The Inlander76%
Bierschnapps is the result of a COVID-era collaboration between Dry Fly Distilling and Brick West Brewing Co. 44%
By Bob Johnson54%
7/16/2026, 8:30:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 24 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Post Hoc (False Cause), and Overconfidence Bias, with Attempt to Sell a Product or Service as the most egregious example at 33.6% saturation with 345 hits. Analysis detected 1,437 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,028 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 47.6% and a BS Rank of 44% (10,778 of 19,039 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 56.60% of the article peer group.
SPIRITS
Bierschnapps is the result of a COVID-era collaboration between Dry Fly Distilling and Brick West Brewing Co.
Everyone loves a mystery, and the July 22 release of an unusual adult beverage called bierschnapps by Dry Fly Distilling would not be happening were not a mystery investigated and solved late last year.
The origin of bierschnapps, as the spelling of its first syllable suggests, can be traced to Germany (as well as Austria, Switzerland and Belgium), where some breweries had small stills that they’d use to distill any excess beer to avoid spoilage.
In the simplest of terms, when water is added to grain and allowed to ferment, beer is created.
When beer is distilled, un-aged whiskey is created.
When hops become part of the equation, bierschnapps is the result.
The genesis of BW Bierschnapps, as it’s named on the label, can be traced to COVID, when Brick West Brewing Co.’s owners came to Dry Fly founder Don Poffenroth and now-President Pat Donovan with a conundrum.
“They had all this excess beer and asked us if there was anything we could do with it,” Donovan recalls.
“I had done some experimenting with bierschnapps in the past — not to any scale; purely R&D — so we knew we could do something.”
Donovan calls the brew that was provided by Brick West “a Frankenstein of beers — a conglomeration of different beers in different quantities that we could never replicate.”
It amounted to approximately 500 gallons.
He says that everything normally done in making whiskey, called alembic distilling, was embraced.
“We ran it straight from the pot to the condenser and treated it like it was our second distillation on a whiskey run,” he explains.
“We took our typical heads and tails cuts and treated it just like something we were going to distill and put into a barrel.
The only difference between what we did with this and what makes a single-malt or any other classification of whiskey is the addition of hops.”
The concoction was put in a previously used wheat whiskey barrel, and the barrel — filled and hand-signed by a distiller who’s no longer with Dry Fly — was placed among the distillery’s other barrels.
And there it sat, save for one move from a previous location near Gonzaga and another to Dry Fly’s off-site barrel warehouse.
It was not out of sight, but it certainly was out of mind, especially during COVID when most of Dry Fly’s efforts were spent bottling hand sanitizer and distributing it throughout Spokane.
Time passed.
COVID subsided.
Life returned to some semblance of normal.
Surviving businesses, including Dry Fly, gradually regained their footing.
“We were busy, and it really was one of those forgotten barrels,” Donovan says.
Then one day, about seven months ago, Donovan says he noticed the barrel.
It had “Brick West” and a date handwritten on it, and a small piece of paper delineated technical notes associated with the distilling.
Donovan tasted the liquid inside the vessel and was surprised.
Pleasantly.
“A craft distillery like us rarely will keep a product in a barrel for five and a half or six years,” he says.
“That’s a long time for us.
It’s pretty wild.
You’re going to get your caramel and residual oak (flavors), but what you’re really missing is that big grain punch that you typically get with whiskey.
It’s way more floral, with a rich malt character and a subtle sweetness.”
When the Inlander spoke with Donovan, he had not yet bottled the bierschnapps, so he wasn’t sure what the final proof would be.
“We’re a dry climate here in Spokane, so the proof climbs in the barrel,” he says.
“Sometimes it’s challenging out of the barrel to determine what it’s going to be at the final resting proof.”
That proof turned out to be 70, and Donovan describes the finished product as “a cool and unique beverage.”
The launch event on July 22 will include the debut of a new food menu, specialty cocktails, featured pours, a Brick West Brewing tap takeover, and bierschnapps prizes for participants in Dry Fly’s weekly bingo event (6:30-8:30 pm).
The addition of a fryer in the kitchen means that Dry Fly now can offer both french fries and tater tots as sides, as well as a “Basket of Potatoes” ($10) — fries or tots tossed in a bloody mary spice mix and served with a choice of sauces — on the appetizer list.
Other new apps include an artichoke and Parmesan dip ($16) with creamy cheeses and toasted pita for dipping, and smashed tacos ($16) with seasoned beef, melted cheese and fresh toppings.
There also are two additions to the salad menu, the “Chef Knows Best” chef salad ($17) and the “Taco ’Bout Fresh” taco salad ($17), plus two new flatbreads: chicken and feta ($19) and taco ($19).
The turkey clubhouse BLT ($18) provides a gluten-free option, while the barrel-aged burger ($20) — featuring a Lone Tree Beef patty, Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, mustard aioli and jalapeño bacon bourbon jam — should pair nicely with the rich malt character and easy-drinking personality of the bierschnapps.
Another unusual, if not unique, aspect of the collaboration: The bierschnapps will be bottled in 750-milliliter wine bottles left over from a long-ago project.
To summarize: multiple types of beer distilled into a spirit and packaged in wine bottles.
Approximately 150 bottles will be available for $79 each.
“It’s not going to be our standard bottle, which gives kind of a bootlegging approach to this,” Donovan says.
“It’s a bottle that we’ve never used before and probably never will again.
It fits the project,” for which one of the marketing phrases being utilized is “No kegs left behind.”
Not much good came out of COVID, but one positive will soon see the light of day — an unusual beverage that had been resting inside a forgotten wheat whiskey barrel for nearly six years.
Bierschnapps Launch Event • Wed, July 22 from 11 am-9 pm • Dry Fly Distilling • 1021 W.
Riverside Ave. • dryflydistilling.com
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