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USA, WA: Poulsbo’s Slippery Pig Brewery shutting its doors for good
It’s been two weeks since the owners of the Slippery Pig Brewery announced the business would shut its doors for good. Chairs and cardboard boxes were stacked, ready to move out of the commercial space on Front Street as co-owner Dave Lambert sat down at a table. The restaurant was emptying out now, but the day after the Lamberts made the announcement the brewery was packed for one last hurrah, Kitsap Sun reported on January 30.
A line of regulars wrapped around the building on Friday, January 17, while tears and beers flowed. Co-owner Shawna Lambert said she gave more hugs that night than she had her whole life. For Dave, it felt like a wake, but there was joy and celebration too. Karaoke closed out the night and everyone who took the stage sang with exuberance, he said. Every song meant something.
“When you are feeling any emotion for the first time in years, it’s like…it was a good time,” he said after a pause. “It was a really good time.”
Things were looking up just over a year ago. Dave Lambert was moving furniture and brewing equipment into a new retail space on Callow Avenue in Bremerton, ready to open a second location. The Lamberts had dreams of a larger space furnished with pinball machines, skee ball and a textural wall with moss and tree branches. With more room, they planned to build a “tank farm” and a tap room and finally remodel their kitchen at the Poulsbo location. But the brewery’s future got caught in the transition.
Slippery Pig Brewery, which launched on the Lamberts’ farm in 2010, was known for its creative “farm-to-glass” brews like the Rhubarb IPA, distinctly Poulsbo meals like lutefisk tacos on the menu, and legacy community events the Lamberts helped create, like the Poulsbo Beer Run and the Viking Fest Strongman competition. The creativity extended to stunts, like the time Lambert rowed a keg of beer from Poulsbo to Seattle, for delivery to a Ballard bar. But after a 15-year run, the small business owners found themselves straddling two rents, awaiting permits for the new building and watching prices rise while sales struggled to keep pace.
Lambert had the keys in hand for the Slippery Pig’s second location in September 2023. But over time, the building became just an expensive storage container, he said, as they waited on permits while the business began to encounter increasing obstacles elsewhere.
“We took the keys in 2023 and we were like, wow, okay, we've shown steady growth every single year. We weren't planning on that same rate of growth... if things don't change, from '23 to '24, it'll be fine,” Lambert said. “And, turns out, it wasn't.”
After getting an architect on board, the Lamberts were finally ready to move forward and were ready to “make this thing happen.” But 2024 wasn't a good year, and numbers were down, Lambert said. If the business had a good month, it would be followed by a bad month.
Food costs went up, and like many restaurants, the Slippery Pig had to raise its menu prices. Their margins began to slim while nationwide, it seemed like people were going out to eat less. They weren’t seeing new customers coming in like they used to, asking for 21st birthday shots on a Poulsbo bar crawl. Taxes were going up and so was minimum wage, and it all began to pile up.
An investor for the Slippery Pig’s second location said he couldn’t just keep funding power bills while the restaurant sat in limbo, Lambert said.
The Slippery Pig was once a small outdoor taproom with no cover, just four taps stuck through the wall of a root cellar at their farm, a picnic table for customers and a barbeque grill anyone could use. Lambert was into home brewing and his friends urged him to go bigger, until he finally opened his business in 2010.
During one of the first winters, Lambert remembered there were six inches of snow on the ground when a four-wheel-drive truck pulled in, asking if the Slippery Pig had its outdoor heaters running. The driver and his friends all sat, exposed to the snow, sharing a beer when another pickup rolled in.
The Lamberts had pigs and chickens roaming the farm and would occasionally sell pork and eggs on the side. After they moved the business to a space on Front Street in Poulsbo, they began to sell more food in order to comply with permits so they could start selling liquor, Lambert said.
“At a certain point, it felt like we accidentally started a restaurant.”
The new space on Callow Avenue would’ve allowed the Slippery Pig to expand its kitchen and move in new equipment. Lambert once hoped to have the second location open this spring, and believes if they’d been able to stick to that timeline the business wouldn’t be in a position to close now. “That was outside of my control,” he said, “but it had to happen.”
Once the decision to close was out of their hands, the Lamberts began to feel a weight begin to lift, Lambert said. First Shawna, then Dave. His stress levels began to subside and soon he found that he didn’t recognize the space. While they broke down the restaurant and did paperwork, he realized “my eyelid doesn't twitch anymore… I don't even know when that started.”
Now, Lambert is excited by the idea of working only 40 hours a week, half what the brewery demanded, he said, and has already picked up shifts to work a couple of days a week at Coast Hardware in Poulsbo. The Lamberts have gone to the gym, and are realizing there's a life outside of work.
“Maybe I can get back into things that I enjoy doing. I want to get back to playing guitar a little bit. I'm not good,” Lambert said. “I started reading a book again. Wow, I love reading!”
When Lambert was told the Slippery Pig would need to close, his initial response was “I don't want anything to do with this industry again in any way, shape or form,” he said. But he’s beginning to come around and lovers of The Pig haven’t yet seen the last drop of Lambert’s brews.
After the West Sound Homebrewers threw a going away party for the Slippery Pig, Lambert was urged to pour at the annual Strange Brewfest in Port Townsend this weekend. Eventually, Lambert gave in.
Slippery Pig brews will also make an appearance during a “tap takeover” at Ridgeline Brewing – the Callow Ave brewery that would have been a neighbor to a Bremerton Slippery Pig – and at Dog Days Brewing in Bremerton. In the meantime, Lambert is also selling off the last of the Slippery Pig merchandise, leftover cases and even its brewing equipment on Facebook.
Even the Slippery Pig’s mug club, for frequent customers, has found a new home, at Western Red Brewing just a few blocks away in Poulsbo. Lambert was distraught at the thought of leaving his mug club hanging, but he had no way of refunding money back because the business was broke.
Denver Smyth, co-founder of Western Red, had known Lambert since his days brewing on the farm and told him their brewery could rehome the mug club. They could offer a shelf for customers’ mugs, discounted pours, deals throughout the year and special events like a St. Paddy’s Day potluck where Smyth cooks brisket and invites a Celtic band to come and play music.
“It was something that we could afford to do that just really truly lifted his spirits when he was in a time of need,” Smyth said.
Western Red and the Slippery Pig have collaborated in the past, including a traditional Nordic brew that Lambert couldn’t execute alone. Smyth hopes Lambert will come back and brew one of his unique beers -- ingredients like dandelions, stingy nettles, blueberries and more were part of the tap list -- for the mug club. He will remember the Slippery Pig for Lambert’s creativity and will miss their working relationship, sending customers between their two breweries downtown to compare the brewers’ styles.
“It really struck home in a lot of ways,” Smyth said of the closing. “One, just seeing my friend sad because he was just heartbroken, but then when you look at it from another brewery perspective, it's like, wow, that could be us tomorrow… I don't think any of us are above one little bad month and we might be right there.”
That’s why Lambert urges beer lovers to support local businesses this year.
As the Lamberts packed up their equipment, decorations and memories from their Poulsbo location, Dave looked back on the history of the building. He knows the next business will move in quickly. He already has his suspicions as to what could be next.
The Front Street space hosted a string of businesses that folded one right after the other. But before that, Lambert remembers a Chinese restaurant that ran for a long time. His grandmother liked to have her birthdays there and the family would gather around a large table. As a kid, Lambert and his sister got to drink coffee without sugar to help go to sleep, oddly, but at the Chinese restaurant, they got to have “endless amounts of tea.” Lambert liked to tip a packet of sugar in and sip out of the little tea cups. “It was so cool,” he said. “It was pretty neat to be in the same building.”
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