Home-based brewer perfects his craft

In a small brewery attached to his house on Fleet Street, Steven Chavez put a glass to the nozzle of his fermenter, pouring in the golden, hazy color of his Believer IPA, a flavorful beer made with actual Douglas fir tips, pine, spices and Chinook hops.

“No one makes cookies like Grandma does,” he said, “and no one’s gonna make beer like we do.”

Having served in the Army for 28 years with two decades in the special forces, a lot rubs off into Crossed Arrows Brewery — the logo itself shows the crossed arrows of the special forces branch insignia crowned with hops.

The pine flavor of the IPA came from Chavez’s time in survival school, he said, where he learned in a dire situation tea can be made from pine needles and water.

Chavez, at least when it comes to beer, considers himself a perfectionist. He’s right where he needs to be, with a relatively small set-up and no taproom, putting the craft in craft beer.

“There’s a lot of great breweries out there,” he said, “but I’m not sure they’re able to sit there and zest huge oranges and then juice them and throw them into the fermenter.”

Chavez makes the beers he and his wife like to drink, taking the advice of a winemaker who told him in the end, he could be the only one who drinks it. The result is a lot of fun flavors—root beer, creamsicle, jalapeño, grapefruit, dark chocolate, coffee, ginger snap.

Originally from Northwest Ohio, home of “Pabst Blue Ribbon, Old Milwaukee, like the worst beers on Earth,” he said, Chavez’s time in the Army moved him all over the country with constant deployments to the Middle East, North Africa, South America and more. In 2014, during his last tour to Afghanistan, he told his generals he was retiring.

“They’re like, ‘What are you going to do?’” he said. “I’m like, ‘I don’t know. I guess I want to go make beer.’”

It started with a regular, simple beer kit, and the system grew to what it is today; Crossed Arrow brews can be found in bars and restaurants across Oak Harbor.

The bigger breweries push out beers in two weeks, Chavez said, often not allowing the yeast to fully eat the sugars. With pressure fermenting, Crossed Arrows retains carbon dioxide, which benefits the flavor and increases the shelf life.

The next beer on the Crossed Arrows docket is a peach blonde, kicking off the summer beers. While Chavez plans on growing to increase brewing and distribution tasks, the vision will remain a small, homestyle brewery.

He likes the concept of keeping it local, allowing people to see the process and chat with the brewer.

“If you can taste off the fermenter, it’s a huge difference on what it will taste like from taps or cans or whatever the case may be,” he said. “Here I control every aspect of the environment.”

The public can try for themselves on Growler Fill Fridays, open from noon to 7 p.m. Appointments can be made through the Crossed Arrows Brewery Facebook page.