Worth Leaving Town For: Diamond Knot Brewpub
Editor’s Note: Originally published July 13, 2018. Updated September 4, 2019.
This is the story of a shipwreck that took down 4 million dollars’ worth of canned salmon.
It’s a tale of perseverance in the face of adversity... and it’s about beer. Significantly, it’s about the best blackberry cider you’ve ever tasted.
Diamond Knot Brewing is located in one of the best places in the greater Seattle area (IMHO): the coast of Mukilteo, a stone’s throw from a ferry dock and Ivar’s.
Mukilteo needs no hype here, but check it out for yourself some time. You’ll like it. Assuming that you like stunning panoramic vistas, beach walks, kites, and fish and chips.
A trip to Diamond Knot Brewing is the frosting on the cupcake that is Mukilteo recreation.
THE WRECK
Here’s how the place got its name.
The Diamond Knot was a steam ship that sank six miles off the coast of Port Angeles on August 13, 1947. It collided with another boat, the Fenn Victory, and began taking on water.
The Diamond Knot was coming from Alaska and carrying four million dollars of salmon—154,000 cases. If that sounds like a lot of fish, it is. The cargo represented ten percent of the year’s catch.
The stakes were high. Fishery owners would be damned if they lost ten percent of their annual profits. They dispatched scuba divers who worked in shifts to cut open the hull of the sunken Diamond Knot. Their goal was to extract and surface as much canned salmon as possible, while it could still be salvaged.
Underwater manual labor isn’t, as a rule, a simple thing to do. Complicating the wreckage of the Diamond Knot were gnarly currents that buffeted the divers.
In the end the workers were able to salvage 75 percent of the salmon. It was sent to Seattle where each can was reopened and inspected for saltwater leakage before being repackaged and sent out to market.
Check out this video of the shipwreck (courtesy Scott Lundy):
In the 1990s two amateur brewers decided to make Northwest IPAs in Mukilteo. Craft beer was coming into fashion. They wondered: could a local IPA get a foothold in the market through hard work and tenacity? Could enough cans be moved to create a profit?
The Boeing employees, Bob Maphet and Brian Sollenberger, thought so. They were also divers. They named their brewing venture Diamond Knot to honor the idea of going slowly and methodically to accomplish something large.
They succeeded. Besides the brew pub in Mukilteo they have a taproom near Paine Field and a second brew pub in Mountlake Terrace.
Bob and Brian. Photo: Diamond Knot
THE MUKILTEO BREW PUB
The cool thing about the brew pub in Mukilteo is that you don’t have to be a beer nerd to enjoy it. There are growler fills, sure, and plenty of craft beverages, but the environment is kid-friendly. They do a brunch on the weekend. It’s a fun place to visit.
The walls are covered in wood panelling, so you feel like you’re in the hull of a ship.
On the bar side of the restaurant are stand-up tables covered in tile. The place is full of complimentary peanuts. Crack the shells and just drop them right on the floor.
Photo: Diamond Knot
If I could recommend anything to you about Diamond Knot it’s this: the blackberry cider (editor’s note: sadly, no longer available at Diamond Knot).
I’m a picky cider drinker. The blackberry cider at Diamond Knot is my ideal beverage: it’s the sweet spot. It’s like an incredibly fruity juice that packs a wallop. It goes down so smooth.
Here’s a solid gold Northwest experience for those over 21 (prove me wrong): drink two mugs of DK blackberry cider and meander the wind-blown pebble-strewn beaches of Mukilteo, gazing out to sea. Fill up with fish and chips and ride the ferry for kicks.
Ahh. That’s what life’s about.
That’s worth leaving town for.
Richard Porter is a writer for Live in Everett.