Tucked away around the corner from the CVS and Safeway in Arcata, Pale Moon Brewing Co. (600 F St., Suite 7) looks nondescript from the outside. Step inside, however, and you’ll find it inviting and lovably pubby. You sit among the metal brightwork — so pretty — and have a pint or two with an old friend or maybe find a new one. While there, I ran into two guys I knew and found myself talking with a nice pair of folks I’d never met.
The crowd is genial and it’s quiet enough to talk. Owner/brewer Jeff Finn also takes pride that it’s a place where a woman can come in alone and expect to be spared untoward douchiness.
Finn began his beermaking journey as many do, home brewing. Prior to starting Pale Moon, Finn brewed for Eel River Brewing Co. and Lost Coast Brewery. He gained experience with several brewing systems at different scales and developed his share of recipes. Eventually, he says, “I wanted to take a stab at this beer thing for myself.”
As a home brewer, I’ve come to think going from making a good beer at home to launching a beer business is akin to being a good golfer and launching a country club. But Finn had the desire to give it a go and the smarts to do it intelligently. He sought out business planning help from the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) and secured financing through North Edge. The company is now approaching its second anniversary.
Finn describes beermaking as very blue collar. Brew days are sweaty. You’re always cleaning something. The equipment needs maintenance.
But there’s also some artistry. For Finn, it’s a combination of waiting for the muse and maintaining the first-album energy of a good new band.
Working on the brewing line at a sizable operation generally means being isolated. They don’t let you out much. Maybe they have you meet a tour group now and then.
Now, he serves pretty much as a one-man shop. Brewing or kegging early in the morning, he serves customers at the bar in the afternoons and evenings. This new-to-him public-facing aspect, he says, has restored his faith in humanity. “I’m less cynical because I meet so many nice people doing good things,” he says. It also sometimes makes him feel vulnerable. When he developed a recipe at Lost Coast Brewery, no one out in the world associated it with him. Here, Finn’s the one guy, standing right there with you and your pint, with no place to hide.
The brews themselves are premium and mostly unadorned, classic styles executed carefully. The menu changes but generally provides two hoppy beers, two malty beers and a lager. These are all beer-flavored beers. There’s not a dragon fruit, mango or pumpkin to be found. In the current beer climate, Finn believes “there’s an avenue to just brewing the classics well.”
Despite being high-end, I appreciated that the pricing was standard and honest: $6 a pint for everything on tap the day I visited.
The straight-up pilsner presents as nuanced and clean. The West Coast pilsner adds a bright hoppiness. The red ale is malty, with a hop bite and the porter is classically brewed, with a pleasing mocha latte head that persisted.
And there was a lovely pink seltzer, hibiscus tea meets 5.4 percent alcohol, that Finn insisted I try. I must admit it has reasons to be popular, including that it manages to yield actual mouthfeel.
If there’s one brewery thing Finn dedicates himself to it’s fresh beer. This showed clearly in the IPA, which supplied the requisite hoppiness but also a subtlety that often becomes lost with time and mishandling.
In the brewing process, Finn obsesses over the details — things like temperatures, continuous refrigeration, no centrifuging, happy yeast and never ever letting the hops get stale. “I want to save every nuance,” he says. He also said something I don’t expect to hear from a commercial brewer: “Here, I’ve never brewed the same beer twice.” Not that he never would, but being able to make that small adjustment in something like the third hop addition is a benefit of nano brewing. You don’t have contracts with large retailers that lock in your recipes.
When we asked the room for ratings, my friend Chris said, “This is my idea of beer fun.”
A bearded guy checking out at the cash register pronounced the offerings as “really good beer … really, really good beer … is that enough reallys?” (Note: there were numerous bearded guys present, which itself represents some kind of beer buy endorsement.)
With limited exceptions, Pale Moon’s brews sell entirely on site. The pub is open afternoons and evenings, Wednesdays through Saturdays. It’s a great place to pull up a stool and settle in for a while. l
Michael Kraft (he/him) lives on Humboldt Hill, where he works as an independent consultant and writes some stuff.
This article appears in Double the Drama.