Army Vet's JBLM Brew Pub Brings Taste To The Base

DUPONT, WA - Jared Wharton's path from amateur home brewer to brew master has had a couple of twists and turns, including tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the Army vet is closing in on his first year at the helm of Forward Operating Base Brewing Co. in DuPont, and recently won a major award for entrepreneurship.

Wharton, 42, got interested in beer in 2002. Working as a sheriff's deputy in California, he and his cop buddies would drink craft beer and play poker. They figured they could make their own, and so decided to give it a shot.

The first batch, an attempt at Alton Brown's "Good Brew" recipe, was a disaster. But that didn't stop Wharton. He dug in.

"I started really reading some recipe books and how to brew and other things just trying to learn what brewing was all about," he remembers.

Wharton eventually left law enforcement and enlisted in the Army. His first duty station was at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. It was on a "particularly bad day" in Afghanistan in 2011 that he decided to pursue brewing as an occupation.

"The only thing in my pocket that I had any success with was making beer," he said.

He stayed in the Army until 2013, and then spent the year after that as a contractor in Afghanistan. While there, he wrote a business plan for the brewery.

Last year, Wharton was able to attend an entrepreneurship boot-camp for veterans through Cornell University. Through the program, he met Larry Broughton, a vet and founder of broughtonHOTELS. Broughton recommended Wharton for a $10,000 Arthur H. and Mary E. Wilson Award through the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), which Wharton got on July 15.

With the help of those programs, Wharton opened the Forward Operating Brewing Co. taproom last October. The brewery is of course open to any beer lover, but Wharton is aiming at enlisted personnel with beers like the Little Bird IPA ("a bad-ass beer named after a bad-ass helicopter") or SNAFU red ale.

"Having such a pro-military, patriotic market right there was ideal," he said.

In the crowded Puget Sound craft brew scene, Wharton is carving out a niche. FOB is one of the few taprooms between Tacoma and Olympia, and so far the only one aimed at the thousands of JBLM residents and veterans in the area. The brewery also hosts live music, food trucks, and even yoga classes.

From here, Wharton hopes to get FOB beers on tap at restaurants and brew pubs around Puget Sound. The long-term plan is to have an FOB outside every major military base in the U.S., which means about 14 more taprooms nationwide.

The only downside: troops aren't allowed to take the beer overseas on deployment.

Visit Forward Operating Base Brewing Co.
2750 Williamson Pl., DuPont, WA 98327
www.fobbrewingcompany.com

Images courtesy Jared Wharton