This week we’re hearing from Cole Tamblyn in Anchorage. Tamblyn is the head brewer at Resolution Brewing Company.
TAMBLYN: I grew up in Oregon in kind of a small town northwest of Portland called St. Helens, OR. I had a friend who was from Anchorage who drove buses for Holland America, and she was like, “You know, there’s a lot of jobs in Alaska in the summer. If you need a summer job, you could make pretty good money.” So I did that and I fell in love with Alaska and just continued to work in tourism for most of the summers after that until I decided to come up here full-time and kinda fell in love with brewing and now… here I am.
You find all sorts of people here just like you do down there. You know, you’ve got the Patagonia-wearers, the outdoorsy types. You got the city types, but I think it’s a small Alaska. You run into so many people you think you’ll never see again here.
There’s still the people I meet every summer… they’re like, “We did not know how to pack for this. We have five coats. We thought it was going to be freezing.” Like it’s one of those odd Anchorage days where it’s like 80, and they’re like, “We don’t have any shorts or flip-flops or anything.” So I think people still, the further away you get from the Northwest… people have no idea. They see pictures of mountains and snowy peaks and they think it’s going to be cold all the time, which we know is not true. We get really awesome summers here.
One of the most beautiful places in the country, in the world honestly, where everything you might wanna do in the winter or the summer is literally like 20 minutes away at your fingertips. And I love that part.
Wesley Early covers Anchorage life and city politics for Alaska Public Media. Reach him at wearly@alaskapublic.org and follow him on X at @wesley_early. Read more about Wesley here.
