BLADE Magazine

Gabe Fletcher/knifemaker ale collaborations lead to the official BLADE Show Beer.

It’s a winning combination, no doubt—a blend of brews and blades.

Three years ago, Gabe Fletcher began making knives. Then, somewhere along the way he had a brilliant idea. The dynamic combination of his finest craft beers with the custom knives that could be developed in collaboration with friends who appreciate both, just as he does, was too tempting not to try.

Fletcher had been in the brewing business since 1988, and the joint venture of beverage and blade just seemed to fit. “I ran another brewery here in Anchorage for 13 years,” he recalled, “and decided to start my own brewery after so many years. I’m coming up on 27 years of professional brewing, and I started when I was 21.”

Gabe knew that the collaboration opportunity was alive and well in the brewing industry, and it just seemed a natural progression. “I do many collaborations with other breweries and I’m pretty well known in the beer world,” he observed of his Anchorage Brewing Company*. “I thought in the beginning that it would be a fun way to get my name out there as a knifemaker. The first collaboration was with award-winning bladesmith Neil Kamimura. He was the person that got me into knifemaking.”

Seeing the knives in Neil’s shop a few years ago provided inspiration for Gabe to give it a try at the forge. At first, he did only beer collaborations as he refined his own knifemaking skills.

“Eventually, I started to get good enough to start actually making knives with these makers. I owe a lot to Mareko Maumasi [page 16]. I would consider him my mentor, and I’ve learned so much from him,” Fletcher reflected. “Working with him so much has really propelled my skills much faster than if I was learning on my own. Now Anchorage Forge and Anchorage Brewing are very connected, and I use it as a way to have fun, collaborate and excel in my knifemaking journey.”

To date, Gabe has completed at least nine knife/beer combos, and there are more to come. Naturally, he gravitated toward one with Mareko. The resulting knife was a dazzling chef’s tool with damascus blade, handle of white oak from the barrel in which the accompanying beer was aged, carbon fiber and G-10 spacers. Respective blade and overall lengths: 10 3/8 and 14.8 inches. Mareko’s price for a similar knife: $3,000.

“Gabe posed the challenge to me to see if I could design a steel that looked like a devil’s skull,” Maumasi explained. “I already had a design for a pattern that looked like a skull, which I hadn’t made yet but had sketched out in a notebook. At that point, all I had to do was figure out how to add horns to the skull. The devil skull came together nicely with the detailed elements for the teeth, cheekbones, eyes and horns. A lot of people who see it assume that it’s a canister damascus steel, but it’s actually a combination of several pattern-welded elements that started out as plate steel. For the forged design, we added a crushed ‘W’s’ flame along the edge of the blade.”

The damascus chef’s knife paired nicely with the latest in Fletcher and Maumasi beer offerings. The pair have actually done more than one brew, and the most recent is a synthesis of tropical flavors to honor Mareko’s Samoan heritage. The first was a Maumasi oak-aged imperial stout, which had a base aged eight months in Buffalo Trace bourbon barrels. It was then transferred to freshly emptied Woodford Reserve Double Oaked bourbon barrels for six months before moving to emptied Buffalo Trace bourbon barrels for four months, and was finished with toasted coconut and coffee from the Olympia Coffee Company in Mareko’s hometown. The second is the Maelstrom IPA, a smooth and light beverage with grapefruit, passion fruit, papaya and lechee hints.

GABE’S GREAT IDEA

Another example of Gabe’s great idea translated into a chef’s knife collaboration with Salem Straub. It includes a 10.5-inch mosaic damascus blade with a handle of copper/coral carbon fiber that features carbon fiber and G-10 spacers. Overall length: 14.9 inches. The knife sold for $5,850 through Eating Tools.

“I forged a bold mosaic pattern of ‘distorted finger-type layup’—that’s Steve Filicietti pattern language—and sent Gabe a big chunk sawed from a loaf of that,” Straub related. “He worked his magic and forged a big sleek integral chef’s knife in an angular Western profile from it, and finished it up with some of his signature-style faceting applied to a hidden-tang handle of crazy carbon fiber. The steels in the blade are 15N20 and 1080.”

Salem has been making knives for 22 years and expressed real gratitude for Gabe’s initiative. “He always kills it at what he does, and this was no exception,” Salem observed. “I’ve had a lot of fun sharing his brew with family and friends.”

The Anchorage Brewing product Fletcher and Straub created found a niche among beer lovers. “Our idea was to come up with a bold, crisp IPA with a low alcohol content,” Salem said. “It’s what I would term a ‘performance IPA’ since you can have one or two and still get stuff done. It’s a real challenge apparently to make a beer to these specs, but Gabe is quite a talented and skilled brewer, as well as knifemaker.”

A hefty chef’s knife with an 11.1-inch carbon steel blade, handle of carbon fiber with G-10 spacers, and overall length of 15.8 inches was the result of Fletcher’s collaboration with Josh Prince. The knife sold for $5,850 on Eating Tools.

“I knew Gabe from interacting over Instagram and a few phone calls to talk about pattern and material processes around knives both carbon steel and stainless,” Josh noted. “Slowly, we developed the idea of working together on a knife/beer release. We worked on a chef’s knife in carbon steel in Gabe’s design with a plug-welded element. I provided the damascus plug element and Gabe did the rest. We dubbed it ‘Planet Eater’ after the classic Star Trek episode “Doomsday Machine,” where a mechanical entity consumes entire solar systems.”

Based in Rhode Island and making knives since 2016, Prince commented, “It’s just inspiring to work with another maker of such a high caliber and level of motivation and creativity.”

That motivation led to a discussion that brought back a pleasant memory for Josh. “I talked to Gabe about another beer that he made with Ben Kamon of Austria and how much the aroma reminded me of cannabis,” Prince remarked. “Oddly enough, Gabe told me that the hop and cannabis plants are very closely related and could even be grafted together! I asked for a dank, strongly fragranced IPA, and Gabe delivered.”

BLADE SHOW BEER

Adventures in knives and beers with Fletcher and friends doesn’t stop there. Recently, Gabe engaged with representatives of the BLADE Show to craft a unique brew just for the greatest show in knives.

“It’s an IPA that will be lighter at around 4.5 percent alcohol by volume—very floral and smooth drinking—and the BLADE Show beer will be available at the show in the Cobb Galleria of Atlanta at every bar on the floor and also on the main hotel floor, i.e., in The Pit!” Fletcher advised of the iconic sunken bar in the lobby of the show’s host hotel, the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly.

“We will also have some of the beer available online through one of my distribution partners, Tavour, where a person can have the beer mailed directly to their home in 23 states in the USA. I went to my first BLADE Show last year and ended up having dinner with some friends and a few people I hadn’t met yet. Henry Wu from the BLADE Show was sitting next to me. We got to talking, and later that year I had the idea of having a beer made just for the show. I pitched it to Henry and he was all about it.”

With his fine pairings of blades and brews already offered and more coming in the future, Gabe melds his two great passions, connects and collaborates with friends, and presents the resulting creations to the world. His love of both brewing and knives shines through in every aspect of the ongoing project.

“The beer is sold through my distribution network and is mainly free advertising for the maker,” he said. “Also, it’s just a fun thing to do. I mean, who wouldn’t want a beer brewed in honor of them? As far as the knives are concerned, most of them are sold through Eating Tools. Abe Shaw and his crew over there do an amazing job of taking beautiful pictures and telling the story of the knife and beer as a whole.”

It’s a powerful, flavorful and altogether refreshing combination of brewer and bladesmith. Raise a glass. Slice and dice. And feel the fine craftsmanship in both.

*In 2024, Gabe Fletcher’s Anchorage Brewing Company was ranked among the country’s elite beer makers. According to Untapped, an app that allows drinkers to rate their beers, his company was ranked No. 6 nationwide in terms of producing the highest number of brews at a state or national level. The ratings are by nearly 11 million beer lovers covering over 26,000 of the world’s top-rated beers, as reported in Forbes.

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