Garliki was born out of regular conversations and experimentation, prompted and prodded by enthusiastic friends and family. After years of fermentation trials and recipe development, this home kitchen concept morphed into a tangible reality ready to share with the masses.
Craft and collaboration are in our blood. We value building, developing, and sustaining relationships founded on creative endeavors and rooted in community. The kitchen is our arena and fermentation is our passion. We aim to inspire experimentation and enthusiastic culinary experiences!
About Us
The story of Garliki began many years ago when Chris and Jason met on the production floor at Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider in Portland, OR during the summer of 2013. They had both started working at the cidery around the same time and bonded over fermentation within the genre-breaking ciders Nat was experimenting with, and beyond. Chris went on to start his own cider and ginger beer company, but not before working in kombucha and wine, and also making cider in the UK and Africa. Jason left the cidery for the beer world, helping to design apparel and advance branding for breweries all over the world. This profession took him back and forth across the country, and by the time he was ready to move on to garlic, he had worked with hundreds of breweries. To put it short, on the road to Garliki, there were many beverages, fermentations, and friends of all varieties met along the way.
The idea of fermented garlic came about one sunny afternoon in Jason’s backyard. Chris and Jason were discussing the virtues of good cooking, and inevitably, garlic, but lamenting peeling, crushing, and mincing garlic, and how the jarred garlic (jarlic) that you find on the supermarket shelves was good enough for nothing but the compost bin. They understood that fermentation has been known to enhance and preserve flavor in other food and beverages, so they began fermenting garlic in crocks and jars, then eventually converted kegs into larger fermentation vessels. The first batches were a revelation. Not only were they left with the garlic pungency they were looking for, but the fermentation process added depth of flavor they had never encountered. It was then Garliki was born, but the recipe and fermentation techniques took two years to further develop. From sausage cultures to wild beer yeast they performed trial after trial while occasionally knocking on the doors of OSU’s Food Innovation Center for scientific guidance and access to research papers. They were learning just how amazing and amazingly stubborn garlic could be, but were determined to capture that combined essence of fermentation and garlic into a jar they could offer to the cooks of Oregon and beyond.
