Author: Chris

I am not talking enlightenment here, but rather the lofty goals we set out for ourselves for our trip to Seattle: eight new breweries and all the good beer bars we could get to in four days. With the help of our friend Chris Devlin, I am happy to report that we exceeded what we set out to do.

Saturday dawned rainy and cold, with me depressed because I was back wearing dreaded pants instead of my comfy shorts. Merideth and I met up with Chris and his significant other Francesca and searched out an antidote for my woe. Beer you say? No… chocolate.

The Theo chocolate factory is not just your average, run-of-mill, award-winning, organic, fair trade chocolate company… it is also housed in the original Redhook Brewery in the Fremont district of Seattle. They have free samples, too, so after a few minutes of trying an interesting array of chocolate nibbles, I was ready to face the rest of the day.

And the rest of the day began just across the street at the world-famous Brouwer’s Cafe.

Brouwer’s is on many ‘top 10’ lists of best beer bars in the United States and it is easy to see why. An incredible draft and bottle selection awaits the thirsty customer. And they have the cool glass washer thingy too.

Following my rule to always drink local brew when I can, I stuck with the Washington beers on the menu. I ended up drinking two cask ales: Hop Diggity from Port Townsend and Bosun’s Black Porter from Maritime Pacific and two keg beers: Big Daddy’s ESB from Silver City and Snoqualmie’s Spring Fever Belgian-style Grand Cru.

I don’t want to gush on about Brouwer’s, but I have to say, I feel pretty fortunate to have had a pint at some of the best beer bars in the States over the last few months… Toronado, Monk’s, Publick House and now Brouwer’s.

Though the rain had finally stopped, it was still chilly as we walked from Brouwer’s down to Hales.

I have fond memories of our first visit to Hales ten years ago, but I have to admit that we were a bit disappointed in the beers this time around. Not that they were bad, they just lacked any ‘wow’ factor.

From Hales, we walked down to Maritime Pacific Brewing and enjoyed a few standout beers such as the Flagship Red Alt Ale and the Nightwatch Dark Amber.

But what really stood out was two items on the food menu. Lil Mahis are fish versions of the famous slider burgers and were to die for. And the deep fried pickles were also out of this world.

Before we hit the last brewery of the trip, we had a bit of business to take care of at Bottleworks, Brouwer’s Cafe’s bottle shop. Namely, we had to pick up the last few beers for our beer tasting next weekend.

The last brewery of the trip was Stix, located on the shores of Lake Union. There is really nothing to say about Stix, except that they brewed their last batch of beer yesterday. The equipment is already sold and the brewer has a new job somewhere else. So, we got there in the nick of time to be able to count it on the list. Oh… Chris D beat me two games to one in pool… and we also got to ride the S.L.U.T.

We finished the day downtown at the Collins Pub basking in the glory of all that we had accomplished over the last four days. We visited twelve breweries- nine of which were new for us – and over a half-dozen beer bars.

I’ll admit that I came to Seattle with a certain amount of skepticism regarding it’s lofty beer reputation, but I am now somewhat a convert. I have to thank Chris D for helping me see the light.

Click here to view all the images of our Seattle adventure.

 

My favorite beer at the Great Alaskan Beer and Barley Wine Festival was a cask imperial IPA from the Anacortes Brewery. I wanted to try more of their beers, so we planned a trip outside Seattle to visit Anacortes and a couple of other breweries. All this before meeting up again with Chris Devlin in the evening for a blind IPA tasting at Cooper’s Alehouse.

Anacortes is about an hour and a half north of Seattle, so we started our day by driving out there. On the way back to Seattle, we would hit the small towns of La Conner and Mukilteo. The big drawback of car touring is that we were limited to taster sets, which really doesn’t give you the full experience… at least to me.

Anacortes certainly did not disappoint, except maybe for the fact that their cask beer was bourbon barrel aged (when is there going to be a barrel shortage crisis?) and that they did not bottle their beer. The food was great, too, and Merideth enjoyed her fish tacos.

We sampled a Pils, Amber, Marzen, Honey Cream Ale, Black Lager, IPA and Porter. While the IPA was really, really good, the Porter was the standout.

La Conner, in the heart of tulip country, is only a short drive from Anacortes. Unlucky for us, there was a tulip festival going on and this little town was packed on a Thursday in the early afternoon. We barely squeezed a parking spot and one seat at the bar to sample La Conner Brewing’s beer. The Brown and Pils were the highlights of the five beers we sampled.

Then it was back to I-5 and heading south to Mukilteo where we planned on visiting two breweries. We stopped at one brewery and were greeted by a sign on the door that said ‘closed today’. However, it looked Closed with a capital C.

The other brewery in town was Diamond Knot. They have to be one of the most ‘diviest’ brewpubs we have ever been to… and I mean that in a good way. Unfortunately, Merideth and I only have twelve tattoos between us, which probably wasn’t cool enough for this crowd.

We again sampled five beers: Golden Ale, IPA, Stout, Porter and ‘Industrial’ IPA. The two other attractions at Diamond Knot are the stone cooking and the Anheuser Busch keg urinals. Merideth thought I was a bit strange when I videotaped the urinals… it was all PG rated.

With our beer touring done for the day, it was time to meet up with Chris at Cooper’s Alehouse for a blind IPA Tasting. And we had the bonus of also meeting up with a longtime friend, Crista, who we hadn’t seen in years.

I really didn’t know what to expect from the blind tasting mainly because it is not something we do. But I have to hand it to Cooper’s owner Kirbie for putting on such a popular event. Cooper’s, over the period of three weeks, was rotating 50 different IPAs through his handles and on a Thursday night, they had a full house of people with their bargain priced sample trays.

As for the blind tasting, we rated 13 IPAs in three rounds. I think I got all the right answers, but Merideth chatted with Crista and lost a bit of focus. I will say, though, she did correctly identify the one imperial IPA in an early round in the tasting.

We finished up at Elysian Brewing for dinner and our fourth new brewery of the day. We sampled a Wit, ESB, IPA, Maibock and Porter. Merideth got a pint of the Pils and I got the Porter.

As for the title of this post, I am sure many of you saw my bit in the Boston episode where I was proclaiming my joy that I would not be wearing pants again for the Year in Beer until our trip to Belgium in December. So far in Seattle I have upheld that claim despite highs only in the low 50s, but tomorrow snow(!) is forecast. So, I might have to put on pants again and the thought has me depressed.

Of course, the antidote for this depression is beer… and we are meeting up again with Chris D early in the afternoon and visiting at least 3 new breweries today.

 

Our trip to Seattle is set. We will be in the Emerald City April 16-20. As always, if you want to meet us for a pint, all you have to do is contact us.

I’ll start this preview out with a confession: Seattle in April is the misfit pairing for the YiB. We wanted to make sure we included Seattle in the YiB, but after filling in all the other months, April was the only month left. While I am sure spring in Seattle is beautiful, and that may be reason enough to come in April, there are just no ‘major’ beer events in Seattle this month.

But have no fear… with the help of our friend Chris Devlin, we are going to avoid Seattle’s well-traveled tourist path and get a local’s tour of the best beer destinations Seattle has to offer.

We haven’t been to Seattle in about 10 years and are looking forward to hitting some of our old favorites including Hales and Big Time.

But the real plus of this YiB installment is that we are going get a flock of new breweries that will begin our final push for 400. The new breweries we will be visiting on this trip include:

• Elysian Brewing
• Maritime Pacific
• Baron Brewing
• Georgetown Brewing
• Laughing Buddha
• Stix Brewhouse
• Anacortes Brewery
• La Conner Brewing

And there is one exciting event. Well, it’s not really an event and it’s not too exciting for Merideth. But for myself, as a hophead, the 6th Annual IPA Fest at Cooper’s Ale House has the taste buds tingling already. Between April 4th-25th, Cooper’s will be pouring “over 40 Imperial, Industrial, and just plain ol’ IPA’s…” We will definitely manage to stop by at some point in the 4 days we are in Seattle. I just hope that their not all gone by the time we get there.

Besides Cooper’s, we will also be visiting Collins Pub, Uber Tavern, Duck Island Ale House and the world famous Brouwers Cafe among others.

It’s a full schedule and we’re sticking to it!