Beer

Two Bits of Beer News

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 13:45:00 -0800

This is what May looks like.

It looks like May will be a busy month on the local beet circuit. Here's the latest on this year's Beer Week (hello, Scott Carsberg?), plus a first-ever awards for Washington beer.

Seattle Beer Week 2013
This year’s installment will be May 9 to 19. The new website is up, but the schedule of tap nights, beer dinners, and other special events doesn’t usually start to populate until a week or two ahead of time. Beer people are casual that way. Organizer Ian Roberts says all the biggies like Brouwer’s Sour Fest will return. Roberts also owns The Pine Box, and says he’ll bring back his beer-can car derby and the Can You Handle My Randall event. But here’s why I’m excited: Bisato chef Scott Carsberg has been consulting in the kitchen, and Roberts says he is planning a super fancy beer dinner, where brews get paired with Carsberg’s technique-driven plates. The two have even written a food menu already. I’ll be sure to share details as this plan develops. Fremont Brewing is brewing the official Beer Week beer; it will be sessionable and hoppy and the first Beer Week brew to come in a can. The brewery says ingredients will be 100 percent organic and 100 percent from the state of Washington. Let’s see if it can top Elysian’s excellent Split Shot Espresso Milk Stout from last year.

Washington Beer Awards
How is it that our state has this spectacular craft beer presence, but no major in-state award program? Two local homebrewers who are active on the competition circuit, Mark Emiley and Peter Twigg got the nod from the Washington Beer Commission to organize the first official Washington Beer Awards. The idea, says Emiley, is recognize local beers and give brewers some feedback and practice before the national competitions. Plus, winning a medal doesn’t exactly hurt with sales and marketing. Beers will be judged based on how well they represent their respective styles. Here’s the full rundown on judging and other details; the competition will be held in May.

Belgianfest Is February’s Hottest Beer Ticket

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 08:00:00 -0800

Image: Russell Lo

Sound Brewery founder Mark Hood says people who don’t like sweet, strong, malty Belgian-style beers are the drinking equivalent of a kid who rejects broccoli, then spends a lifetime hating it without trying it again. Hood’s Poulsbo brewery opened in 2011 to champion undersung European beer styles here in IPA country. Half of Sound’s lineup—its banana-scented Dubbel Entendre or biscuity Koperen Ketel pale ale—is made with strains of yeast from an actual Belgian monastery.

Only a sliver of Washington’s breweries give Belgian styles the same year-round status as IPAs, porters, or hefeweizen. And yet the Washington Beer Commission’s annual Belgianfest, a celebration of locally made saisons, wits, dubbels, tripels, sour lambics, and abbey-style ales, is one of the hottest tickets of the beer festival circuit. In its first three years, the fest outgrew the original Rainier Brewery building in Georgetown, then an old hangar in Magnuson Park, before supersizing to the Pier 66 event space in 2012. Washington Beer Commission executive director Eric Radovich says female drinkers in particular go for Belgian beers (guilty as charged).

Belgian-inspired creations can range from cloudy, spicy, unfiltered wit, or wheat, beer to malty gold-colored ale with flavors of fruit and bread and power-house alcohol levels of about 10 percent. Or perhaps a darkly sour beer with a barnyard’s worth of funky aromas. Tying all these styles together: a notable absence of that hop bite we love so in the Northwest. However, more than 30 local brewers use the festival as an excuse to turn their attention to making boozy magic with Belgian yeast. Last year’s notables included a witbier from Fremont Brewing, made with cherries, pomegranate, and pink peppercorns, and Black Raven’s La Petite Mort, a clove-scented strong brown abbey ale that spent some quality time aging in bourbon barrels. Some brewers experiment with European hops, which have less acid and more subtlety than Washington--grown varieties. Others can’t help but marry Belgium’s flavors with our local hophead ways.

Most of these creations will only be poured within the walls of the Bell Harbor International Convention Center on the first Saturday of February. That’s a shame, says Tim Czarnetzki, whose Urban Family Public House in Ballard is a shrine to Belgian beers, because when Washington brewers tackle Belgian styles, the results tend to be awesome.

Published: February 2013

New Breweries in Woodinville

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 08:05:00 -0800

Image: Valentyn Volkov/Shutterstock

With the giant exception of Redhook, Woodinville has long been a wine aficionado’s town. But a quartet of new nanobreweries are attracting local drinkers and day-tripping beer geeks from across the region.

Brickyard Brewing
Locating this taproom on the back end of an industrial park takes some doing. But inside, cofounder Joe Montero rewards your navigating skills with pours of Stones Throw Pale Ale and Brickyard’s eponymous IPA. If you dragged any children along, occupy them with a scoop of Snoqualmie Gourmet Ice Cream, made with Brickyard’s oatmeal stout. The space is full of comfortable, mismatched furniture; a giant projector screen showing the NFL network, plus popcorn and pretzels on offer, lets the taproom do double duty as a sports bar.
Don’t miss The toasty-sweet Masonry Oatmeal Stout—if only it were socially acceptable to drink beer for breakfast.
5817 238th St SE, Ste 3, Woodinville, 425-483-2337; brickyardbrewing.com

Dirty Bucket Brewing Co.
The roll-up garage door lets this brewery blend in amongst the brightly lit car wash and row of auto care centers a block away from Woodinville’s wine-fueled Warehouse District. Inside, brothers and longtime home brewers Chris and Steve Acord are forever releasing new seasonal brews like the Full Nelson Black Ale and Ruski Porridge oatmeal stout. Just a handful of beercentric establishments in Seattle pour Dirty Bucket’s beers, so the cheery tasting room is the place to go to sample the brewery’s broader-than-average roster.
Don’t miss The Filthy Hoppin’ IPA, a love letter to hopheads, though balanced enough for the rest of us to appreciate, too.
19151 144th Ave NE, Ste 101, Woodinville, 206-819-1570; dirtybucketbrewery.com

Triplehorn Brewing Co.
Down the street from Dirty Bucket, brawny after-workers drink brawny beers in a spacious, spare room adorned with various tributes to Norse mythology. And, quite often, a football game on TV. If you ask nicely, the staff might let you wear the Viking hat with the horns on it. Kegs of the Landwink IPA and Folkvang Red are trickling into pubs around Woodinville, Redmond, and Seattle, and brothers Rich and Ray Nesheim plan to start canning this month. Unlike most tasting rooms, Triplehorn’s is open seven days a week, from noon to 9.
Don’t miss The yet-unnamed seasonal porter, aged in used syrah barrels—conveniently plentiful in Woodinville.
19510 144th Ave NE, Ste E6, Woodinville, 425-242-7979; triplehornbrewingco.com

Twelve Bar Brews
Brewer Kirk Hilse also happens to be a bass guitarist, most recently in a quintet that plays Balkan-gypsy dance music. All his beers are dry hopped and bear musical names, from the Pentatonic Pale to the Wicked Riff IPA. During his first year in business, Hilse was too busy making enough beer to supply about 75 local watering holes to trick out his Broken String tasting room. A visit to the taproom behind McLendon Hardware used to mean standing at the walk-up counter, but a recent refresh added actual tables and seating.
Don’t miss The Turnaround Red, brightly hoppy without getting all up in your face about it.
12826 NE 178th St, Ste C, Woodinville, 425-482-1188; twelvebarbrews.com

Manny’s, Manny’s Everywhere

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 08:00:00 -0800

Image: Michael Clinard

Being Manny Chao The many faces of Georgetown Brewing Company’s brewmaster, photographed at 9LB Hammer in Georgetown, November 2, 2012

This is a love story. And as in all love stories, people get their hearts broken. People lose their way. And some people fight. You’ll hardly believe much of what happens, even though you know exactly how it ends. And in case you don’t, let’s just get that out of the way: It ends with one man’s first name signifying a city’s pride, its happiness, its unique brand of entrepreneurship.

If you’ve been to a Seattle bar in the past decade, you know that first name. You’ve seen people drink beer that bears the name and, in all likelihood, you’ve drunk the beer, too.

Geoff Kaiser is ordering one right now. It’s a Sunday afternoon and CenturyLink Field’s concession deck is practically in orbit around him. Fans in Seahawks jerseys, jacked on booze and testosterone, teeter in wide arcs from the stands to the restrooms. The tops of kids’ heads flash in and out of the crowd. A cacophony of 67,000 voice —the loudest such cacophony in the NFL—booms from the field, where the home team is laying waste to Tom Brady and the New England Patriots.

Kaiser moved to Puget Sound seven years ago from Chicago, smitten with Northwest craft beer, and one beer in particular. So when it’s his turn to order, the 34-year-old financial analyst says the words that have become almost an incantation: “I’ll have a Manny’s.”

Even the insignia on the tap handle has momentum. The letter M and its one fin jutting out like a spoiler on a sports car set the pace for the rest of the golden script racing across the logo’s red oval: The aerodynamic a, two n’s, and the y bend to the right, straining under some imaginary g-force. The tightly wound s seems one slither away from springing off the tap handle. But the tiny, five-point star above the first n hardly befits the stature of a beer sold in more than 500 bars in the city (outselling Anheuser-Busch and Coors at a rate as high as three to one) and in more than 2,000 bars throughout Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

Four years ago, Manny’s Pale Ale helped inspire Kaiser to launch the Seattle Beer News blog (now part of the Seattle Times website). “The great thing about Seattle is that you can even go into a bad bar,” he says, “a bar where you wouldn’t expect to find good craft beer, and you find good craft beer. And that beer is usually Manny’s.” He tips back the plastic cup of ale. At the front of his mouth there’s a quick bitter punch—the hops—which, by the time the beer reaches the back of his tongue, dissipates, and the taste is crisp, clean.

Everything about the beer—its flavor, its name—has an origin, of course. And it all started nearly 40 years ago and half a world away.

T
he boy acts up in class, or says a dirty word in Spanish—mierda, maybe—and the thud on the back of his head arrives like a thunderclap. Or he’s dragged out of his desk. Or his ears are pinched. You don’t cross the nuns in Las Palmas, grand capital of Spain’s Canary Islands, and expect to get away with it, especially at the Catholic school where five-year-old Manuel Chao is a student in the mid-1970s. The sisters keep the children in line with the power of prayer and light corporeal punishment.

Image: Michael Clinard

He’s the son of Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants who work late hours at a Chinese restaurant. So at the end of the school day he and his brother—two and a half years his senior—run to the home of the Spanish couple across the hallway from their apartment, Juan Manuel and Maria, the boys’ godparents. Chao is named after Juan Manuel, and he doesn’t think of the couple as godparents. They’re like parent parents.

In 1978, the family says goodbye to Juan Manuel and Maria and leaves Spain for the United States, where the father opens restaurants in Virginia, Maine, and New Jersey. He tells Manuel and his brother that they are, under no circumstances, to speak Spanish or Chinese. You are Americans now. You speak English. They miss Juan Manuel and Maria. Then one weekend, the father flies to Portland, Oregon, and when he returns he tells Manuel, now eight years old, and his brother that they are all going to live in the Northwest. The father opens a Chinese restaurant in Portland, and the family settles in the suburb of Beaverton, home of Nike.

When Manuel Chao is in high school—Aloha High, class of 1990—he lands an internship at the sportswear giant, where he runs the fax machine for reps in the international sales division. It’s a paid internship, but he spends his whole paycheck at the employee store until he is, head to toe, covered in Nike gear.

And that’s exactly how he arrives—decked in Nike swooshes—at the University of Washington in the fall of 1990 to study business. He pledges a fraternity, then blanches the first time someone says, “Hey, Manny!” He hates the nickname—his parents christened him Manuel—but he learns to smile and laugh it off. He and his new friends party a lot. They drink lager, the cheapest beer they can find at $35 a keg.

Something happens his sophomore year. A girl. He wants to impress her. He takes her to the fanciest place a 19-year-old college student can afford in Seattle in 1992, Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley. He scans the menu for a beer he recognizes. Nada. He flashes an ID—actually his 21-year-old brother’s ID—so he can order a drink and tells the server, “I’ll have the Blackhook Porter please.” He doesn’t even know what a porter is. The beer looks like coffee. He takes a sip. The silky taste hits his tongue, and he’s in love.

Image: Michael Clinard

Beervana Georgetown Brewing Company produces nearly 80,000 kegs a year, 80 percent of which is Manny’s Pale Ale, on tap at more than 2,000 bars in the region.

Hours later his roommate asks how the date went, but Chao doesn’t say a word about the girl. All he can think and talk about is the beer. He and the roommate start making nightly pilgrimages to Safeway, walking right past the cheap domestic beer that had been their staple and heading straight for the craft beers. They devour every beer by Redhook, makers of Blackhook, headquartered just a few miles from campus. They geek out on pilsners and porters and ales, and become acolytes of what at the time is a craft beer revolution in the Northwest—Diamond Knot, Hale’s, Redhook, local breweries taking advantage of the close proximity to Yakima Valley, 140 miles away, where 80 percent of the nation’s beer hops grow. Chao even keeps a beer diary, evaluating each brew.

While at home in Beaverton for the summer, he and another friend start brewing beer, experimenting, and deepening his obsession. In business classes back at UW, whenever there’s a group project, he convinces his team members to make the project a study of breweries.

After graduation, much to his parents’ frustration, Chao doesn’t land a business job but takes the morning shift cleaning the Hopvine Pub on Capitol Hill and works the rest of the day at a home brewing supply store next to Pike Place Market.

At a beer trade show he meets a man named Jack Schropp. Schropp and his business partner, Malcolm Rankin, have started a small-scale brewing operation, making and selling batches of ale out of the garage of Schropp’s house in Redmond. Chao has instant rapport with Schropp, who’s 15 years older but shares the same passion for craft beer.

Chao calls Schropp a week later, asking for a job. Schropp apologizes but says he’s got nothing. Chao calls the next week and asks for a job again. And the next. He calls every week for three months. He finally gets a call back—not from Schropp but from Schropp’s partner, Malcolm Rankin. Come meet us for a beer.

Over drinks the two men confess that they do need someone to help deliver and sell beer. So how about we put you on commission and give you $10 for every keg you sell?

It won’t be enough money to pay rent and living expenses—so he supplements his income by preparing high school kids for SATs—but Chao becomes the first employee of Mac and Jack’s Brewery. “I’d get there in the morning,” he says now, “wash kegs, fill kegs, then load the van up with beer and go do my route. And try to sell beer.”

Few bar owners at the time—1996—have heard of the three-year-old Mac and Jack’s. So Chao must talk his way into bar after bar, often before business hours, and convince the owners to sample the ale and put it on tap. Mike Bitondo, managing partner of the Garage, the Capitol Hill bowling and billiards bar, will later recall the earnestness with which Chao sold Mac and Jack’s. “It was good beer, but you bought it, really, because Manny was such a great guy.”

Image: Michael Clinard

Beervana Roger Bialous and Manny Chao talk shop in the Georgetown Brewing offices.

When the time comes to create a logo for Mac and Jack’s, it’s Chao who sits down to design it. “I took clip art”—of a lion’s head—“shoved a little line in the middle, and designed the little label around it. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but we liked it and we went with it.”

Chao becomes the de facto face of the brewery, if for no other reason than he’s the pitchman, the guy who arrives at taverns, beams a smile, and offers customer service. He travels all over the city and throughout Washington and Oregon, spreading the gospel of Mac and Jack’s.

He comes to see his success at the company as the fulfillment of his parents’ hard work and sacrifice, leaving Spain all those years ago. “The idea of starting a business and dragging two kids around,” he says, “and going to a foreign country where English is now your third language—I really admire them for doing that, and they did it because they wanted us to have an education and an opportunity.”

After five years, Mac and Jack’s amber ale becomes the third top selling craft brew in the state—at some 20,000 barrels a year—outsold only by Redhook and Pyramid. Rankin and Schropp have moved the operation out of Schropp’s garage and into a larger facility and hired eight new employees to keep up with demand.

Then, in 2000, Chao leaves, abruptly.

“I’m not sure what went wrong between Manny and Mac and Jack’s,” Bitondo, the Garage managing partner, says. “I’ve never asked.”

T
he BMW R1200C screams down Interstate 5. The glass canyons of downtown Seattle flash by. It’s July 2000. The rider guns it past Boeing Field, beyond the industrial decay of Georgetown, then Burien, Tacoma, Olympia. He pushes the bike farther and farther south, placing as much distance as he can between himself and the greatest job he’s ever had.

It had come down to a single conversation with Rankin and Schropp—the last conversation he would ever have with them, a conversation that a decade later Chao refuses to discuss on the record. Rankin and Schropp won’t reply to requests to comment either.

This much can be said: After five years a line had been drawn, with founders Rankin and Schropp on one side, and their first employee on the other. Chao felt that he had significantly helped the two men build the company, and that he should have a say in its direction. There’s more to it, of course, but by the end of the talk Chao was heartbroken, his pride wounded. He walked off the job on the spot, revved up his BMW motorcycle, and left Seattle.

He spends weeks on the road, touring state and national parks—Yosemite, Joshua Tree, Yellowstone—camping out under the stars, clearing his head. He burns up some of his savings to fly to Mexico, twice. He returns to Seattle a month later, in late summer, ready to start over.

An apprenticeship as a sushi chef in Madison Park lasts a year before he quits and takes another job, selling software. He hates it. He’s lost.

Over beers nearly every night at Fiddler’s Inn, down the street from his house in Ravenna, he and his housemate, Roger Bialous, commiserate. Bialous, a health care insurance employee, met Chao some five years earlier when Chao was starting out at Mac and Jack’s and Bialous was making a living by removing corneas from the eyes of the recently deceased, harvesting them for transplant patients.

Now the two men are at a crossroads. They both hate their jobs. And Bialous keeps floating an idea: Let’s start a brewery.

Chao, still smarting from his Mac and Jack’s experience, won’t even consider it. “I felt soured about the whole thing,” Chao will later recall. “But also, looking back on Mac and Jack’s, I just feel like we got really fucking lucky. I didn’t know if lightning could strike twice.”

Bialous sees a crack in Chao’s resolve. “I knew he’d always been super entrepreneurial, that he had always wanted to run his own business,” Bialous says now. You know this business better than anyone, he keeps pressing. You’ve at least got to give it a try.

Chao finally buckles, and they set out to create Seattle’s beer. “The more we looked at the market, we’re like ‘holy cow’, there’s this staple beer category, the pale ale, and no one local was going after it,” Bialous says. “Sierra Nevada in California and Mirror Pond in Bend, Oregon, were owning the market, but they’re not local.” They experiment, brewing pale ale on the back deck of the house. Batch after batch, throughout the spring of 2002, until finally, on the eighth batch, something feels right on their taste buds. “It was a crossover beer,” says Bialous. “It had a nice hoppy flavor, with the aroma right in front of your mouth when the beer first hit the palate, and then finished very clean.” When they serve it to their friends, Bialous, the cornea-removal expert, focuses on the optics. “People would try it, and you’d watch their eyes get big as the hop flavor hit their palate. They’d swallow and they’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s weird, I got a hop flavor without the bitterness.’ ”

Manny’s Pale Ale is born.

And just as he had done at Mac and Jack’s, Chao sits down to design a logo. He wants it to reflect Seattle—to be timeless and stylish at the same time. He uses Sting Ray, a free font available online that echoes the Corvette Sting Ray of the 1960s. The result is a tap handle reminiscent of a gas station sign, a sign no doubt like many Chao passed on his post–Mac and Jack’s motorcycle odyssey. The star at the top, perhaps the most distinct feature of the logo, is an afterthought.

“We started looking online for brewing equipment, and it became really apparent to us that stuff was cheap,” Chao says. “There was equipment out there, used equipment, like complete systems that were sitting in warehouses collecting dust and nobody wanted them.” They found a brewery system for sale in North Carolina, paid $28,000 for it (the system would likely go for $250,000 to $300,000 today), and set it up in a space in the old Seattle Brewing and Malting building in Georgetown, the same building where Rainier beer was mass produced in the early twentieth century.

“People would try it, and you’d watch their eyes get big as the hop flavor hit their palate. They’d swallow and they’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s weird.’ ”

On February 27, 2003, two months after Chao’s 30th birthday, he and Bialous—sole proprietors of the newly minted Georgetown Brewing Company—deliver two kegs of Manny’s Pale Ale to the Latona Pub in Greenlake. The place is packed with all their friends and the beer disappears within a couple hours, so they drive back to Georgetown for another three kegs.

Chao begins dropping in on his old Mac and Jack’s clients, all of whom are happy to see him and even happier to help him introduce his new ale to Seattle. Old Town Ale House in Ballard. The Nickerson Street Saloon in Fremont. The client list quickly grows. Mike Bitondo from the Garage on
Capitol Hill doesn’t even require a visit; when he hears about the new beer Bitondo reminds Chao that he once said that if Chao ever started his own brewery he’d stock his beer in a heartbeat.

It’s early October 2012. Manuel Chao, now 39, drives his Toyota 4Runner from his Ravenna home to Georgetown Brewing Company’s new headquarters, a 37,000-square-foot warehouse and former fertilizer and insecticide plant. Some 40 employees work for Chao and Bialous now, producing nearly 80,000 kegs a year—80 percent of which is Manny’s Pale Ale. Other beers in the portfolio include a red ale, an India pale ale, a porter, and Roger’s Pilsner, named after Bialous. In 2011, the U.S. Brewers Association ranked Georgetown Brewing Company as the 52nd highest selling craft brewer in the nation. (Mac and Jack’s, with just 4,200 more barrels sold that year, was ranked 45th.)

There’s more to it than numbers, though. Kevin Lilley, who’s pulled the Manny’s tap for five years as bartender at the BottleNeck Lounge in Madison Valley, puts it this way: “We get a lot of former locals in here who’ve moved away and come back to visit. They say they want two things when they’re here: Pho from the International District.
And Manny’s.”

When Chao tells the story of his beer—Seattle’s beer—there’s a smile on his face the entire time. But then there’s also a smile on his face when he’s putting on goggles to enter the warehouse’s massive brewing area. And a smile on his face when he introduces his partner, Roger Bialous. He even smiles when he talks about his time at Mac and Jack’s.

Finally, Chao smiles when he describes meeting fans of his famous pale ale. “They’re always
surprised,” he says. “I’ll hear, ‘I thought you’d be some old German guy,’ or ‘I thought you’d be a
short Mexican dude, but I didn’t expect you to be an Asian guy.’ Or, you know, ‘I didn’t even know
there was a Manny.’ ”

The New School of Seattle Beer

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 05:00:00 -0700

Image: Patrick Kehoe

Dear Students,

All that national hoopla about the resurgence of craft beer? That’s old news in our corner of the world. And now that local brewers don’t have to spend as much time proving their creations worthy of attention, they can focus on making excellent beer. This is still IPA country, but Seattle-area brewmasters are branching beyond hops bombs and becoming conversant in Belgian-style ales, with their flavors of fruit, yeast, and spice. They’re pouring dark imperial stouts, complex as cabernet, confounding the mind and palate with sour ales and easy-drinking patio beers that still pack big flavor. Beer lovers: Class is in session.

2012 Beer Book

Seattle Beer Bars 101

Brewery Field Trip: Poulsbo

Beeriodic Table

Seattle’s Best Bottle Shops

Local Breweries Put Craft Beer in Cans

Tart, Funky, Sour Beer Catches on in Seattle

Seattle’s Low-Alcohol, High-Flavor Beers

Seattle Beer Bars 101

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 05:00:00 -0700

Brouwer’s Cafe

The Senior Class

Beveridge Place Pub
Drinking here is just like hanging out in your friend’s awesome basement—if that basement happens to be aboveground and equipped with a fearsome beer selection.
Taps: 25
Food: Minimal bar snacks and an open invitation to get food delivered to the pub.
6413 California Ave SW,  West Seattle, 206-932-9906; beveridgeplacepub.com

Brouwer’s Cafe
Fremont’s Belgium-inspired cafe planted Seattle’s flag for destination beer drinking back in 2003 and is usually on the city’s forefront of introducing drinkers to new styles like Belgian tripels, barley wine, and sour beers.
Taps: 64
Food: Mussels and frites, steak and frites, and surprisingly good salads in the rare event anyone gets tired of those frites.
400 N 35th St, Fremont, 206-267-2437; brouwerscafe.blogspot.com

Naked City  Brewery and Taphouse
Naked City’s six rotating housemade beers comingle with 18 craft standouts from Washington to California. The beer list also documents which kegs are next in line for each tap, giving you reason to return.
Taps: 24 for beer, along with cider, wine and root beer
Food: Full-service restaurant
8564 Greenwood Ave N, Greenwood, 206-838-6299; nakedcitybrewing.com

Quinn’s
Other beer bars may have more taps, but the curated offerings at Quinn’s invariably include unfamiliar and intriguing selections. The bar, perhaps the most ruggedly stylish beer destination in town, particularly loves its Trappist ales, brewed by monks in Belgium or the Netherlands.
Taps: 14
Food: The supercharged pub menu, full of offbeat meats such as oxtail and wild boar, and even a few thoughtful vegetable-based dishes, is just as much of a draw as the libations.
1001 E Pike St, Capitol Hill, 206-325-7711; quinnspubseattle.com

Über Tavern
Beer labels plaster the rafters, and the exact science of how such a small space can offers so many beers (and kegs) can boggle the mind. A recent makeover installed a flashy digital display for the tap list but retained the tableside fire pit.
Taps: 17
Food: Barriga Llena often sells its crave-inducing tortas outside the bar.
7517 Aurora Ave N, Greenlake, 206-782-2337; uberbier.com

The Freshman Class

Brave Horse Tavern
Tom Douglas’s gastropub is perpetually packed with Amazon employees. But the beer list, a culling of crowd-pleasing finds from around the region, is worth clawing your way to a table for. Frequent beer dinners let chef Brian Walczyk display his talent for pairing food and drink.
Taps: 26
Food: Don’t even think of leaving here without having a pretzel.
310 Terry Ave N, South Lake Union, 206-971-0717; bravehorsetavern.com

Burgundian
After a brief stint as the Publican, the owners (the same team behind Brouwer’s Cafe) changed the name and affectionately dubbed it the Burg. The bottle list here numbers exactly zero—it’s cans only if you stray from the drafts.
Taps: 22
Food: The elegantly gut-busting breakfast menu is served all day, and by breakfast we mean “the best chicken and waffles in town.”
2253 N 56th St, Wallingford, 206-420-8943; facebook.com/theburgundiantavern

The Pine Box
This bar gets points for its clever name, a nod to its location just steps from Pine Street, and the soaring space’s past as a Butterworth mortuary. Taps are heavy on IPAs and uncommon finds selected to impress the brewers who hang here regularly. But what really wows is the built-in Randall tap, which can infuse any beer with flavors of coffee beans, cocoa nibs, or the floral essence of hops.
Taps: 33
Food: Inventive pizzas topped with pulled pork and kimchi, arugula and walnut pesto, and the like.
1600 Melrose Ave, Capitol Hill, 206-588-0375; pineboxbar.com

Red Papaya Ale and Spirits
Beer and pho? Absolutely. The owners of a Vietnamese restaurant near Seattle Center decided to unite craft beer and Asian food, two Seattle mainstays that don’t commonly fraternize.
Taps: 15 for beer, plus wine and cider
Food: Stick to Vietnamese dishes like noodle bowls and bar snacks like garlicky green beans. Ask the bar staff to suggest beer pairings.
530 First Ave N, Lower Queen Anne, 206-283-6614; redpapayaales.com

Urban Family Public House
Keep walking, hopheads: This bar in the heart of Old Ballard is devoted to Belgian beers and the domestic brews they inspire. A row of unadorned taps dispenses beers you won’t find anywhere else in Seattle.
Taps: 25
Food: A limited menu of serviceable sandwiches, with expanded fare on the way.
5329 Ballard Ave NW, Ballard, 206-783-2337; urbanfamilypublichouse.com

Brewery Field Trip: Poulsbo

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 05:00:00 -0700

Slippery Pig Brewery
Two rutted tire tracks wend a narrow, twisting path up a hill, and just when you’re convinced you took a wrong turn somewhere and are officially trespassing, this makeshift road deposits you at Red Rooster farm, home to one of several breweries that make a trip to Poulsbo worth the ferry fare. In this secret hamlet, farmer and brewmaster Dave Lambert replaces aromatic hops with smoked pumpkin, kale, rhubarb, and even stinging nettles. His creations, most of which are stunningly good, are poured beneath an old, peaked farmhouse roof that long ago shed its walls, and beneath strings of white lights, and a few space heaters when necessary. Some people even bring their own hammocks to string up between the support beams. Nearby chickens peck, pigs snuffle, and a dude in a Utilikilt works a field from atop a tractor. Visiting on a sunny afternoon is like stepping into a country music video—and a memorable only-in-Washington beer moment.

932 NW Slippery Pig Way, Poulsbo, 360-394-1686; slipperypigbrewing.com

Sound Brewery

Sound’s ales are inching their way into Seattle bars and bottle shops, but the industrial-park taproom offers a rare chance to try the full complement of American and Belgian styles, and some brilliant combinations of the two. Did this place really only begin brewing in 2011? Brews like the stealthily boozy Tripel Entendre or the Humulo Nimbus, a crisp hop thunderbolt of a double IPA, carry an assurance of a brewery that has been doing this for years.

650 NW Bovela Ln, Poulsbo, 360-930-8696; soundbrewery.com

Valhöll Brewing Company
The taproom has a vibe like a biker bar, but with more toddlers and Belgian-style brews. Valhöll’s beers are the brawny companions to the Ultimate Fighting Championship matches frequently aired on the taproom television; a visit here could yield a black Belgian wit dark as motor oil, a banana-fragrant tripel, or Stouty Stouterson, an imperial oatmeal stout made with sweet potatoes, raisins, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Brewers Jordan Rodgers and Jeff Holcomb make “well-rounded and, in many cases rather extreme, beer,” and succeed masterfully.

20186 Front St NE, Ste B, Poulsbo 360-550-5825; valhollbrewing.com

Beeriodic Table

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 05:00:00 -0700

Click here for the full table

Seattle’s Best Bottle Shops

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 05:00:00 -0700

The Beer Junction
West Seattle’s bottle shop added taps when it moved around the corner back in March. The 1,250-bottle selection might be the best in Seattle, but the hyperorganized layout and friendly staff makes this largesse more exciting than overwhelming.

4511 California Ave SW, West Seattle, 206-938-2337; thebeerjunction.com

Bottleworks
Wallingford’s main drag may be crawling with young ones, but these dim environs offer adults-only respite, from the same guys behind Brouwer’s Cafe and the Burgundian. Fill a growler, drink a pint, or buy a bottle to enjoy after the kids are in bed.

1710 N 45th St, Wallingford, 206-633-2437;  bottleworks.com

Full Throttle  Bottles
Boxes are piled everywhere, but the slightly ramshackle setup feels just right on Georgetown’s main strip. Though beer seekers usually encounter an unexpected find or two, the real draw here is owner Erika Tedin, dispenser of strong opinions and knowledgeable beer advice.

5909 Airport Way S, Georgetown, 206-763-2079; fullthrottlebottles.com

Malt and Vine
Scouting the enormous selection of nearly 1,000 bottles can take hours; fortunately the store’s 18 beer taps offer an excuse to grab a seat and contemplate a shopping list (beers are even poured into appropriate glassware). The entire array of bottles and cans is displayed in coolers, so you can make a purchase and crack it open right then and there—after paying a modest “crackage” fee, usually about $2. Oh yeah, there’s wine, too.

16851 Redmond Way, Redmond, 425-881-6461; maltandvine.com

Local Breweries Put Craft Beer in Cans

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 05:00:00 -0700

In 2010, 7 Seas Brewing in Gig Harbor blew the collective minds of beer drinkers by putting its British Pale Ale and Ballz Deep Double IPA in the same 16-ounce tallboy pop-top aluminum cans usually associated with shotgunning and brown paper bags. While craft beer—good beer—in a can might cause some cognitive dissonance among drinkers, the can revolution has long been fomenting at a few breweries across the country. Aluminum cans fend off skunkifying oxygen and sunlight better than glass, are easier to recycle, and require less energy to produce and ship. A sophisticated interior coating fends off that unfortunate metallic tang that makes many drinkers fear the can. The Burgundian Tavern, the Wallingford sibling to Brouwer’s Cafe that packs a ton of beer cred, doesn’t sell a single bottled beer, balancing out its taps with a list of 70 canned beers.

In Seattle, Hilliard’s Brewing eschews bottles in favor of slickly designed aluminum. Two Beers also cans some of its beers, and even partnered with Churchkey Brewing Co. to produce a pilsner in an old-school flat-top steel can, the kind you have to puncture with a bottle opener to drink. Fremont Brewing plans to release cans in July, and Big Al will follow suit later this year.