The Citizen’s Guide to Seattle Beer

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 14:41:00 -0700

BACK IN MAY 2009, then-Mayor Greg Nickels issued a proclamation officially recognizing “Seattle Hand-Crafted Beer Week.” Seattle, Nickels wrote, recognized by many as the epicenter of high-quality craft-beer brewing, boasts the most artisanal, family-owned breweries in the  nation….

This month local pubs, brewers, beer shops, and restaurants around town will celebrate the third annual beer week (May 19–29), churning out a dizzying array of events for locals looking to get a taste of offerings from established craft brewers, up-and-coming “nanobreweries” (smaller operations, even, than microbreweries), and hobbyists. In anticipation of this beer  bacchanalia, and in hopes of inspiring you to get out and try some new brews, we created this insider’s guide to drinking local. It’s springtime in Seattle, after all, and our beer is the toast of the town.

The Proper Way to Taste a Beer

PICK THE RIGHT VESSEL
You want a red wine glass,  maybe a brandy snifter. Something with a stem so your hands don’t warm up the beer and a bubble shape to help you fully appreciate its aromas.

LEER AT YOUR BEER  
Hold your glass up to the light. How clear or cloudy (“turbid,” in beer-nerd-speak) is the beer?  Is the head (froth) lacy?

GET AGITATED
Don’t be shy about swirling  before you evaluate a beer’s nose. Agitation will reveal much  about its aromas, carbonation, and consistency.

WHIFF IT
Stick your nose down into the glass and take several short sniffs. Generally a hoppy beer will smell of citrus, grass, and flowers. Toasty, sweet, and caramel notes indicate accentuated malt. (Smell skunk? That’s the unfortunate result of hops that have been exposed to light. Hope you saved your receipt.)

OKAY, HAVE A SIP
But wait one sec! Before you drink, take a moment to think about your tongue. At the  front tip are the taste buds that sense sweetness; way in the back  are those that identify bitter. In between you’ve got the salty zone—just behind the sweet  spot on either side—and behind  that, the sour/acid region.

GOT THAT?  
Now, take a swig and let it roll around in your mouth and  travel across your tongue. Think about mouthfeel and flavors. Is the body light, medium, or full? Does it taste more sweet than sour, more bitter than sweet? Savor the moment when the sweetness from the malt gives way to hoppy bitterness.

SWALLOW YOUR BEER, AND REPEAT
You are now drinking like a pro.

The Citizen’s Guide to Seattle Beer: Suds of Spring and Summer

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 05:00:00 -0700

RICH COFFEY, chef at Madison Park Cafe (madisonparkcafe.ypguides.net), has two passions: food and beer. He’s a certified Cicerone—like a certified sommelier, only with beer—who regularly sounds off on the sudsy stuff on seattlest.com. These are his six local picks for the upcoming seasons.

1. Boundary Bay Brewery Inside Passage Ale
Coffey washes down blue cheese burgers with this Bellingham brewery’s intense Northwest India pale ale that’s strong and hoppy, yet well—balanced. bbaybrewery.com

2. Epic Ales, Solar Trans Amplifier
“Epic thinks outside the box and comes up with unique twists on established styles,” says Coffey. “This one takes the concept of a Belgian wit beer, but uses rice rather than wheat, and ginger and chamomile rather than the usual coriander and orange peel. A nice summer beer.” Pick some up inside the SoDo tasting room, open Fridays from 3:30 to 8pm and Saturdays from noon to 4pm. epicales.com

3. Georgetown Brewing, Manny’s Pale Ale
Manny’s, says Coffey, is “about as fine a pale ale as you could ask for—get a keg for your outdoor summer bash.” georgetownbeer.com

4. Pike Brewing, Pike Naughty  Nellie Golden  Artisan Ale
Coffey recommends this “mild, easy-drinking golden ale” to “folks that find Northwest IPAs too aggressive.” Make Naughty Nellie your date to a party, suggests Coffey. The beer’s cheeky name is a handy icebreaker. pikebrewing.com

5. Schooner Exact Brewing, Three-Grid Ipa
A growler of this SoDo brewery’s well-balanced flagship beer will go fast at a backyard barbecue. “It’s not bashing you over the head with hops, but has enough hops flavor to satisfy,” according to Coffey. schoonerexact.com

6. Silver City  Brewery,  Ziggy Zoggy  Summer Lager
Coffey says he’ll vouch for the quality of any beer from Silverdale’s Silver City Brewery, including the new Ziggy Zoggy lager, a German-style sipper custom-made for outdoor imbibing. silvercitybrewery.com

The Citizen’s Guide to Seattle Beer: The Republic Of Cascadia

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 05:00:00 -0700

Image: Erik Skaar

IT FEELS VAGUELY treasonous talking to  Abram Goldman-Armstrong , a Portland brewer and beer writer who refers repeatedly to a place called the Republic of Cascadia. The ROC is a sovereign nation, in the fantasy lives of Goldman-Armstrong and his cohorts, formed from Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. Its signature beer: the Cascadian dark ale—often called black IPA—an emerging style whose name remains the subject of considerable controversy.

What is Cascadian dark ale? It’s a highly hopped ale, made with hops grown here in Cascadia. It’s dry in the body, similar to an India pale ale but dark—reddish to almost black. The color comes from Carafa, a German malt that gives color without too much roasty flavor. But the roastiness is there.

Where does the name come from? My friend Bill Wood and I were brewing what we were calling India dark ale. He said, “We better call it a Cascadian dark ale before these people from San Diego try to claim they invented it.” (At that time, they were trying to push for any double or imperial-style IPA to be called “San Diego style.”) Pretty soon other people were picking it up—now you’ll see “Cascadian dark ale” on beer descriptors in North Carolina and Ontario.

Beers We Love

Image: Erik Skaar

Elysian Brewing Great Pumpkin Ale

My years (years!) spent toiling at a certain coffee megachain really squashed my taste for pumpkin flavoring. On any given day we’d go through 15 loaves of the freakishly fragrant pumpkin bread. Every fall we served equally fragrant pumpkin lattes: too many frothy concoctions to count, made with extra-goopy, extra-spiced syrup. So last October, when a beardy Northwest-beer-nerd tried to sell me on Elysian Brewing Great Pumpkin Ale, I took a wary swig, expecting an artificial aftertaste. What I got was a game changer—so zesty, so aromatic…so natural. With just-right spice and a creamy rich tinge, the brew trumped my better-in-theory theory about pumpkin. I killed the bottle. - Christopher Werner

What are you doing to preserve it? I’m hoping the name will be recognized by the Beer Judge Certification Program—they set the styles for home-brew competitions. I petitioned the Brewers Association in Boulder, Colorado. They’ve accepted the style as “American-style black ale” which doesn’t really capture it. And I think it is a disservice to Phillips Brewing in Victoria, BC—which is in Cascadia, but also Canada—who pioneered CDA as a year-round bottled product.

We heard that late Vermont brewmaster Greg Noonan was the first to brew black IPA. We’re not trying to say we’re the only people who ever brewed with dark malt and lots of hops. But the signature of CDA is the hops grown here—amarillo, cascade—which have these massive piney, resiny, and citrus-like aromas. The interplay between roastiness and hops is the key to the style.

Is anyone fighting you on all this? This guy called Jack Curtain did a very disparaging article in the Ale Street News [“Black and Bitter, True Origins of Black IPA,” August 2010]. There’s this obsession with who did something first in the brewing industry that is silly. I don’t want to take anything away from the Vermont brewers, I just don’t think they have anything to do with the rise of the style here in the Northwest.

Where can we citizens of the Republic of Cascadia find the best Cascadian dark ales? Seven Seas Brewing [in Gig Harbor, Washington] makes one and Mac and Jack’s [in Issaquah] does, too. Iron Horse in Ellensburg has one, but they call it a black IPA. In Oregon we’ve got Hopworks Secession, Deschutes Hop in the Dark, and Widmer Pitch Black. Widmer calls theirs a black IPA but say it’s “our take on the Cascadian dark ale.” They’re hedging their bets on that one.

The Citizen’s Guide to Seattle Beer: Cask and You Shall Receive

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 05:00:00 -0700

Image: Andrew Waits

Unlike beers stored in a regular keg, cask-conditioned brew goes in unfiltered and undergoes a secondary fermentation in the container (aka the cask). The yeasts remain alive, affecting the beer’s flavors and character. A good beer on cask is a great beer, but attention newbies: Cask brews are served at a warmer temperature than regular draughts.

Here’s where to try them.

Beers We Love

Mac and Jack's African Amber

My beer story starts with pizza. As a New Jersey native who’d recently relocated to Seattle, I was determined to find a slice of home—preferably loaded with sausage, peppers, and onions—within blocks of my new Belltown apartment. But all I came across were soggy crusts and sadness, paired with the finest beer I’d ever had: a Mac and Jack’s African Amber. It was the perfect rust-red ale, smooth and rich, a refreshing break from the same old Smithwick’s served in Every. Irish. Pub. And did I detect a hint of fruit? I imagined pairing it with steak, chocolate, oranges. I wanted to sleep with it, wear it. Who came here to order food? Thanks to this liquid comfort, my adopted city had snuck into my good graces. I quickly ordered another.  - Laura Dannen

Cask Central
Every spring the Washington Beer Commission (washingtonbeer.com) organizes a cask festival at which several dozen in-state breweries pour from  over 70 different casks. It’s well worth the $35 cost  of admission.

Unfiltered Pub Crawl
There are too many pubs tapping casks to list them all, but here is a sampling: West Seattle pub the Cask
(thecaskseattle.com) plays host to a revolving set of fresh regional brewskies, and the Hopvine (3pubs.com/hopvine.html) staff taps a cask every Monday, an event that coincides nicely with the Capitol Hill pub’s 5 to 7pm happy hour. Elliott Bay’s West Seattle brewpub pops a vintage cask one Wednesday a month, the Burien pub does the same on Thursday (elliottbaybrewing.com).

The Redmond Two-Step
Equipped with a few tables and a tiny bar, Redmond beer and wine store Malt and Vine (maltandvine.com) doubles as a sipping spot for serious geeks, who wander in on Wednesdays to try the cask of the week. Nearby, visit stellar brewery Black Raven (blackravenbrewing.com); the staff taps a firkin, an 11-gallon cask, every Wednesday at 4pm.

Thirsty Thursday
On Thursday, May 19, the first day of Seattle Beer Week 2011 (seattlebeerweek.com), West Seattle’s Beveridge Place Pub (beveridgeplacepub.com) hosts its annual Cask-o-Rama, a rowdy celebration of local beer and your chance to try cask brews exclusively produced in Seattle.

The Citizen’s Guide to Seattle Beer

The Citizen’s Guide to Seattle Beer

The Proper Way to Taste a Beer

The Citizen’s Guide to Seattle Beer: Suds of Spring and Summer

The Citizen’s Guide to Seattle Beer: The Republic Of Cascadia

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Beers We Love

Elysian Brewing Great Pumpkin Ale

KEEP UP WITH MORE BOOZE NEWS

The Citizen’s Guide to Seattle Beer: Cask and You Shall Receive

Beers We Love

Mac and Jack's African Amber

KEEP UP WITH MORE BOOZE NEWS