The New School of Seattle Beer

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

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.

Tart, Funky, Sour Beer Catches on in Seattle

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

In the back of Schooner Exact brewery in SoDo, behind the towering tanks full of familiar IPA and hefeweizen, brewmaster Matt McClung stands atop a ladder, hovering over a stack of 37 barrels to sample a sour beer he’s aged for over a year—a type of beer that some brewers predict will become the next big thing among Seattle craft brews

Sour beer is a strange creature. The genre dates back hundreds of years to a time when the brewing process wasn’t as sterile and controlled as it is today. Airborne microorganisms occasionally “contaminated” brews, creating tart, funky beer. Over time, brewers—particularly in Belgium—learned to corral the microbes into a sour beverage that can be complex as wine, sharply fruity, or tempered with malty flavors.

McClung, who founded his brewery in 2007, wants to make these heretofore-obscure beers a cornerstone of his program. Working with special yeasts and bacteria cultures, he incorporates fruit like raspberries or apricots and ages these creations in oak barrels for as long as two years to add depth. While the brewer knows exactly how long it takes to produce his Profanity Hill porter, crafting a sour no one else has made before is a matter of tasting, tinkering, and making it up as you go along. The aging, the experimenting with new recipes, and the fact that sours are just now starting to gain traction in the beer community mean that most local sours come in very small batches, surfacing fleetingly on various bar taps.

Brewers at Fremont Brewing, Elliott Bay, Naked City, Epic Ales, and Elysian, to name a few, are running their own experiments with sour beer, in part because it’s popular among beer geeks and, well, because the brewers like to drink it.

Gradually, the general public is catching on. “Someone might start with amber or pale ale and work their way up to more complex beers,” says McClung. He’s noticed sours appearing more frequently in pubs and tasting rooms over the last five years. It seems to be a natural progression; as Seattleites drink more craft beer, they start sampling weirder stuff. “We’re kind of going through a renaissance with beer. Who knows where it’s going.”

Cody Morris at Epic Ales also has an extensive sour program that includes a sour summer ale called Party Time!!!, barrel-aged lambics, and plans for a sour with local apples. Morris thinks the beer is starting to take off as local breweries realize they have a chance to establish sour programs while the beer is still a newcomer. The tendency of Seattleites to embrace the offbeat could help these breweries along in their efforts, and maybe it’ll be enough to push this new frontier in beer to the mainstream, where Morris thinks it belongs. “I see sours as having the same excitement that IPAs had maybe four or five years ago when they first started getting popular.”

Pucker up, Seattle.

Hoist ’em Here:
Fremont Brewing, Naked City, Schooner Exact, Elliott Bay, Epic Ales, and Elysian occasionally offer their sour of the moment at their breweries.

Brouwer’s Cafe in Fremont reliably has a handful of imported and domestic sours on tap and by the bottle.

Urban Family Public House and Stumbling Monk usually carry a sour or two, though the selection changes.

Seattle’s Low-Alcohol, High-Flavor Beers

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

In Washington, bigger beer usually means better beer. Turbo-charged behemoths like double IPA, imperial stout, and Belgian-style tripel have alcohol-by-volume levels that can soar to 10 percent and above, complex and boozy as a glass of wine.

And then there are guys like Kevin Klein, founder of Northwest Peaks Brewery. In his miniscule brew house in Ballard, Klein brews blondes, browns, porters, spiced ales, and more. And most of them have alcohol levels that hover between 4 and 5 percent.

“I like a lot of the bigger beers, but once you do two of them, your night’s done,” says Klein. “And if you do any more of them, your next day is done, too.”

Some people call these gentler brews lawnmower or patio beers, since they are a natural fit for summer and sunshine-related activities. But the proper term for easy-drinking beers is sessionable. And the public’s growing interest in them has more breweries in Washington and elsewhere brewing creations that ratchet down the booze, but still pack a lot of flavor.

In brewer parlance, sessionable beers have an ABV of 5 percent or below, and keep flavors like hops or malt in balance. This way you can enjoy a “session” of these beers—that is, several in one sitting. In drinker parlance, you can put away a bunch of them and not get wasted. And they actually taste good.

These beers aren’t any more difficult to make, says Klein, though the lighter flavors means that “if you do screw up, there’s less to hide behind.” His primary challenge is convincing the drinkers who wander into his tiny tap room that low in alcohol does not equal low in flavor.

Kayle Thompson, who manages the beer program at Brave Horse Tavern, says Washington brewers have been making good sessionable beers from the beginning, but only recently labeled them as such. She has also noticed that brewmasters who have jumped on the canning trend usually fill those aluminum vessels with sessionable beers, perfect for transporting multiple beers on a hike, or just to the backyard. Her own tavern recently got in on the session action, collaborating with Pike Brewing to make a Hop Session house beer that will pour all summer long. It’s a sessionable version of the Northwest’s signature IPA; Thompson says area breweries are “definitely pushing the stylistic boundaries” when it comes to low-alcohol ales, branching beyond the expected pilsners and hefeweizens to create sessionable Belgian-style ales and IPA.

Plenty of hardcore beer lovers will never stray from those potent brews. But they can find their own ride home.

Three to try:
Two Beers India Session Ale
Pike Brewing Hop Session
Northwest Peaks Brewery

2012 Beer Book

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

Image: Patrick Kehoe

Todd Garrett of Hilliard’s Beer

Best Dressed
Hilliard’s Beer
Cans, Taproom

1550 NW 49th St, Ballard, 206-915-3303; hilliardsbeer.com

Cofounder Adam Merkl leaves the brewing to his partner Ryan Hilliard and head brewer Todd Garrett. But Merkl’s background in design prompted the distinctive herringbone pattern on the brewery’s cans. The Ballard brewery (with an inviting taproom every bit as stylish as the cans) began pouring only last October, but has swiftly infiltrated bars, restaurants, and grocery stores around the city. Hilliard’s is a rare brewery that cans a Belgian—style saison brew, but surely the sharp packaging helps as well.

Most Athletic
NW Peaks Brewery
Taproom

142 N 80th St, Ballard, 206-853-0525; nwpeaksbrewery.com

A stone’s throw and a world away from trendy Old -Ballard is a shoebox of an industrial garage where Kevin Klein brews very small amounts of very good beer, most with lower alcohol levels that encourage bountiful drinking. Before he became enthralled with home brewing, Klein got into mountaineering. Every beer he creates, be it the dark Esmeralda Ale or the fruit-noted Redoubt Red, is named for a peak the brewer has personally scaled. Sampling his beers usually requires a trip to base camp, aka the garage and its tasting-friendly patio.

Most School Spirit
Schooner Exact Brewing Company
Taproom

3901 First Ave S, SoDo, 206-432-9734; schoonerexact.com

Named for the ship that first dropped the Denny Party, Seattle’s founders, at Alki Point in 1851, this brewery stays true to the classic beer styles and gives its products names that serve as alcohol-fueled lessons in Seattle history. The Profanity Hill Porter harkens back to the days when lawyers used to ascend First Hill to the original city courthouse, lodging R-rated complaints about the steep hike to anyone who would listen. And the Seamstress Union Raspberry Wheat summertime beer…well, those ladies weren’t actually seamstresses.

Most Likely to Succeed
Fremont Brewing Company
Taproom, Cans

3409 Woodland Park Ave N, Fremont, 206-420-2407; fremontbrewing.com

Born of a scrappy warehouse space in Fremont in 2009, today the brewery is…still a scrappy warehouse space, albeit one that keeps major grocery stores and more than 350 statewide bars and restaurants stocked with its beers. Fremont will start canning its Universale, Inter-urban IPA, and seasonal creations this summer, and by year’s end aims to have the largest barrel-aged beer program in the state, aging beer in 400 bourbon and wine barrels. Also, owner and recovering lawyer Matt -Lincecum keeps his carbon footprint small, which has to be good for company karma. The urban beer garden—a fancy name for a delightfully unfancy space—has a large roll-up door, comfortable seats, and a handy proximity to some only-at-the-brewery taps.

Image: Patrick Kehoe

Teacher’s Pet and Class Flirt

Teacher’s Pet
Black Raven Brewing Company
Taproom

14679 NE 95th St, Redmond, 425-881-3020; blackravenbrewing.com

Ask local brewers what beers they geek out about, and most of them will point to Redmond. In the heart of the most nondescript of office parks, Black Raven makes creations that usually carry the words strong, dark, or bourbon-barrel aged somewhere in the name—along with some reference to birds in literature or myth-ology. Just when you’ve characterized this place as a den of knockdown boozy beers, brewer Beaux Bowman will surprise you with his summer-perfect Sun Thief Kristallweizen. Spotting a Raven outside its natural habitat is relatively rare (especially west of Lake Washington), but inside the facility’s four walls march a steady parade of memorable beers, in small batches. Despite its intimidating lineup, the taproom is exceedingly friendly; a cask-aged creation gets tapped every Wednesday at 4:30, and the annual anniversary party is a must for beer geeks.

Class Flirt
Big Al Brewing
Taproom

9832 14th Ave SW, White Center, 206-453-4487; bigalbrewing.com

White Center’s hometown brewery makes admirable year-round beers, but owner Alejandro Brown likes to partner up with just about any restaurant, bar, or community group that catches his eye—to create special beers in their honor. Sounders megafans the Emerald City Supporters now toast matches with Big Al Brougham Bitter, while the house beer at Tutta Bella pizzeria is a pie-friendly amber ale of Al’s creation. Every few months, the brewery produces a new beer especially for West Seattle and White Center bars, and proceeds go to charity.

Image: Patrick Kehoe

Epic Ales founder Cody Morris

Biggest Geek
Epic Ales
Taproom

3201 First Ave S, Ste 104, SoDo, 206-351-3637; epicales.com

Owner Cody Morris may look like a high school student, but he isn’t afraid of confounding customers with audacious flavors like Belgian ale Solar Trans Amplifier, made with rice, ginger, and chamomile, or his dark Terra-Saurus, earthy with shiitake mushrooms. Working with ingredients like cane sugar, white peppercorns, and dried cherries, his closet-size brew house produces food-friendly farmhouse-style ales, originally brewed for the men tilling the fields in France and Belgium and forgoing the hoppy bite perfected in the Northwest. Though an expansion and brewpub are in the works, hunting down Epic’s mind-bending brews usually means wrangling one of the three seats or limited standing room in the tiny SoDo taproom.

Biggest Overachiever
American Brewing Company
Taproom

180 W Dayton St, Warehouse 102, Edmonds, 425-774-1717; americanbrewing.com

Since opening in February 2011, the Edmonds brewery has brewed 11 beers, bottled three of them, and collaborated with Tom Douglas Restaurants to create a Brave American brown ale specially for T-Doug’s Brave Horse Tavern—and it just happened to bring home a bronze medal from the Great American Beer Festival. Not a bad first year. The fact that brewmaster Skip Madsen is the shaggy Steven Spielberg of the brewing community—reliably churning out blockbuster brews at Puget Sound breweries for nearly 20 years—might have a little something to do with ABC’s fast-won popularity

Image: Patrick Kehoe

Most Well Rounded

Most Well Rounded
Silver City Brewery
Brewpub, Taproom

Brewery: 206 Katy Penman Ave, Bremerton, 360-813-1487.  Brewpub: 2799 NW Myhre Rd, Silverdale, 360-698-5879;  silvercitybrewery.com

As brewmaster Don Spencer is fond of saying, “Some beers are made for sipping; some for tipping.” Silver City has won a slew of industry medals on both these fronts. The oak-aged Fat Woody Scotch Ale packs all the boozy, vanilla-laced wood-smoke notes of a well-made wine, while the Ziggy Zoggy summertime lager begs for a sun-flooded patio. The brewery’s production facility in Bremerton and its brewpub in Silverdale are both worth an excursion, but its bottles make regular appearances in Seattle-area bars, bottle shops, and grocery stores.

Image: Patrick Kehoe

Charles Finkel and Rose Ann Finkel

Cutest Couple
Pike Brewing Company
Brewpub

1415 First Ave, Pike Place Market, 206-622-6044; pikebrewing.com

The future first couple of local beer, Charles and Rose Ann Finkel, met at a wine tasting (that he was conducting) in 1968. They married, moved to Seattle, and got into beer sales in 1978, when America was in the throes of its unfortunate relationship with bland, mass-produced brews. In 1989 came Pike Place Brewery, now Pike Brewing, which has since filled Seattle’s glasses with food-friendly, accessible beers in a boozy rainbow of styles, even when words like barley wine and tripel might as well have been Mars speak. The Finkels function as the matriarch and patriarch of local beer, and some of the top brewers in the state learned their craft at Pike’s market-side steam-powered facility.

Image: Patrick Kehoe

Most Popular
Georgetown Brewing Company
Taproom

5200 Denver Ave S, Georgetown, 206-766-8055; georgetownbeer.com

For many Seattle denizens, an easy-drinking pint of Manny’s Pale Ale is the first inkling of life beyond Big Beer. Founders Manny Chao and Roger Bialous tinkered endlessly to create an unfiltered brew that’s about two shades darker in hue than other pale ales, has a hoppy finish lest you forget this is the Pacific Northwest, and is on tap at approximately 5 billion places around town.

Friendliest
Elliott Bay Brewing Company
Brewpub

Elliott Bay Brewhouse and Pub, 255 SW 152nd St, Burien, 206-246-4211. Elliott Bay Public House and Brewery, 12537 Lake City Way NE, Lake City, 206-365-2337. Elliott Bay Brewery and Pub, 4720 California Ave SW,  West Seattle, 206-932-8695; elliottbaybrewing.com

The brewpub owners have a knack for slaking the thirst of undertapped neighborhoods, first opening in West Seattle in 1997, then bringing beer and pub grub to Burien and, most recently, Lake City. Kid- and adult-size regulars slide into the wooden booths for burgers and fish-and-chips, but beer is hardly an afterthought; at each bar, a dozen or so of Elliott Bay’s own creations intermingle with finds and favorites from other Washington breweries.

Image: Patrick Kehoe

Most Likely to Be Famous
Elysian Brewing Company
Brewpub

1221 E Pike St, Capitol Hill, 206-860-1920. 2106 N 55th St, Wallingford, 206-547-5929. 542 First Ave S, SoDo, 206-382-4498; elysianbrewing.com

If Seattle’s breweries were an actual high school class, Elysian would be the early admissions shoo-in to Beer Harvard. Since its beginnings as a modest 20-barrel facility on Pike Street in 1996, Elysian has created 225 unique beers and opened popular brewpubs in Capitol Hill, Wallingford, and near the downtown stadiums. Drinkers polish off beer as fast as the brewery can make it, so Elysian built a shiny new Georgetown facility and forged a collaboration with Colorado megabrewery New Belgium that keeps 10 states (plus DC, British Columbia, and even Taiwan) amply supplied with beers like Avatar Jasmine IPA and Men’s Room Original Red ale. Its annual Great Pumpkin Beer Festival includes the tapping of an actual pumpkin, filled with a pumpkin brew that undergoes a second round of fermentation inside the gourd. This year Elysian is readying at least 12 unique pumpkin beers for the occasion. Watch this brewery. It’s poised to be a major craft beer presence far beyond Seattle.

Most Outgoing
Two Beers Brewing Company
Cans, Taproom

4700 Ohio Ave S, Unit A, SoDo, 206-762-0490; twobeersbrewery.com

Since opening in 2007, brewer Joel Vandenbrink keeps finding new ways to weave his company into the fabric of the local beer scene. Two Beers was the first Seattle craft brewery to start canning, and aluminum sixers of brews like Persnickety Pale and SoDo Brown are a common sight in grocery stores. The cocoa-brown, hoppy Heart of Darkness Imperial Cascadian Dark Ale is an exemplary execution of a semiobscure beer seldom seen outside the Pacific Northwest. And when the state’s hop crops ripen in late summer, Two Beers gets busy transforming the green buds into fresh hop ale, another rarity in the beer world since hops must be used within 24 hours of harvesting. The newly expanded tasting room is a popular hangout spot, and a great place to sample infused versions of its beers.

Valedictorian
Big Time Brewery and Alehouse
Brewpub

4133 University Way NE, University District, 206-545-4509; bigtimebrewery.com

The oldest surviving brewpub in Washington state has served up English-style ales, like its Coal Creek Porter and Bhagwan’s Best IPA, in the University District since 1988. Its goal has always been to serve the cheapest pints of good beer on the Ave. Good might be an understatement: Big Time has won more Great American Beer Festival medals than any other brewery in Washington. While its beers seldom venture outside the convivial pub, its Whiny the Complainer, an aroma-packed triple IPA, is a newly installed February tradition. The brew’s name pokes fun at beer geeks who bellyache about not getting their hands on another rare annual release, Russian River’s Pliny the Younger out of California.

The New School of Seattle Beer

The New School of Seattle Beer

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

2012 Beer Book

Best DressedHilliard’s BeerCans, Taproom

Most AthleticNW Peaks BreweryTaproom

Most School SpiritSchooner Exact Brewing CompanyTaproom

Most Likely to SucceedFremont Brewing CompanyTaproom, Cans

Teacher’s PetBlack Raven Brewing CompanyTaproom

Class FlirtBig Al BrewingTaproom

Biggest GeekEpic AlesTaproom

Biggest OverachieverAmerican Brewing CompanyTaproom

Most Well RoundedSilver City BreweryBrewpub, Taproom

Cutest CouplePike Brewing CompanyBrewpub

Most PopularGeorgetown Brewing CompanyTaproom

FriendliestElliott Bay Brewing CompanyBrewpub

Most Likely to Be FamousElysian Brewing CompanyBrewpub

Most OutgoingTwo Beers Brewing CompanyCans, Taproom

ValedictorianBig Time Brewery and AlehouseBrewpub

Best Dressed
Hilliard’s Beer
Cans, Taproom

Most Athletic
NW Peaks Brewery
Taproom

Most School Spirit
Schooner Exact Brewing Company
Taproom

Most Likely to Succeed
Fremont Brewing Company
Taproom, Cans

Teacher’s Pet
Black Raven Brewing Company
Taproom

Class Flirt
Big Al Brewing
Taproom

Biggest Geek
Epic Ales
Taproom

Biggest Overachiever
American Brewing Company
Taproom

Most Well Rounded
Silver City Brewery
Brewpub, Taproom

Cutest Couple
Pike Brewing Company
Brewpub

Most Popular
Georgetown Brewing Company
Taproom

Friendliest
Elliott Bay Brewing Company
Brewpub

Most Likely to Be Famous
Elysian Brewing Company
Brewpub

Most Outgoing
Two Beers Brewing Company
Cans, Taproom

Valedictorian
Big Time Brewery and Alehouse
Brewpub