Schooner Exact Brewing Co. Seattle, WA

Next stop in Seattle is Schooner Exact Brewing Company, (I didn't get an explanation of the name...,) for some beer and another tour.  This brewery is located in a warehouse right next to a Vespa dealer, and entry is right through the open garage door.  Within is a small bar with a few extra tables and a bunch of oak barrels filled with aging beer.  As a cool addition to the tour, Mitch Steele, brewer of Arrogant Bastard, and another Stone employee were already sitting at the bar and sharing homebrew and Schooner beers.  The beers were all very good, but the one we all kept going back to was the whiskey barrel aged imperial porter...nummy! 

I was amazed to see one of the brewers hand bottling in the background while we toured.  Just like we do at home!  Our stay here was not long enough!

Rock Bottom Brewery: Seattle, WA

Having just recently been to the Rock Bottom Minneapolis, it was interesting to try out the RB in Seattle.  The first time I was here was Thursday morning for the final NHC pre-conference event:  A beer breakfast to kick off the official NHC festivities.  A large line of folks started outside and just when we started to get pretty hungry they opened the doors, allowing a hundred famished homebrewers into the cozy interior.  Having been burned on the food front before at my Pike dinner, I was taking no chances and barged my way to the forefront and loaded my plate with eggs, fruit several types of sausage and crispy bacon.  These guys know how to cater an event!  The servers brought several taster glasses of beers throughout the event, including a very good kolsch, and a light honey summer ale.  The basic four beers, (kolsch, Belgian wit, red ale, IPA,) are all the same recipe as at the Minnesota Rock Bottom, but the others are different.  I met a great local couple in line and we ate together and discussed homebrewing and beer at great length.  Nothing is more of a social lubricant than beer and common interests!

It is Art!

I ended up back here for lunch one day, since it was walkable from my hotel and I knew the menu was good.  Of course it started raining on the way and I was a bit bedraggled by the time I arrived.  Who knew there was a soccer game going on and that the place would be packed.  Not even a spot at the bar to settle into!  After waiting quite a while, I was finally seated and ended up inviting another homebrewer to sit with me, as we wanted to make it back to the hotel for the Keynote speech in the afternoon.  It turns out that he works for my favorite magazine, Brew Your Own, in which pages I have seen my first published article.  I had a great time talking about East coast beer culture, sipping on a pint of chocolate stout and time flew before we realized we had to hike back to the hotel.

Georgetown Brewing Company: Seattle, WA

Our final brewery trip on day two was Georgetown Brewing Company, set in a large warehouse located in a fairly industrial area of Seattle.  Greeted by a big red sign proclaiming "Beer this way" we made our way into the spacious tasting room to try some of the best beers I had on this trip!  The tour of the brewery was done with half of our group at a time to keep it more intimate.  The head brewer, Manny, is the only brewmaster of Asian heritage that I've ever met, and really knew his stuff. 

Manny

The space was large and clean, with no bottling facility as they just keg at this time.  They do have growlers for sale though, and I wish I could have taken some home with me.

The beers!  My favorite was the Johnny Utah session IPA, coming in at 3.9%ABV with the hop flavor and aroma of a big IPA...so well balanced!  I could drink this all day, which I imagine is the idea.  Every one of the hoppy beers was clean, with a perfect dry but not astringent finish, making you want to keep trying more.  They let us sample every one of the 8 beers on tap, and I loved them all.  I don't think that is just because it was the third brewery in our tour...
They also made one of the only porters I had in Seattle and that was quite roasty and smooth, making a nice break from all the IPA's.

Pyramid Alehouse: Seattle, WA

This was the start of my Second day of NHC pre-conference brewery tours, the smaller brewpub cousin to Pyramid Brewery, makers of Pyramid Apricot Ale.  That beer was the first beer I could tolerate the taste of, maintaining a special place in my heart, and prompting me choose this particular tour group.  Pyramid has been absent from the Minnesota beer scene for the last 4 years or so, just missing the local craft beer boom, so taking that first sip was like heaven. 

Barleywine!

The alehouse serves up most of the usual Pyramid beers but also brews their own seasonals, so this is worth a try.  The food was pretty good too, and the ambiance was fantastic.  I love the combination of gleaming copper, stainless steel and heavy dark wooden beams in this place.  The brewer has recently stepped down from his position as head brewer of Redhook so he could get his hands dirty with actual brewing again, and his excitement shows in his new beers.  He gave a great tour and answered a lot of questions for us homebrewers.  The barleywine was to die for!  He also served up an interesting Scottish ale made with a hint of cherrywood smoked malt...not authentic,but pretty tasty. 

I picked up a tap handle for my collection, and totally spaced on my plan to get the brewer to sign it.  Oh, well!

The Pike: Seattle, WA

The Pike!

This is one of the very earliest craft breweries to open in the USA, founded in 1989 by Charles Finkel.  Charles has a long history of importing beers and wines into the US and had been "in" the scene for a while before starting the brewpub on the South end of Pike Place Market, very close to where they throw the fish around...

The beers here are fantastic, with a mix of traditional UK beers like Kilt Lifter Scotch Ale and Old Bawdy Barleywine as well as newer hoppy IPA's and pale ales.  Love the Bawdy, one of my favorites!  I did not have a beer that I didn't like.  The place is tight and crowded, withevery inch of the walls and bar area covered in signage and brewerania, I could just wander around here for hours.  There are also lots of cool glasses, books, and other barware for sale.

As a side note, I have been here before and wanted to go back, so I joined a pre-conference "Beer Pairing Dinner" that carted us over by bus.  When we arrived, they directed us to a large back room with some tables set up in the back corner.  Half the room was already full of people who were not in our paid tour group, so there was almost no where to sit and it was very loud and chaotic.  There were three hot and one cold food stations each sitting next to a pitcher of beer.  One was a bowl of warm pretzel bites, one was chicken wings, one was slices of sausage and the last was crab dip.  Most of these were empty or nearly empty by the time we showed up, and didn't get filled until almost 30 minutes later.  We milled around, wondering when they would seat us for the beer pairing dinner since we hadn't had nearly enough appetizers to go around.  After about 45 minutes we realized that this was it.  Keep in mind I love this place and love the beers, but it was hard not to get crabby after paying $45 and expecting something a bit more...filling.  A couple people wandered down to Pike Place to grab some pizza, and small group of us asked to be seated in the regular restaurant and be served a "real" meal there.  The halibut fish and chips was fantastic, but added more cost to my already expensive "dinner."  Oh well, you win some, you lose some.  I still ended up having a good time hanging out with Dave and Wendy from Wisconsin, so it wasn't a complete loss!

Elysian Fields

Having arrived in Seattle, I was greated by two good friends Pete and Genevieve, who took me out on the town. Since I really wanted to return to the Elysian Fields Brewpub, we headed out there.

I really love the industrial-meets-arty-meets-big-fish-tanks look of this place. They had about 16 of their own beers on tap with some nice guest taps as well. The Avatar Jasmine IPA was really unusual and worth a try! I really liked a set of pale ales made with experimental as-yet-unnamed hops called Beaker and Bunsen. Meep!

The food was excellent, steak frites with blue cheese butter. I was jealous of my colleagues' lamb shepherd's pie though...

I have very pleasant memories of randomly being at this pub for their Great Pumpkin celebration a few years back, when they changed all their taps to serve pumpkin beers.