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!

Airways Brewing Company: Kent, WA

Our third stop on the Washington beer scene was another departure, no pun intended.  First we had been at a fairly large production brewery with brewpub, then a midsized brewpub, and now arrived at tiny production brewery in a sprawling office park.  There was a tiny carboard sign out by the curb saying "Beer" with an arrow pointing to deeper amongst the rock-lined soulless walls of this park.  With a shrug, we entered this miniscule tap room and bellied up to the bar to try some beers, don't judge a book by its cover after all. 

We were greeted by ex-homebrewer Alex Dittmar and his wife Dione who served up some tasty samples and told us their story.  Despite this being the smallest brewery we saw on the trip, everyone was impressed by Alex and the similarity of what he was doing to expanded homebrewing, including mistakes and advice about how to make that jump.  He had started out his career as a commercial pilot, hence the name of the brewery.  The brewery even has an old Boeing nose cone over the boil kettle.

His first big "hit" with a beer was the Sky Hag IPA, named after the crusty and cantankerous old stewardesses who fly the not-so-friendly skies.  He was out of the beer, but opened up a spigot and served us some directly from the secondary fermenter where it was dry-hopping nicely.  Based on that sample I really want to try the finished product!

Camaraderie: fun, but hard to spell

Of all the places I visit and beers I drink on my tours, by far the best part is sharing those things with others.  When I drink a great Surly beer from my well-stocked fridge I enjoy it, but don't remember the experience later.  When I share a sample of Surly at the brewery with friends while listening to death metal blaring over the speakers, that memory will stay with me.  The combination of place, people and the social aspect of having a beer is the real reason I get so excited about this process.  As an anthropology major, I can tell you that the complexities of this social dynamic have been influential in the entire history of man and the agricultural revolution.

I saw so many places and tried too many beers to remember over the last week, but the things that stay with me are the people I met and spent time with.  Unfortunately I'm horrible with names and have left out some great people from this post...I loved hanging out with you, even if you are not mentioned here!  

I'm normally a fairly reserved and shy Norwegian Minnesotan, so going on this beer-mecca trip on my own was a little outside of my comfort zone, not knowing if I would have anyone to talk to or if I would be watching a lot of TV in my room.  However, the trip got off to the right start with meeting a couple of great guys on the plane from Wisconsin who were also headed that way.  By great luck I was able to meet up with them for breakfast before the flight home as well.  On the shuttle to the hotel I also re-met Mark, who I'd briefly met two years ago at NHC 2010.  I sat with a great couple (Tony and Kat,) at the Rock Bottom breakfast before the NHC kick-off toast and we shared brewing stories.  I'm hoping we can exchange some beers in the future!  I also had lunch randomly one day with Kiev, from Brew Your Own Magazine since we were both alone and didn't want to wait longer to be seated--thanks for the pint man!

One of my favorite people from the trip was a bloke named Paul who flew all the way from England to immerse himself in American beer culture, (though he gets most of his exposure through the Brewing Network so he probably thinks we belch and swear more than most of us really do...)  I ran into him on an early tour and ended up hanging out with him much of the trip due to his great sense of humor and attitude.  Oh, and I learned that "growler" has a far different meaning in the UK!  I'm guessing our new local publication of that same name would have a significantly different draw over there.

I have to mention the Primary Fermenters club out of St. Paul!  I've been friends with several of these folks for years, but this was a great way to spend some time with them and get to know other members I hadn't previously met.  They made me feel welcome and made sure I got my quota of partying in rather than escaping up to bed.  One day before Pro-Brewer Night we all went to an insanely crowded and authentic dim sum place and all ate way too many dumplings and sticky buns, and that dinner is a high point of my trip. Thanks guys!

To cap all this off, it was still nice to come home and be near my good friends in Minnesota.  On Monday night I was able to stop by Chris' house and sit on the deck drinking a great Gratzer beer while discussing the local beer scene and finally relaxing after my tiring trip.  It is good to be home.

So to all those who befriended me or improved my trip to Seattle, thanks and I'll buy you a round some time!

Harmon Tap Room: Tacoma, WA

The second stop in our first beer tour of the Seattle area was Harmon Tap House in Tacoma.  This place is very new, under two years old, and has a clean upscale feel for a small brewpub.  This is the third site for the company, with most of the commercial bottled beers being brewed in the original facility. They have a dark back room called the Harmon Underground where they often have live music.  There was a brief tour of the brewery by the head brewer, though I didn't think to record his name for this blog.  I blame all the good beers!  I think he enjoyed giving a tour to a group that actually had tough brewing questions for him, and not having to explain what malt is...

We had a lunch of spaghetti and a very nice salad whilst sipping on beer samplers.  I met some great folks on the bus and we shared beers in order to try them all.  One beer had some diacetyl, but otherwise all were very pleasant.  The stand-out was their Anniversary IPA, which was dry and balanced and remains one of the best of the style I had while on my trip.  Not too shabby for a small brewery surrounded by big guys!

Fish Brewing in Olympia, WA

From the website:
"From its home in beautiful Olympia, Washington, Fish Brewing Company has been hand-crafting ales of Northwest proportions since 1993. Founded by Crayne and Mary Horton and a few dozen local investors, Fish began operations humbly. With a 15-barrel brew house, two 15-barrel fermenters, and one dairy tank, we brewed for our neighbors up and down Puget Sound. Growing steadily since, Fish is now an award-winning craft brewer with distribution throughout the great Pacific Northwest and beyond."

Later the company moved to produce some of the first commercially available organic beers and are moving toward making all of the beers organic.  They also do some contract brewing for other brewers and have a line of ciders.  Interestingly the cider production has to all be done in a separate area of the brewery on separate equipment due to wierd alcohol laws. 

This was the first stop on my first organized beer tour in Washington state, and took about an hour on the bus from the Bellevue Hyatt.  On the way there, we had some beer trivia with homebrew prizes and exchanged brewing disaster stories, MC'd by a local homebrewess.  Our tour guides were actually investors in the Fish Brewery, hence were very knowledgeable about the place. 



Very cool artwork on the exterior walls

We started with a guided tour of the production facility, housed in a cool historic building.  The guide gave some pretty fun explanations of the brewing process and was quite animated for 10:30 in the morning!  The storage warehouse used to house a 50's sock-hop and had some pretty funny old grafitti that the company decided not to mess with. 

We had a few minutes to grab some sausage and beer samplers at the Fishbowl pub across the street, where the original small brewery was located.  The organic IPA was quite good, and all the beers were tasty.  I would certainly recommend a visit if you are in Olympia, but maybe not worth a trip all the way from Seattle. 

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.