Day 1: West Seattle Equals Best Seattle
And here we are, back in the Emerald City. My husband joined me for this portion of the hop trip so we opted to drive instead of fly. Approximately six hours later we made it my sister-in-law’s apartment in West Seattle, our home base for the next few days. Since it took half the day to drive from Bend and with a desire to avoid Friday evening traffic in the city, we opted to stay in West Seattle for the rest of the day. However, as we soon found out, this in no way limited our beer choices.
Our first stop was West Seattle Brewing, the Mothership location, which is located off of Fauntleroy Way (they have a second location called the Tap Shack which is on Alki Beach). The Mothership is a small, industrial space with several tables looking directly onto a section of the brewery floor (my preferred design for a tap room, always love that smell). The tap room has a decent selection of beers on tap (both core and seasonal offerings) and also serves coffee drinks and a small food menu (sandwiches, salads, and pizza). While there I sampled their Alki Lumber Lager, a clean, light lager which was perfect for a warm day in Seattle (shocking, I know) and the Smoke Haze IPA, a decent addition to the hazy IPA trend. Since the Brewers Association added Hazy IPAs as an official category can we call it a trend anymore? Anways, I digress.
After finishing up some work (it was Friday, guys) we ventured over to The Beer Junction, a combo beer bar and beer store in the middle of West Seattle. The Beer Junction came highly recommended from my coworker and fellow beer nerd Adrian so that combined with the fact that it was walking distance from where we were staying (don’t drink and drive y’all), I had a feeling it would be a winner. I was very happy to be right. Their website claims to have Seattle’s largest beer selection with over 1,300 different beers available in package and a monster tap list with around 40 taps of beer, cider, mead, and kombucha. And it was a beautiful tap list that night, and not only because they had Cascade Barrel House’s Manhattan on tap. The tap list is separated into several categories including: Hops!, Light & Medium Bodied, On the Dark Side, and Rare, Sour, or “Odd & Delicious.” While they did seem to have a love for Central Oregon beers, which I always appreciate, I went for some non-Oregon beers including a Dark Mild from Machine House Brewery (one of the most British ass beers I’ve had in awhile) and a Mahogany Kriek from Grand Teton Brewing. While sipping on these beers we also spent some time perusing their massive bottle shop selection which I believe I have only seen bested by one other place (we’ll keep that one for a future hop trip). In short, it is awesome and if money and storage were no object I would have brought a good portion of it home with me. It’s also worth noting that The Beer Junction is a block away from Ma’ono, a place which serves delicious fried chicken and Hawaiian food.
Day 2: Let’s Drink All of the Beer in Ballard!
Day two brought us to one of my favorite Seattle neighborhoods, Ballard. The number of breweries per capita in this neighborhood is insane so it seemed like the perfect place to embark on a brewery crawl (several tour companies have also had this brilliant idea so be forewarned that you may have to share space with large groups of noisy people as we did).
First stop was Bad Jimmy’s Brewing Company, a small brewery tucked away behind another building in Frelard (this is what Seattlites have started calling the area between Ballard and Fremont and I hate it). What I don’t hate is the tasting room at Bad Jimmy’s Brewing Company (see what I did there). Although the space is small it has a glass garage door and a sizeable patio perfect for sitting in the sunshine on a nice day, which it was. Nice, I mean. Shocking, but true. The tap room also has a second floor with a selection of games, including pinball.
The brewery itself, which is in the back of the building, was started by four craft beer inclined friends in Seattle and is named after one of their beer bellies (image below for full story). The tasting room has a fairly quiet, chill vibe (well, until the aforementioned tour group of bros showed up) which can be quite a find on a sunny Saturday. While there I sampled Wildberry Gose which was decent (sorry, I’m a bit of a sour snob) and the Habanero Amber Red Ale which was excellent (just the right amount of spice and doesn’t linger overly long on the palate).
Next up was Populuxe Brewing, which I had heard good buzz about but had yet to visit. The brewery, started by a couple in Ballard, was originally a nanobrewery out of their garage before trading up to a larger commercial space. The tasting room definitely has a commercial aesthetic with very simple decoration and lots of metal. Highlights of the space include an arcade, a private event space (their original tap room), and a large outdoor patio where there is usually a rotating food truck set up. The patio was an especially nice spot to chill on this sunny day and was a lot quieter than expected (always appreciated with this introvert). Beer-wise the tap room had a good selection. My husband was super excited about the sour he tried while I had the Saison Six-Six which was a nice light beer for the warm weather.
After chilling in the sun in Populuxe we headed to our next stop, via a short walk: Stoup Brewing. This was another brewery that there has been a lot of chatter about and was glad to finally visit. Apparently I’m not the only one who has heard about this place because of all the breweries we visited that day this one was the busiest by far. Does that mean it was the best? I tend to not be of the mind that lots of people in the tap room does a good brewery make but not everyone is me (thankfully, because that would be terrifying). However, I can say after doing some sampling that their beer is really good. We did a flight and both my husband and I agreed that there wasn’t a bad one in the bunch. Not even a mediocre one in the bunch. What I’m saying is they make good beer and you should try it and I can’t give any more specifics because this dumb dumb didn’t record what beers she tried. Sorry ☹ Although, fun fact, one of Stoup’s brewers was Washington’s first female Cicerone which is pretty cool.
The next brewery on our list wasn’t originally on our list at all because I had never heard of it. During a chat with a fellow beer nerd at Populuxe he recommended Obec Brewing which also happened to be in walking distance. While the name is Czech (Obec is the Czech word for community) they serve a variety of styles, although the beer list on the day we visited leant towards lagers and pilsners (which worked for me as I’ve been in a lighter beer groove lately). Anyways, as they just opened last year I’ll be curious to see where they go in the future.
The last stop of the day was Elysian Tangletown because as I mentioned in part one I cannot get out of Seattle without ending up at Elysian at some point. Of the Elysian locations, Tangletown is my favorite and the beer and food are always good.
Day 3: New and Old Favorites
After a bit of a beer hangover from day two we decided to slow our roll a little on day two and only hit two breweries. First up was Cloudburst Brewing near Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle. This is another brewery that I’ve been meaning to visit, especially once I found out that it was started by the former experimental brewer at Elysian, Steve Luke (Elysian has always made some damn fine experimental beers). The tap room has a bit of a hole-in-the-wall feel from the outside and we almost missed the entrance due to Seattle’s ever-present construction. Once you’re inside however it has a comfy yet industrial feel and the seating furthest back looks out onto the brew floor. There wasn’t much to see on a Sunday morning but a tap room that opens onto the brewery is always nice in my book. And the beer? Well its really fucking good. I drank a Cascadian Dark Ale called Social Suicide which was very enjoyable but the best beer I had there (and one of the best beers of the trip) was an IPL collaboration with Boneyard Beer called Loose Ends. Light yet hoppy perfection! It’s also worth noting that Cloudburst doesn’t do taster flights and only sells pre-filled growlers (but we were there on April Fool’s Day so they were doing both of those things).
Next, we made our way over to the Magnolia neighborhood and my personal favorite Seattle brewery, Urban Family Brewing Co. As I already discussed how much I love them in part one of this article I’ll just say that I had a Moon Path (a blackberry and black currant sour ale) and a Dreamscape (a foudre aged sour ale with hibiscus) and both were delicious.
One last (completely unbeer related) thing before I conclude this hop trip: on the evening of day three my sister-in-law, a few of her friends, and I went to The Moore for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Live. Now I realize that the cross-section of craft beer nerds and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend fans may not be very large but this is my blog so I ask, why the hell not? If you like musical comedies you will almost certainly like it and if you don’t well give it a try anyways (it will be good for you). Anyways, the moral of the story is that they put on a kick-ass live show and it was a perfect ending to this hop trip.
Till next time! Prost!
