Seattle at last!

I’ve been totally delinquent about covering Seattle, and for no particular reason.  I wasn’t busy, I was just being lazy, and now I’ve got a weeks worth of beer to wrap up.  I’m going to try to keep things snappy though, because I’ve got moving boxes calling my name, waiting to be filled.

Here’s a quick summary, jump to whatever looks interesting to you:

• Monday 10/13: Hopvine & The Stumbling Monk
• Tuesday 10/14: Trivia at the Ballard Loft
• Wednesday 10/15: Porter & Pumpkin Tasting
• Thursday 10/16: Allagash Event at Uber
• Friday 10/17: Hales Ales & Maritime Pacific Brewing Co.
• Saturday 10/18: Great Pumpkin Beer Festival at Elysian
• Sunday 10/19: Snoqualmie Falls Brewing Co.

Monday 10/13: Hopvine & The Stumbling Monk

Our trip to Hopvine for dinner went exactly as Allie predicted: Great soup, great selection of local beer, very slow service.  I’m assuming those soups are back there in big kettles, so I’m not even sure what took so long.  All I know is my southwestern pumpkin soup was incredible, it was so rich but the spiciness cut through all of that, and paired perfectly with my Ninkasi Total Domination IPA.  The only beers I’ve had from Ninkasi have been variations on the IPA style (the other two being the Tricerahops Imperial IPA and the Mt. Hops Fresh Hop Ale), so I don’t know anything about the breadth of their brewing skill, but I can say that I like what they do with hops.

Afterwards, we scooted on over to The Stumbling Monk to meet up with Chris, The Beer Retard.  We’ve just barely missed him several times over at events we both attended (various WABL Fests), or when Chris came into town for the Slow Food Festival but I was away at my cousin’s wedding.  It was fun to finally meet up with this person with whom I had mutual friends and several email conversations back and forth.  Over the course of a Dick’s Imperial Stout and an Abbaye Des Rocs Grand Cru we discussed beer blogging and all the good Seattle beer events I was looking forward to this week, which only tortured Chris who was on his way to Texas for a while.

Tuesday 10/14: Trivia at the Ballard Loft

No real beer story here, especially as I was the driver, but as we were only one point away from winning trivia night.  Things we learned that night:

• An icosagon has 20 sides, not 11
• Henry VIII only beheaded 2 of his 6 wives
• Sarah Jessica Parker has been in a lot more stuff than we thought

Wednesday 10/15: Porter & Pumpkin Tasting

This started out as a simple porter tasting, to include 6 to 8 beers, and to be held in San Francisco.  As my life started to change, I realized I’d be moving, I drove round trip from Seattle to San Francisco, and visited Portland, it morphed into something else entirely.  It ended up as a Black & Orange, Porter & Pumpkin Tasting at my sister’s place in Seattle complete with 25 different beers from 5 different beer stores and a variety of pumpkin-y and other fall dishes baked by me and Melissa.

The porters we sampled:

1. Alaskan Smoked Porter
2. Anchor Porter
3. Avery New World Porter
4. Darwin Brewery Original Flag Porter
5. Deschutes Black Butte Porter
6. Deschutes Black Butte XX Porter
7. Dick’s Lava Rock Porter
8. Eel River Certified Organic Porter
9. Elysian Perseus Porter
10. Firestone Walker’s Reserve Porter
11. Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter
12. Fuller’s London Porter
13. Marin Brewing Company Point Reyes Porter
14. Oy Sinebrychoff Baltic Porter
15. Port Townsend Brown Porter
16. Rogue Mocha Porter
17. Samuel Smith Taddy Porter
18. Steelhead Scotch Porter
19. Stone Smoked Porter
20. Zywiec Baltic Porter

The pumpkin beers we samples:

1. Buffalo Bill’s Pumpkin Ale
2. Dogfish Head Punkin’ Ale
3. Michelob Jack’s Pumpkin Spice Ale
4. Shipyard Pumpkinhead Ale
5. Southern Tier Pumking Imperial Pumpkin Ale

We pulled together this motley collection from:

• Belmont Station, Portland, OR
• BevMo, San Francisco, CA
• Bottleworks, Seattle, WA
• City Beer Store, San Francisco, CA
• Healthy Spirits, San Francisco, CA

The menu included, among other things I am probably forgetting:

• Pumpkin biscuits with cinnamon sugar
• Pumpkin quesadillas
• Garlic cheesy toast
• Mozzarella, tomato, basil sandwiches
• Turkey meatballs with cranberry dipping sauce
• Crab apple tart

We had a small group of 10 people total, so we didn’t make it through all the beers in the line up.  I don’t feel prepared to pick a favorite since this ended up being more of a third-debate-night party than a thoughtful tasting.  Luckily, we went through only a single bomber/750mL or two 12 oz-ers of the ones we did try, so now my sister’s fridge is full of enough porters to last her through an apocalypse, and maybe next time I go up there to visit we can actually go through them blind.

Thursday 10/16: Allagash Event at Uber

I had never been to Uber before, and it had been about 6 months since my last special Allagash tasting, so I could hardly hold back my excitement on Thursday night.  Uber was as tiny as Allie had made it sound, and since it was packed wall-to-wall with patrons, I’m especially glad they didn’t have their table-top fireplace lit up.  Surprisingly, despite the crowd, we got ourselves seats on the couach against the back wall pretty quickly after arriving.  We also got a chance to say hi to Rob Tod, who was on hand and a nice as ever, even though he had just flown in from Portland, ME, and it was getting late in his time zone.

For our first round, Allie called the Fluxus 08, the only beer I hadn’t yet had and the one I most wanted to try, so I got the Interlude, and Melissa got the Tripel.  I love the Interlude, but I have to say that I was nevertheless jealous.  The Fluxus really stole the show. It’s an Imperial Witbier and it’s incredible.  The bouquet alone made it worth it.  I could have sat there and just sniffed the glass all day.  It’s spiced with ginger, which comes through clearly but also plays nicely with the other spices.  I don’t think there’s actual sage in the spice blend, but after ginger, sage and clove were the strongest flavors I picked up.  It’s anything but boring and puts all those bland witbier makers out there right now to shame.

The only downside was that I, of course, left my credit card behind the bar at the end of the night, because I usually use cash and never keep an open tab.  I knew I was going to do this and even warned Allie as I handed over my plastic not to let me forget it.  Whoops!

Friday 10/17: Hales Ales & Maritime Pacific Brewing Co.

Allie’s lucky enough to work in a neighborhood where, either way she turns down the road after leaving work, she hits a microbrewery before she’s gone more than four blocks.  We decided to have things both ways, and meandered up and down her street to visit both Maritime Pacific and Hales’s Ales after work on Friday.

Maritime Pacific is in the middle of an industrial neighborhood, which Allie explained to me can give it a very locals-only feel sometimes.  The regulars at the bar, and the bartenders, assess everyone as they come in, and decide whether they’re local blue-collar folk, sometimes taking a while to take the orders of those who don’t look the part.  Funnily enough, Allie does work for a local, industrial manufacturing company – you just wouldn’t guess it from looking at her.  I’m taking her word on all this though, because this time our service was prompt and the patrons seemed friendly.  There was even a sweet older couple in the 80’s who were finishing up what I can only guess was their dinner as we arrived just after 4:00pm.  Though it got a little drafty near the front door, I really liked that the restaurant, excuse me, the “Jolly Roger Taproom”, had a bunch of different pirate flags strung around the place.

The tap wall had more handles than I would have guess for a local microbrewery.  When I asked the bartender about this, he explained that there weren’t really as many beers as there appeared to be, because their two flagship beers were each served four different ways.  I actually liked this concept even better.  It’s rare that you get to taste the same beer side-by-side with an alternate version, much less three alternate versions, of itself to see how its taste changes.  The Flagship Red Alt and Islander Pale Ale were each served:

• On a regular tap
• On nitro tap
• On cask
• On a regular tap dry hopped

Isn’t that awesome?  The other beers available were:

• Old Seattle Lager
• Portage Bay Pils
• Oktoberfest
• Clipper Gold Hefeweizen
• Salmon Bay ESB
• Imperial IPA
• Nightwatch Dark Amber
• Bosuit’s Black Porter

Our bartender made up a mixed taster tray for us containing a smattering of beers of different types from the overall selection.  My favorite of the bunch was the Nightwatch Dark Amber. It was refreshing, with Mt. Hood and Saaz hops keeping it out of the insipidly mild and malty territory that a lot of ambers seem to occupy, and with a background of toffee and light roast malt flavors.

The pints seemed pretty inexpensive to me at $3.75 for 16 oz, and they stay that price even after everyone else’s happy hour specials are over.  Last reason to visit Maritime Pacific: applewood-smoked beer battered onion rings with roasted jalapeno tartar sauce.  Yum!  And you get giant plate of them in each order.

After our samples and our rings, we headed on over to Hales Ales.  I really liked their space as a venue and wish we had somewhere like this around me.  When you walk in, the brewery is on your right behind floor to ceiling glass panels, so that you can see everything that is going on.  And on your left, pub is insulated from the drafty, chilly hallway by an interior wall.  Inside are plush, cozy leather arm chairs and sofas, a far cry from the brutal-looking concrete exterior.

They also had a ton of taps.  We got a full sampler, which included the eleven different beers available at the moment:

• Kolsch
• Nitro Cream Ale
• Nitro Cream Hale’s Special Bitter
• El Jefe Hefeweizen
• Red Menace Big Amber
• Hale’s Original APA
• Mongoose IPA
• Troll Porter
• Nitro Cream Stout
• Winter Wee Heavy
• Rudyard’s Rare Barleywine

My favorites were the El Jefe Hefeweizen, which had great Bavarian-style flavor, with lots of bubblegum in the aroma and bananas in the taste, and the Troll Porter, which was on the strong side at 7.0%.  It’s not as roasty as some of the others we tried on Wednesday, which is a shame, but it’s got some herbal hops to pull it through and keep it interesting.

The Elysian Great Pumpkin Beer Festival was the whole reason I was in Seattle in the first place, and is so unique, that it really deserves a post of its own.  So in the interests of getting the EGPBF photos I need from Melissa, and in finishing up my packing for my big move, I’m going to stop this post here.  But check back in for the EGPBF write up!  It’ll be up tomorrow most likely.