Seattle — Brewpubs

Within 2 hours of landing in Seattle I was seated at Pike Place Brewing, drinking their phenomenal epynomyously named stout.  On par with be beer was the company. I arrived on Friday night and the gentleman next to me at Pike’s was the boyfriend of one of the servers. He and the duty bartender outlined a ton of fun things to do in town and told me all about life in Seattle. The take-away is: everyone there is way cooler than I ever have been or hope to be; this was confirmed by hearing computer programmers tell me tales of festival-going bacchanalia that rival that of my roadie friends. It is a cool town, with great beer everywhere, great coffee still hidden around, and a serious donut problem. But today is about the beer, coffee and donuts are later in the week.

I also had the Scottish at Pike, it was solid but I wasn’t amazed. It was a big seller, and it is nice to see some malt win out in a city so hop obsessed it is called after their color. The stout was the big winner, with a clean aroma with black patent and roast barley dominating the flavor. It was highly bitter with a low earthy hop flavor, but all stopped short of being harsh. It was a fantastic beer, as was the pretzel (made with spent grains) and house-made mustard, which was almost palette wrecking in its strength. They had an imperial red that wasn’t hop but packed a lot of malt flavors between the hop blasts. My meal was also great, though I can’t exactly recall what I had at that point. The DIPA was great, well balanced and a nod to what was to come.

I also had the great pleasure of making two trips to the Elysian Brewpub in Capitol Hill. They boast a 130′ draft line run that is suspended from the ceiling and glycol chilled. It ends in an awesome hanging set of taps. The staff explained them using a multi-core line that was cleaned every other week, or faster.

The beers are similarly unique. I was able to drink through most of their tap lineup and noticed a nice trait, all the beers have a spicy finish. This is likely due to the use of chinook to bitter all of the beers, it leaves a spicy hallmark that ties the beers together. Gordon Strong suggested as much in his recent book– he uses honey in all of his IPAs. The Elysian IPAs were good, there were four on tap when I was there. They burst with the piney and citrusy flavors of northwest hops. They also are not harshly bitter, and the high levels of bitterring are attenuated by fruity esters, fruity hop flavors, and a higher than expected sweetness and high finishing gravities. This was true across the Northwest beers, but very noticeable at Elysian. The hop flavors were still on display, but on top of a far less stark base beer than the Chicago-land IPAs I am used to drinking. The finish is more medium to medium sweet, so the harshness does not linger as I’ve become used to. This also differentiates the beers from their neighbors to the south, the california beers finish with a characteristic dryness and less malt flavors, thanks, I’d imagine, to the nearly ubiquitous use of the Chico yeast strain. Perhaps my favorite beer was the Slight Return, a small beer with Cascade and one of the hops du jour, Nelson Sauvin. This was a grainy masterpiece, pushing the malt to the limit but packing in a noticable but not obnoxious amount of hops. Balance is the key word for the Seattle beers I experienced. The brewpubs were great, as was the bar scene. More on that later and, of course, the donuts– oh the donuts!