Visiting Seattle (Winter 2018 Update)

Are Big Time and Naked City really worthy of highly recommended? Both were just okay when I lived in Seattle.
I've heard good things about Standard.

 

Ravenna has been open almost two years now and some of their IPAs and kettle sours have been really good this past year. Their Guava sour was impressive.

Eureka has a pretty solid taplist that tends to go under the radar (the had Spice Wars and Rusty Nail long after they were gone everywhere else). We normally go to Din Tai Fun at U Village, but I never had any issues with their service the few times I've been in.

I wouldn't disagree or agree with those thoughts, but I've wondered that myself. I feel like we've got two tiers of breweries here in Seattle. The Universally Recommended list? That's not changing. Maybe we call the other list "Other Breweries" and take out "highly recommended."

I've also thought about putting Salare and June Baby on the restaurant list. Solid food and the owner clearly has an interest in craft beer.

 

I've also thought about having a list of Washington breweries not from Seattle but ones you should look for at bars and bottle shops:

Matchless
Three Magnets
Skookum
Structures
Bale Breaker
Engine House No. 9
Propolis
etc.

But that might be overkill.

 

It may indeed be overkill, but I had a couple of those breweries in mind when I responded to a recent post asking for great breweries in Seattle. It would be a shame to visit the area without knowing that I should keep an eye out for Bale Breaker or Skookum.

It would be like visiting Portland and not knowing about Block 15 or Fort George.

 

Nice work! I actually like this idea here a lot. I would also consider adding Black Raven, Wander, & Chuckanut to a WA-general list.

I agree on Ravenna, they go under the radar but I'm impressed with the quality of their beer (and love their logo). I'd maybe pull back on Eureka, primarily based on the thinking that I wouldn't recommend that anyone visiting Seattle ever visit U. Village. That said, there could be people visiting for UW reasons and it might be nice to know what is close to UW, so I don't feel strongly.

I'm in general agreement with your other suggestions too, and as a dad of two, especially the kid-friendly vs. 21+ distinction .

 

I still don't understand the Shambles love. Maybe once they get their legs under them they can ascend to the top beer restaurants. But they aren't there yet.

 

Their food is better than most beer centric restaurants here imo. I agree they are definitely very new though.

 

Will do a better post when back on my komputater, but for now, I'd like to give a huge THANK YOU! to @BuckeyeOne for maintaining this for so long. Let me know if you and the doggo want to grab a beer if you're ever up my way.

 

See, I've never even heard of Ravenna until these posts. If we're not even talking about them here, how "must-hit' can they be? I think adding a kid/dog friendly section might be a good idea (although, not sure how many Visitors would be bringing their pets? Some surely, especially people doing long road trips, but somebody flying in for a couple days before jumping on a cruise ship? Shrug. Maybe just use various symbols [*,#,^. etc] on the place listing?). I agree with removing Schooner Exact (and, I've been a long-time fan) until their situation shakes out.

I'll admit that it's been 2-3 (or maybe more) since I've hit up Big Time, and if they've slipped, then maybe take them off. But, there are several of the smaller breweries, and yes I'm standing with Naked City here, that make beers that match the beers on the Universally Recommended list. Except for Georgetown and Seapine, the UR list would also match pretty closely to a Most Hyped Breweries in Seattle list. Maybe my physical distance from Seattle, along with my rare visits (Maybe 6-8 times a year, mostly for beerfests or M's games, where I just do that event and get out of town. I have an allergy to large cities.) skews my viewpoint, but when I do go down, the UR list is a list I use to plan where not to go. I realize I'm an outlier on this, give my my thoughts whatever weight you wish.

And, thanks for carrying on the thread! The beer offer holds for you too next time you're up.

 

There's a lot of relevant stuff going on in the city that we don't talk about here on BA, I don't think our recommendations should rest solely on what gets talked about here. We tend to fall into the rut of only talking about hype stuff, when there's a lot of smaller breweries that don't distribute but make good product for their community. Like Ravenna.

Remember when I was the only person on BA that liked Urban Family and ever said anything positive about them? It wasn't that long ago.

Some comments on Facebook would indicate that the Belltown Brewing people have sold off a lot of the SE branded growlers to home-brew shops, so I'm wondering if we'll be seeing massive rebranding.

I live in NE Seattle and my normal rotation of breweries is Holy Mountain, Fremont, Urban Family and Reubens. I sometimes hit Stoup, and Ravenna is the closest brewery to my house so I try to make it in there from time to time. I can't remember the last time I went to Big Time, but I like them a lot. Naked City is a great place for dinner (and beers) with my daughter, but we don't go there much. I'm a member of Flying Bike but I haven't been there in at least six months. I'd go to Cloudburst more but I hate getting downtown. Maybe when the Roosevelt light rail station opens up and I can walk there in five minutes. So close yet so far away.

No worries!

 

Yeah, you have to wonder if they're totally rebranding to SoDo Brewing.

They might think it's time to get rid of the confusing Schooner Exact name. I'm sure most people don't know it's referring to the name of the boat that brought the original founders of Seattle to the area. I know I didn't and asked on my first visit what's up with the name. I thought it was referring to the schooner beer glass, but didn't get the "Exact" part.

 

Well, I don't think it's anymore confusing than a lot of brand names; Holy Mountain isn't obvious. Once you get away from either local/geographic features or the owners name, it's all kind of a guess. Some folks still callit Pikes Place Brewery, which is wrong two ways.Shrug.

But, you bring up a quirk to the NW that confused me when I first visited 18 years ago: the use of "Schooner" as a smaller pour. Everywhere else I'd ever been a schooner was a large glass, in the 20-24oz range, and, generally, in my experience, shaped like a large Weizen glass. Hell, even Webster's thinks so: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/schooner

Maybe @jesskidden has something in his history books that cover this?

 

Yeah not sure if schooner as a smaller pour is just unique to Western Washington. I think if I asked for a schooner size in Portland, they would say what?

 

Oh, fair enough. But, it certainly seems to be regional thing. Or not. Shrug. Beer is good.

 

When I was much younger, like about 50 years ago, I frequented the Sloop Tavern in Ballard. They had two sizes of pours, a regular and a schooner which was a smaller, narrow at the bottom glass. Ah the good old days - not.

 

Oh the Sloop. I was in a kickball league 10 or 11 years ago and they were our sponsoring bar. Not 50 years ago, but Seattle was a different beast even then. Good times.

 

Idle question: has Urban Family increased production/distro? Seems like they're popping up around here semi-regularly lately. A couple nights ago, they had a brewers night at the Whole Foods across the street from me, that I accidentally wandered upon. They had 5 beers, 2 Murky IPAs and 3 Sours. I liked the 2 sours I tried, thought the Hazebros were meh-ish (but, I'm not enamored of the style).