Visiting Seattle (2022)

The two Stoup pilsners I had with dinner were delicious. No “gram worthy” pics needed, whatever that means. And I’ll put my phone away for the rest of the trip now. Cheers.

 

Indeed, CapHill has a number of good beer bar options, but in terms of good breweries, it is a bit of a wasteland.

 

As @distantmantra mentioned, South Nut and Garden Path are mere steps apart by the Burlington airport. Also in that area is Cardinal Craft Brewing, which is the taproom for Skagit Valley College's brewing program, but it's only open for 4 hours, on Thursdays: https://svccardinalcraftbrewing.ecwid.com/ Depending on how nerdy you are, ya might want to give a call to Skagit Valley Malting (right near the other 3 mentioned above) and see if you can get a tour.

One of my favorites in the area is Anacortes Brewing/Rockfish Grill in downtown Anacortes. The beers are good, and the food is really good. I suggest either the Thai Chicken Pizza or the Porter Onion Burger: https://anacortesrockfish.com/

Downtown Mt. Vernon has the new version of old favorite Skagit River Brewing, Temperate Habits Brewing, and District Brewing all a few small blocks apart. Just up the road a bit is Farmstrong Brewing. My thoughts on all those places are here: https://www.beeradvocate.com/place/list/?city=Mount+Vernon&c_id=US&s_id=WA

 

Thanks for the info! However, now I don't think we're going up there! But your info is now etched in immortality for the next person like me looking on some tips for the area...

 

I love Capercaillie and Standard (didn't know about Metier, that's exciting) but yeah, none of those are really in CapHill (closest for me is Capercaillie, and that's a nearly two-mile walk). Not a big fan of Outer Planet, unfortunately, nor Redhook/Elysian/Optimism.

 

I'm back from my Seattle trip and in the WNWBAYDN thread I was encouraged to give a recap of our trip- Here's installment 1:

Preface: My daughter graduated from college last May with the intention of going to PA (Physician’s Assistant) school starting this summer, so basically she had a year off, one that she didn’t want spend in suburban central CT. One of her good friends got a job at Amazon in Seattle so my daughter thought it would be a grand idea to move to Seattle for a year. So she got a job as a medical scribe, got an apartment, and there she is.

I’ve never been to Seattle, the closest I’ve ever been was Portland and that was in 1991. My wife went out there twice with my daughter, once to look for apartments and once to help move her in. That was last summer. The reports I received back emphasized the overall lack of policing, shooting and gang warfare in local parks, lawlessness, homelessness, filth, human feces everywhere, basically a shitshow. Granted, that’s an exaggerated summary of probably an exaggerated account, but the media sure wasn’t holding back on reporting this view as well. So I wasn’t sure what to expect on our visit. What I actually experienced was very little of that account. Sure, there was more homelessness and drug use than I’m used to, but the positives of a vibrant, creative and geographically beautiful area far outweighed the negatives I experienced. In short, I loved the place.

So with that backdrop, here’s our day-to-day recapping of our visit-

Day 1 (Tue) – Landed at about 3pm, got settled into our hotel by about 4:30- again, we were staying at the Homewod Suites on Pike across from the new convention center because my daughter lives a block UP (capitalized because it is a steep walk up that damn hill) on Boren. Our first stop was walking to Optimism Brewing to wait for my daughter to get home from work. As previously reported, the beer was meh at best. I had a Unicorn IPA that had hints of Pledge and my wife had a slightly better Moxee, their WC style IPA. We then met my daughter at nearby Mamnoon for some really tasty Mediterranean food washed down with crisp Stoup Pilsners while the ladies enjoyed their fancy cocktails. Had a nightcap at Six Arms – McMenamins, I forget which beer I had, it was pretty good. Called it a night.

Day 2 (Wed)- Walked down to The Market, did the typical touristy things- took pics of gum wall, strolled through a couple of the random shops downstairs, etc. No, I did not mount the pig. Pro tip- check out the “secret” garden, cool view from there. Then we walked down to Pier 50 and took the water taxi over to West Seattle/Alki beach, hopped on Lime bikes (I always laughed at people riding those, now I'm hooked on them!) rode over to Alki beach, had lunch at Dukes (Crab Un-cakes were delicious, beers consumed were a pilsner I forgot the name of and Bale Breaker IPA) then we cruised the area some more on our bikes and caught the 3:00 ferry back. Since we had a 24-hr Lime pass we grabbed two more bikes, went back up to The Market, bought some fish (not from the fish-throwing place but a much mellower place across the street and down some) and veggies and what not and made dinner at my daughters. I make a mean piccata type fish dish, just saying. I drank a bunch of Bodhizafa’s with dinner, great beer. Overall great day, the weather definitely cooperated!

To be continued...

 

Thanks pbrian for the review! It's always great to hear what visitors think of Seattle. I was curious about what Optimism beer you didn't like. I've never been there as it seems so far away from Ballard. Georgetown's Bodhizafa is one of the best, easy to obtain Seattle IPAs. It's always solid, comes in packaging that easy to pack in checked luggage, and has legible canning dates!

 

Seems like @pbrian caught on quick. Any metro area (even my city of only 90k) is gonna have the homelessness, drug, and random deranged folks issues he mentioned. Shrug, this is our modern world.

But, all those negatives are rarely a problem for most folks, and the basic nature of the locals will shine through. I'm not a "Big City" type person, but, I could deal with Seattle or PDX. Glad you went out and found your own experiences, and didn't just rely on outside sources from the issues a couple years ago.

 

yeah... while realizing how much exaggeration the media put on sea/pdx stuff from the past few years, i will admit i was a bit surprised to see how much worse belltown/downtown looked post-covid. again, not nearly as bad as it was made out to be.

 

This same thing happened in my town. There was an unsanctioned town (at its height it would have qualified as the 6th largest town in our county) in an abandoned industrial area. The city cleared it out to expand a trail and park network and all of a sudden "we had a homelessness crisis!"

The reality, of course, was that we had been living with a homelessness crisis for some time before that but it was conveniently out of sight.

I don't think that the role of the mild climate on the west coast is often considered in the influence on the homelessness issue for us. Where i grew up, in the upper midwest, literally freezing to death in the winter did something to keep the homeless population in check. I remember several stories a year as a child, and I assume there were more than that since I wasn't any kind of news hound as a 12 year old.

I'm actually startled to hear that that is the presentation of Seattle people are getting back east. I think of Seattle as a fairly nice city

 

I will continue my recap, I promise, but the night got away from me tonight…

 

Maybe I watch too much Fox News

 

It's easy to get a wild idea of places far from us that loom large in the cultural landscape. Im sure my perceptions of greater NYC and Florida are cartoonish for the people that live there

 

This. A thousand times over.

 

That's never happened to any of us out here......

 

Even at the peak of the issues a couple years ago, both Seattle and PDX were presented as being totally under siege, when in reality, it was just a couple blocks in both cities. But I remember one prominent poster here on BA, who replied in a thread where someone asked where to go for a beercation, strongly put the kibosh on PDX and SEA as potential destinations as both both cities were burning to the ground, and OP would surely be maimed, if not killed. SMH.