The Spirit World

I really appreciate everyone’s comments on my “megabrew” articles. Drinking local is a challenge and (if you are really strict about it) would require some self-denial, especially if you are like me and love those beers from Belgium. If I were going to go all local with my beer consumption, I would have to seriously think about moving to Belgium.

This week I’m going return to my plan of giving you some of my impressions of Washington breweries. I’ve already told you about The Harmon in Tacoma and Powerhouse in Puyallup. So today I’ll tell you about my mini-pubcrawl across Seattle.

The drinking started just after noon at Elysian in the Capital Hill district of Seattle. Brenda suggested this well-worn space as a good rendezvous point for our Spirit World lunch pow-wow. To start I ordered the Weizen Bock to keep me on my program of drinking anything other that Pale Ale, India Pale Ale, Porter, and Stout—not that I have anything against these styles, its just that on this trip I was looking for beers like Wits and Saisons and other stylistic treats. The Weizen Bock was malty and sweet, and it left me thirsty for more Elysian beer. The next day I did manage to find the Saison I was looking for. I picked up a bottle of Elysian Saison from 2004 that had kept rather nicely. That Saison was easily one of my favorites of the week.

Our next stop (yes I had a designated driver—thanks mom) was over in the Fremont neighborhood where we found Dad Watson’s. There I learned about the extensive family of McMenamins brewpubs (something like thirty of them) that dot the Pacific Northwest. The theme seems to be the reclamation of old buildings and converting them into brewpubs (a worthy enterprise in my book). The Powerhouse in Puyallup and a related brewpub over in Tacoma, Engine House No. 9, are both in reclaimed spaces (very eco-friendly to recycle whole buildings). At Dad Watson’s I had a Cream Ale, a light colored, refreshing drink that finished a little sweet. I enjoy cream ales and would recommend them to any in the die-hard American light lager crowd. If you want a true “beer with training wheels” your cream ale is a good full-flavored alternative to grain/corn/rice tea.

We rounded out the day at Hale’s Ales which turned out to be only a few minutes by car from Dad Watson’s. At Hale’s I had a pint of the Red Menance Big Amber Ale which somehow I managed to misremember as being called “Better than Dead Red”—but perhaps it was just the shock of seeing a statue of Lenin keeping watch over Fremont.

Before making the trek back south to our base of operations, I finagled a pit stop at the Bottleworks where I drooled on bottles of beer from all over the world. But since I drink local (wink) I confined my choices to the beers of Washington and Oregon.