Seattle Beer Week

Jonathan's arrival in Seattle coincided with the start of Seattle Beer Week and a strange temperature inversion that brought sunny skies and seventy degree temperatures to Seattle while sending rain and snow (in May!) to San Diego.  We lost no time in sampling the best brews the city had to offer (even though I was still hobbling around in my protective boot).

We started on Wednesday evening at the Pike Brewing Company where we tried the seasonal samplers - the Houblon Saison was declared a winner.  On Thursday we ventured up to Fremont, starting with a Cascade sour beer tasting at the Sixgill, and then moving on to Fremont Brewing, where I enjoyed the orange and earl grey IPA, and ending up at Outlander, where we sampled an amazing array of ten innovative beers produced by this tiny nanobrewery in a Victorian house. Friday's treat was a beer and food pairing (cheese, artisanal sausages, pork shank sliders and goat cheese fritters) at the Bell and Whete led by Dave Adams of San Diego's Green Flash beers.  Even though we are beer snobs we learned some interesting new facts about brewing. We walked up Capitol Hill to The Pine Box, a mortuary converted to a bar, for a nightcap.

On Saturday I threw caution to the winds and removed my boot. So far my foot seems to have recovered.  We spent the day exploring Ballard's breweries including Hales, which uses the traditional English open tank method (thumbs up), Bad Jimmy's (thumbs down), Reuben's Brews which had just opened a new facility and deck (excellent), then Hilliard's Beer which occupies an old roller skating rink (interesting tequila barrel aged saison), and lastly Populuxe. We saw several cycle saloons visiting the same breweries - these are bicycles made for 10 with a bar down the middle, but ironically these pedal powered bars are not allowed to serve alcohol! Saturday evening, we felt strangely tired (I wonder why...).

On Sunday we spent a very enjoyable morning at the Museum of Flight, highlights of which included artifacts from moon landings, the original red barn in which the Boeing aircraft factory had its beginnings, and the galleries on World Wars 1 and 2 which told the story of the war through tales of legendary pilots, men and women from many different countries. The bus ride back took us through neighborhoods of Georgetown and Sodo, which merit further exploration some time soon. We finished the weekend with another beer pairing dinner back at Outlander.