Seattle Beer Report
By Joe Larson

In September 2007 my company sent me on a two week trip to Seattle Washington for a class. That's a long time away from home, so I was looking for things to do. Of course, the first thing I thought of was finding some small breweries and sampling their products. This is the fabled Northwest, right? Home of the craft beer movement, right? There must be hundreds of places, right?

As it turned out I didn't have all that much time to go exploring.
There were only two places worth mentioning - not that there weren't more places to check out, but only that I only found two of them to report on.

The Tap House Grill in downtown Bellevue advertises in all the glossy hotel magazines that they have over a hundred beers on tap. And yes, they sure do. Bring your wallet and make sure your credit card is fully charged and ready to go. It's a nice place, the food was okay, and there were lots of beer choices. They let you build your own sampler of six or eight different beers, and the wait staff was knowledgeable about the varieties. I told her that I was into dark beers and she helped me build a sampler of some good darks.

It was expensive, but the variety was good and the food was good. I went with a group of guys from class and we all enjoyed it.

But I actually had more fun in a solo expedition to the Red Hook Brewery. Red Hook is in Woodinville, a northwest suburb of Seattle.

By the way, the traffic everywhere in the Seattle area is terrible.
Plan on an hour to get anywhere and you won't be far off.

But back to Red Hook. I found them on the map, straight north from Redmond - home of Microsoft - and pretty much right on a numbered road.
But I drove right past it. It wasn't marked very well. If you see the big Chateau St. Michelle winery on one side of the road you better be turning into the driveway to Red Hook on the other side, even if you don't see any signs.

They have at least one more brewery, in Portsmouth NH, according to the labels on the Red Hook beers at County Market. But the Woodinville brewery is the home office, as I understand it. There's a gift shop, and a decent pub with good food. It's kind of a big place, somewhat bigger than the Point Brewery complex.

I ordered the sampler to get an idea of their varieties, and took notes on the beers to report back. Here's what I found.

Sun Rye: good wheat beer, but the rye kind of over powers the malt.

Blond: good example of the British "Mild" style, with a touch of Saaz hops on the tongue.

ESB: their flagship brew, not really an ESB but a nice amber. Almost as good as Point Amber. Not bad at all.

IPA: HOPS! HOPS! HOPS in the nose, but with a sweet taste too.

Porter: smooth, with a coffee finish.

My waitress, Amanda, asked how I liked everything, and I gave her the full rundown from my notes. She was impressed and brought me two more samples. I told her I was going to write up my visit for the Stevens Point homebrew club.

She brought me a Porter that was on nitrogen instead of CO2. The head was smaller and creamier, kind of like Guinness, and the taste was creamier to match the head.

They also had a dry hopped IPA which had a much stronger nose and finish. Maybe too much hops? Could that even be possible? Maybe. It went down harder than the other styles.

But anyway, there is my report. I highly recommend making friends with the wait staff at any local brewpubs you visit when you travel. They appreciate educated consumers like we homebrewers often are, and you never know what goodies they might bring.

If you visit the Red Hook Brewery when you visit Seattle, give my regards to Amanda.