Seattle Area Breweries

As Rob mentioned in a post a few weeks ago, one of the great things about traveling these days during the recent craft beer explosion, is that wherever you are traveling, there is a pretty good chance you will be able to explore some new, small, local craft breweries while you are there.  Last weekend I flew up to the Seattle area for a wedding of a friend of mine, and even though I was only in the area for about 31 hours, I had the opportunity to tour and do a tasting at one brewery and also try beer from another small local brewery, both without really going out of my way.

The wedding was in Issaquah, WA, a smallish country town about 30 minutes outside of Seattle.  Before heading up there, I figured the only breweries in the area would be closer to Seattle, and that I likely wouldn't have enough time to visit any.  However, to my surprise I discovered the Issaquah Brewhouse in old town Issaquah.

Note the fish on their sign, lots of things in the town were either fish or frog related.

Issaquah Brewhouse was acquired by Rogue Ales in 2000, and has its own 15 barrel system to create its own unique beers.  All of the beers have Frog in the name.  They only had 3 of their own on tap when I visited, but also had over 20 Rogue beers on tap.

Stepped off the airplane flight and in to the brewhouse for a beer flight...

With my flight, I got to try the Menage a Frog, 11th Anniversary Frog, Contraband IPA, and St. Rogue Red.  On the recommendation of some people sitting near us that we chatted with, I followed up the flight with a pint of the Morimoto Imperial Pilsner.  All of the beers were tasty, though none of them jumped out at me as being too exciting or delicious.  It was a nice place, though, with decent food and a good atmosphere.  The people sitting next to me were also homebrewers, so we enjoyed some beer and brewing conversation over lunch.

After lunch we continued on to the wedding, where I was able to learn about another local brewery.  The beer at the wedding was a keg of Manny's Pale Ale from Georgetown Brewing Company in Seattle.    From what I can tell, Georgetown has two flagship beers, the Pale Ale and a Pilsner, and a handful of other selections such as Chopper's Red, Georgetown Porter, and Lucille IPA.  They began brewing in 2002, expanded to a larger location in 2008, and opened up a tasting room in their brewery in 2010.  They have the capacity to brew up to 35,000 barrels per year, which would give them a pretty significant amount of brewing capacity, but I don't know how many barrels they are currently brewing.

Keg of Manny's Pale Ale

Although I was only able to try the one beer they had on tap at the wedding, the Pale Ale was very tasty and I look forward to someday being able to visit the brewery and try other Georgetown beers.  I think that a good pale ale is very under-appreciated by breweries these days but can be a very delicious, well-rounded beer.  Manny's was full-bodied with a nice hoppy finish but still very clean and smooth and easy to drink.  By the time I had a few pints, I didn't think about taking any other pictures other than the one above, so I don't have much else to show for it, but if you are ever in Washington, it is definitely worth a trip over to Georgetown to check out their brewery and see what they are all about!