I’ve visited Brickyard Brewing twice so far.  First time was the second stop on my Woodinville-area brewery bike trip, just a short, downhill ride from Foggy Noggin. Next visit was about six weeks later, on their official grand opening. Brickyard is a two-man outfit, and the one who was there both times recognized me when I showed up for the opening party. Pretty cool. I guess arriving on a bicycle and spending up to an hour scribbling down mysterious tasting notes can you make you somewhat memorable.

Samplers at Brickyard Brewing — Woodinville, WA

Rob’s Picks
• Stones Throw Pale Ale – 5.8% – Really smooth start. Fairly malty with a touch of caramel, and light balancing bitterness.
• Brickyard IPA – 7.3% – Great mix of flavors — bit of a sweet start, good malty backbone, to floral hoppiness. Awesome balance.
• Masonry Oatmeal Stout – 7.1% – Good chewy chocolatey stout with subtle coffee flavors and slight alcohol edge.
• Blonde – 4.9% – Nice honey flavor, slightly bready, with some caramel, too. Very smooth. Banana/clove flavor mixed in — pretty cool. They normally call this their “Concrete Blonde” but apparently it’s not supposed to have the banana/clove flavor, so it may not be there next time. Maybe I should refer to this batch as the “Bavarian Blonde.”
• Pumpkin Ale – 5.2% – Good balance of pumpkin, caramel maltiness, and bitterness. Not particularly sweet, which is nice. Tried this one on my second visit — you can the soon-to-be-drinkable pumpkins in the background of the picture I took on my first visit, above.

During the grand opening, they handed out samples of their ice cream stout float, with ice cream from a local creamery. It was pretty darn tasty, and I hoped the amount of ice cream was small enough not to trigger too many uncomfortable lactose intolerant side effects. Not much else food-wise, but they do serve free popcorn, freshly popped from one of those old-time movie theater-style poppers. (Lazy Boy has one of those, too.) They also sell logo glasses and growlers, as well as refurbished PCs, although I forgot to see if those sported the Brickyard logo. So, you can satisfy all your beer and IT needs in one go. Very convenient.