I feel a little guilty about writing a post on Urban Family Brewery and Public House because I haven’t done my usual gung-ho outdoorsy whatevers when visiting them. One of these days I’ll have to put the blinders on when biking to Ballard and not get distracted by the dozen or so other breweries en route. Life is hard sometimes. Anyway, like Naked City, Urban Family opened a pretty cool alehouse while planning the brewery side of the business. Unlike Naked City, they first focused more on non-PNW beers, although now there’s more of a balance between local and European offerings. After what seemed like forever, they finally got the brewery going. First beer was a saison, so yeah, they’re ambitious.

Urban Family’s first born, Le Vagabond — Seattle, WA

Rob’s Picks
• Paint It Black – 5.6% – Color is pretty darn black. Citrusy aroma with a hint of roastiness. Roasty malt forward, with some citrus hop flavor throughout. Light on the tongue, but fairly rich. Great lingering flavors.
• Muscles from Brussels – 5.5% – Belgian pale ale. Banana/clove and earthy aroma. Good mix of banana/clove flavors with biscuity maltiness, with underlying and lingering earthiness that balances other flavors well.
• Low Hangin’ Fruit IPA – 6.9% – Golden amber color, unfiltered. Made with Belgian yeast, so not your usual IPA. Interesting mix of citrus (mainly grapefruit), funk, and bitterness — same goes for the aroma.
• Lee Road Pale Ale – 5% – Floral aroma, but not as strong in flavor. Nice toasty maltiness that balances light floral hoppiness nicely. Bit of a dry finish, with a little bitterness but not too much.
• Red Derby Porter – 5% – Creamy, with strong coffee flavor, some honey/caramel sweetness, and a touch of dryness on the finish. Really drinkable.
• Le Vagabond Saison – 5.75% – Nice little saison, especially for a first beer. Banana/clove in the aroma. Lots of subtle flavors: clove (not so much banana, interestingly enough), bit of coriander, slight dry rye-ness, bit of alcohol edge.

The Rest
• 1885 – 5% – Scottish pale ale. Toasty aroma with a bit of sharpness to it. Very toasty flavor, sweet, with an herbal hoppiness. Interesting mix of flavors. Some lingering bitterness that builds up.

Last couple of their beers I’ve had were on tap elsewhere, so it’s good to see they’re continuing to expand. At one point I heard they were thinking of moving the brewing side of things to a separate location from the alehouse. Maybe I should put on those blinders, bike out there, and find out.

Named after the particular old Rainier Brewery building they call home, Machine House Brewery in Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood is a two-person endeavor making amazingly authentic English-style cask ales. They’ve been open since January 2013 and have so far produced six beers, three of which are their year-round staples. I first stopped by in December during a casual open house they had when putting on the finishing touches but before they had beer to sell. Pretty cool space they’re in — tall ceilings, exposed brick, industrial feel, beautiful single-pane windows, and absolutely freezing in the wintertime. They had a stockpile of blankets ready for folks when they began their extended soft opening. Finally, during their grand opening party (and a great party it was, by the way), the sun was out, streaming in through the windows, and it was awesome.

At the Machine House Brewery bar — Seattle, WA

Rob’s Picks
• Oatmeal Stout – 6% – Sweet molasses aroma. Full-bodied dark chocolate bitterness and molasses sweetness, but not particularly thick on the tongue. Touch of alcohol, too. Quite smooth, slowly mellows to a good lingering finish. Usual minimal carbonation, but there’s something special about a well-made English-style cask beer.
• English IPA – 7% – Limited release. Citrus and caramel aroma. Really smooth and somewhat creamy. Nice citrus and grapefruit hoppiness with a strong malt flavor mix — bit of caramel comes through. Some lingering bitterness. Hope this isn’t as limited as advertised…
• Mild – 3.6% – Dark in color but light on the tongue. Good bitter dark chocolate flavor and some lingering coffee notes. Very subtle nuttiness. Pretty refreshing and drinkable.
• Gold – 4.4% – Nice amber/gold color. Little bit of caramel sweetness, a bit bready, and good lingering bitterness. A little more sweet than the brewer originally planned, so it may have changed, but I thought it was quite nicely balanced. As it warms up, some honey comes out in the aroma and flavor.
• Bitter – 4% – Darker amber color. Maltier and not quite as bitter as the Gold, although it does build up. Slightly more prominent caramel/honey sweetness. Hint of apple, as well.
• U Name It Ale – 5.5% – Sort of a darker, strong ESB. Solid caramel flavor with a bit of chocolate/coffee. Touch of bitterness on finish. Very drinkable.
• Nettle Beer – 4.6% – Light brown/amber color. Grassy/nettle aroma. Light and smooth, with a pretty cool mix of vegetal, almost grassy, nettle and caramel flavors. Fairly bitter finish with a bit of lingering nettle flavor.

The Rest
• Beer Ginger – 4.4% – Ginger aroma, not surprisingly. Light on the tongue with fairly strong ginger flavor. Light biscuity and caramel maltiness. Pretty bitter, too. Interesting mix of ginger and bitter, but not my thing.

They debuted the U Name It Ale at their opening party and had a sheet for people to write down name suggestions, but when I returned about a month later to try the Nettle Beer, they still hadn’t decided what to call it and seemed to be leaning towards keeping the conversation-starting name (or non-name). I suggested doing the acronym thing and calling it UNI Ale. So if they use that, you have me to thank. You’re welcome.

Yeah, I know. The Pyramid Breweries are not exactly what one would call a microbrewery, but they’ve got Washington history, and the brewing equipment in their Seattle alehouse is back in action — they actually have smaller batch stuff on tap, in addition to all their usual beer. So when a friend and I were biking around town one day, and no brewery had been visited, this is where we ended up. A bike ride just doesn’t feel complete anymore unless there’s a brewery visit or two. We ordered two taster flights of Pyramid-only beer, hoping to get all the in-house brews, but two MacTarnahan’s tasters were included, anyway. Even though they are in the same North American Breweries “portfolio” as Pyramid, I’m not going to include them here. Suffice to say, the MacTarnahan’s were okay but not very interesting.

The great Pyramid taster tray — Seattle, WA

Rob’s Picks
• McTut Irish Stout – Really nice Irish stout. Creamy, with strong chocolate/coffee aroma and flavor. Goes right down.
• Eye of Ra – 5.8% – Rye based. Malty and sweet with a nice rye flavor. Touch of alcohol flavor, too. Pretty interesting and very drinkable.
• Hop Tep II IPA – 6.7% – Good strong citrus and floral blend with solid caramel malty base. Really smooth.
• Oktoberfest – 6.6% – Caramel sweetness and big malty base. Basically a big amber, smooth and with a touch of floral hop flavor.
• Thunderhead IPA – 6.7% – Smooth, with a good malt/citrus/floral balance and a light bitter finish. Bit of caramel, too. Not bad.
• Summer Bock – 6.7% – Light banana/clove flavor, bready, some floral hoppiness. Really light in color. Not the kind of bock I was expecting, but oh well.
• Cleo’s Cream Stout (nitro) – 5.8% – Pretty creamy but with a slight crispness, interestingly enough. Nice mellow maltiness. Smooth and goes right down.

The Rest
• Red Wheat Fig – 6.7% – Kinda malty, kinda sweet, lingering figgy flavor but not overpowering. Taster’s good enough for me, though.
• Hefeweizen – 5.2% – Taster served with muddled lemon. Basically tasted like bready lemonade. Drinkable but I would’ve liked to have decided on the lemon myself.
• Apricot Ale – 5.1% – Strong apricot aroma and lingering flavor. Bready, and a bit syrupy sweet.
• Alehouse Amber Ale – 4.9% – Malty blahness and a touch watery.

Pyramid was in the news around here recently when NAB was sold to some Costa Rican beverage conglomerate. Don’t know how that will affect things locally, but I hope the smaller batch stuff they’re making in the Seattle alehouse sticks around.

There always seems to be something new and interesting on tap at Outlander Brewery & Pub. I’ve visited several times, either as a pit stop during a casual in-town bike ride or on the way back from the climbing gym, and it’s about time I got around to writing this little review. The longer I wait, the more of their beers I’ll have tried, and the more daunting it’ll then feel to get this post done. So let’s see, Outlander is two guys, Nigel and Dragan, and is in a cool old house (brewery’s in the basement) at the western end of the Fremont strip. They started out small, and in six months or so have become somewhat less small. When Naked City expanded and upgraded, some of their previous equipment went to Northwest Peaks, which in turn sold a couple fermenters to Outlander. They also got a couple of old bourbon barrels from Redhook. Trickle down beer economics in action.

Now, instead of having two or three of their beers on tap at any given time, they have six or seven. In theory this should make me happy, but it means I’m missing out on quite a few of their beers (they like to experiment and brew new things rather than have a fixed set of year-round offerings). Oh well. On the up side, I can pass on the beers I probably won’t like (e.g. their Strawberry Wheat, or Organic Ginger and Apple) and instead focus on the ones I probably will.

Update! 9/9/2013: I’ve been back to Outlander many times since publishing this post, and it’s about time I updated it before there are too many beer notes to type in. Their one year anniversary was in August, and they threw a pretty great party. Good beer, free food, live music, really crowded. I didn’t try the Biggus Dikkus Barley Wine but probably should’ve. I’m just not usually a barley wine fan. And did I really need a mega-strong beer before biking home? Anyway, it was good to see Dragan and Nigel are making a go of it, although I think they might be outgrowing the current space. It’ll be interesting to see what they do in the next year.

Retro swank at Outlander Brewery & Pub — Seattle, WA

Rob’s Picks
• Jamaican Stout – 7.9% – Coffee/chocolate flavors with a bit of sweetness. Some dryness, and a touch of astringency.
• Lovely Jubbly English IPA – 5.7% – Smooth maltiness with somewhat sharp herbal hoppiness. Medium lingering bitterness that blends back in well.
• Belgian Strong – 8.7% – Sweet, funky, lemony aroma. Good sweet (turbinado sugar) and banana funk flavor mix. Nice little spiciness on the tongue.
• Bourbon Barrel Double IPA – 9.4% – Bourbon flavor was surprisingly complementary to the fairly floral and somewhat spicy hop character, giving it extra punch. Just enough malt base and a nice bitter finish.
• Rooibos 70 – 4.4% – Tannic/tea aroma. Dry, tannic, slightly fruity, with a bit of breadiness. Really easy drinking.
• Goats n’ Roses – 5.4% – Valentine’s Day beer made with horny goat weed and rose petals. Light, smooth, with a touch of honey sweetness. Almost the usual amber but with interesting subtle flavors going on and a dry finish. Hope they make this one every February.
• Astragalus and Shisandra Berry – 7.4% – Healing of the Nation #2. Light and somewhat tea-like. Some floral hoppiness, subtle ginger flavor, and a white wine thing going on, too.
• Hop Bomb Double IPA – 9% – Good strong citrus/piney aroma and flavors with well-balanced malty backbone. Decent lingering bitterness.
• Rauch n’ Maple – 7.2% – Made with maple syrup. Strong smoky flavor. Has that smoked gouda taste that takes a moment to wrap your brain around. Full, smooth mouthfeel. Bit of maple syrup sweetness on the finish when served, but as it warms up the maple flavor comes out more — interesting mix. Fun beer.
• Reishi Mushroom Stout – 7.8% – Healing of the Nation #1. Made without hops — bitterness comes from the lingzhi/reishi mushrooms, some sort of traditional Chinese/Japanese medicinal fungus. Alcohol and chocolate aroma. Good mix of flavors: chocolate, a bit of alcohol, and an earthy mushroom that really rounded out the stout. Lingering bitter, earthy, woody mushroom flavor, and a little tingling in the throat — pretty cool. Not so much carbonation, but very drinkable.
• Rye Pale Ale – 5.2% – Sweet aroma. Really smooth, with nice dry rye backbone, good caramel maltiness, and a touch of floral bitterness on the finish.
• Peanut Butter Stout – 6.1% – Thick and crisp stout. Strong roasty malt and dark chocolate flavors, with a touch of alcohol. Peanut butter pretty subtle at first — needs to warm up a little to bring it out, and then the peanut butter and chocolate mix quite nicely. Fairly complex but very drinkable.
• Tesla Wizard – 10.5% – Bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout. Good strong bourbon aroma and flavor, but can still taste the stout. Some coffee/chocolate flavors, as well as alcohol and sweet caramel edges. Carbonation pretty minimal but has enough flavor to compensate. Very smooth for 10.5%
• Are U Nut? Brown Ale – Sweet alcohol aroma. Big smooth malty/nutty flavor, with caramel, too.
• Presidential Ale – 6% – Honey ale from Obama recipe. Nice sweet honey flavor balanced by good maltiness and subtle bitterness. Some of the heavy, sharp barley wine flavor — pretty cool mix. Really drinkable.
• Foreign IPA – 6.8% – Really nice, almost whiskey-like aroma. Light and crisp. Good mix of hoppy flavors, with a sweet edge and subtle malty base. Closest thing they have to a year-round beer.
• Vanilla Jasmine Porter – 7% – Subtle vanilla aroma, sweet. Vanilla and jasmine flavors are pretty subtle at first, too, but the vanilla becomes more prominent as it warms up. Caramel sweetness. Quite smooth. They also offered this with a scoop of ice cream, but I passed on that.

The Rest
• Rye and Sorghum – 7% – Sweet fruity aroma. Interesting flavor mix of banana and rye. Herbal hoppiness. Maybe a little too much going on. Found out the grain bill was 80% rye, 15% barley, 5% sorghum.
• Yerba, Ginseng, Ashwaganda – 8.2% – Healing of the Nation #3. Interesting. Woody, cardboard aroma and flavor, with some other subtle spiciness. Balancing caramel maltiness. Smooth.
• Lord Byron’s Darkness – 8.2% – Belgian Dark Ale. Sharp, dark malty aroma. Sweet malty start to dry fruitiness, with a wine-like finish. Big, crazy beer. More of the fruit, including some raisin flavor, comes out as it warms up.
• Del Boy English Mild – 4.9% – Cidery aroma. Sweet cidery flavor, bitter. Bready finish. Touch of honey, too.

If you sit at the bar, with the various regulars and Dragan working the taps, there’s a good chance you’ll get to help name one of their upcoming beers. Have a pint or two and let the creative juices flow.

Lantern Brewing is one of those tiny, one-person, nano-breweries that I thought I’d never get a chance to visit.  So when I saw Lantern announce an improptu open house as part of the Phinney/Greenwood Summer Streets outdoor block party program, I quickly searched for their street address, finished up the sampler flight I was enjoying at Reuben’s Brews, and was soon back on my bike, pedaling away and looking for the least steep route up to Phinney Ridge.  There was an considerable amount of family-friendly fun to be had in the several blocks of closed off street, but I headed directly to the brewery — gotta keep my priorities straight.

The beer lab at Lantern Brewing — Seattle, WA

Rob’s Picks
• Pale Ale – 5.5% – Crisp, dry, and light, but still malty and bitter. Interesting. I’m used to heavier pale ales.
• Witbier – 5% – Light and refreshing. A little apple-y. Fairly complex mouthfeel — bit of spiciness on the tongue. Really drinkable. Very clear, but Chris wants it to be cloudier.
• Abbey-Style Tripel – ~8% – Subtle banana/clove aroma. Subtle caramel and banana/clove flavors, with nice alcohol notes. Not the tripel I’m used to, but light and pure.
• Abbey-Style Dubbel – ~6.7% – Again, pretty light, but that helps balance the malty sweetness. Pretty crisp. Not the usual heavy dubbel.
• Stout – 5.5% – Alcohol aroma. Sweet alcohol/coffee/brown flavors. Pretty light and dry for a stout, but heavy flavor-wise. Pretty cool beer!

Lantern’s producing an impressively wide range of mostly Belgian-influenced beers on a very small system.  Hopefully Chris will be able to expand his capacity and increase access to his fine brews to more than the Phinney neighborhood stores, restaurants, and farmers’ market.  Then again, having such a neighborhood-centric brewery is pretty cool (although I’d prefer it if Lantern were in my neighborhood, instead…).

It had been a long time since I last visited the Pike Pub and Brewery. I’m not even going to try and remember when that was. I don’t think I liked the food all that much, and over time that kind of spread to my view of their beer. Or something like that. Anyway, I walked down to the Market on a surprisingly non-rainy afternoon, and decided to pop in and finally do an “official” visit. The beers turned out to be pretty solid, but after sipping from all six, taking notes, and nibbling on a tasty hummus plate (so maybe I was wrong about the food…), I went back through the samplers, and two of them, after warming up, didn’t taste so good anymore. I’ve been trying to figure out what to do about them: keep them on the Pick list but with a warning that they’re better cold, or drop them down to The Rest because they don’t hold up if you drink them slowly? It was too hard of a decision, as it turned out, so I just put them on both lists. Oh well.

Update: 14 April 2014 – I’ve had several more visits to Pike in the two years (!) since my original post, as well as trying a few of their one-off brews at other establishments, but I somehow missed their recent triple IPA Hopulus Erectus that they made for the Hop Mob Triple IPA Road Show. I must be getting lazy in my old age. Anyway, I’m adding five beer entries below and crossing a brewery off my “To Update” list. Progress!

Taster tray at the Pike Pub and Brewery — Seattle, WA

Rob’s Picks
• Wolf of the Woods – 5.5% – 2013 fresh hop pale ale. Smooth floral and citrus hop flavors with solid caramel, honey, and slight bready maltiness. Nice light grassiness throughout, and a bit of bitterness on the finish.
• Morning After Pale Ale – 5% – Piney/citrus aroma. Good piney and citrus hop flavors on the start to smooth biscuity malt finish, with a touch of sugary sweetness, too. Light bitterness at the end. Quite drinkable.
• Harlot’s Harvest 2012 – 8.5% – Pike’s pumpkin beer. I was nervous at first because pumpkin beers aren’t usually my thing, but I was pleasantly surprise by this. Definite pumpkin aroma. Good dark, somewhat caramel-y,  malt start to pumpkin finish. Chewy mouthfeel. It was not a pumpkin pie spice beer, but just a pumpkin beer, and that worked for me.
• Space Needle Golden Anniversary 2012 IPA – 6.5% – Official beer of the Space Needle’s 50th Anniversary. Nice citrus aroma.  Sweet citrus blast.  Smooth to a slight bitter finish, with good underlying maltiness to tie it together.
• Olympic Honey Ale – 5.2% – Seasonal.  Sweet (honey/caramel mix), crisp, and light with banana/clove flavor.  Pretty nice balance of elements. Quite drinkable.
• Naughty Nellie – 4.7% – Golden organic artisan ale. Nice light mix of floral hoppiness and breadiness. Crisp, bubbly. Hoppier than I expected.
• Pale Ale (cold) – 5% – “Heirloom amber.” Good mix of big bready maltiness and underlying hoppiness. Sort of a cross between a pale ale and an amber.
• Kilt Lifter – 6.5% – Great sweet maltiness. Very full bodied. Just enough hops to balance sweetness but not stand out. Yum.
• XXXXX Extra Stout (cold) – 7% – Great coffee/chocolate aroma. Great rich coffee/chocolate/bit of smoky flavors that linger. Extremely drinkable.
• Monk’s Uncle – 9% – Tripel. Banana/clove and slight alcohol aroma. Banana/clove flavor but balanced nicely with some sweetness, some spiciness, touch of alcohol, slight breadiness. Pretty darn good.
• Doubble Troubble IPA – 8% – Strong floral aroma. Very crisp with strong floral and citrus hops. Light but strong.
• Post Alley Porter – seasonal – Similar coffee/chocolate/smoky flavors as XXXXX but has a dry instead of a rich mouthfeel. Yay, I used “mouthfeel!”

The Rest
• Space Needle Golden IPA – 6.5% – Pike has since made this a year-round addition to their line-up, and when I had it in January 2014 it was way more bitter than the original Anniversary batch. Too bitter for me. Oh well.
• Octopus Ink CDA – 8.2% – Definitely inky in color, with floral aroma. Sharp roasty maltiness with some floral and catty hop undertones. Slight alcohol sharpness and lightly bitter finish.
• IPA – 6.3% – lots of floral hops but nice malty base. Good hoppy bite but too floral for me.
• Pale Ale (warm) – 5% – For some reason, after this beer warmed up a bit, it just tasted bad. Weird.
• XXXXX Extra Stout (warm) – 7% – Just like the Pale Ale, when the Stout warmed up a bit, it just didn’t taste all that great.

Since my last post, I found out there are three more breweries in and around Seattle that are churning through the federal licensing process and planning to open this year. Plus, I forgot about three other existing local breweries I have yet to officially visit (or five, if I count Pyramid and Redhook). And then there are a couple I’ve been meaning to re-visit. So, plenty to keep me busy, without even having to bike very far from home.