Last weekend, me and my wife Amaia decided to leave town. We decided to drive to Seattle. We agreed to stay North of downtown, in the area called Fremont. I’d known Fremont already from previous visits but hadn’t been back there in about 10 years or so. When I checked on the map, Google revealed that there’s a whole bunch of - to me unknown - breweries in the aerea. The only one I’ve had beer from before was Fremont Brewery. I remembered that I’d tasted and liked their IPA but didn’t have any further details about it.
Long story short, we drove down Saturday morning, checked into our hotel located conveniently on Aurora Ave & 40th st, some time in the afternoon.
After getting accustomed to the location & familiarizing us with what’s within the area, we decided to head out on foot. Walking South for a few blocks, we followed the footpath, which took us down a few steps under a highway bridge (Aurora bridge) where a bunch of people were huddling appearing to look at something. From our perspective, as we walked down the steps, we couldn’t see much but the people all looking onto the downside of the bridge while taking pictures. As we came down lower on the stairs, it became apparent what people were looking at this:
The “Fremont Troll” was erected in at this site in 1990 in an attempt to disperse the daily drug dealings that had taken place under this bridge. The statue seems to have clutched a VW beetle from the bridge above as it clinging to it in its left hand (with a California license plate). After enjoying the statue and cracking a few jokes about it, we continued our walk n 36th down a couple of more blocks past some well used and aged American vehicles and arrived at the Fremont brewery location.
Nicely located near the water by the harbour, it features a large garden area that looks like it’d be the perfect location to spend an afternoon on a nice sunny and warm summer day! Also, In front of the brewery, they had a sign that read “Save our Planet, it’s the only one with beer”. I liked how desperate that call read and borrowed it for the title of this blog post. Only too bad that it wasn’t a sunny and warm summer day as we got there but a kind of on & off rainy and wet April spring day instead.
As we entered the brewery hall which is quite large and features two separate bars, one on each side, both of which seems to serve about 19 brews on tap. Many of them are IPAs and brews with elevated IBU content which definitely calls to my taste buds.
Each of us ordered a flight of 5 tasters of our choice and as we sat down in the well occupied tasting room and happily sipped away at our selections, we discussed taste of each brew and selected a favourite each: Amaia’s favourite was one called “Spring Elixir” which tasted like a more seasonal IPA with a taste of Elderberry while my favourite was the Lush IPA which I thought had hints of fresh hop but doing further research revealed that I misinterpreted the citrus hop flavors as fresh hop flavors.
Nonetheless, it’s a delicious beer that was enjoyed along with some free salty pretzels that are offered to snack on in parallel.
After we finished our flights, we moved on, walked West through the alleyway between 34th & 35th Ave which brought us right onto Fremont Ave and after a couple of more Minutes, we hit our next target on N 36th St & Greenwood Ave: The Outlander Brewery & Pub. Having done some research before we left the hotel earlier in the day, we’d discovered that this one was a must do! Outlander Brewery has got some really special brews on tap that we definitely wanted to try. It is the place where you may find a beer that is called
“Sauerkraut Sour” or “Holy Basil Pale” and was a definite must for a people like us that thoroughly appreciate beer of almost all kinds, even the most particular ones. Sticking out as the common favourite brew at this place however, was a well rounded and fully formed pale ale called Azacca Pale. It seemed like the little 5oz glass was hardly enough....
After we enjoyed and discussed this taste experience with some rather unique tastes, we hopped (no pun intended) on an UBER (since Seattle is a place where they allow for convenient & affordable way of travel - even when drinking beer, perfect!). We had the driver to drop us off at Lagunitas brewery which is located on 49th St & 17th Ave. What actually is on the West corner of a 4x4 block rectangle where there’s 8 craft breweries located. This is the corner where you really want to be (if you’re up to tasting a bunch of beer and just walking between breweries). Lagunitas may be know to many by their fairly popular IPA which is available almost everywhere along the West coast from San Diego until Seattle and even here in Vancouver you can get it at a few places.
Now, who would’ve guessed, Lagunitas has got a whole catalog of brews. We satdown in the fairly busy tasting room on the bar, where between the chatter of people, you could hear a guy playing music on an acoustic guitar on the stage. He tuned into some old school laid back
tunes from Otis Redding and such that were a pleasure to listen to while we’d sip on our beers. As a favourite here, we chose a porter calles Penny’s Porter (Penny also being the name of a dog that hung around at the brewery). This also was the place where we would order some beer snacks, chips & salsa to be exact. With our bellies (somewhat) satisfied, we just crossed the street (remember 8 breweries within 16 blocks) and went to NW Peaks brewery which we learned is also known as the Bergschrund. The beer menu here was really versatile too with definitely more than one beer that I knew I would like by just reading the name of it (I’m not judgemental or preoccupied, am I?).
We ordered another flight each, making sure to not order the same beer on both flights (to maximize the number of tastes while sharing). From the various tasty beers selected, we commonly decided that our favourite here is a tropical IPA called PeakBagger. Now, while there were a lot of opportunities to taste a whole bunch of more beers in close proximity, the Shrund turned out to be the last brewery for this day, our first brewery tour in Fremont came to a close. We however both decided that we’ll sure have to be back to taste more beer at other breweries as well as visit some of our favourites of this tour, again next time. Fremont, WA a place well worth visiting if you like to taste a variety of brews!
Places visited:
Fremont Brewing Company
1050 N 34th St, Seattle, WA 98103, USA
Favourite brew: Spring Elixir
Outlander Brewery and Pub
225 N 36th St, Seattle, WA 98103, USA
Favourite brew: Azacca Pale
Lagunitas Brewing Company TapRoom & Beer Sanctuary
4731, 1550 NW 49th St, Seattle, WA 98107, USA
Favourite brew: Penny’s Porter
NW Peaks Brewery
4818 17th Ave NW, Seattle, WA 98107, USA
Favourite brew: PeakBagger