You like pumpkin beer?  We do! All the pumpkin beers seem to come out too early, so we hang on to some each year and serve them up the day before Thanksgiving. This year the Roadshow kicks off Wednesday, November 26th @ 6pm.  Elysian is the king of pumpkin beers, so we throw what we have called the Elysian Pumpkin Roadshow.  The formula is pretty simple, we save 8 Elysian pumpkin beers and this year 9 other Pumpkin beers (including a cider).   What follows is a list of what we are tapping for the event:

Lost Abbey/Elysian Avant Gourde

A note about Turkey day.  We will be closed on Thursday, November 27th.  We would like our employees to enjoy Thanksgiving.  We will reopen at 11am on Friday, November 28th. While you are out shopping, you can always get some relaxation here with a pint in between trying to find that perfect gift for the loved ones…or you might be going to Fremont Brewing for their B-Bomb release which starts Friday @ 5pm as well, so stop in before you go to Fremont for a pint and some food. 

Almanac, Avery Bainbridge Island, Ballast Point, Bear Republic, Black Raven, Boneyard, Boulevard, Crux Fermentation, De Struise, Deschutes, Destihil, Elysian, Engine House #9, Fremont, Full Sail, Great Divide, Hales, Holy Mountain, Jolly Pumpkin, Goose Island,  Logsdon, Lompoc, Lost Abbey, Midnight Sun, New Belgium, Pelican, Perennial, Pike, Port, Reuben’s, Schooner Exact, Seven Seas, Sound, Surly, Stone

First off, this Saturday, October 25th we will be closed for a private party.  We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.  We will reopen on Sunday at 11am.  Thank you for your understanding.

We have few events next week.  First off next Wednesday, October 29th @ 6pm John Harris from Ecliptic Brewing will be in town.  You may or not know John Harris, but you have drank his beer before.  He worked at both Deschutes and Full Sail and is now doing his own thing at Ecliptic Brewing based in Portland.  We will have 5 unique draft beers.  John will be here to hoist a beer with, answer your questions or just admire him from afar.  We hope you join us.

Next Friday is Halloween!  Fremont Brewing, Gigantic Brewing, and New Belgium Brewing are all getting together with Emerald City Soul Club to throw one hell of a party for you.  We have some great prizes!  Including a Sounders Package for 2, a New Belgium bike and lots of shwag.  The costume contest will start at right around 10:15 or 10:30. 

Hopfest our annual celebration of all things hoppy, starts tomorrow October 8th at 11am and runs through Sunday, October 12th.  We are very proud of the amount of Fresh Hop, and other hoppy gems that we have collected in the past few weeks.   We made a few road trips and were able to amass some rare beers for the Seattle market.  It sure is hard work driving around and meeting great brewers all in the name of this festival.  Hard work I say!  We have a little different format this year, usually we fill all the taps with a beer or cider that fits in with the festival.  This year we are starting with 42 different hoppy  beers.  Throughout the 5 days of this festival we will rotate in other beers as the ones we start with blow.  This gives you many reasons to come back day after day to enjoy a new fresh hop or hoppy beer that wasn’t on the previous day. It  all so allows us to accommodate those folks that for one reason or another aren’t in to hoppy beer.  We are really excited about the line up that will be on draft tomorrow upon opening, I’ve said enough.  What follows is what you can expect to see on draft,  remember sometimes we make game time decisions and things change, this here is mostly if not exactly what you will see on draft tomorrow.

Perennial Artisan Ales out of St Louis is coming to the Seattle Market and we are hosting the launch event here on September 25 starting at 6pm.  The owner/brewmaster will be on hand.  Perennial is know for their Belgian Style Ales as well as their barrel aging.  We will be pouring their 3 flagship beers Saison de Lis, Hommel Bier and Aria (a belgian style ale with Brettanomyces Bruxellensis).  In addition to this we will be pouring The Last Word ( a tart ale with key lime, wintergreen, and wormwood), Loomiweisse (a 4% black Berliner Weisse brewed with omani limes in collaboration with Evil Twin), Hopfentea (a Berliner Weisse), and Woodside Honey Triple.  We are working on the menu but we will be using some of these beers in special menu items for the event.

Hopfest–our annual celebration of all things hoppy will start on Wednesday, October 8th and run through the weekend.  We are changing the format a bit this year in an attempt to provide as many fresh hop options as we can.  We are going to start on Wednesday with 20 fresh hop beers plus 12 or so other hoppy options, and keep a rotating cast of 20 fresh hop beers on draft throughout the festival.  We hope to see you on more than one of the days…due to the nature of these beers the list of beers is still a work in progress.  As it gets closer we will update you as to what will be available. 

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We are very excited to host an event for Reuben’s Brews 2nd Anniversary on Tuesday, August 5th at 6pm.  We will be pouring:
Crikey IPA on cask
Kenya Cream Ale–Cream Ale with Coffee
Imperial Ipa
Balsch
Irish Stout on Nitro
Please come downshow your support, hoist a pint or two for this awesome Seattle Brewery, Adam and the crew will be in attendance.

Thursday, August 7th at 6pm we will be hosting a re-release of Midnight Sun Barfly Smoked Imperial Stout, as well as pouring a few other offerings from this Anchorage Brewery.  This is a rare opportunity to taste this delicious beverage.

Here’s what Midnight Sun says about the beer:

ABV: 11.6%
IBU: 45

First brewed as part of our 2010 Pop Ten Series, BarFly was added to our Alaska’s Most Wanted line-up in 2014. Bourbon barrel-aging requires a long leisure so this beer is not on a set schedule but we hope to get a batch out about once a year.
Availability:
AK – 22-oz bottles and very limited draft (Summer 2014)
WA, OR, CA, NY – 22-oz bottles (Summer 2014)
ALASKA’S MOST WANTED
Midnight Sun crafts some of the most sought-after beer in the world. This ongoing and ever-growing line—called Alaska’s Most Wanted—includes creative successes from our themed beer series as well as amazing one-offs. The beers in this line-up will be produced and released as time and tank space permit but they will be repeated.
We hope you love our extra special brews as much as we do. A gracious thank-you to our long time “every weather” fans for years of love and support. And an open-armed welcome to the new aficianados who are just discovering our very characterful beers.

                                                                                         photo credit plus russ

You like hops?  We like hops…this year we are changing up the format of Hopfest, we moved the date a little further back in to October.  October 8th- 11th, to be exact, in an attempt to get more fresh hop beers.  We are going to plan on having a rotating cast of 20 fresh hop beers on draft as well as a few other hoppy beers throughout the entire time.  We hope you plan to join us each day, as we get a better idea of exactly what we will have on hand we will keep you posted. 

We invite you to join us tomorrow, July 9th, to drink a Chimay Red or Chimay “Première” on draft.  This is the first time that it has been available on draft in Seattle.  This is an exciting opportunity to drink a great Trappist Bier.

Seizoen Bretta (say-soon‘-brett’-ah)  GOLD at the Great American Beer Festival, 2012

Far West Vlaming (far-west-flam‘-ing)     >Voted as 20 best sour beers in 2014<

Then we are in to August!  Bring it on Summer!

The title says it all.. Barley Brown’s have you heard of them?  The are from Baker City, OR and produce some rad IPA’s, Gold Medal winning IPA’s for that matter.  We were fortunate enough to receive one of their Pallet Jack IPA kegs and will be pouring it on Tuesday, July 1st.  You will want to put this in your face for sure.  What better way to say good bye to June and hello to July? 

Barley Brown’s & Baker City Brewing Co. snag 5 medals AND Brewery of the Year at GABF 2013!

Baker City Brewing Company and brewmasters Marks Lanham and Eli Dickison were named Brewery and Brewers of the Year in the small brewery category

As you can see this is a not to be missed opportunity to drink a Gold Medal winning beer.  See you next Tuesday!

Please come and join us and taste some great beer from the state of Alaska.

Thanks to all of you for your support in making this Seattle Beer Week a roaring success.  Thank you for making Back in Black Stout Fest, Beer and Burger Battle and Sour Fest awesome this year.  How nice was it to be drinking sour beer in the sun on Thursday, May 15th? Lets do it again next year.   Here’s to more great events!

That said we have a new brewery from Vancouver, WA that is coming to the Seattle market and we are pleased to be hosting the launch of Heathen Brewing on Thursday, June 12th @6pm. Here is there story:

Heathen Brewing is a small craft brewery that was created from the soul of home brewing. The realization that we as a people want to break the corporate strong hold on the beer industry and get back to using local ingredients in small craft batch brewing has demanded the formation of Heathen Brewing. At Heathen Brewing we make small batches of “Progressive Ales for the Promiscuous Palate”. It all begins with fresh, high quality ingredients and that means sourcing those ingredients from those in our community. The freedom to create seasonal and experimental beer will allow Heathen Brewing to truly test the palate of our community. The Heathen way will move quickly towards the new hops and malts that are being introduced as science, technology and the American spirit create new versions of classic recipes. This forward thinking will create new and unique recipes that will tantalize the tongues of the Heathen Faithful. Through the love of travel and the appreciation of different cultures many beer recipes can now be formed or re-born 10 barrels at a time.

We will be offering 4 beers from their portfolio.  We are still finalizing what those offerings will be.

We are very excited about this event.  We will not be open at our regular 11am,  we are opening at 2pm and kicking the battle off then, this is a change from past years.  Please take note. We apologize if this was not clear.  We keep trying out different approaches, this year we thought we would open later, do just burgers all day, and have a great time.  This year Drew from Big Time defends his title against, Tony from Boneyard, Jamie from Ninkasi, Matt and Warren from Schooner Exact, and Jesse and the gang from Almanac.  Your palette will not be disappointed by anything that is offered.  The idea behind this event is pretty straight forward, we invite 5 breweries (including the winner from the previous year) to design a burger based around a 1/3 pound beef patty, and pair it with a beer, while providing other beer options.  The winner is determined by the most combine sales of both the burger and the beers. 

The weather is looking to be amazing for Sour Fest, on Thursday, May 15th.  We are currently taking internal bets as to how many folks will be in line when we open, and how early the earliest person will line up.  You got any ideas?  We have compiled what we feel is a great list.  We hope you choose to join us. 

We here at Brouwer’s Cafe are very excited about the 6th Annual Seattle Beer Week.  There are so many events city wide.  We hope you plan on attending the Kick off party at Elysian on Capital Hill today.  We also suggest that you join us for our events.  The first one, Back in Black Stout Fest, starts tomorrow, Friday, May 9th at 11am when we open the doors.  We have amassed 45 plus dark, delicious beers for your imbibing pleasure.  There are no tickets to this event, like all of our festivals most of the beer will be poured in 12 oz snifters.  Here is the list:

Tomorrow, Tuesday, May 6th we will be closed for lunch and open for happy hour at 3pm.  We have some last minute maintenance projects to get out of the way before Seattle Beer Week.  Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Attention, Attention…. We are going to do something that we don’t usually do….

Have you checked the Seattle Beer Week Schedule yet?  Are you planning what events you plan on attending?  Are you figuring out a plan for survival with all the great unique beers to try?  We invite you to attend the 3 major events that we have planned for Beer Week, they are:

Back in Black Stout Fest–Friday, May 9th All Day—this is exactly what it sounds like, we will replace just about ever tap with the dark, delicious elixir called Stout, from low abv to high, from smoky to barrel aged, your palette will not be disappointed.

Beer and Burger Battle- Tuesday, May 13th @2pm– The idea is pretty simple, we invite 5 breweries to create/dream up a burger recipe based on a 1/3 lbs beef patty, all toppings etc are open.  We have had Voodoo donuts used as buns..I think you get the idea.  They are also instructed to bring 4 different beers, with one of those pairing with their burger.  This year Local Hero Big Time defends their title against challengers Boneyard, Schooner Exact, Ninkasi, and Almanac.  There will be brewery representatives on hand.

Sour Fest-Thursday, May 15th All Day-  Featuring beers from Cascade, Almanac and Logsdon. We will be replacing all of our draft lines with a delicious sour beer.  We have more beers than we have draftlines, so there will be tappings throughout the day.  This is a not to be missed event.

We are really excited about tomorrow night.  Awhile back we sent a Dry Fly Wheat Whiskey Barrel over to the fine folks at Black Raven to age some beer in, and promptly forgot about it.  Fast forward to a month or so ago and I remembered that they had it.  Long story short, they blended said beer with some other barrels they were aging beer in and King Dandy, the sour beer you get to taste tomorrow night @6pm. Here is what their barrel master Justin had to say about the beer: