Author: Nat Pellman

U-G-L-Y your sweater ain’t got no alibi, it’s ugly. Well, at least you hope so. It’s the most magical time of year – where you dust off the vintage, grandma-knit hand-me-down or scour the internet for the perfect top that will make people shake their heads in disgust. It’s Ugly Sweater time! Now in its 8^th year!

As is tradition, the lovely people of Firestone Walker are helping us put on one of our favorite events of the year. We’ll have fun holiday games, some crafting, an “Ugliest Sweater” contest, and a whole bunch of goodies from the cellar on draft. There might even be a few presents to give out to the people donning their finest yule-time apparel. We’re usually one of the first ugly sweater events of the year, so you can come out and use the night to beta-test that new purchase while sipping on some not-so-ugly brews.

We’ll kick off the evening around 6 pm, with the sweater contest happening around 9 pm. Please join us once again for this really fun evening of ugly!

Christmas time is here again

Adam needs a helping hand

We cannot find his brewing sheet

To brew his laying for the night

So all the waiting beer on lees

Gonna hear Big Tony sing

 

There’s no lambics, not this Christmas

There’s no lambics

Floodland and Brouwers, drinking sours

They don’t give a damn

 

December 13^th is here again

Aaron needs a helping hand

It’s getting very, very late

He put six beers in Golden Gates

And Mike Lane is still in bed

I wonder which burrito he’s gonna eat

 

There’s no lambics, not this Christmas

There’s no lambics

Floodland and Brouwers, all done sours

We don’t give a damn

 

There’s no lambics, not this Christmas

There’s no lambics

Floodland and Brouwers, found more sours

We don’t give a damn

We’re dreaming of a tart, Sabbath

 

 

December 13th at 6 p.m.:

 

Floodland + Brouwer’s + King Diamond

 

Be there, or we’ll call Abigail.

 

 

Out of the night the covers me,

Charred as the barrel from head to head,

I thank whatever brewers may be,

For my barrel-aged spread.

 

It matters not how high the abv,

How charged with punishment the hangover,

I am the master of my belly,

I am the captain of my blur.

 

What time is it again? You guessed it – Big Wood time; our time to celebrate all beers (and ciders) barrel-aged. Not barrel-aged? Not interested. That’s right, 50+ taps of beers that have been aged in barrels. Oh, you threw some beechwood staves into your tanks? Get out here with that nonsense. We are talking real time, in real barrels. This is one of the events we put on that certainly isn’t to be missed.

 

On December 6^th – 9^th, we will once again dive deep into the bowels of the cellar and pull all sorts of vintage goods for your palate from sour to sweet and everything in between. Join us that weekend for one of the biggest barrel-aged beer festivals in the city. Big Wood is good.

A Night with Great Notion

One of our favorite Portland breweries is once again making the long trek northward to deliver beer to the cold, wet, and SAD masses of Seattle. Great Notion will be bringing us a few goodies on draft to tide you over with liquid sunshine until the land bridge that was I-5 thaws out and you can make the trip down for yourselves.

Look for 6- 8 unique draft beers

 

It’s that time of the year, the time when the days get short and the sun becomes a hot commodity. It is time for the wearyites of Seattle to take to the insides of bars and coffeehouses in search of warmth and polite human interaction. Heat, beer, coffee, commiserating… there seems to be one thing missing, though – chocolate. Chocolate, you say? We do say.

New Belgium Brewing has paired with our neighbors over at Theo’s to bring you four beer and chocolate pairings that are guaranteed to bring a smile to your face and help you forget about the drab days ahead.

We’ll be lining up a flight of four beers and four chocolates for your enjoyment. 6 oz beer pours paired with a chocolate for $15.00

They will be:

Imperial Frambozen paired with Theo Raspberry 70% Dark Chocolate

Cocoa Stout paired with Theo Hazelnut Crunch 45% Milk Chocolate

1554 paired with Black Rice Quinoa Crunch 85% Dark Chocolate

New Belgium Fat Tire White paired with Theo Orange 70% Dark Chocolate

AleSmith Grand Prix

On your marks!

Get set!

And… take it easy as you sip through some of the neat variants of AleSmith’s signature brew, Speedway Stout. We’ll be featuring 4 variants and offering them as a flight or “lap” as AleSmith calls them. We’ll have Mokasida, Thai, and Hawaiian Speedway, as well as barrel-aged Speedway to help you feel faster-than-light while keeping you firmly planted in your seat.

Join us on Thursday, November 1^st at 6 p.m. for this fun night. Whether you are a tortoise or a hare, everyone wins this race!

 

We will be hosting a fundraiser for Techbridge, a non profit that aims to get more woman involved in the Tech Industry.  We will have the entire downstairs reserved for the event, there will be regular service upstairs.

Here’s a little about Techbridge:

Techbridge Girls excites, educates, and equips girls from low-income communities by delivering high quality Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) programming that empowers a girl to achieve economic mobility and better life chances. They envision a world where all girls lead, contribute, and thrive in STEM.

For more info follow this link to the event page.

Fremont Fresh Hop Showcase

By this time, if you’ve been around for a fresh hop season, you’ve become familiar with Cowiche Canyon. It is one of the best hop producing regions in the greatest hop producing region in the world.  We will be putting all of this seasons Fresh Hop Beers from Fremont as well as a couple other goodies.

Draftlist will be:

Field to Ferment Centennial
Field to Ferment Simcoe
Field to Ferment Citra
Head Full of Fresh HOP
Cowiche Canyon Fresh Hop Citra/Simoce

 

Bale Breaker and Friends

If anyone knows about the hop harvest, it’s the people in the middle of it. That’s why we’ve invited Bale Breaker to come up and peddle their wares to the thirsty masses. They’ll be showing off a few neat collabs they’ve done as well as one or two of their own fresh-hop brews. The list so far is:

Bale Breaker – Piled High Imperial IPA
Bale Breaker/Crux- Way Too Fresh IIPA
Bale Breaker/Cloudburst- Citra Slicker IPA
Bale Breaker/Modern Times- Palm Springs Pilsner (not fresh-hop, but delicious)

We might even have a beer or two from the participating breweries as well. Come out on Wednesday, October 3^rd to try these great beers and put a fresh hop in your face.

 

 

What if some beer you never met; some beer you never saw; some beer you never knew; was the only beer for you?

We think we might have a match(less) for you. The crew at Bottleworks and Brouwer’s will be heading down to Tumwater to brew a nice, juicy IPA that’s as easy to enjoy on your houseboat on Lake Union as it is in your garage in the south sound.

We’ll be having a special can release of our and Matchless’ collabro-ation IPA – Sleeveless in Seattle at Bottleworks on August 30^th. We’ll be hosting Matchless at Brouwer’s starting at 6pm, where you’ll be able to try SiS on draft along with some other, fine Matchless brews.

As per our recommendation, Sleeveless in Seattle tastes best cold, in the Summer, while wearing a shirt without sleeves; or, warm, in the winter, while wearing a shirt without sleeves; or, lightly chilled, in the Fall, while wearing a shirt without sleeves… all right, drink it how you want except you just don’t need those constricting shirt sleeves while enjoying this beer… they just get in the way of those partially tanned guns, anyhow.

Tentative Draftlist:

Sleeveless in Seattle

Regal Lager Version 2

Camo Hat Pale Ale

Shared Table Saison

Blueberry Sour

Cherry Sour

Sunshine Day Dreaming DIPA

We have great news for you – the hop growing season has been outstanding this year and fresh hop beers will soon take over taps across the land.

But… why wait, when you can have fresh hops now! On Monday, August 6^th we’ll be tapping the first fresh hop beer of the year with Two Beers’ Brewing Centennial and Cluster Fresh Hop IPA!

Now here is where we could use your help. Picking hops off the vine is a super fun and rewarding process, but one that takes a few hands. It takes a village to brew a fresh hop. Two Beers will be bringing hop vines all the way from Yakima and we’ll be picking hops off the vine on the patio from 5-8 pm while drinking that sweet, sweet fresh nectar.

Since it is such a good time, we are inviting you all out to help “harvest” and touch, feel, and smell those buds of love. We won’t even charge you an apple. We do recommend long sleeves and hand pruners, but rubber gloves will be provided.

More info here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/2170438859650501/

From his humble beginnings as a garage homebrewer, thanks to a thoughtful gift from his son, Reuben, Adam Robbins has always looked to create the best brews he could. After using family, friends, and strangers to test his recipes – and winning a silver medal at a national homebrew competition – he embarked on his own full-time beer journey alongside his wife, Grace, and brother-in-law, Mike.

That was 6 years ago, and by all accounts, he has been incredibly successful. He has gone from a small 7-barrel brewhouse tucked away in Ballard, to two brewhouses, 15-barrel and 30-barrel, capable of upwards of 13,000 gallons of beer a year. That’s enough beer to quench the immense thirst of Washington drinkers.

The team at Reuben’s has been heavily involved in the community since the inception of the brewery. It has been a point of pride for them to be good stewards and friends of their fellow neighborhood residents. You can frequently find Reuben’s beers at almost every beer festival or other community gathering where fine beer is poured.

We’ve always been huge fans of the work they do in Ballard and in 2015, they created Gobsmacked, an amazing IIPA, for our tenth anniversary. More recently, we have been partnering with them to produce Triumvirate, our double-gold medal winning house beer, for over two years now. We couldn’t be happier to have the relationship we do with the team at Reuben’s and we are excited to be able to celebrate their 6^th Anniversary with them. Come out on August 3^rd to congratulate Adam and the rest of the family on 6 years of making bloody good beer.

Draftlist will be close to this:

Triumvirate
Stone the Crows
Dark Strong & Proper with Cherries & Vanilla
Crush Summer hopping
Razzmatazz Raspberry Berliner
Tropical Funk Brett IPA
Pilsner
Anniversary International Juice
Porter
Joe Crikey
Wee Heavy

While we aren’t known as a sports bar, we do fancy ourselves to be fans of Belgium. Beers, chocolates, cuisine, you name it, we like it. That will extend to the World Cup this year. We’ll be showing the Belgium/England match on June 28^th at 11 am. As a bonus, we’ll be playing it with the sound on, a rarity for us.

We are inviting our Belgian friends and national team supporters to put on their finest kits and joining us to watch Les Diables Rouges take on the Three Lions. I mean, c’mon, we don’t have the U.S. to cheer on, so you might as well. Belgium is rad. It’s the seat of the EU, they ride bicycles, they love beer and chocolates, and they are one of the most traffic-congested places in Europe. Brussels and Seattle are like twins.

New Belgium 20 years of sour

Two decades ago while the staples of Fat Tire, 1554, and Sunshine were making a name for and keeping the lights on at New Belgium, a man named Peter Bouckaert, formally of Rodenbach, was brought on to take over the brewing reigns from founder Jeff Lebesch. Peter, along with Eric and Lauren Salazar, then began the process of creating a robust sour beer program.

A couple brews later, lovingly referred to as Felix and Oscar, and the brewery had the bases for their long lineage of superb sour ales. From the Lips of Faith series in the beginning to the Tart Lychees, Sour Saisons, and Single-Foeder offerings of today, New Belgium has continually created wonderful, cellarable labors of Love.

We at Brouwer’s have been friends and fans of the good people of New Belgium and are delighted to be able to host a 20^th Anniversary Celebration to commemorate two decades of pushing the palates and educating the American public on these old-world styles of ale. Please join us on Wednesday, June 27^th and reacquaint yourself with the classics of the Lips of Faith and new offerings like the Passionfruit Foeder Saison. As a bonus treat, we’ve dove into the cellar and had pulled out several of the original cork and cage La Folie’s from 2009.

 

Shadow Hike-a-thon

If there are two things we at Brouwer’s Café like, other than beer and pommes frites, it’s our dogs and hiking. This year, we’ve been asked to partner with the Shadow Hike-a-thon Fundraiser benefiting the Old Dog Haven in Oak Harbor.

The Shadow Hike-a-thon was founded by a Whatcom County couple as a way to honor their late pooch, Shadow, seven years ago. Until this year, all the hiking had been completed in Bellingham, but this year they are including a hike down in Seattle to incorporate their friends in King County. In the seven years they have been doing this, they have raised a total of $40,000.

This year, as an extra treat, they are partnering with their (and our!) friends at The North Fork on Mount Baker Highway to brew Winnie’s Rescue Red Ale with some proceeds benefiting the Old Dog Haven. The special brew will be available on June 22^nd before the hike, at Hop and Hound in Bothell, and after, here at Brouwer’s. The beer will be available at 5:30 and all proceeds will go to the charity. We are happy to be able to help out a wonderful organization with a very noble goal.

From their page: “Old Dog Haven was founded in 2004 to provide safe, loving homes for abandoned senior dogs who have almost zero chance of adoption in a shelter. We do not have a kennel; all our dogs live in homes as members of temporary or permanent (Final Refuge) families. We take dogs 8 years and older from shelters and occasionally from owners in Western Washington. We adopt out dogs that have a reasonable life expectancy; however, more than 90% of our dogs are Final Refuge (permanent foster) or hospice residents – too frail, old or sick for adoption. ODH’s mission is to give these dogs a loving family and good quality of life in their final months, years, weeks or even days. We also assist owners who need to re-home their senior dog and help shelters and other rescues place their seniors.”

For more information about ODH, please visit: www.olddoghaven.org

Sometimes the stars align and two forces are brought together to create special things. GoodLife Brewing is super stoked to announce a very cool project with national recording artist G. Love. We are collaborating with him to release a limited edition seasonal release of G. Love’s Special Sauce IPA.

The GoodLife Brewing team and G. Love will be partying at Brouwer’s Cafe for one night and one night only so come hang out with us and meet G! He’ll be playing an acoustic set for an hour and you definitely won’t want to miss it!