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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:

We are very proud and honored to become a Scotch Malt Whisky Society “Society Spot”.  The launch is tomorrow night, Thursday, April 10th at 6pm.  “What is a Society Spot? ” and “What does this mean for me?”  Here is what it means to you.  The Society purchases single barrels and produces their own line of Single Malt Scotches. In the past these limited edition bottles were only available to members of the society.  We are becoming a Society Spot which means, you, a non member, or you a member, can come in and purchase these previously member only scotches for in house consumption.  We purchased 15 different Scotches and have tasted some of the offerings, they are fantastic, ranging in age from 4 to 33 years old.  There will be representatives from the Society on hand to answer questions as well as pour a complimentary taste. 

We are very excited to announce that we will be hosting a Black Raven Brewing Brewer’s Night on Wednesday, April 23rd @ 6pm.  We are still finalizing the draftlist for the event,  but we are featuring a special beer.  Let me digress…a while back we sent them a used Dry Fly Wheat Whiskey barrel and they put some beer in that barrel.  They used beer from that barrel and a couple others to blend a beer that we are told has a sour character with notes of mezcal, even though no mezcal barrels were used.  It will be pouring at our event.  We hope you plan on joining us for this event.

Seattle Beer Week is approaching fast.  We are hard at work putting together the draftlists for our 3 events:

Thursday, May 15^th Sour Fest—we replace just about every tap with a delicious sour beer.

Hardliver Barleywine Festival is this weekend, March 15th and 16th, we apologize if for some reason it seemed otherwise.   Our livers are sufficiently prepared, we hope yours are too. We have just about all the beers in the cooler and are getting them organized and ready to serve.  We will have 57 beers flowing on Saturday, March 15th when we open.  In our last post we announced most of what will be available.  We have some special beers that we have not announced yet, and you will be rewarded for arriving early.   This year we are not doing the judging early we are going to be deciding the winners by the vote of the people.  Don’t forget to vote for your favorite.  Just a reminder that we will be closing at midnight on Friday, March 14th, so that we can prepare for the event.  Thank you in advance and we look forward to seeing you on Saturday for an amazing day of drinking!

If you didn’t know now you do.  Our 9th Anniversary is approaching and we will be celebrating it on Friday, March 28th starting at 3pm.  We are planning on tapping a few previous Anniversary beers from us and Bottleworks, don’t ask us exactly what right now, we are still readying ourselves for Hardliver this weekend.  We are also pleased to be pouring a beer that we brewed with Elysian, to be exact we brewed it with Steve Luke at Elysian Fields.  Steve makes great beer and was gracious enough to invite us down to brew a low abv hoppy ale that we have named Hopped to the 9’s and are thinking of calling an All Day Everyday IPA.  In the above photo you can see us in front of the kettle steeping 50 lbs of whole cone Cascade hops, just imagine the aroma therapy that we received while taking this photo!  We hope that you plan on join us in turning 9 years old on March, 28th at 3pm. 

We are very excited to announce that on Thursday, April 10th @6pm we will become Scotch Malt Whisky Society spot.  This is a great honor.  For more information on the Society here’s a link to their website.  We will be starting with about 20 single malts from the Society collection that have in the past only been available to their members, and are now going to be available to you the general public through us.   On Thursday, April 10th there will be representatives from the Society on hand to sample you on some of our offerings as well as answer any of your questions about all things Scotch related. This is quite exciting. We hope all of you come out and join us in sampling some great Single Malt Scotch.

and after that Seattle Beer Week is upon us… we have 3 large events planned:
Back in Black Stout Fest on Friday, May 9th.
Beer and Burger Battle on Tuesday, May 13th.
Sour Fest on Thursday, May 15th.

We can’t believe that it is already that time of year again.  What happened?  Hardliver is here!  Its March 15th and 16th.  We used to joke that the way to prepare for this event is to drink an entire 22oz of barleywine each day leading up to the festival.  We have been working diligently to get the Hardliver Draftlist complete, and it is just about there.  We will put this disclaimer out to all of you, the list that follows is subject to change, most of what you see posted here will be on draft, however I’ll say it again: This list is subject to change. You all know how it all goes, sometimes things happen and beers don’t make it on time, or get lost in translation, or a warehouse.  Please don’t get upset if one beer happens not to be here but is listed, we are not intentionally misleading you.
Contrary to previous years there will not be a closed door judging this year.  We have decided to let the winner be decided by popular vote.  Without further ramblings here you go, feast your eyes on the list: 
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Soooo…we usually start events during the week at 6pm, and initially we were going to start the Hop Mob Triple Ipa event at 6pm too.  After more than a few of you expressed interest in the event starting earlier we reassessed and are now going to start the event at 3pm.  There will be no happy hour pricing on the Triple Ipa’s, there will not be flights available however in the interest of all of our livers we will be offering 6oz and 12oz pours of all 14 beers.  What follows is a list of the Breweries that are part of the event:
 -Airways
– Bainbridge
-Big Time
– Black Raven
– Elysian
– Georgetown
– Naked City
– Pike
– Populuxe
– Reuben’s
– Stoup
– Spinaker Bay
– Strong Arm
-Two Beers
We are really excited about this event we hope you join us in celebrating Washington Triple Ipas.

We are super excited about our upcoming Hop Mob Triple Ipa event on Monday, February 17th.  We are up to a total of 14 locally brewed Triple Ipas lined up and ready for the event.  We can’t thank Adam from Reuben’s enough for setting up this event. Who needs Pliny the Younger, Washington brewers are here to fill the void.  We have heard that a few of you are concerned about the 6pm start time, we are discussing the idea of starting the event at 3pm.  Details to any change will come soon. 

We are pleased to announce that we will be hosting an event with Virtue Cider on Thursday, February 20th at 6pm.  Its a launch for their Mitten, we thought it would be cool to do a Stone Fence event. A Stone Fence is a drink consisting of a mixture of cider and a spirituous liquor, we will have 3 different Stone Fence cocktails for you to try.  Greg Hall, their brewer will be in town to drink with and he will also be judging his favorite cocktail offering.  We are also doing a Winter Coat Drive, please bring your clean, gently used or new coat to donate if you are so inclined.

Saturday, March 15th and Sunday, March 16th is the 12th annual Hardliver Barleywine Festival.  For those of you that know, show up early, get in line and wait for the doors to open at 11am.  We will be filling most of our 57 taps with this delicious beverage.  We are working on having the list available for you sooner than later.  We are just putting the final touches on it.

Adam from Reuben’s brews sent us an email, asking us if we would be interested in hosting this  event. 12 local breweries are coming together to celebrate Triple Ipa’s.  We quickly responded with a resounding, yes!
 We think it all started with the Russian River Pliny the Younger craze, a few years back.  Drew from Big Time and Don from Naked City wanted to have a little fun so,  Whiny the Complainer and Cry Me a River were born, and for the first year poured along side Younger.  I actually think that Whiny the Complainer started with Bill Jenkins the former Head Brewer at Big Time.  Details, Details.  Drew has been brewing the beer for the last 3 years.  This event has obviously blossumed,  more and more folks experimenting with higher and higher gravity hoppy beers.  A few more emails were sent back and forth and we agreed upon a date.  That date is Monday, February 17th at 6pm.  Kendall, of the Washington Beer Blog,  did a write up on the whole event.  Here are the breweries that you can expect to see pouring at our event:
– Airways
– Bainbridge
– Black Raven
– Elysian
– Georgetown
– Naked City
– Pike
– Populuxe
– Reuben’s
– Stoup
– Spinaker Bay
– Strong Arm
We will also be pouring Whiny the Complainer from the Big Time.  We hope that you mark your calenders for this great Washington Beer Event.

This Thursday, January 16th at 6pm we are pleased to be hosting an evening with Breakside Brewing out of Portland.  We will be pouring 5 delicious options:
Woodlawn Pale Ale
Big Country Winter Ale
Bourbon Woody
Noble Belgian Blonde
Outlander IPA
 Scott and Ben from the Brewery will be here to answer questions, just hang out with or admire from afar.  Please join us.

We hope that you didn’t make too many New Year’s Resolutions, we have an event every Thursday for the next few weeks.

This Thursday, January 9th at 6pm we welcome Telegraph Brewing to the market.  We will be pouring 7 draft options from them.

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The following Thursday, January 16th at 6pm we are pleased to be hosting an evening with Breakside Brewing out of Portland.  We will be pouring 5 delicious options:
Woodlawn Pale Ale
Big Country Winter Ale
Bourbon Woody
Noble Belgian Blonde
Outlander IPA
 Scott and Ben from the Brewery will be here to answer questions, just hang out with or admire from afar.  Please join us.

On Thursday, January 23rd at 6pm we are pleased to be hosting an event that we have dubbed “Not your Father’s Boilermaker!” Dr. Bill Stone’s in house Certified Cicerone loves Scotch and Beer and wanted to do an event here in Seattle.  He went in to the Stone cellar and pulled out some rare beers, and paired them with some of his favorite Scotches.  What follows is a list of what will be offered, we will be pouring 6oz pours of the beers and 3/4 oz pours of the Scotches.  We will also be offering food specials.
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We hope that the Holiday’s are treating you well!  Thanks for all your support over the past year, we are looking forward to serving you in the new year.  We will be pulling a few goodies from the cellar for New Year’s eve, we are currently deciding on just which beers we will pour.  We will be opening a large bottle from Reuben’s Brews and one from Outlander (our neighbor)  to ring in the New Year with a proper beer toast.  Please come down and join us.

Just a heads up we will be closed both December 24th and 25th so our employees can enjoy the holiday.  We hope you enjoy yours.  While we are talking about being closed we will also be closed January 1st ( again for the holidays), Sunday, January 12th (for our employee holiday party) and will reopen January 13th at 3pm.

We are in the process of planning events for the New Year, we have a couple of events scheduled:
Thursday, January 9th @ 6pm Telegraph Brewing Launch Party, we will be posting more details about exactly what they are bringing soon.

We have tentatively scheduled a Breakside Brewers Event on Thursday, January 16th @ 6pm.  More details are being worked out for this event as well.

We are planning a great Scotch and Beer event with Stone Brewing hosted by Dr. Bill Sysak on Thursday, January 23rd @ 6pm.  We are picking 6 beers and pairing them with Scotch, we are also working on some food specials to go along with these pairings.  We have a tentative list that is subject to change that will follow below.  This is going to be a fun event with some rare Stone beers on draft.

-Ardbeg Uigeadail  years old paired w/ Southern Charred (ISLAY)
-Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban paired w/ Arrogant Bastard aged in Templeton Rye Barrels (HIGHLAND)
– Balvenie Double Wood 12 year old paired w/ Stone OAKED SMOKED Old Guardian BW (SPEYSIDE)
-Talisker 10 year old paired w/ Stone 11.11.11 Vertical Epic Ale (SKYE)
-Glenlivet Nadurra 16 year old paired w/ 2010 Imperial Russian Stout aged in Bourbon Barrels (SPEYSIDE)
-Highland Park 12 year old paired w/ Double Bastard Ale w/ Dark Toasted Oak (ORKNEY)
-Macallan 15 year old Fine Oak paired w/ Stone Reason be Damned Belgian Style Abbey Ale aged in Red Wine barrels (HIGHLAND)

We are proud to host the first of 5 Triple Ipa events in February, to be exact Monday, February 17th @ 6pm, we will be pouring 10 Locally brewed Triple Ipa’s.  For more information on this event Kendall of the Washington Beer Blog has put together a nice post.  
We will have beers from :

– Airways
– Bainbridge
– Black Raven
– Elysian
– Georgetown
– Naked City
– Pike
– Populuxe
– Reuben’s
– Stoup

Mark your calenders, The 12th Annual Hardliver Barleywine Fest is scheduled for Saturday, March 15th at 11am, this is not for the faint at heart.    This is last years logo, for those of you that don’t know this is one of our biggest festivals.  We replace every tap with a delicious Barleywine.  We have quite a few vintage barleywines hanging out in our cooler already, and are compiling the list as I type this.   Mark your calenders now and start planning.

The Firestone Ugly Sweater Party is this Thursday, December 12th at 6pm.  We have lots and lots of prizes and gifts for you.  At some point in the festivities we will hold a contest for great prizes.  We have some great games planned to add to your Ugly Sweater experience.  What better way to spend your Thursday night, in an ugly sweater drinking delicious malt beverages from Firestone Walker.  Well I could ramble on and on about how awesome this is going to be, why don’t you just show up and see.  We will be pouring: Union Jack, Double Jack, Wookie Jack, Pivo Pilsner, Walker’s Reserve Porter, Velvet Merlin and from our cellar we will be pouring: Abacus ’11, XV Merkin ’11, Dbl DBA ’11 and Hat Trick sour. 

 We will have a great event planned for Wednesday, December 18th with Sound Brewery.  It sounds like the guys at Sound have been working on their barrel project and would like to showcase some of their wares.  We were more than happy to be host them.  There will be Brewery Representatives on hand.  We will be pouring:

Westland Whisky Noel (Westland’s Whiskey barrel)
Ursus Spelaeus Tennessee Whiskey, (Tennessee sippin Whiskey barrel)
MM15 (Quad Pro Quo, Tennessee sippin whiskey barrel)

Monk’s Indiscretion
Mosaic American Pale Ale
Reluctant IPA

Monk’s Indiscretion, Belgian Specialty Ale – 10.0% ABV
Dry hopped, and fermented with an aromatic Belgian yeast strain,
Monk’s Indiscretion has an intense tropical hoppy aroma and flavor,
with balanced bitterness, and is scarily drinkable for such a strong beer.

Mosaic American Pale Ale – 6.4% ABV, 34 IBU
Utilizing one of the newest hops from the Hop Breeding Program, Mosaic
hops give intense fruity, floral and earthy aroma and flavor characteristics
to a crisp, classic Northwest style Pale Ale.

Reluctant IPA, American Style IPA – 6.4% ABV
Clean dry malt balances loads of flavoring hops to create a balanced, light,
highly drinkable American style IPA.

Ursus Spelaeus Belgian Imperial Stout – 10% ABV
Named for a long extinct Russian Cave Bear, Ursus Spelaeus is as deep
and dark as the caves its namesake inhabited. Spelaeus has thick, rich
maltiness with notes of chocolate, coffee, toffee, and subtle licorice in the
nose and on the tongue with just enough hops to keep it balanced. The
Belgian yeast strain adds touches of fruit, herbs, and spices.

Entendez Noel, Belgian Pale Quadrupel – 10.6% ABV, 50 IBU
Like most big Belgian holiday beers, Noel is bursting with subtly complex
flavors and fits no particular beer style. Its explosion of sensations comes
from just Belgian Pilsner malt, cane sugar, Motueka hops, Trappist yeast,
water, and fermentation. Drink warm or cold in various glassware shapes
and sizes to discover all its nuances. Entendez should age extremely well
for years to come.

Quad Pro Quo, Belgian Style Dark Strong Ale – 9.5% ABV, 30 IBU.
A rich treat in a classic abbey style, “Quad Pro Quo” is smooth and easy
to drink with a complex aroma of fruit, light chocolate and caramel.

Here is a reminder that we will be closed on both December 24th and 25th as well as January 1st for the holidays.  We hope that this does not inconvenience you.

We just posted the Bigwood draftlist under the Bigwood sidebar link.  You will notice that the Surly beers are ” subject to  arrival”, we are expecting them to be delivered sometime during the day, and they will be tapped as soon as possible after delivery.  Why might you ask are they not here yet, they got hung up because of a snow storm and the holiday slowed delivery of them down.  We apologize in advance, and appreciate your understanding in advance.

This is also a reminder that we will be closing early tonight to aid with set up for tomorrows event.  We will call last call at 11:30 and lock the doors at midnight.  We also appreciate your understanding with this.

Don’t forget the Brewtal Truth book signing event with Adem Tepedelen and Todd Haug from Surly Brewing on Saturday, December 7th at 4pm.

We hope this allows you to plan in advance.  We look forward to seeing you.

Ladies and Gentlemen… The Elysian Pumpkin Roadshow is tomorrow night, Wednesday, November 27th @6pm.  We will be pouring 16 Pumpkin Beers for your drinking pleasure.  We invite you to join us, what better way to spend the day before Thanksgiving.  Here is a list of what we will be pouring:
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Southern Tier Pumpking 9.1%

Dogfish Head Punk’n 7%

Elysian Dark o the Moon Pumpkin stout 6.5%

Elysian Great Pumpkin 8.1%

Elysian/21 A He Said- 8.2% Belgian Triple with pumpkin, terragon and galangal

Elysian/21 A He Said- 8.2% Baltic Porter with pumpkin, Vietnamese cinnamon, and caraway

Epic Pumpkin Porter 8%

Midnight Sun Treat 7.8%

South Hampton Imperial Pumpkin 5.5%

Elysian Calatrava 6% Habenero Pumpkin Ale

Elysain Great Gherkin 3.94% Cucumber Pumpkin

Elysian Plumpkin 5.2% Plum Pumkin ale

Elysian Kurbitinus 6.65% Pumpkin Dunkelwiesse

Elysian Hopsquash IPA 6% collaboration with Ninkasi

Propolis Pumpkin Dubbel 7%

Jolly Pumpkin La Parcela 6%

One of our favorite festivals, Bigwood is approaching fast.  It starts on Thursday, December 5th when the doors open at 11am and runs through the weekend.  Here is the most of the list:

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