Tom B.
Yelp
This stretch of Rainier has a parking lot on the west side that's almost a side street unto itself. It's not that it's huge; there are bigger parking lots. But after blocks of almost every business fronting on the street, this little cul de sac of a parking lot has at least half a dozen businesses turned sideways from the street--rad Vietnamese, ice cream, pinball, Kenyan, night club, other stuff, and now a brewery.
You walk in and there are high ceilings leading away from the door down a long, narrow space. It's a couple tables wide, basically, with a bar on the left and, to the right, a hallway leading straight into and through the brewhouse. It's one of those combined spaces that are becoming more and common with startup breweries.
The tables are kinda interesting; one of them shows a glass top over some cool rough-looking beams banded with steel. Industrial, but homey enough. You could call that the startup aesthetic in the brewing world. To make sure the hominess comes through, they even had a vase of fresh daffodils on the table, which is a welcoming touch that you definitely don't see at every single brewery.
Staff here are super quiet and reserved, or at least they were for the hour or so we were there. Very nice, and certainly well informed about the beer. They're right on point with checking glasses and offering rounds, pouring flights, and all that. But soft-spoken and of few words, to be sure. There's a bit of music playing through decent-sized speakers flush-mounted in the wall, well above head height. There's a big 70s amp with lit-up VU meters driving the signal. I dig the hell out of that, from the hardware to the placement. They mostly played newer rock, KEXP type stuff, but I can't say I noticed which bands were on.
The beers here are solid, reasonably priced, and available in fairly generous pours. We tried the sweet potato porter, which was just a porter with extra hints of sweetness. Honestly, the flavors could have been a little clearer in both the base beer and the sweet potato. But the doppelbock was pretty rad. Definitely not the sugar bomb that many doppelbocks (even some of the world classics) can turn out to be; this one had all the malt body but had nuttiness and toastiness from the grains, without the syrupiness or stickiness that sometimes come along with the style.
If you're on the hunt for cool, less-promoted Seattle breweries who know what they're doing, ya gotta get in here and check these guys out.
