Tom B.
Yelp
I walked in here having absolutely no idea what to expect from them, and that's speaking as somebody who spends waaaay too much time reading about new breweries, special releases, and beer industry news. I don't know if they're under the radar, or there's just too much going on to keep up anymore, or whether it's because they've only just recently begun shipping kegs up north to the Seattle area, but all I knew about them was their name and address. Clearly, though, in the year they've been here, they've already built up a nice following and they know what they're doing for sure.
They're right downtown, near the capitol (I say that like I know Olympia geography...forgive me if this area isn't considered close to the capitol). Even very early on a sunny day when most of the world was probably headed outside to recreate, they were already building up a steady stream of customers through the door.
You can park on the street on one end, or in a decent-sized lot on the other. The parking lot enters on the bar, and the street side brings you into a medium-sized cluster of restaurant seating. In between the two, there's a kitchen and a brewhouse. The brewhouse looks sizable, with nice shiny new equipment, but it wasn't in operation on the Sunday we visited. The kitchen was bustling (plenty of staff all flying around at the start of the lunch hour), though.
We wandered down to the bar. There's a big high bar with tall stools, a long barback, some communal highboy tables, and then a scattering of smaller tables. They have nice coasters and glassware, and the tables even have the company logo burned into the wood at regular intervals. Lots of full-custom construction everywhere you look. These guys got some cash from somewhere before they opened this place, that's for sure. They haven't even been around a year yet and they already look as nice as 90+% of the breweries around.
Fortunately, the nice touches extend far beyond the superficial. The beers were all startlingly good, and not messing around with a garden-variety lineup, either. We had an APA, IPA, saison, table bier, pils, and kellerbier. They all had great flavors with real clarity and balance. Only the pils showed some off flavors, with the pilsner yeast throwing some esters that smelled (and tasted) like swimming pool toys. This is an easy mistake to make in brewing a pils (and it's not even a mistake, so much as it is a yeast by-product), and I'm sure they'll tidy this beer into lovely shape in short order.
We didn't try the food at all, but the burgers cooking definitely smelled great. There were tons of families and small groups of friends coming in for meals and beers. It seems like this place has already found its niche. The staff are super friendly and nice, cheerfully answering questions with information that was helpful far beyond just addressing the specific questions we were asking, telling us all about the local beer scene and interesting details about the brewery. I like everything about this place (most importantly, the beer), and will definitely be back.