Epic Ales Brewery visit

So Jeff and I are excited to keep trying all of the many, many breweries in the Seattle area - at the same time as being embarrassed about how many we haven't tried!! I listed several we want to try a few months ago in this post.

Recently, we visited Epic Ales brewery in SODO with some friends from my program. We showed up on a Friday evening, and were greeted by a TINY tasting room, but it felt really intimate and friendly. The owner and brewmaster was behind the counter and immediately offered some of his crazy beers for us to try (in 8 oz. samplers, mind you!) - Wow!

We had one brewed with the Mexican spice "epazote" and it tasted spicy, earthy, and peppery - really unique, and would have been great paired with a nice Mexican meal. The last beer we tried was called the Solar Trans Amplifier. It was light and summery, and by far the most unique and complex of the 3 we tried. It's brewed with ginger and cammomile! You can imagine how interesting it tasted! Yum.

After we tasted these beers, we made the trek back up into downtown for dinner at Pike Place Brewery & Pub. One of our favorite places to eat and drink in Seattle. I had the Scotch ale (Kilt Lifter) as usual, and Jeff enjoyed his favorite "Monk's Uncle" Tripel Ale.

Seattle Brewery Roundup

So with all of our brewery filled trips to Bend, Oregon, I decided that we need to be enjoying the fact that we live in a big city that also boasts a lot of great local brewing talent. Jeff and I have barely tapped (ha, ha, ha...) the list of breweries based in Seattle, and I thought I'd share our journey through the self-made list here.

The following are some of the breweries that made the list. Criteria included NOT being one of the major mass producing breweries, so we were going for smaller craft breweries, or ones that are not very widely distributed. We need help rating these, so friends - please join us in this adventure!!

Pike Brewing Company
(visited several times, review to come)

Naked City Brewing Company
(visited once, need to make second opinion)

Pyramid Brewing Company
(this one barely made the cut)

Elliott Bay Brewing Company
(visited once, review to come)

Elysian Brewing Company

Rock Bottom Brewery

Redhook Brewery
(visited several times, review to come)

Mac and Jack's Brewery

McMenamins Brewery

(mainly because there are several Seattle-area locations, and a couple of them are not up to par with the majority of McMenamins' locations - we want to redeem as many as possible.)

Big Time Brewery

Northwest Peaks Brewing

Maritime Brewing Company (Jolly Roger Taproom)
(visited several times, review to come)

Georgetown Brewery

Big Al Brewing Company

Fremont Brewing Company

Two Beers Brewing Company

Sound Spirits

Baron Brewing/Three Skulls Ales

Schooner Exact Brewing Company

Gilligan's Brewing Company

Black Raven Brewing Company

Odin Brewing Company

Epic Ales Brewery

Rating scale will take into account quality, creativity and diversity in beer styles and taste. Also, we're big fans of brew-pubs, so bonus points will be allotted if we find new hangout spots with good atmospheres. Oh, and any good brew-pub must have fantastic fries. So that might go into our rating scale as well. ;-)