Due: Wanna go on a brewery tour?
Me: Uh, yeah!!
Due: Great i will get the tickets.
this is how our brewery tour girls night out started. a simple text message months ago.
being a mom of two great kids and very little time does not really allow for a day out in seattle, but for a beer tour i will find a way. i got to share this journey with two great ladies who are also beer lovers, due and schaff. obviously i didn't get the memo that i was supposed to wear black.
we started our afternoon with martinis. martinis? huh? i am not a huge mixed drink fanbut hey why not, it's all about the adventure. we went to oliver's lounge in the mayflower hotel. i got their signature martini, paradigm shift . i think it is a good idea when you aren't very knowledgeable about something, in this instance martinis, to go with what the establishment is known for. i wasn't too crazy about it, but that's okay we had an evening of beer coming up.
we tooled around the city center for a while; taking our picture with statues, watching street performers, doing a little shopping or browsing since i wasn't really shopping. schaff almost broke her ankle walking in a ridiculously high pair of heels with no heel. being the extremely supportive friends we are, due and i laughed our sides out as she stumbled out of sight down a shoe aisle. schaff also invited us to an impromptu scavenger hunt...can you help me find my black sweater that fell off somewhere inside this department store? to think that we had already had so much excitement; scavenger hunts, runway shows, and street performers and we hadn't even been on our tour yet.
brewery tour. meet here. you will picked up by van or camel. i was secretly hoping for a camel, but i don't recall ever seeing a caravan of camels in seattle. three breweries in three hours. all the beer is supplied. you get a tshirt and a mug. sweet! our group included; a father son duo, a husband and wife, a group of three beer loving dudes, us and our guide/owner dustin.
we took the first bench in the van and instantly started problems. apparently i have no clue how to operate any other seatbelt besides the one in my own vehicle. after two attempts i gave up and just accepted that i was going to be suctioned to my seat due to a locked seatbelt. this meant with every bump, start and stop my belt tightened more and more. hey at least i was safe. i wasn't the only one, due somehow lost the plug for her belt in a never ending black hole. it took dustin awhile to fish the end out and of course we ladies were giggling incessantly the whole time.
first stop...fremont brewing company. when you walk in there is a multitude of tanks (for brewing no less), random tables, lots of chairs, and this tiny bar. the walls were painted this vibrant blue, i loved it so happy and cheery. at the fremont brewing company we got to try three beers. i picked the brown, their signature beer an ipa, and the stout. i love a dark beer and the brown was my favorite, but it wasn't fremont's own brew it was a guest tap.
next stop...hales ales. here we tried several beers. the first three were on nitro; cream ale, HSB, and the porter. of these three the HSB was my favorite although i am not a huge fan of nitro beers. then we had the el jefe, red menace, and super goose IPA. if my memory serves me correctly i liked the el jefe probably because i enjoyed saying it. our final beer here was the kolsch german ale, we sampled this on tap and on cask. i liked the tap better than the cask, but that's because i like the bubbles.
final stop...hilliards. this is a fairly new brewery that is making craft beers but bottling it in cans. this is going to sound bad, but i am pretty sure we sampled four different beers here, but i honestly only remember two. i missed the intro to this brewery because i was in the ladies room. i also spent some time mingling with the table next to us, they had pizza.
were you keeping track of how many beers we sampled? 3 + 8 + 4. yes that's correct fifteen different beers from three different breweries. when we first got into the van dustin said there is one rule, "no beer left behind". i must say it's a good thing we had some burly men to help us waif like ladies out. one of those burly men came in handy when i got stuck in the men's room. the ladies was full and i was in desperation mode, so i opened the men's room and called out anyone in here? when i got no reply i quickly went to a locking stall and emptied my bladder. the problem fellas kept coming in and i was not about to exit my stall to a room full of men using the urinals. i text the girls, they sent in burly man to clear the men's room so i could get out. funny the bonds you create with complete strangers on a brewery tour.
well another memory for the record books. if you are looking for a fun night out with the ladies or gents, are a beer conniseur and love a good van (not camel) ride this is the tour for you. cheers
1 comment:
formatting really drives me bananas!! not sure why i can't get the spacing the same!! grrr....
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