Saturday, April 28, 2012

Seattle: Brouwer's Cafe


 I had a free day in Seattle, due to a flight cancellation. After an early flight from Portland and a nap at the airport hotel, I headed out to Brouwer's Cafe, one of the more highly-touted beer spots in town.


It's a large open two-story place. Maybe 20 bar stools, 10 tables, and 4 large booths. Another 10 tables visible upstairs through an oval-shaped opening in the ceiling.

Overall, I was a bit disappointed. The tap selection wasn’t as extensive as I’d been led to believe. Well, yes, they did have a ton of barleywines -- 31 in fact, which were the remnants of 60 they had for the recent Hard Liver BW Festival, most priced at $5 for 6oz. and $7 for 12oz. Who should complain, right?
I ordered glasses of two:  Lagunitas Olde GnarlyWine '07, which was superb, and Stone Old Guardian '07, which wasn't.

However, the rest of the tap list consisted of beers you might see in many bars -- eight Belgians, two from California, and one each from Colorado, New York, Missouri, Ireland, Germany, and England). The exception, and a decided highlight, was Pliny the Elder on tap and in bottles. The bottled beer selection, on the other hand, looked impressive. They also had 59 single malts and 28 other types of whiskey, as well as 13 wines.

One big negative point is that they don’t have sampler sets. Another was that the service was fairly slow. The staff (four people) seemed to be very busy and not terribly friendly, rushing around at their tasks, even though the place wasn’t all that crowded. It took a bit of time to place an order. The food menu looked much better than regular pub grub, though I didn’t order anything. I've heard that the fries, the mussels, and their other Belgian dishes are especially good

Be sure to have a look at the reproduction on the back wall ("The Bitter Draught" by Adriaen Brouwer). Then get back to your beer.


2 comments:

  1. RE: "One big negative point is that they don’t have samplers."

    You can always ask for samples of anything on tap at the bar. Getting samples if you're at a table, on the other hand, you're at the mercy of your server. For better or worse.

    RE: "Another was that he service was fairly slow. The staff (four people) seemed to be very busy and not terribly friendly, rushing around at their tasks, even though the place wasn’t all that busy. It took a bit of time to place an order."

    Or in other words, they've replicated the typical Belgian beer bar in this aspect, as well.

    //TB

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  2. Thanks for your comments.

    I did get a few tap samples. However, I was hoping to get a sampler set so I could try out more beers.

    I'll definitely go there again, next time I'm in Seattle. I'm sure the tap list will be more diverse. When I was there, it was taken up by many barleywines, and I just couldn't make it through too many 6oz. glasses of those in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.....

    BTW, did you create the "Brew Review" app? It looks quite useful.

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