First Explorations

Madrona Eatery and Ale House

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Friday night I went down to a local beer bar in my new neighborhood, the Madrona Eatery and Ale House. It is only a few blocks walk from where I live so it will make a perfect local watering hole for me. You should know that the owners believe in being family friendly. During regular hours there are plenty of families with kids, they even provided toys. We went around 9:00 and there were no kids around, so plan accordingly.

The beer selection was pretty decent with around 20 beers on tap, mostly local selections. The food was better than average, but the service was slow. One complaint was with the hummus plate one of ordered. There was just one small sauce cup of hummus and a lot of garnish. I had a CDA and Pike's Wit. My one complaint is the Pike's had so much star anise flavor that it was more like a pale winter warmer than a refreshing summer beer.

Two things I did not like so much was even mostly empty the noise level was pretty loud. There are lots of hard surfaces and not much to absorb the sound. The other is the service seemed slow. Our beers had been poured a few minutes before the same server brought them to the table. None of these are fatal flaws, just things to be aware of.

Then on Saturday my brother and I went to the 2010 Washington Brewers Festival over in Saint Edwards State Park in Kenmore, WA.

The first thing we headed for was the W.A.B.L. tent to get the special beer, an Imperial Porter. It was not bad, but I have a pet peeve about the fact that an "imperial porter" is just a stout with a fancy name and don't like the marketing mumbo jumbo.

After that we headed to the cider and wine tent. We are both fans of cider and there should be plenty of them up here. I think there were seven cider mills, each with 2-3 selections. The one complaint is that the ciders were two tokens each. Back in Missouri, once you pay your way into a festival all of the samples are free. Here in Washington you have to present a token for each pour. You can purchase more tokens, but it is a more expensive deal than I am used to. My brother and I did taste different selections at each booth, so we did get to taste more than what we would have individually. Somehow I ended up with a token left over. I will say the festival is well run and planned. There were even several park and ride areas set up with shuttle busses to make it easier to get in and out of the park.

One thing I did really like was when I found out that Boulevard Brewing is now being distributed in the Seattle area at QFC Stores. Now I can get one of the best things from my old home in my new home.

Notes From The Road

I left Kansas City for Seattle yesterday to start my new life. The first day my brother and I drove all the way to Boulder for the first day. Our first stop was Avery Taproom. We both had tasters of Ellie's Brown, Ballsmack!!! Baltic Porter, and Seventeena highly hopped black lager. Then he had a Out of Bounds Stout and I had a 2006 Samael's Barrel Aged. As always the beer was great, only complaint about it really is that it is very loud in there so it is hard to have a conversation.

After that we went to Efrains II just down the road from Avery. We both got the Efrain spicy, which is a chef's choice plate. It was quite good, but it was SPICY!. We had to give in and ask for a side of sour cream. It is a good place to eat though, it was busy and good prices.

Today we were trying to go to Medovina Colorado Honeywine, then to New Belgium on the way to Yellowstone. Well that did not work out quite right. First Medovina does not seem to have a tasting room of any sort. Then New Belgium seems to close their tasting room on Sunday and Monday. Why a major brewery that is a well known would not have hours on a weekend is beyond me. It is not like there are state laws at play as Avery is open both of those days. Finally we got all the way to Lander, WY and decided that we did not have time to see anything in the park today and the prices would be higher there. So we stopped for the evening here. The plan now is to get up early and get through the park and as far west as we can that night.

There is one bonus. It seems that Lander has a brewpub, so that is where we are going to go for dinner tonight. I will try to post something about that once we get back to the hotel.