Beer Adventure in Seattle With Marshall

Your mom and I took separate trips this weekend, her to the coast with a couple girlfriends, me to Seattle with by best man, Marshall, to soak in the beer world up there. Seattle is one of the hotbeds of the "craft beer movement," and he spent much of his life in that area before moving to California, so he intended to show me around.

It's weird traveling without your mom, but adventures were to be had!

His family his still in Washington, north of Seattle, living in the same home he spent much of his childhood. I even stayed in his old room from when he was a kid! This is the view from their driveway on an uncharacteristically sunny Washington day. As we made our way around the neighborhood he regaled me with stories and memories of his somewhat troublemaking days.

There's no such thing as hanging out with Marshall and not hearing the working of a new song.

The first big day of beer tasting centered in Bellingham, his old stomping grounds during his college days. There were some new places that weren't around when he lived here.

Bellingham seemed like a sleepy, industrial town with a hip, blue-collar vibe, if that makes sense.

One of the true beer highlights of the trip were these lagers from Chuckanut Brewing, a place which really knows how to make good beer the old fashioned way, obviously with very close attention to detail and a lot of patience to make crisp, clean, delicious lager beers.

Boundary Bay is where Marshall said he had hist first (legal) pint of craft beer, thus it's partly responsible for beginning his love affair with the stuff. That makes it the ultimate origin of my own interests as well!

The next day we headed closer to Seattle. This is under the Fremont Bridge heading into downtown Seattle.

The city looked beautiful from across the lake. Our first stop (it was the first place open) was right here.

Fremont Brewing...

Then, getting closer to downtown, we stopped at the tiny Reuben's Brews, which for its size had a surprisingly large variety. Marshall even finagled a couple free tastes of some experimental stuff "in the back." Heh.

Marshall was definitely in his element, hanging with family and friends, and it was almost non-stop reminiscing about his days here. We definitely kept it interesting!

Down the same block as Stoup Brewing...

Then in the heart of downtown we stopped at the much large Elysian Brewing.

Like all big cities, it seems, Seattle was bustling and building.

 

We stayed in town until dusk and finally made our way back to his place, ready to make it back to our families the next day. What a ride!