Black Raven Brewing, Redmond, WA

On my recent trip to the Seattle area, I stayed in Redmond with my old college buddy Jesus, who's on a job there for a few months.  The suburbs don't hold the same charm as other Seattle neighborhoods, but that doesn't mean good beer isn't to be had.  Northwest brewing pioneer Mac and Jacks is located in Redmond, as is the up-and-coming Black Raven Brewing.  The weather was nice, so on Saturday evening we walked about a mile from Jesus' apartment to the Black Raven tasting room to check out the beers there.

From the outside, you wonder why you came to a nondescript office park in search of a beer.  Inside, however, the atmosphere is very relaxing:  soft, warm lighting, lots of wood and stone, a couple of bars and lots of tables spread through a few small rooms.  There's no kitchen: bring your own food or have pizza delivered from a joint nearby.  They also served free bowls of peanuts in the shell -- I like the way Washington tasting rooms give you some free bar snacks. The place was full right up until closing time, but not overcrowded. They were playing good reggae at a conversational level on the stereo all night -- more Burning Spear and Culture than Bob Marley -- which suited me very fine, though one of the bartenders conceded he gets a little tired of it.

While we were enjoying our Black Raven brews, one of the brewers -- the dapper Keil Anderson (in the photo) -- was showing a couple of his friends the brewhouse and barrel room.  I insinuated myself into the field trip, and was impressed with the various barrel experiments they have going on.  They even had a fermenter stewing away with some brettanomyces.  Since I was still in the throes of fresh hop mania, I was disappointed to hear that Black Raven wasn't able to do a fresh hop beer this year: the grower they planned to get the green hops from brought his crops in early, but neglected to tell the brewery about it in time to get them into the planned brew.

Over a couple hours Jesus and I ran through everything Black Raven had on tap that night -- from memory (since I foolishly forgot to photograph the chalkboard or write anything down) an IPA, a pale, a brown porter, a stout, a barleywine, a scotch ale, and a black lager.  Our favorite of the evening was the scotch ale:  hearty without being too sweet, and just a little smoky.  The barleywine was an excellent nightcap, the porter was very quaffable, and everything else we tried was well done, though the nitro stout I started out with was a little forgettable.  The tasting room is open most days 3 PM to 10 PM, opening at noon on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Keep an eye on Black Raven:  they've only been brewing for a couple years, but they're a big hit in Seattle right now and they're looking to grow.  Further reading:  this month's Northwest Brewing News has an article on Black Raven.

Fremont Brewing Company, Seattle

A couple of weekends ago when I went up to Seattle for the Fresh Hop Throwdown, I spent Friday evening running around with Chris, a Seattle beer friend once known as The Beer Retard, who has moved up in the world by getting out of the beer blogging hobby.  My Seattle beer credentials are so weak that it was easy to think of crucial places that I hadn't been to before.  We were on our way from Elysian Fields near the train station to Bottleworks in Wallingford when Chris suggested that we stop at the Fremont Brewing Company tasting room, despite the possibility of having to dodge the unattended ankle-biters of our fellow imbibers.

There only ended up being a couple of toddlers in attendance, sliding around in a small spill of beer next to a neighboring table as their oblivious parents rolled their toys into it again and again.  The warehouse space -- I called it a tasting room, but Fremont calls it the Urban Beer Garden -- consists of a long communal table with kegs for seats, a padded bench lining one wall, and a few small tables with custom upholstered booths backed up against the brewery's fermenters.  The tables were nearly full, but we found room to sit on the bench.  Since we were on a fresh hop mission, it was good to see Fremont's Cowiche Canyon Fresh Hop Pale on tap, though if had arrived half an hour later we would have missed it.  It was decent, growing so much on me as it warmed that later at Bottleworks I bought a bomber of it to take back to Portland.

Besides the fresh hop, there Fremont was pouring a standard lineup of the usual beer styles, plus a gravity-poured cask of the week -- when we were there it was a stout flavored with chocolate mint.  We were on our way elsewhere, but I haven't had good luck with mint beers recently so I didn't even consider a glass of that. 

The Urban Beer Garden hours are pretty sparse: it's open Thursday and Friday from 4 PM to 8 PM, Saturday 12 to 8, and Sunday from noon to 6.  You can bring your own food, or cleanse your palate with free pretzels.  Kids and dogs are allowed.  Relaxed, friendly neighborhood vibe -- I will definitely visit again if I'm in the area during opening hours.

Fremont also opens at 10 AM every weekday for retail sales:  bombers are $3.75 and up, or swap out your empty growler for a full one for $8.  That's a refreshing growler price, $9 six-pack equivalent.  I would take home more growlers at that price: with most Portland growlers starting at $10, it's been at least a year since I got one filled.

Your Thoughts on Alcohol Counseling

This is a weird question that I hope doesn't sound like a cry for help.  Do you have any good recommendations for alcohol counseling?

It's this friend of mine... No, actually, it's this blog itself.  The page on It's Pub Night that gets Googled the most -- I'm going to describe it obliquely so that the hits keep going there and not to this post -- is this one that describes a bad interaction between a common store-bought headache remedy and the intoxicant found in beer (click the link if that's too confusing).

What does that have to do with alcohol counseling?  Because that post comes up in a lot of (possibly remorseful) web searches, I got an offer earlier this year to insert paid text links into it, pointing to a website that purports to find you help with substance abuse.  It was easy to turn down the offer, because the website carefully obscured who was behind it, putting the ball in your court to either telephone them or send them your personal info.  On one level or another it was obviously a scam and not a professional service.  At best it would mechanically hand you off to someone in that line of work in exchange for a finder's fee; at worst it is a phishing operation.  No way to tell.

But it put the idea in my mind that I could put links to reputable rehabs or counseling services on my oft-searched page.  It would be purely a public service, not a paid advertisement, but only if I can find links that would truly be helpful to someone who wanted help with a drinking problem.

Got any recommendations?  Or is my whole idea ridiculous?