Wedgwood Beer Locales & New Brew Reviews!

Beer luvvas,

Yesterday was a grand day in Seattle! The sun was out and it wasn't too hot, so SQHub and I wandered Wedgwood to enjoy some beer and the great NW outdoors.

First stop was lunch at the Wedgwood Ale House. We decided to compare & contrast the two ESB's on the list: Belk's ESB from Anderson Valley Brewing, and Big Time Brewing's Paxton's ESB. Paxton's was the better of the two with a lighter bitterness, and darker malt - perfect for a sunny Seattle afternoon. Belk's was very frothy and had a strong bitter aftertaste that detracted from our food - which was quite tasty!

Round two was a pint of Peeping Peater Scottish Ale - on nitro! - from Port Townsend Brewing. This scotch ale was excellent: extremely sweet caramel flavor with a surprisingly muted hop character that kept this wee-heavy more on the wee side, than the heavy side.

For round three, we walked down the road to Fiddler's Inn for another great beer-drinkin-on-the-patio experience. There we decided to whip out the tournament Scrabble board while we quaffed a couple more pints. SQHub enjoyed the best beer of the day: the Laughing Buddha Ginger Pale Ale. The ginger notes in this beer were perfect! I chose to reacquaint myself with Bhagwhan IPA from Big Time, and it was as good as I remembered. It was after quaffing this pint, I decided to add Big Time Brewing as the #2 place to get beer in Seattle.

Round four was an 8oz glass of Hale's Imperial "Aftermath" IPA. The Aftermath was a solid, over-hopped, West Coast IPA. But I won't put it in the XTREME category.

Round five - yes we had five rounds of brew in one afternoon! I love the ability to walk to good drinking locations. Round five was another IPA pint from Glacier Brewing in Montana. Not to say that this was a bad beer, just relative to the rest of the beers we experienced this light summer sipper was not up to par.

Wow! What a day!

Prost to spending the day drinking great beer in sunny Seattle!