Lynnwood’s Big E Ales announces that it is closing. Last day, this Saturday

Big E Ales in Lynwood recently announced that it is closing down, stating that the closure is due to the impact of COVID 19.

The message on Facebook was pretty simple. “It is with a very sad and heavy heart I have to announce that Big E Ales will be closing. We are just one of the hundreds of businesses closing due to the impact of the Corona virus.”

Big E Ales (aka Ellersick Brewing) is something of a time capsule. The brewery dates back to a time when there were fewer than 100 breweries in Washington. Today there are well over 400. Actually, Big E dates back to when there were a lot less than 100 breweries. The story is a throwback to bygone days. A simpler time.

The story of Big E Ales was one of the first brewery profiles I published on the Washington Beer Blog (read it here). That story was told in 2008.

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Back then, I told the story of how Rick Ellersick went from a homebrewer in the 1990s to pro brewer. The brewery and pub in Lynwood opened in 2005, but by that time Rick had been selling his beer (his homebrew, basically) out of his garage for years.

To be totally honest, speaking for myself and probably for a lot of you, Big E Ales got lost in the tidal wave of breweries that opened in the last ten years. I am sure the locals, the neighborhood folks, never failed to think of Big E as their go-to, local brewery, but for the rest of us? Well, it’s become easy to lose sight of these kinds of legacy breweries as we are continually distracted by the barrage of shiny-new breweries. Lord knows there’s been a lot of those in recent years.

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Still, it’s hard to see one of our longest-standing, pioneering breweries close its doors.

From the Big E Ales Facebook page, “I would like to thank everyone for all the love and support we have received over the past 16 years. Our last day will be Saturday February 6 , we will be open 12-6pm . We will be filling growlers ,cans to go and pouring pints. The kitchen will be closed to give us a chance to visit ,share memories and say goodbye.”

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