Georgetown Brewing has now opened its expanded tasting room and is serving full pours of beer. For local beer lovers, this is very exciting, long-awaited news.
If you want to see an awesome display of a brewery’s success, visit the Georgetown Brewing retail facility in Seattle on a Friday afternoon. Even though they’ve offered nothing but tiny tastes of beers until now, the number of growlers-to-go and kegs-to-go that walk out of the building is amazing: a constant stream of thirsty beer lovers that endures for hours.
Erstwhile, Georgetown Brewing was never a destination for people looking to enjoy a pint or two of beer. Other than those shot-sized tasters, it was a purely grab-n-go experience. Very quietly, that changed the other day when Georgetown Brewing’s new, expanded tasting room earned final approval from city officials after nearly a year of work. In addition to the new indoor space, there is a beer garden out front, though it currently appears something of a work in progress. Buy your beers at the bar and go find a place to enjoy it.
For beer enthusiasts, perhaps the greatest reward in visiting the taproom is the chance to sample one-off, experimental beers. Everyone knows the core lineup (Manny’s, Roger’s, Bodhizafa, Lucile…), but the tasting room always offers a more robust sampling of the brewery’s work. I’m talking about beers you’ve never heard of and may never hear of again. A lot of them! Many (most) of these beers are tapped at the tasting room exclusively. In other words, its a dream come true for all of you inexhaustible UnTappd badge hunters.
Most local beer lovers know the whole story behind Georgetown Brewing. I won’t reiterate that here except to say that opening a full-blown taproom was probably never on their minds when Roger and Manny first hatched the idea of opening a brewery 16 years ago. Then again, they never intended to package their beer in bottles or cans either. Roger and Manny, who founded the brewery, are nothing if not deliberate. Nothing happens by accident at Georgetown, so I’m sure that this taproom expansion was a very carefully considered next step.
At this time, the taproom still shuts down early, so this is not a place where you’ll linger late into the evening. It is pretty much the same as it has always been, but with full pints and a place to enjoy ’em. And open on Sundays!
Expanded hours, starting on Sunday, November 3 –
Monday thru Saturday: 10:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M.
Sundays 10:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M.
Georgetown Brewing
5200 Denver Ave S.
Seattle, WA 98108
(map)
I’ve always found this very interesting, your local brewery charged $6 for 64 oz of Manny’s, $8 for the ipa. The premise of a growler is go somewhere else to enjoy it = out of this neighborhood. Yet local restaurants and bars still served the brewery’s product. I worked in Georgetown for 8 yrs and it’s a tough buck to earn. Why support a brewery that competes for that buck right down the street, never made any business sense to me. Still love the growler program
You are not the only person who raises questions about this. I have heard it from bar owners who love their local breweries but do not necessarily love the idea of competing with them for on-premise sales.
Not that I know everything, because I certainly do not, but I do know this. The act of going to a bar, a pub, or a restaurant is distinctly different than the act of visiting a brewery taproom. All those people at all those taprooms in Ballard on a Saturday afternoon would not be drinking at the Sloop Tavern if those brewery taprooms were not there. The people who visit Georgetown Brewing or another local Georgetown brewery taproom at 3:00 on a Saturday afternoon would not otherwise be sitting at Jules Maes or the 9 Lb Hammer at 3:00 on a Saturday afternoon.
That’s what I see, anyway. Apples and oranges that happen to grow on the same tree.