Editor's Note: This post was written by our most knowledgable Seattlest beer expert Dikla with photos by Morgen

It was a icy cold day up in North Seattle Saturday morning, clouds threatening rain. But we didn't care; we were off to warm up with hearty beers and enjoy three phenomenal tours of some of Seattle's oldest and newest breweries up in the Fremont/Ballard neighborhoods. We had such a good time on our first tour, it was hard to imagine this one could live up to it. Thankfully, each spot brought new and interesting insights into the local brewing community.

Our first stop: Fremont Brewing down on the waterfront, just east of the Fremont Bridge. As the brewery stretched itself awake for another busy Saturday of filling growlers, kegs and sleepy patrons' pint glasses, we wandered around the brewery, gazing at the shiny fermenters and breathing in the comforting smell of brewing. Fremont is one of Seattle's newest, up-and-coming successes in the city. Renowned for their use of simple ingredients and innovative styles, they are rapidly outgrowing their modest warehouse space. Mostly consisting of 30-barrel fermenters, Fremont Brewery has recently expanded to a couple 60-barrel fermenters, giving them a higher production volume to meet the climbing demand.

Our tour guide, Thor, took us through the brewing process and showed us the large back storage space that houses Fremont's old homebrew station (used to "experiment" with), their keg filling station, pallets of bottles, kegs, and most importantly, barrels. Currently, Fremont Brewery is experimenting with several barrel aged brews (which at the moment, primarily consist of the B-Bomb winter ale -- a bourbon aged version of their Abominable Ale) as well as some sour beers. These should be ready soon, so keep your eyes pealed for announcements of those releases, they are sure to be delicious.

Next stop: Hale's Ales on Leary in the magical land of FreLard. Hale's is one of Seattle's oldest, most traditional breweries, brewing most of their beers in the traditional English style with fresh, Northwest ingredients and flare. Head brewer, Lincoln Molek, took us through their brewing process and explained their use of the traditional, open-topped fermentation process, which isn't seen frequently in breweries anymore. The open top fermentation allows for a slightly different environmental influence on the beer -- and sure looks neat when the yeast gets going in a new batch of beer, rising to the top of the fermenter, and basically jumping ship as they die off.

With their large production line, the brewery is a 17,000 square foot building that formerly housed an industrial hose manufacturing plan, with a cozy pub in the front. Being one of Seattle's oldest breweries, founded in 1983, Hale's has a strong tradition of brewing some classic beers, but also has expanded their production line to include many Northwest style beers, such as their Supergoose, which is strongly-hopped, higher ABV (alcohol by volume) version of their Mongoose (traditional American style IPA). Currently, the brewery is also undergoing some renovations, expansions, and even has two new closed fermenters (what most of us are used to seeing at breweries in the Pacific Northwest). Again, with the growth of the craft beer industry, the award-winning beers that Hale's creates, and the higher demands on distribution, Hale's is changing and growing to keep up. "It's an exciting time for craft brewing," Lincoln explained with a smile.

Last stop: Maritime Pacific Brewing. Avast, a pirate's oasis just east of the Ballard Bridge. This was our last stop, and by far the largest system we had seen yet. With 44-80 barrel fermenters all side-by-side lining the floor of the brewery, and 3000 (on average) lbs. of grain going into the wert (that's the barley/grainy bit of the beer making process) for each batch of beer, Maritime brews up a huge volume of beer on a daily basis. Our tour guide, head brewer Corey Blodgette, took us through Maritime's brewing process, which was a little bit different and certainly on a grander scale than we had seen prior to this stop. To give you an idea of just how much the brewery needs/uses ingredient-wise for their batches of beer, the brewery has its own grain silo attached to the brewery as well as its own hot water tank to produce enough of it to constantly keep the brewing process going (rather than waiting to have hot water piped in).

What really blew us away was the extraordinarily ancient bottling line that Maritime style uses. While quite impressive to look at, I don't think I'd want to be one of the three people this contraption requires to run it (that's right, it takes three bodies to run that monstrosity). Nor do I have a sick enough imagination to picture how it might be used as a torture device.

By the end of our tour at Maritime, we were thoroughly educated and wonderfully sauced. No longer were we thinking about the dreary weather, but instead happy to have had such charming tour guides and sampled some of Seattle's finer quality brews. Cheers, and thanks to Thor, Lincoln, and Corey for showing us what wonderful work is being done in our beautiful North Seattle neighborhood breweries!

Filed in Food and tagged beer, breweries, brewery, fremont brewing company, hales ales, maritime brewing company, seattle, tour

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