There’s Something Brewing In Seattle Discover What Makes Your Beer So Good At Seattle’s Micro-Brewpubs Where Tours Take You Through The Brewing Process

Seattle is a city of liquids.

There are the sparkling waters of Puget Sound and Lake Washington, which border it like bookends. There’s the rain that falls close to half the days each year. There’s the celebrated coffee that cuts the chill and provides the energy for urban excitement.

And there’s some of the best beer brewed anywhere, beer that has helped make the Pacific Northwest the focus of the American microbrew revolution.

You could easily spend a long weekend sipping your way through several of the city’s brewpubs and alehouses, and still have plenty of stops left for a return trip or two.

For starters, Seattle’s three biggest brewers - Redhook, Hart and Hale’s - all opened new breweries with attached pubs in the past couple of years.

They’re places where the enthusiast can sample a brewery’s full line of beers, including some seldom found in the Inland Northwest, and see how they’re made.

And they’re places where the microbrew novice can get some good food and drink, in a comfortable, smoke-free, family environment, and maybe begin to understand what all the fuss is about.

The Hart Brewery is home to a big, bustling, bi-level pub in an 80-year-old remodeled railroad warehouse just south of the Kingdome.

As announced by twin tanks flanking the entrance, Hart produces the Pyramid and Thomas Kemper lines, with the year-old Seattle operation joining the original Pyramid brewery in Kalama and Kemper brewery in Poulsbo.

The atmosphere inside is what head brewer Rande Reed calls “quasi-industrial” - polished concrete floor, brick and wood walls, plenty of exposed pipes and huge wooden beams in the ceiling.

“Clearly, it’s all old-growth timber, which nobody in 1915 particularly cared about,” says Benjamin Myers, Hart’s communications director.

The brewing equipment is visible through large waist-to-ceiling windows, with tours available throughout the day.

Along with appetizers, pizzas, salads, soups and sandwiches, the menu includes a half-dozen “pub plates,” most made with the house beers. Baby back ribs are steamed in raspberry-tinged WeizenBerry and basted with an Espresso Stout barbecue sauce, while the fish in the halibut and chips takes a dip in a malty Pyramid Best Brown batter.

Among all Seattle brewpubs, Hart offers the widest selection of its own beers. There are 17 on tap, ranging from White (a spicy Belgian-style ale) to black (the rich Espresso Stout, which actually contains no coffee but tastes like it does, thanks to roasted malts).

“What’s so cool is that people get to try every beer we make,” Myers says.

Hart also has some of the most approachable beers for less adventurous drinkers. Kemper is one of the few microbreweries specializing in lagers, which are usually smoother and cleaner-tasting than ales and take longer to make. (Mass-produced American beers are also lagers, although nothing Kemper comes up with will remind you of Budweiser.)

And about half the Kemper/ Pyramid products are wheat beers - brewed with wheat in addition to the standard barley malt - making them lighter-bodied and refreshing.

Some of the wheats are fruit-flavored, such as WeizenBerry and Pyramid’s Apricot Ale. The most distinctive is the citrusy White, with a recipe that includes coriander seed, Curacao orange peel imported from Africa and a top-secret spice. “We’d tell you,” says a mock-sinister Reed, “but then you couldn’t leave.”

Hale’s Ales, born in a converted Colville, Wash., warehouse in 1983, continues its small-is-beautiful philosophy in its new brewery and pub in Seattle’s Fremont district, north of downtown across Lake Union. (The Colville operation has since moved to Spokane, without a pub.)

The moment you walk in the door, you’re greeted by the bready, sweet smell of fermenting beer. The stainless steel brewery tanks are out in the open, off to the right of a central gallery. A series of signs explains the brewing process, with Hale’s “greeters” eager to explain the details further.

Hale’s system can brew 30 barrels of beer at a time, compared to 50 for Hart. Traditional touches abound; instead of piping the young beer between tanks, as in most breweries, Hale’s system is gravity-fed, meaning the tanks start out high and gradually get lower.

But traditional turns to kinky when it comes to the mirrors on the ceiling.

Like old-style brewers, Hale’s doesn’t cover the tanks where the beer ferments (“How else can you talk to the yeast?” explains general manager Phil O’Brien). But because the fermenters are taller than the old ones in Hale’s former, smaller brewery in Kirkland, people can’t look inside. The solution: mirrors, so visitors can still see a reflection of the foaming yeast at work.

“We wanted to tell our story, what we’re about - traditional brewing on a comfortable, human scale,” says founder Mike Hale, who learned about ales while bicycling in England.

While Hart and Redhook are starting to stretch their markets by building breweries across the country - Hart in Berkeley, Calif., and Redhook in Portsmouth, N.H. - Hale won’t even bottle his beer, saying it doesn’t taste as good as fresh from the tap.

It’s as fresh as it gets in the enclosed pub, off to the left of the gallery through a door with the Hale’s logo beautifully etched in glass.

The bar divides the pub into two sections, in what Hale says is typical European fashion - a quiet side, with carpet, an acoustic-tile ceiling, warm Honduran mahogany and soft leather couches, and an active side, with a hardwood floor, high ceiling and a stage for the live jazz and blues featured Wednesdays and Saturdays.

The menu highlight is a selection of large, lavishly topped pizzas on an earthy, nutty crust made with leftover grains from the brewing process. Some of the spent grain also goes into pretzels, while some is fed to area farm animals.

Of course, there’s a full selection of Hale’s ales to sip with the pies; some are served “Dublin style” from a special nitrogen tap, making them smoother and less carbonated with a creamy head. And if you’ve had your fill of suds, Seattle’s Best Coffee is served for free.

Less than a mile from Hale’s is a red brick complex that once was a trolley barn for the Seattle Electric Railway and now houses the brewery headquarters of Redhook, which was first on the Seattle microbrew scene back in 1982.

The small, cozy Trolleyman pub features a large fireplace, a comfortable collection of couches and mismatched chairs and a light menu to munch with Redhook’s ales.

But if you drive half an hour to Redhook’s newer brewery in Woodinville (a little longer than that if you get 145th Avenue mixed up with 145th Street), it’s another world entirely.

Inside what looks something like an overgrown gingerbread house is a futuristic ale factory. Beer is brewed 100 barrels at a time, under strict computerized control. A state-of-the-art bottling line, designed to eliminate almost all of the oxygen that makes beer go bad, can turn out 425 bottles a minute. The beer ferments in towering, 200-barrel tanks.

“At four pints a day, it would take one person 34 years to drink one of those tanks,” informs tour guide Erin Hale (no relation to Hale’s Ales).

All the high-tech production takes place in a setting of serene beauty - 24 acres dotted with wetlands, adjacent to the Sammamish River bicycle and jogging trail. (A “Haul Ash!” bike tour to the Fremont brewery and back is scheduled May 18, to commemorate the Mount St. Helens eruption.)

The Columbia and Ste. Michelle wineries are across the road, making a multiple visitor attraction. A picnic area, where bottled beer can be taken, overlooks a slough. Deer and geese show up almost as regularly as tour groups. Hop vines wind along the outdoor beer garden, with wheat and barley likely to be planted nearby.

“People are really interested in the malts, what the hops look like, how they’re grown,” Hale says.

Inside the comfortable, modern-feeling Forecasters Public House, condiment containers come in six-pack holders and the small but eclectic menu ranges from a Thai chicken salad to fajitas to a Greek plate. Top off your meal with a chocolate cake made with Redhook’s DoubleBlack Stout, which is brewed with Starbuck’s coffee.

Beer selections include a naturally carbonated, cask-conditioned version of one of Redhook’s ales, on a rotating basis.

Like Hart and Hale’s, Forecasters is non-smoking, except for part of the patio. If people complain, pub manager Randy Smith tells them - semi-seriously - that the smoke can affect not just human lungs, but the beer being brewed. “Then they don’t mind,” he says.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 3 Color Photos

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: IF YOU GO Planning to visit one of Seattle’s major brewery brewpubs? Here’s how to find them: Forecasters Public House (Redhook), 14300 NE 145th Street, Woodinville (206-483-3232). Hours: 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 10 a.m.-midnight Friday, 11 a.m.-midnight Saturday and noon-7 p.m. Sunday. The Trolleyman Pub (Redhook), 3400 Phinney Ave. North (206-548-8000). Hours: 8:30 a.m.-11 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 8:30 a.m.-midnight Friday, 11 a.m.-midnight Saturday and noon-7 p.m. Sunday. Hart Brewery Pub, 1201 First Ave. South (First and Royal Brougham; 206-682-3377). Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday and 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday-Saturday. Hale’s Brewery & Pub, 4301 Leary Way NW (206-706-1544). Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday and 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday-Saturday (closed Sundays). All offer brewery tours, have gift shops where you can pick up souvenir T-shirts and glasses and are non-smoking. Except for the Trolleyman, minors are allowed at least most of the time and families are welcome. Hale’s and Forecasters offer children’s menus; Hart has Thomas Kemper root beer and cola on tap, while Forecasters is the only place you can get Redhook root beer. For more information about places to stay and things to do in Seattle, call the Seattle-King County Convention & Visitors Bureau at (206) 461-5800.