The Scuttlebutt Brewing Company is a micro-brewery in Everett, WA on the waterfront, about a 40 minute drive from where I live. When I learned about it earlier this year, I immediately set about making plans to visit it. The company I work for has season tickets to several local sports teams that they raffle off to employees. As luck would have it, the same week I learned of this brewery, I won four tickets to the Everett Silvertips. The brewery itself is very kid friendly which is nice, and has very reasonable prices. They’ve got one of the coolest logos I’ve ever seen, which features prominently on their pint glasses. The root beer is tapped from a keg into pitchers which the servers then carry around to fill your glasses.
The Body is very sweet and spicy yet light on the core flavor. There’s a fruity hint as well and it isn’t really creamy at all. It is rather crisp and clean which I suspect comes from a lack of preservatives but the waiter didn’t seem to know much about its ingredients. The Bite is solid from the aforementioned spices and carbonation. The Head is wonderful. It is tall and frothy and lasts as long as it takes you to drink your pint. The Aftertaste is fruity, sadly. I really don’t like the fruity.
This root beer is ok. I really like the spices but it’s too light for my tastes, and then the fruity. The superb Head boosted it up a notch but it’s still only a low 3.5. The food was delicious. Reading all of Yelp reviews it seemed like their fish and chips were divine. After a 3 piece order, I must agree, especially their tartar sauce. I’ll probably drop by if I win any more Silvertips tickets.
Scuttlebutt Brewing Company’s Famous Fish and Chips, so delicious!
So Bluebird Microcreamery in Seattle just decided to get into the nano-brewing business and had a grand opening just a few weeks ago, officially becoming Bluebird Microcreamery & Brewery. When I heard they were brewing root beer as well I headed over as quickly as I could to get the scoop (pun intended) on the new brew and the new entrant into the gourmet root beer world. My first impression of the place is that it is truly a nano-brewery. They are on a 2 bbl system that seems to only hold about 100 gallons at most per vat. The whole operation, brewery, creamery, bar, and sitting area occupy about as much space as a corner Starbucks. The decor is very rustic with tables built on old fashioned milk cans and pints of root beer served in frosted mason jars. They try to be all natural local and organic as well. They have three different root beers that they brew but only one at any given time. This one is imaginatively called Batch 001 because it is obviously their 10th try … I had hoped that by announcing myself as the internet root beer guru that I am there would be much excitement but I was kind of overshadowed by Chef Gordon Ramsay who was shooting an episode of Kitchen Nightmares just next store. Oh well.
On my recent trip to San Diego for the IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting I had two main root beer goals, acquire Old Town D-n-A Root Beer and visit the San Diego Brewing Company, which is the only brewery in the area that makes their own root beer. They’re located over 5 miles from the hotel where I was at, but I rented a car for a day to visit my Aunt in Escondido and this was along the way. What a perfect place for lunch. This time I didn’t say who I was or what I was doing, because frankly, I would prefer to keep anonymity until after I know that I like the stuff. Trashing someone’s creation may be fun over the internet, but I’d rather not do it in person in their establishment if I can avoid it. This time I was extremely glad I did.
