BowlingJoe: Crawling In Georgetown

Well, hello. It's been a while since I've posted anything so it's time to dive back into the pool. My job has kept me pretty busy lately and I've done a fair amount of work-related writing lately, so the last thing I've felt like doing was going home and doing......more writing.

But there are a backlog of topics that aren't going to go away anytime soon so let's get to it. Several weekends ago, BowlingWidow and I embarked on a mini pub crawl in the greater Puget Sound area. There are a couple of parts of the region which have become a hotbed of hops in recent times and we just had to pay some visits.

This post will focus on the Georgetown area near Boeing Field. Quite frankly, Georgetown was a dump not all that long ago. But now they're climbing out of the abyss with some nice stores, restaurants and yes, breweries.

The Machine House: just like being in England...but not

Our first visit was to a place I've been wanting to check out for quite some time: The Machine House. The style is strictly British ales. I can confirm that it even smells a bit like a rustic English pub despite being located in what is essentially a modified warehouse. Just as in Great Britain, these are session ales with relatively low alcohol content being delivered from the casks. They offer a Special Bitter, a Mild, an Oatmeal Stout and one or two more (I opted for the bitter). I've learned to prefer the highly hopped full-bodied beers which makes the Pacific Northwest famous, but this was a nice choice and a good starting point for the day.

BowlingJoe enjoying a pint of bitter at The Machine House

The next stop was another spruced up warehouse which houses Two Beers Brewing. "Life is just a little more honest after two beers" is the phrase which inspired their name. We both enjoyed one of their EVO IPAs (I never did figure out what EVO stands for). The staff was particularly friendly and since business was a bit slow on this Saturday afternoon we were treated to a personal tour of their brewing and bottling operation in the back room.

Nice day to be outside at Two Beers

Our third and final stop was Schooner Exact Brewing. We ordered a snack (one must have actual food after all when embarking on a mission such as this) and consumed a Hopvine IPA. The hoppy goodness certainly lived up to its name.

The friendly bar of Schooner Exact

We ended the South Seattle sojourn by feasting on Ethiopian food for dinner. We had never had Ethiopian before and figured it was a good time to cash in the Groupon that was sitting in my desk drawer for an extended period of time. The place is called Dahlak Eritrean Cuisine. Ethiopian food is eaten primarily with your fingers, using pancake textured bread to scoop up the various items on the serving plate. Spinach, chickpeas....honestly I don't entirely know what we ate at the meal. For the most part it was good but we're not sure if our American palates will be up for a return visit.