Schooner Exact Brewing Co.

Now on twitter

A lot of people email us and ask us where they can find us since we tend to favor rotating taps making us hard to find. We were hoping that the blog would be a decent vehicle for getting this news out to you but unfortunately it has fallen a bit short. Therefore, as of a few hours ago, we are now on twitter where you can follow us and see what we are up to and where you can find us. This should be easier for us to manage so we can get the info you need out to you in a more timely manner.

schoonerexact on twitter

It's Seattle Beer Week!!!

We are SO excited for Seattle Beer Week! Ten days of events all over the city in celebration of Seattle beer! Check out their events page for a full listing, but we wanted to do a quick rundown of where we will be.

May 7th - We will have a cask conditioned IPA at both the Beveridge Place Pub, and at Naked City as they will be kicking off the week with some wonderful local beers.

May 9th - We actually had a hand in creating the inaugural Tour de Pints along with the Seattle Beer Week crew, so of course we will be riding it. If you are not going to be doing the whole thing and want to jump in mid-ride, feel free to follow us on twitter so you can see when we will be near you.

May 10th - Battle of the Randalls. We will be getting together with the folks from Diamond Knot and Full Sail for a big bad Randall smackdown! Come on out to Beveridge Place Pub to see all three Randalls, up on the bar top and see who packs the most hop punch.

May 11th - Come on out to Beveridge Place again for their Dry T-shirt contest. Our very own Heather McClung will be one of the judges. Prizes for oldest, farthest away, and best story behind your shirt.

May 14th - A double dose of Schooner Exact tonight! First we will be at Collins Pub downtown and we will be breaking out the Randall again for all you hop lovers ut there. We will also be up at the Park Pub for their New Brewer's Night. We will be joined by the guys from Two Beers, Big Al, and Chuckanut. Come on out and see the new beers that you have been missing!

May 16th - Today we will be finally opening our new place to the public so everyone can see what we have been up to for the past few months. We will be joining Trade Route Brewing, Georgetown, Baron, and Big Al for the South Seattle Breweries Open House. Each place will be open for tours and tastings. Here at Schooner Exact Global Headquarters we will also be having a band and bbq!

So get off your butt and go celebrate Seattle Beer with the rest of us!

Reaching far and wide

Lots has been happening down here at the new facility with both the build out and expanding our client base (that means you can find our beer closer to your house now). Things are moving along with the build out, cooling system is mostly in place, we took delivery of our custom built kettle, and we just have a few little loose ends to tie up. of course, as anyone that has taken on a project like this knows, it's all the little stuff at the end that takes forever.

We have also been expanding our reach and quite a few new places are now carrying our beer. We have broken into a couple of new markets both to the north and the south. Up north you can now find us at the Green Frog Cafe Acoustic Tavern in Bellingham, and at the Porterhouse Pub in Mt Vernon. We have also been busy opening up a few new places down in Tacoma. We can be found at the Red Hot (great dogs!!), the Rosewood Cafe, and we will be delivering our first keg to the Parkway Tavern next week. As always, if you have a place where you think we would be a good fit, let us know and we will see what we can do.

Here in town we have been pretty busy as well. In the north end of town the Pub at Piper's Creek, Cooper's Ale House, the Park Pub, and the Barking Dog have joined the crew of fine establishments with Schooner Exact IPA. Closer to downtown we have been delivering to Collins Pub on a fairly regular basis recently and have just started pouring at the Hilltop on Queen Anne. A little south of town you can find us at the Dog and Pony in Renton, which even if you live in Seattle, is worth a trip to check out, great beer and great people. Out east we have been busy as well,Sahalee Country Club has been serving our stuff for a couple of weeks now. Also, and this is great news, Black Raven Brewing in Redmond will be opening soon. Beaux called and asked us to be one of the guest taps in his tasting room for the opening and we are honored to be a part of this historic event. Keep tabs on his site as it really is opening any day now and he makes great beer!

Keep your eyes open in the next couple of days as we are getting close to finalizing all of our plans for Seattle Beer Week. I can tell you now that it will include events at Beveridge Place Pub, Naked City, the Park Pub, Collins Pub, Elysian Fields, and McCormick & Schmicks. More to come on that but be prepared for a week long celebration of all that is wonderful about Seattle beer!

Herbert is going down with the ship

Any of you that have been following us on our Facebook page know that a lot of what we have been doing lately involves construction, heavy machinery, and getting dirty. However, we have been able to slip away and brew a little beer here and there and will be bringing out a few special releases over the next couple of weeks.

First of all, this is the 10th anniversary of the Cask Festival. Every year a collaborative beer is brewed among the many area brewers and it is called Herbert's, named after Bert Grant, one of the founders of Northwest craft brewing. In celebration of the 10th anniversary there will be 10 different versions of Herbert's available at the cask festival and around town. We collaborated on our version with Laughing Buddha (soon to be Trade Route Brewing Company). This will be avail able a few different times, so we hope to see everyone at least once to get some of this big, hoppy concoction. We will be serving this on 3/19 at the Beveridge Place Pub, on 3/27 at Brouwer's Cafe, and on 3/28 at the Cask Festival.

The other thing that we have been working on is a very limited edition barleywine style ale, called Old Sinking Ship. Anyone that has looked east at 1st Ave and Yesler will know where the name came from. Barleywines are generally very big, bold, hoppy, with a strong malt backbone to keep everything together. Our's is no different, brewed in the Northwest style with a generous amount of hops. This is a very limited release this year, and will only be available at the Beveridge Place's Barleywine Bacchanal on 2/27, Brouwer's Hard Liver Barleywine Fest on 3/21, and a special dry-hopped cask version at the Cask Festival on 3/28, where we will also have a dry-hopped version of your favorite, 3-Grid IPA.

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

...but Hoppy Holidays is so delightful. That's right, its that time of year again for the wonderful award winning winter brew from Schooner Exact, Hoppy Holidays! We have been brewing up a storm and you should start seeing the blue tap handle with the bouncing snowman at your local pub very soon. Of course, we are never one to just give you the normal stuff, so we have a few tricks up our sleeve for this year. First of all, the Winter Beer Festival at Hale's will be getting an exclusive version of Hoppy Holidays called Cherry Poppin' Hoppy. As you can guess, it has been infused with cherry goodness, and made it a touch sweeter and dropped the hops just a touch so it has a wonderful balance and a great nose. Be sure to get there early as our special brews tend to go fast and there there is always a long for them.

The next thing we are bringing you has us extremely excited. We have been working on this since last year when we got our greedy little hands on a giant whiskey barrel. We filled it up with the last bit of Hoppy Holidays that we made last year and it has been sitting all year. We finally transfered it last week and now it is ready to go. You should start seeing Hoppy the Woodsman at you local pub soon. We took a couple of samples around and the alehouses have been going nuts for it! Keep tabs here as we will be getting the word out to where our deliveries are going. This is a very small limited batch that will go fast so do not hesitate when your local pub gets it, its goingto go fast! Of course, if you are one that really loves all things woody, we will be pouring this along with lots of other great beers at Big Wood, Brouwers festival of all things barrel aged.

Lots of things going on

There is a lot of stuff coming up over the next couple of weeks with Schooner Exact, here is a quick rundown so that you can plan your life around us! There are a couple of firsts for us, we are trying some new things out with the help of the brewing/beer community that should excite and amaze you. First, today we will be delivering a keg of 3-Grid IPA to the Red Housein Renton. Why is that so special? Well we have made this batch specially for and in conjunction with the Red House. They have quite a crop of hop vines running around their establishment, which they harvested for us. Just hours after harvest we created the first and only fresh hop version of 3-Grid IPA and it will be available at the Red House shortly.

Another first for us is that we created Gutter Punk'in Dark Wheat Pumpkin Ale this year with assistance from the great people at Elysian Brewing. If you missed it last week at their Capitol Hill location, you can enjoy it on Sunday the 26th at their Elysian Fields location. It will be the second, and last, chance to get all of the great pumpkin offerings from Elysian, Big Time, Elliott Bay, Pike, Allagash, and many others!

Upcoming at the Beveridge Place Pubon November 6th is their annual Cask-O-Rama. If you have not attended one of these events before you really need to go. Over twenty different cask conditioned IPAs up on the bar top and free flowing for your enjoyment. This night they will also be announcing the winner of Hoptoberfest where they allow their patrons to elect the house IPA for the upcoming year. Last year we got to a surprising third place and I know all of you have been out there making sure we have a good showing again this year!

Lastly, in case you had not heard there is an election going on. No, not that one, I mean a real election, with real issues, one that could change the direction of your life for the forseeable future, the Northwest Brewing NewsReaders Poll. This is where you can make your voice heard about your favorite brews, bartender and alehouse. Feel free to contact us if you need a little advice on the issues. Find your online ballot here!

Oktoberfest is your last chance at Gallant Maiden!

This weekend is the 2nd Annual Oktoberfest brought to you by the Washington Beer Commission. It is also the last chance you will have to enjoy the lovely Gallant Maiden Hefeweizen. We will be focusing rest of our time on Brouwer's Hopfest, Hoptoberfest at Beveridge Place Pub (don't forget to vote 3-Grid!), and the Elysian Pumpkin Beer Festival. After that it will time for us to roll out the 2008 version of Hoppy Holidays Winter Ale. So if you love the Maiden as much as I know many of you do, get your butt down to the Oktoberfest this weekend!

Of course, for you bitter types we will also have plenty of 3-Grid IPA on hand as well.  Come for the great beer, and stay for the brewer's games and oompah music! Should be a good time for all (as long as you're over 21). Hope to see you all there! Stay tuned for more updates, lots of stuff going on with us over the next few weeks!

New website!

We just put up our new website today! It is still under construction and we will be adding a lot of content. Lot of pics of festivals and events to post, as well as a list of the different places that you might be able to find one of our fine creations. As always, with our size, it might be good to call ahead first. Lots of thanks to Heather "the boss" McClung for all of her hard work on this!

As far as what has been going on with us, well we are just starting to get moving on our expansion plans. Meeting with investors and scouting locations. We will be growing into a 7bbl system (we are on a .5bbl system now) so we will be finding some new digs and will have more tastings and growlers/kegs to go than we currently have. This also means that we will be a lot more available around town, and that's what you all really want anyway right?

Look for us at the Washington Beer Commission's Oktoberfest on September 12-13. We will have some tasty 3-Grid IPA and in keeping with the German theme we will also have the glorious Gallant Maiden Hefeweizen.

Busy Times Behind Us, Busy Times Ahead

Hello! It has been some crazy months here lately. We've had a lot of irons in the fire and they were all heating up fast. We had some major medical issues arise in the midst of buying a house and a new brew system. When it rains, it pours. But the good news is that we have a new system that will increase our production from a Keg at a time to 13 Kegs at a time! (Big sigh!)

The delivery crew here at Schooner Exact has been doing some major peddling of wares lately. Here is the most current list of where to find us:

3-Grid IPA House Taps at the West 5 and Abbondanza Pizza in West Seattle;

Rotating status at the new, beautiful Beveridge Place also in West Seattle;

Brouwer's Cafe has 2 Golden Gate dry-hopped casks of 3-Grid IPA in addition to a keg of regular draft IPA. They also received the first Gallant Maiden Bavarian Hefewiezen of the year which should be pouring in the next week or so after their, oh-so delicious, Sour Beer Festival winds down.

Old Town in Ballard has the IPA but warning, in this part of town, it goes fast!;

The Latona in Greenlake has the 3-Grid on tap, and

We added a new account to the SE rolls... The Dray in Ballard. Lots of wood, warm intimate atmosphere; nice, knowledgable guys behind the bar; Stumptown espresso and beer? Can you ask for anything better? This is Matt's favorite new haunt in Seattle, you gotta check it out.

Major Upcoming Events:

The Mother of all Father's Day Festivals! The Washington Brewers Festival at St. Edward's Park put on by the Washington Beer Commission. We are going to have the summer line of SE offerings and a cask or two to boot! Come out and root for Matt during the annual Keg Toss! $15 advance ticket sales. All ages event, but alas, no dogs.

Well, that's about all that is coming down through the pipes at the moment. Stayed tuned for more expansion news to come. Cheers! 

Week of March 17th

Good news everyone, we're getting out into more new locations.  Here's what's up for this week.  We are always on at the West 5 Lounge with 3-Grid IPA.  The Beveridge Place Pub, also in West Seattle, will have a keg of Regrade Pale Ale on later this week.  Up on Capital Hill you will be able to enjoy 3-Grid IPA at the Hopvine, a new location for us!  Also under the 3 Pubs umbrella is the Latona Pub.  The fine folks at the Latona will be pouring Regrade Pale Ale later this week.  Thanks to 3 Pubs for taking us on!  In Freemont you will find something special.  Brouwer's Cafe will be pouring our India Dark Ale from one of their cask engines.  This is new for us and they only have a quarter barrel available.

We're also working on getting 3-Grid into the Fiddler's Inn later this week and the Old Town Ale House next week.  Stay tuned.

What's going on this weekend with you?  We'll be at the Washington Cask Festival at Seattle Center pouring a dry hopped 3-Grid from one of our firkin casks as well as our India Dark Ale.

Cheers, Matt.