Great people, beer and stories

Lunch on Friday was at the The Pike Pub & Brewery hosted by Keren Brown with blogger Hank Shaw and his partner Holly Heyser.  They came up from the Sacramento area to enjoy some of the bounty of the NW's, which gave the room full of Seattle Bloggers the chance to get together for some lively conversations about food and drink.

After the greetings we were given a very comprehensive tour of the brewing operations with a lively informative look at sustainable brewing done at Pike Brewing Company. Everything from the lighting in the Pub to the recycling of the spent grains going to feed cattle create an ecological business mentality that makes you want to drink more. It was nice to see how creative and serious they took the responsibility of resources to make their business a integral part of the community.  Given a chance to see and smell the ingredients that go into making the many types of beverages foreshadowed the tastings were would have with our lunches. Learning about the differences of Malts, Hops, where they sourced their grains and grew their yeast gave a new appreciation of how much of the process is both science and art.

After the tour we sat down to a fine selection of cheese, radishes with butter and truffle salt provide by the wonderful staff at the Pub.  As we all took to chatting about the food and getting to know more about our guests, we squeezed in our lunch orders and were soon enjoying a wonderful lunch with our choice of some great tasting beers.