The original Ballard brewery (Image: Redhook)

The Redhook Brewlab is the last physical vestige of Seattle’s “first microbrewery” (Image: Redhook)

Marking 40 years will be a bittersweet journey for a beer maker that helped usher in the microbrewery era but now finds itself seemingly without a home after decades of change in the industry and being swallowed up by “the world’s largest beer company.” But the Redhook Brewery does have a home, surviving right here on Capitol Hill and still part of the Pacific Northwest beer scene thanks to one of the most uniquely densely-packed brewing facilities you’ll find.

This weekend, the Redhook Brewlab — the last brewery and pub in the Redhook line — is setting out to celebrate those 40 years with a party showcasing the beer it brews here on E Pike, favorites from the past, and “Seattle’s first microbrewery” role in the history of Washington and Oregon beer. There will also be baby goats.

This Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we’re celebrating Redhook’s 40th anniversary and Brewlab’s 4th anniversary with a three-day celebration filled with hazy beers (and plenty of non-hazy beers); baby goats (Saturday only!); a Drinkable History to-go pack featuring the beers that define Redhook’s history and future; and the return of the Brewlab Crowler Club (sign up at the anniversary party and get a bonus 16oz. 4-pack). See you there!

Complicating the celebration of history is this hard fact: Redhook wasn’t born on Capitol Hill and the brewery as we know it today is far from the early 1980s beer startup born in an old transmission shop in Ballard.

(Image: Redhook)

In 1994, the first bottle cap flipped as Anheuser-Busch took a 25% stake in the company. In 2010, Redhook was merged with Widmer. The resulting company is now part of Anheuser-Busch’s Brewers Collective. Capitol Hill-born Elysian Brewing, also owned by the company, is marking 25 years of Seattle beer in 2021.

With the anniversary, Redhook, like Elysian, has been hearing about its big beer ties. “We’re owned by A-B, but we’re still the same Redhook Brewery,” reads a recent company response to a critic on Instagram. “In other words, we still guide the mission of Redhook Brewery, but we have a different support system. We’ve always been dedicated to brewing high-quality, great tasting beers, and that won’t ever change.”

That may well be but direction for the Redhook brand has been to continue bottling a few favorites while innovating at about the smallest scale something like AB-InBev can stomach. The Redhook Brewlab debuted on Capitol Hill in the summer of 2017 and became Redhook’s sole Seattle brewing operation after its parent company agreed to sell the remaining Redhook Woodinville brewery site for $24.5 million. The move severed any remaining historical ties and left the Brewlab as the brand’s sole real world incarnation.

(Image: Redhook)

But as far as new homes go, the Brewlab is pretty interesting. The original plans for a ten-barrel system were downsized to a lower production eight-barrel system with a focus on experimentation, not bottling for retail. Redhook called the project “a beer-focused working space” and “a test ground to experiment and create new small-batch beers primarily for the pub, and to develop recipes that will eventually come to life on a wider scale in Washington and beyond.”

The tightly packed brewing facility is perhaps the ultimate mixed-use, part of a major 260-unit apartment development built on the bones of the old E Pike BMW dealership and garages and now one of the largest apartment buildings on Capitol Hill. It is surrounded by plenty of space for tables and a large patio formed by the building’s preservation of the old auto row facade from the showroom and garages that used to stand at the site. With a design by Graham Baba Architects, Redhook says Poquitos and Rhein Haus owners James Weimann and Deming Maclise — “who intentionally worked to emphasize the industrial features of the Pike Motorworks space while incorporating historic elements such as a 1930s bar salvaged from a Greyhound Bus Station in Soap Lake, Wash., and vintage lighting fixtures” — consulted on the look and feel of the pub and brewery.

The Brewlab joins Elysian and two other much smaller players in creating Capitol Hill’s brewing scene. On 12th Ave, Outer Planet qualifies for “nano-brewery” status with its microbrewery and pub making beer on the ground floor of a microhousing development. Meanwhile, Optimism Brewing has grown into a center of its neighborhood on the backside of Pike/Pine with a brewery and taproom space that has transformed an auto-row era showroom into one of the nicest places to hang out and enjoy a Capitol Hill-crafted beer in the city.

Most of the Redhook Beer purchased in the world, naysayers and big beer haters will point out, isn’t even brewed in Seattle any more. The majority is bottled at the Widmer Brothers Brewery in, gasp, Portland. But most of the beers on tap at the Redhook Brewlab are made right here on E Pike with Seattle Public Utilities water and probably more than a few Capitol Hill microorganisms in the mix. That’s something you might be able to lift a glass to regardless of how you feel about the world’s largest beer company.

Redhook 40th Anniversary Celebration
Redhook Brewlab, 714 E Pike
Friday, August 20 – Sunday, August 22, 2021 — A weekend-long celebration honoring Redhook’s 40th Anniversary, featuring:

• Live music from Seattle DJs
• Baby goat petting zoo on Saturday
• Specialty beers on tap including Hazy Big Ballard, Since You Been Gone and Now That You’re Back

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