Urban Beer – Fremont Brewing

What do you do when called that there is going to be a gathering at brewery on a late Thursday afternoon. You get off your butt and head on down to Fremont, former home of Red Hook and current home of Hale’s Ales, McMenamin’s, and now Fremont Brewing.

Situated in Fremont on Woodland Park Ave & 34th, behind Bikram Yoga lies the brewery and beer garden featuring tables of made of planks, kegs, and wooden pallets. Where you can shoot the breeze with Two Matts and an Aaron.

This was my first taste of Fremont Brewing’s wares, currently they have two beers; Universale Pale Ale & Matty’s Creamy Steamy Porter. They claim to be finished with the Firelight IPA, but the only evidence of it was a tap handle that poured out nothing. Aaron said it would be ready tomorrow.

As for a brewery tour, just spin around when you’re in there, you will have then seen the entire place. They are new and growing, you will see two hot liquor tanks, brewing tuns, and two (or was it three?) fermenters along with cold storage and some funky Naugahyde looking furniture that lays in a pile in the middle of the brewery. Apparently it’s for future use in the tasting room, hope they have it upholstered!

So far, I don’t think they’ve found their niche, everyone has that one beer they become famous for but I think they are still working on finding it. The Universale was a good solid Pale Ale, but it doesn’t blow the doors of Sierra Nevada which I would consider to be the holy grail of Pale Ale. Fremont Brewery also has a sustainable energy goal similar to Sierra Nevada who sells their discarded yeast to be made into Ethanol.