We've Got Mad Hops, Yo

Special to Seattlest by sous chef Ryan Tateishi, who can also be found at Canlis.

This past weekend’s trip to Pacific Place started out innocently enough. First a trip to Daiso to buy some $1.50 kitchen timers, followed by a stop at Barnes & Noble to peruse the cookbooks, concluding with calamari and beers at Gordon Biersch. There we met up with our accomplices and were invited along to an exercise apparel-themed pub-crawl on Capitol Hill.

An initial search for parking almost 86ed the plan, but after an hour of cursing the neighborhood, it was on like Donkey Kong. The night was full of many firsts, as we found ourselves at Bimbos/Cha Cha, sitting in front of a banana, eating nachos and drinking Amstel Light. A banana costume may not seem like appropriate exercise apparel, but he was wearing a sweatband.

After the requisite hour at each location, a whistle blew and we were off to follow a gay cowboy to our next destination. On the way to Chapel, the banana was forced to take some photos with a lesbian couple. They had just had a conversation with sweatband-wearing Wonder Woman about the purpose of flying in an invisible jet when she herself was completely visible. The night was becoming uncannily close to a Family Guy episode, all the banana needed was a pair of maracas. Having responded to all the phallic banana comments along the way, we finally arrived at Chapel only to consume more Amstel Light.

Thankfully on Monday we had an opportunity to purge our system at Latona Pub. They were the tapping the Fremont Brewing Company’s Universale Pale. It felt great to support a local brewery and the event got us excited about our hop harvest.

We’re hoping we have enough homegrown hops and coriander to brew a witbier. Growing hops has been a relatively easy process. If you’re interested in having your own hops next year, ask your local homebrew supply store about rhizome availability for planting in spring.