The fourth Tacoma Craft Beer Festival will be Saturday on the Foss Waterway. Of 57 breweries expected to tap at the event, most are Northwest based and a dozen are South Sound brewers. We’ve got a list of beers that will be served and other information you need to know before you head to the festival.
Taprooms don’t offer glossy dinner menus or slick promotions and, well, most of them come with just one bathroom. As a woman who visits taprooms, I can report with authority that the seat rarely is left down.
While this region has plenty of restaurant brewpubs – the Harmon, Engine House No. 9 and Powerhouse among them – taprooms are a rare find.
The kind of taprooms I’m talking about are bare-bones facilities with little more than a few stools in a working brewery. They come heavy on the gritty atmosphere, light on the extras, such as kitchens. Think of a taproom as a place to buy a pint or fill a growler directly from the brewery and maybe even meet the brewer. Read more »
Wingman Brewers has been tapping its beer around Tacoma since the niche brewery opened in April. And now they’re about to expand. Wingman just applied for a permit to open a taproom and brewery at 509 ½ Puyallup Avenue –next door to the Habitat for Humanity store near the Dome. They don’t expect the taproom to be in operation for at least four more months. Until then, they’ll continue to operate out of their small space at 1727 Fawcett. Their new Puyallup Avenue location is an improvement for selling their beer – they’ll have a tasting room open to the public for the first time. Read more »
Ken Thoburn has a sudsy dream and soon it will be taking root in an old building at 1727 Fawcett.
Next door to the Tacoma Buddhist Temple, Thoburn and three friends – Derrick Moyer, Daniel Heath, and Jason Sabol – are starting Wingman Brewers – a production brewery they hope to turn into something like the Tacoma version of Gig Harbor’s 7Seas Brewing.
“It’s very small batch …. we’re starting really small,” said Thoburn when I talked to him by phone about the concept late last summer. The group applied for licensing last summer. Read more »