Into The Wild: Seattle

This week, we’re bringing you a special episode from our Into the Wild tour
with New Belgium Brewing. This is a tour focused on wild, sour, and
otherwise aged and blended beers in the vein of what New Belgium Brewing
has been making for longer and more continuously than any brewer in
America.

This tour is visiting at least a half a dozen cities this year and we
kicked it off in Seattle with a series of sensory-driven events. We did a
sour beer and cheese pairing at The Pine Box with chef Angelica Garza,
featuring some funky and surprising cheeses alongside New Belgium’s Wood
Cellar beers. We held a smoked and fermented event at Central Smoke where
they made a cocktail with a Transatlantique Kriek float. (It was
delicious.) And we finished at The Masonry with chef Matt Storm, where we
explored the relationship between acid and fat.

It was a wild week. These two conversations you’re about to hear came out
of my experiences there. First up, we’ll talk to Ian Roberts, one of the
owners of The Pine Box, about the bar’s role in the city’s beer scene, and
how customers have changed over time when it comes to sour beer. Then we’ll
catch up with Chef Matt to talk about The Masonry, pizza, and other things.

And if you want more, we have a great little article on the website from
chef Angelica Garza about how she constructed the cheese pairings and how
you can think about that the next time you want to host some of your
friends around cheese and sour beer. As specific as these flavors and
aromas can be, there’s some pretty good principles at play that will help
you do it yourself.