Downtown was lined with regenerated warehouses whose façades were wispy with the names of long gone businesses. The six-storey high former Hotel Olympus with its name carved on a stone façade seemed particularly poignant. The clanging of a trolley bus in the next square rounded off the whole Edward Hopper effect. In the east, the snow capped summit of Mount Rainer rose, a legendary home of the gods, perhaps?
Before
checking into the hotel, I walked through downtown and came across the Odd Otter brewpub, a newly renovated space with brewing kit skulking at the back. I enjoyed a mid morning glass at one end of the bar, looking through big open
windows onto the street, while a woman in running gear dashed in and asked for
a growler of watermelon Hefeweiss. I conjoined with a glass of Jolly Otter ESB,
a custodian of malt character with a jangle of hop.
‘We’re in Tacoma.’ A beer fan
and his wife settled at the other end of the bar, a flight of beers asked for
alongside Connect and as the couple played, the plastic counters clicked as
they tumbled down. Meanwhile outside, the sun shone in the wide streets and the
breeze ruffled the leaf-heavy branches of a tree.
Beer town, beer city? Indeed. Apparently there are 15 breweries and brewpubs in the area, which form part of the South Sound Craft Crawl, though I went for moderation and only visited a handful
of breweries, including Odd Otter again, where I spent some time
chatting with co-founder John Hotchkiss (me: ‘as in the machine gun?’; John:
‘yes’). And this time as the day was well-worn I tried Poppa Bacon Breakfast,
warming and roasty and smoky, a matrix of flavours.
Elsewhere my beer experience
included Tacoma Brewing Company’s fascinating Simcoe-hopped Cigar Box IPA,
which was aged on cedar wood; Pacific Brewing’s Simcorilla, where head brewer
and co-founder Steve Navarro explained hop bursting to me; Wingman’s refreshing
cucumber farmhouse beer Brux 2 and a good chat with Harmon Brewing’s head
brewer Jeff Carlson, a former Enduro bike racer — after going through the
regular beers, we switched lanes and went for the experimental barrel-aged
stuff, including an exemplary two-year-old sour, which had been aged in red
wine barrels and had a cider-like nose, a hint of petrol (think Riesling) and
bananas on the palate and a dry tart finish. ‘This was my take of a Berliner
Weisse, with apples in the mix,’ said Harmon as we sipped this marvellous beer.
Next morning I left Tacoma,
Mount Rainer looming over the highway. One question had been answered. Tacoma
beer city? Yes.