Tin Dog Brewing

Tin Dog Brewing 12Nov2017

Tin Dog Brewing is in the South Park neighborhood near Burdick brewing and its taproom. The bus route to get there is one bus on two routes – the 28X from Ballard through downtown Seattle where it becomes the 132 and continues through various industrial areas to South Park.

The brewery is housed in a business park that presents a strip-mall-like face to South Cloverdale Street. 

The face of Tin Dog Brewing. In warm weather the garage doors open to
accommodate an outdoor seating area.

An entry door and two garage doors form the face of the retail space with some limited parking in front. Today the garage doors were closed because of typical November cool rainy weather. As you enter the door you see the tiny (two barrel) brewing area straight ahead and the seating area plus bar to the left. 

The view straight ahead as you enter the front door

Seating area and bar

The greeting is friendly – kind of wait and see neighborly – and the beer list is chalked up behind the bar above the taps. 

The beer list and food menus

No tasting flights are offered so the choices are schooners, pints, crowlers, growler fills and limited one-off bottled selections. I had a quick taste of the Tripel then ordered schooners of three beers. 

From l to r: Saison, Azacca Saison, and White IPA

Later I dove into the Tripel. 

Oaked Black Tripel

I sat at the bar and sipped, took notes, and conversed with the bar tender. On a rainy non-Seahawk Sunday afternoon the place was pretty quiet.

Tasting Notes:

White IPA (5.1%): Clear yellow-gold. Black pepper and smoky phenolic aroma. Some sourness from the wheat – sour and dry. IPA bitterness followed by Belgian yeast profile (again the black pepper and smoky phenols). Dry, bitter and beery finish. After a few sips I tasted a bit of lemon.

Azacca Saison (5.2%): Clear yellow-gold. Pepper phenols and dank hop aroma. A complex mix of dry malt body, peppery phenols, bitterness, fruity hop flavor and fruity esters. The lower alcohol (compared to the Saison, below, expresses the hop flavor nicely. Bitter-sweet finish.

Saison (6.8%): Clear reddish gold. Band-aid phenols (mostly pepper and smoke) aroma. Soft but dry malt flavor, slight bitterness and that characteristic Belgian yeast profile that I just can’t pick apart. Bitter-sweet finish. Tin Dog’s flagship beer.

Oaked Black Tripel (10.9%): Opaque black with no highlights. Sweet alcoholic malt and ester aroma with some barrel notes. Sweet malt, astringent barrel, grape and ester flavors. Dry finish. Very drinkable strong ale that belies its strength.

Tin Dog is a community resource in South Park. A couple of years ago, while sampling beers and talking to the bartender, I realized that the business model of a small brewery serving most of its beers on tap to the local community could be viable. Tin Dog gets a mix of locals from the residential neighborhoods and people knocking off work at surrounding businesses. The model works in the right neighborhood – I am not sure how they would fare in the Ballard Brewery District.

Tin Dog brews beers in the Belgian style, which lends their beers a fruity and phenolic profile from the yeast. They source their malt from Skagit Valley Malting, which gives the beers a unique flavor profile. Most of the beers I had were dry to the point of being austere – a taste that I prefer. To be sure, some malt sweetness was present in the beers but more as a dextrinous presence as opposed to sugar sweetness.

The brewery atmosphere is minimalist. When you go to use the restroom, you will walk right past the brewkit, all clean and shining and not very imposing. A lot of good beer originates there, nonetheless. 

Like the concrete floor the minimalism is continued into the taproom. It’s cozy and really needs the presence of people to warm it up. On a slow rainy Sunday afternoon I was not sufficient numbers to fill the room with laughter and conversation. But then one of the reasons I go on Sundays and Wednesdays in the afternoon is that most breweries are quiet then.

After drinking most of that Oaked Tripel I knew the bus ride home was going to seem long. An hour and twenty minutes door to door is not bad but I still felt on the verge of disgracing myself right up until the last minute when I got in the door at home. On the reverse commute the 132 morphs into the 26X which goes nowhere near my house, so I had to transfer to the D-Line once I arrived downtown.