Burke-Gilman Brewing Company
under construction
under construction
Burke-Gilman Brewing Company is scheduled to open on March 1st, in the previous Ciao Bella restaurant space, vacated several years ago, part of the Laurelhurst Professional Center (3626 NE 45th Street).
The building owner, Ron Sher, also owns the buildings where St. Helens and Great State Burger restaurants are located, as well as the building where Rudy's Barbershop is located.
Ron, owner of Third Place Books in Bryant and Lake Forest Park, is also the founder and majority owner of Third Place Company, the parent company of Third Place Books and the Honey Bear Bakery, with several locations.
Ron is also the founder and CEO of Sher Partners, a family real estate development, management and investment firm. He was involved in revitalizing the Lake Forest Park Shopping Center and Bellevue's Crossroads Mall in the late 1980's.
Ron told the Laurelhurst Blog about the upcoming opening of the brewery: "We're very excited about their being a tenant."
Kenneth, one of the owners of the brewery, told the Laurelhurst Blog Staff:
Two of the four owners are experienced homebrewers who got into it as a fun hobby. I initially assumed it was a cheaper way to get beer. I soon found out that wasn't true, but it sure was a more fun way to get beer.
I had always toyed with the idea of scaling up, but it was the opening of Ravenna Brewing down the street that taught us that this really is possible. We've since become good friends with the owners at Ravenna, and they've mentored us through a lot of this stuff.
Myself and another of the owners, look forward to brewing on a full sized system and will definitely be brewing some portion of our output. But, we're also hiring a full time brewer . We're hoping to post that position on various brewing job listings very soon.
We, owners, are all big fans of the renaissance in locally brewed beer that Seattle is a center of. We thought it would be very interesting to open a small neighborhood brewery. Since we live in the neighborhood, we wanted a place we could go ourselves, and figured the rest of the neighborhood likely would also be interested.
While we of course want to make beer so good that the whole city makes a pilgrimage for it, our real target is people who can walk or bike in, since it's so close to their house. We're family and dog friendly, so we really want the whole family to think about a night out.
All beer will be brewed on site, with a few guest taps. We will have as many beers as we can brew. We have ordered a 7 bbl gas-fired brewhouse, and quite a few fermenters, to allow a nice variety. We are trying to fit a modest barrel aging program in the space as well. We'll have an emphasis on local ingredients, sourcing malt and hops from Washington growers to the extent we can. We hope to develop a nice line of sessionable (lower alcohol) beers, with several stronger beers to balance them. We're big fans of historical styles and Belgian styles as well. So, we hope to have something new on tap every time someone comes in. We will have some guest taps for some favorites of ours and our customers, and we also plan on a variety of ciders.
None of the four owners are restauranteurs. We will not have a kitchen. We will have some light snacks, but the beauty of this location is that there are six restaurants on the block or right across the street. Pick your favorite restaurant from the neighborhood, sit down at one of our tables and pick out the perfect beer to accompany it. We'll have games for the kids, as well as some healthy snacks and drinks (milk, juice, etc.) for them. And as we mentioned above, we'll have cider for the non-beer drinkers. The license we'll be opening under unfortunately only allows for beer and cider, so no wine.
We're happy for people to bring whatever they want in - our neighbor businesses, delivery from somewhere else, even a picnic to eat on the patio with a fresh beer to accompany it. We have thought about hosting a food truck, but if this happens, it would likely come in a later phase. We do think there's a great variety of cuisines in the neighborhood already, so we'll see how well this works before organizing a truck.
The brewery will be accessible to bikers. And several of us are dedicated bike commuters, and we're making sure we have tons of bike parking, including for family bikes. Since the brewery space is on the bottom floor of the building, it's not directly accessible from the trail, but it's a pretty easy route around the corner of the building and down the sidewalk to the bike racks. Being on the trail also helps so much with bike-ability, which is important to us.
We're targeting spring of 2018. We've got March 1st pencilled in, but we're still early in the planning and permitting phase, so we're sure this will change. We'll definitely update people when we know more.
We're so excited to be joining our neighborhood's little business district and we look forward to helping draw business to the district. We think there's a lot of potential for synergy here. And we look forward to learning what the neighborhood wants to drink, building up a great beer list, and having the room to have some fun experimenting.
The Facebook page says:
Our license only allows us to manufacture beer, but we are allowed to have as many ciders as we want on tap, so long as they are WA State ciders. We'll have a nice variety for non-beer-drinkers.
For the beer nerds, we'll have a 7bbl brewhouse, and enough fermenters to have a wide variety on tap. We're hoping to sell nearly all of our production in the taproom, with very little sold in kegs. We're also happy to sell growlers and crowlers for takeaway.
We're beer geeks, of course, so we want the basics (a good IPA, a good stout, a good saison, etc.), but on top of that we want to make as wide a variety as we can. Historical styles, rare styles - we're even figuring out... some room for some barrel sours.
None of us wants to quit our day jobs yet, so we'll be hiring a brewer, who we hope won't mind if we brew occasionally ourselves. We'll be staffing the taproom ourselves as much as possible, but also hiring staff.
We're hoping to be open by March 1st. We can't wait to pour you a pint.
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