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52 Weeks: Ballard Grill & Ale House, Seattle, WA
Ale House indeed.
Week 46 of 52 (6 More!)
4300 Leary Way NW
Seattle, WA 98107
Neighborhood: Ballard
(206) 782-9024
Mon-Sun 11 am – 2 am
Rank: 3/5
Type of Establishment: Pool hall, sports bar, arcade game laden divey joint with over 30 taps.
Visit: After grabbing dinner and a handful of wax dipped bottles of barrel aged quad from Hale’s, I figured, why not grab a pint at the bar directly across the street? I’d never been there, so I changed that.
Beers on Tap (at time of visit):
Maritime Pacific Jolly Rodger
Maritime Pacific Imperial IPA
Emerald City Beer Dottie’s Lager
Pyramid Haywire
Ninkasi Total Domination IPA
Dick’s IPA
Elysian Men’s Room Red
Big Sky Moose Drool
Big Al’s Winter Warmer
Red Hook Winter Hook
Deschutes Mirror Pond
Deschutes Black Butte Porter
Rogue Dead Guy Ale
Mack & Jack’s Amber
Stone Arrogant Bastard
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
New Belgium Fat Tire
New Belgium 2 Below
Georgetown Manny’s Pale Ale
…and other macros.
Bottle List: Nothing exciting.
Food Options:
The “Grill” portion of the name is pretty accurate. The menu boasts a decent selection of burgers, sandwiches and apps. It’s bar food. Nothing too crazy, but it will surely do you right if you are looking to lay down a nice foundation for a long night of boozin’ and hustling the tables.
Bar Opinions:
The bartender informed me, as I was scribbling down the taplist (no website), that BG&AH always has three rotating taps. It seemed as though the bartender said it in a way that would imply that I should be impressed with that. Only three rotators isn’t very impressive to me, but the more I thought about it, it actually is sort of impressive in this case because it means that they have a pretty decent number of darn delicious permanent taps. In hindsight, I’m perplexed with myself that I didn’t think to ask which ones where the rotators at the moment. I was in an anti-social mood. It happens sometimes.
I ordered the Dottie because, believe it or not, I had yet to try it. It’s an amber lager, not something that I’m ever excited to drink, but I do respect craft brewers that make a solid lager. It’s not easy to do, and I’m happy to say that Emerald City Beer hit it out of the park with this one. Seriously, if ECB had some serious dough to invest into making massive amounts of Dottie, canning it in pounders and selling it for cheap, I think every Seattle hipster would leave their precious PBR or Ranier behind. Easy drinking and flavorful to say the least.
As the bartender poured my Dottie he mentioned that they had just tapped it for the first time. Rotator? You would think, but you would also think that the seasonals like Jolly Rodger and Big Al Winter Warmer and Winter Hook and 2 Below would be the rotators. Wait that’s 4 winter beers right there that are obviously not available year round. I think there just might be more that 3 rotators. Never-the-less, even if just Arrogant Bastard and Dick’s IPA and Moose Drool and Maritime Imperial IPA are full-time handles here, that’s pretty solid.
Game on!
BG&AH is pretty spacious inside, and though I was there in a Thursday night around 8 p.m., there was enough people there to prevent it from feeling cavernous. But even it you were there completely alone, there’s plenty to keep you occupied. It may be slightly challenging to play on one of the 6 pool tables by your lonesome, but you could easily work on your dart game, or shoot some hoops, or some guns on the various arcade games available. This is definitely a place to bring your insatiable appetite, your lustful, unquenching thirst for fermentables and a pocket full of quarters.
