Fremont Brewing's new Black Heron Lounge

Seattle's great Fremont Brewing Co. has somehow found ways to expand their already uber-popular tasting room and the latest expansion is the Black Heron Lounge. The tasting room opened in the loading dock to the original brewery, the area was the original bare bones taproom before the brewery built out a real bar and beer garden on the other side of their building. With Fremont Brewing's opening of a new production facility in Ballard called Fremont West, it allowed some space in the brewery operations at the OG location for foeders, barrels and the Black Heron Lounge which features a unique experimental taplist separate from the main Urban Beer Garden on the front side of the building.While Fremont Brewing's main taproom now features two bars, a large beer garden and gas fire pits, the new Black Heron Lounge is a more industrial experience. The lounge itself could go completely unnoticed by Fremont Brewing regulars because it's invisible from the outside and is actually located around the corner on the east side of the building at 3409 Woodland Park Avenue North.Fans of farmhouse, wild ales and other experiments will want to migrate to the Black Heron lounge for a sip. The bare bones but more intimate vibe takes the beer drinker into the actual brewery with beers being poured from a simple kegerator setup right in front of the brewhouse. Barrels box in one part of the lounge area and fittingly there are big leather lounge booths against the back wall and beer hall style large tables down the center.Using the 30 barrel brewhouse on-site at the taproom location, the brewers have some space to have fun with filling two 20-barrel foeders for new small-batch mixed culture beers that are often oak-fermented and bottle-conditioned. The Black Heron Lounge is expressly there to focus and highlight those beers as well as other experiments with local grain, local hops and local fruit.A sample taplist that was available last weekend highlighted a heavily mixed culture/wild ale and farmhouse lineup:Heritage Wheat: Saison/Wit hybrid fermented and aged in an oak folderSolera: Batch 001 of our foeder aged soleraFoeder Golden Strong Ale: Golden strong ale fermented and aged in an oak foederHouse Saison: Saison fermented and aged in an oak folderWaves of Light: Foeder Saison, lightly dry hopped with Loral and Wakatu hops The Lost Art: "Session” SaisonBottle PoursFrench Saison with Brett: Classic French Saison bottle conditioned with Brettanomyces

Hours:3pm – 9pm Fridays1pm - 9pm Saturdays