I found myself having to go to a meeting downtown the other night and thought it would be a great opportunity to check out a new brewery. I was just up the street from the University of Washington and I did some googling to find Big Time Brewery and Alehouse, which was located very close to campus.

I was pleasantly surprised by the atmosphere at Big Time. Generally bars that cater to the college crowd are a little less than appealing visually. However, this bar had nice wood accents and a pleasant homey feel.  Besides, there was a dinosaur holding a beer on the wall– how can you go wrong with that?

dinosaur at big time

As usual, I did a flight. This place let me pick my flight (which I always find amazing that all breweries don’t). By picking my flight, I didn’t have to have the IPA on cask– I am sorry but cask kills hops and ruins IPAs. I am not the only one who feels this way either.

I started with the Scarlet Fire IPA. This was a good middle of the road IPA with 65 IBUs and a 6.3% ABV. There was a slightly floral nose to this beer. For the number of IBUs, it had a remarkably strong bitter taste. However, this bitterness didn’t linger for long.

For those of you who don’t know, citra is my favorite hop and I was so glad to see a Citra SMASH IPA on draft here. This was a nice earthy beer with 60 IBUs and 6% ABV.  The citra was very strong on the nose as were the earthy and citrus flavors in the beer.

Bhagman’s Best IPA was very malty for an IPA, although it was still 60 IBUs. It had very little nose and had almost that kolsch kind of tar-like aftertaste. This definitely wasn’t my favorite beer here.

Cosmic Inflation Pale had an earthy nose and that taste also lingered. If you don’t like earthy flavors then you wouldn’t like this beer. In fact, it was so earthy that it almost had a dirt/tar like flavor that was pretty strong.

Icculus XPA was only 50 IBUs and 5.8% ABV. This beer had no nose and an off-putting almost skunk-like taste. Skip this one too.

Hopgoblin Pumpkin had a nice pumpkin spice nose of cinnamon and nutmeg. It was a bit too cinnamony in taste. I found it kind of reminiscent of a red hot soaked in beer. Overall, I kind of liked it, but I like cinnamon. I am not sure that this would go over well if you didn’t.

Coal Creek Porter didn’t have much nose but had good coffee flavors. Overall, this was a very good porter.

Old Rip Oatmeal Stout had a nice coffee nose and a great smooth mouthfeel. There was just a hint of sweetness to this beer so it was very well rounded. This was another definite try.

Mikulas Imperial Oatmeal Stout didn’t have much nose but a strong coffee flavor. For an imperial stout, it was relatively low in alcohol (8.6%) but it did still have that underlying alcohol flavor with a hint of a burn. This beer also had a very smooth mouth feel.

Finally, I tried the Old Wooly Barley Wine. I’m not really a fan of barley wines but I am trying to give myself the opportunity for them to grow on me. This beer had just a hint of malt on the nose but had a very strong underlying alcohol nose and flavor. There was quite a bit of sweetness up front. Although not my fav, this was not a bad representation of style.

I have decided that next time I am up toward UW, I will make a stop in Big Time again to try anything that might be new. In February, I’m hoping to attend the Washington vs. Arizona basketball game so that might be a good opportunity to swing by on trip #2.

Beer list at Big Time

flight at Big Time

empty flight at Big Time