Bale Breaker Brewing Company is not a Seattle based brewery. They're actually from Yakima, WA., which in the grand scheme of hops, makes perfect sense. Three fourths, yes nearly 75% of all breweries use hops that were grown in Yakima. Pretty crazy. Brewers from the East Coast even make pilgrimages out to Yakima just to pick out the hop varieties they want sent back to their own breweries. Troegs, in Hershey, PA does just that.
Bale Breaker does have a Seattle based taproom, however. Because, and no offense to Yakima, but there are way more people on the west side of the mountains to try these beers. They're taproom is located in the Ballard Brewery District and is actually cohabited with Yonder Cider Co.
Yonder is similar to Bale Breaker in that.. their pride-and-joy (apples in this case) is grown in Eastern Washington. Much like hops, some of the best apples come from eastern Washington. Yonder as a cidery is from Seattle though. They started during the pandemic selling cider out of a garage in Phinney Ridge. I give them my props for that.
Yonder and Bale Breaker came together to create a dual-taproom of sorts, which I actually quite enjoyed. The Bale Breaker / Yonder site is perfect for relaxing on...well whenever, but definitely with groups of friends with varying tastes. Inevitably, someone in your group will lament that they like to drink, but don't like beer. Fret not, because there's a bunch of ciders on draft to try as well. Hate ciders? Cool bro, there's a bunch of actually pretty good beers too. I got the 8.2% Bottomcutter and totally zenned out.
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| Nothing like a good West Coast IPA to cut through all the haze |
When we visited we both got Two beers and a cider to try. My mind wasn't blown by any of it, but it was solid enough that I'd love to come back on a nice day. Also, where can you get a beer AND a cider flight from the source??
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| An old repurposed...box trailer? Is that what they're called? |
They have a decently sized inside area, but also a pretty large outdoor space too. Part of the outdoors space is covered, part of it is not. Part of it has fire pits. We sat at a stereotypical brewery barrel for our first round, and sat awkwardly near one of the fire pits for our last sips. Not because the place is awkward, just because we are.
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| IPAs and Fires on a crisp day in May. I could die happy. |
They don't have a kitchen, but they do, as like many places, have rotating food trucks. We got a number of different tacos, and shared some birria tacos from the truck of the day, Vandalz
I promise it tasted better than it looks.
Pool Rule -- It is dog and family friendly. There were, however, several groups of children running around, with zero parental supervision. Jumping off of things. Literally throwing rocks. Etc. Not cool. not cool at all. The beautiful dogs everywhere made up for it. The dogs, we're all completely well behaved. Imagine that.
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| cider on a barrel...... |
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| These flowers on our walk to the bus were marvelous. |
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| We took the 40 from downtown. Gotta go! |
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