Bigtime Turns 20

We love you GG

The Bigtime Brewery on University Ave celebrated its 20th birthday last week and in Bigtime style celebrated in their understated way. It was a week of fantastic beer, reminiscing with old beer friends and realizing how little had changed. In this great hall of suds some allstar brewers have created some of the best beer in the world. Dick Cantwell, Kevin Forhan, Drew Cluey, were a few. Now Bill Jenkins calls it home . Special beers were poured and 10 year old Old Wooley made it up from the basement.

It is a labor of love at Bigtime. Hauling the grain sacks around in a very small space, utilizing the space aged conveyor belt to get kegs up from the basement and lovingly extracting bungs from those beloved Golden Gate Kegs. In this bungless-straight sided-Sankey Keg world it is refreshing to know that each key is cleaned debunged and personally filled by Bill or Chris.

It is one of the few breweries in the country that still uses the Golden Gate kegs. Employing a bung extractor a giant would use as a cork screw, each wood bung is drilled and pulled. The keg is cleaned on a flushing water pod and then made ready for that luscious ale.

We salute the Bigtime and all the great people that have worked there over the years. It is truly a Seattle Landmark.