Welcome back to Sip Northwest’s Beer Hall of Fame: a twice-monthly induction into a list of essential Northwest beers that have made their mark on the field and region.
Matt McClung is a chemist — literally. For years, he would commute along Seattle’s downtown thoroughfare, via King Street, when he worked as a chemistry teacher on Mercer Island. This was before he co-founded Schooner Exact Brewing Co. some 11 years ago, but in 2009, with these memories in mind, when he named his beloved brown ale after the route over which he’d commute while molding the minds of the future.
The King Street brown ale is a sleek, clean-drinking masterpiece. It began as a collaboration between Schooner Exact and another SODO suds shop, Two Beers Brewing, for the Washington Beer Lovers anniversary. After the event, both Schooner Exact and Two Beers took the recipe to their respective labs and tweaked it, now living separately as King Street and Two Beers’ Sodo brown.
“The King Street brown has always been well-received,” McClung says. “It’s our alternative to an amber. We don’t brew an amber, we swore we never would.”
The brewer says the philosophy behind the tasty brown — and all of the brewery’s creations, in general — is to make “good, drinkable beers that are solid, consistent,” he explains. “Not over the top in any one dimension. Well-balanced. We wanted people to be able to order pitchers rather than, say, 12-ounce goblets.”
But in terms of its flavor profile, McClung says the ale is malt-forward with a touch of hazelnut and light chocolate. “Maybe even a little bit of dark cherry,” he adds. “With a light hop bitterness that balances the malt sweetness, and it finishes dry.”
While the brewery may sell more of its Hopvine IPA, it’s the crisp brown ale that landed Schooner Exact on this list. Not a bad professional mark for a former chemistry teacher-turned-brewer.
