For obvious reasons, accomplished brewers don’t love people constantly focusing on their gender. Any brewer who manages to work their way up from keg washer to celebrated brewery owner deserves attention and respect, and yet it’s something of a watershed moment for Portland to see a woman do this.

On my recent, short visit to Seattle, I managed to pop in to six different breweries, but here are three that illustrate the range and diversity the city now boasts. 

Portland’s Von Ebert pulled off the singular trick of winning gold at both the GABF and Oregon Beer Awards for Volatile Substance, their IPA. A year earlier, their IPA Nothing Noble took bronze at GABF. It was high time I spent some time at the brewery to figure out their secrets.

Cloudburst’s hoppy ales are at once familiar yet distinctive. They shimmer with hop particulates, but don’t look hazy, exactly. They feature saturated juicy flavors, appreciable (but far from violent) bitterness, and a spectacular quenching dryness that make them dangerously drinkable.

Now, of course, amber and brown ales are rare—blonds proliferate. This seems barely worth mentioning, since it mirrors the trends everywhere else, but consider this: The radicals at the forefront of this evolution in Belgium were Trappist monks. In particular, the ones brewing at Westmalle.

The lineage of brewers making the traditional tart weissbiers of Berlin seemed to end when Schultheiss made the last example in the early 2000s. A tradition shared from one generation of brewers to the next, the thread seemed to be broken—until Ulrike Genz found that last brewmaster and went on to found Schneeeule.

As British drinkers are increasingly seduced by hazy IPAs and other “craft” offerings, some of the old breweries continue to make characterful, handmade ales in an older tradition. Harvey’s Brewery in Sussex is an exemplar.  

American beer fans have become too insular. Even if one only wants to deepen their appreciation of IPAs, it’s important to see the places our tradition started.