I love Hilliard’s. Their tasting room is in the brewpub, and you can’t beat that in my opinion. Product as fresh as can be. Love the feel of being in the brewery while drinking the beer. The taplist is the beers they brew, four taps and four canned selections. No food, but good value. Great place to check out.

(Visited 09/2012 on the Seattle Road Dogs Tour): Hilliard’s brewery is located on the northwest side of Seattle on 49th Street near Salmon Bay. There is a parking lot next to the building.

The inside is spacious and the front door opens to a counter for to-go beer. Some tables made out of telephone cable spools. Beyond the seating area is the canning line.

Hilliard’s had 4 beers available on our visit: Scottsh Blonde, Amber, Nautical Reference Pale, and Saison. They were all fairly average.

Service is good at Hilliard’s. We got a brief tour of the brewery and explanations of the beer. Checkout was friendly too.

Overall this is a decent brewery to visit in the Seattle area.

These guys are definitely off to a great start. They have a great light-industrial facility in Ballard that they have unobtrusively converted to a great brewhouse and taproom. They often have a good food truck parked right outside, and they often have a huge crowd of people parked inside. You walk in and immediately feel like you’re hanging out in a cool garage. The chairs and tables are pretty second-hand, especially the biggest one, which is a giant cable spool they picked up somewhere. Nice reuse. There’s a free pool table behind the bar. The bar has four taps, and they always have tallboys of four beers, for a total of eight different things pouring. There’s not much going on except hanging out, but it’s kid-friendly and dog-friendly, and people certainly take advantage of that. Lots of wee ones and four-legged ones in the taproom. It’s got a great vibe, with old punk and metal playing (at least when I was in), and a nice kind crowd. By the end of the night, you’ve had a couple beers, maybe you shot pool, maybe you hit the food truck. It’s an uncomplicated proposition. They have these cool little touchscreen tablets that you use to choose a tip and sign out, and those are kinda neat. The beers range from good to great, with a couple detours into OK. I’ll definitely be back.

Spacious, industrial chic type place to enjoy a few pints and chat with the brewers. Pretty good mix of beer styles to choose from.

This is a brand new place winter 2012. Has a small tap room up front but then there is a brand new 15 barrel brew house right behind. Plenty of brews on tap and bring your own food. They got 6 taps and 2 canned brews. Great feel and awesome service.