Jellyfish Brewing Company Floats Into Georgetown This Spring

If all goes according to plan, Georgetown will get a new brewery in May. Jellyfish Brewing Company, which is already brewing beer in anticipation of opening, will first launch a tasting room where you can try its goods. Then, hopefully this summer, a pub with a full restaurant will launch. The venture will be located at 917 South Nebraska Street, between Airport Way S and Corson Ave S.

Jellyfish is owned by Tom Stevens, who spent time at Big Time Brewery and Alehouse, and Mark Burr, who boasts a 25-year career in beer, which includes helping open Water Street Brewing and Alehouse in Port Townsend and co-founding Strange Brew Fest. Stevens and Burr have brought on as head brewer Justin Rizza, who’s worked at Hale’s Ales and Great Divide Brewing Company.

For his first beer, Rizza will release a flagship red ale crafted with eight hop varietals and “a whisper of hibiscus to add a juicy hop finish,” says Burr. “Our goal is to create a very approachable beer for a broad range of beer enthusiasts.” The company aims to wholesale that beer to a wide market.

The brewery will ultimately offer a wide range of styles, including a saison that the team is souring in wine barrels, a Belgian Quad aged in whiskey barrels with figs, plus standards like a pale, IPA, porter, and stout. “We’ll really be looking to allow Justin to be very creative and push some of the traditional boundaries,” Burr says.

The brewery name, Burr says, reflects the brewery’s path to existence. When the team was looking for a space, many of the prospects were near the water. They tossed around names like “Dented Buoy Brewing,” “High Tide Brewing,” and “Bulkhead Brewing.”

“Then, one afternoon, Tom stumbled across some factoids regarding jellyfish,” Burr says. “Namely, jellyfish are brainless, aimless and bloodless. We both felt pretty brainless and aimless after getting kicked around from prospective space to space, so we playfully adopted the moniker. As time went by, and we continued to refer to our budding brewery as Jellyfish, it just stuck. Even though we ended up landing in Georgetown, and we couldn’t even throw a stone into the Duwamish waterway from our location, we decided once a jellyfish, always a jellyfish. Now we’re fascinated by the little creatures.”

There you have it. Stay tuned for updates as the brewery nears opening.