Urban Family Brewing Brings Its Well-Regarded Sours to Ballard Friday

North Seattle’s crowded brewery scene is about to welcome a new resident. Urban Family Brewing — which has operated out of a tucked-away space in Magnolia for the past four years — will open its long-in-the-works new Ballard taproom Friday at 1103 NW 52nd Street. It will be a homecoming of sorts, since the beer maker started as a small taproom in downtown Ballard in 2014 before its move to Magnolia. It has since built a sizable following for a wide array of creative sour beers, many of which feature strong fruit flavors, such as the Briar Heart ale brewed with boysenberry and the Mantra imperial that showcases Alphonso mangoes. It also serves a few hoppy IPAs and seasonal dark offerings, including the Pecan Joy brown ale with pecans, Madagascar vanilla beans, and brown sugar.

Owner Andy Gundel tells Eater Seattle the new space will be about three times the size of its Magnolia brewery, with room for around 183 people inside and a spacious 4,000 square-foot patio featuring a fire pit. The brewery will be dog and kid-friendly, although the upstairs mezzanine will be 21-plus only, in case some people “want to get away,” says Gundel (Washington Beer Blog got a sneak peek inside). There will also be a rotating lineup of food trucks, starting with barbecue pork specialists Swine and Steel on Friday and Vietnamese street food purveyors Momo Express on Saturday.

This opening marks quite a hit streak for the area’s beer scene. Just in the last week alone, two new West Seattle breweries have debuted, including the gluten-free Cold Crash and a brewery called Good Society with a philanthropic focus, not to mention the arrival of the much-anticipated Fair Isle Brewing in Ballard last month. Urban Family will now see how it stacks up in a more concentrated brewery neighborhood.

• Urban Family Brewing [Official]
• Urban Family Brewing [Facebook]
• Sneak Peek: Urban Family Brewing Opening This Friday in Ballard [Washington Beer Blog]
• All coverage of Urban Family Brewing [ESEA]