Ode to Manny's
How Georgetown Brewing Company Came to Make the Best Beer in the Universe
Kelly O
WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENS Thanks, guy!
Declaring any one beer to be the world's best is impossible. It's so subjective. Nevertheless, Manny's Pale Ale—created and brewed by Georgetown Brewing Company and served at roughly 500 bars around Seattle—is the best beer in the entire world. This fact is seconded by the only other person whose opinion matters: my significant other, aka he who must share pitchers with me. Prior to discovering Manny's, Jake gravitated toward Redhook ESB, I liked Shiner Bock, and pitchers were impossible, or at least imperfect, requiring one of us to make do for the sake of the other. Manny's changed everything, throwing itself in our path with ever more regularity and steadily earning a place alongside making out, marijuana, and Melrose Place on the list of Things We Love Together.
Manny's status as a bridge-building beer is no accident. As creator and namesake Manny Chao tells me, his dream with Manny's Pale Ale was to create a craft beer with "something for everyone"—hoppy enough to attract fans of India Pale Ale, but not so hoppy as to repel those wary of IPA (the cilantro of beer). The result: a pale ale with a "rich and complex malty middle with a snappy hop finish," as the Georgetown Brewing Company website puts it. This snappy hop finish is Manny's distinguishing characteristic, giving each sip a slightly salty sheen (think of salted fruit), and is the result of extended experimentation.
Stranger Personals
"I was always looking for that taste and kept adding hops to the back end," says Chao. "Eventually, I added some to the front end, and it all came to life." Thus was born Manny's, a built-for-pleasure beer that's delicious when ice-cold and continues to flourish even as it inches toward room temperature in a pitcher, while the 5.3 percent alcohol content guarantees a lovely buzz without bloat- inducing levels of consumption.
I ask Chao which beer best scratched his itch for the taste of Manny's before Manny's was invented, and he names Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. How many imperfect rough drafts preceded the perfection of Manny's? He says, "About eight batches..."
"More," says Roger Bialous, Georgetown Brewing Company's cofounder. Bialous and Chao met in the 1990s, when the lifelong Pacific Northwesterners (Manny is from Beaverton, Roger is from Port Angeles) crossed paths in Seattle and discovered their mutual love of Ultimate Frisbee and good beer. Back then, Chao was working in tech, Bialous was working in health care administration, and neither was very happy.
"We'd hang out, drink beer, and complain about our jobs," says Chao, whose experience as a home brewer guided them to the next phase of their lives.
The premier products of the Georgetown Brewing Company were brewed in 2003 at the old Rainier Brewery, where Chao and Bialous rented space and set up a 15-barrel system they'd purchased used from a defunct North Carolina brewery and hauled across the country. The first dispensary for their product was the Latona Pub—the owner is an old friend of Manny's. Other outlets soon followed, and in 2008, the Georgetown Brewing Company relocated to its own space in north Georgetown, quadrupling in size in the process. Last summer brought the opening of the on-site retail shop/tasting room, where customers can buy GBC products in reasonably priced kegs and freakishly thrifty growler jugs (refills: $6!).
After I profess my undying love for the product bearing his name, Manny gives me a tour of where the magic happens: an airplane-hangar-sized warehouse rigged with dozens of huge stainless-steel vats. It is the only place I've ever been that smells like beer while being immaculately clean. "Making beer is 90 percent cleaning and 10 percent brewing," Chao tells me. The cleaning and brewing is done by a small staff that rotates through the various tasks, an arrangement that guarantees every worker understands every step of the process. The crew brews 10 times a week, producing 10 batches of Manny's (which accounts for 85 percent of GBC's business) and two batches of its other brands, which include Roger's Pilsner, Georgetown Port, Lucille IPA, and Lisa's Chocolate Stout—the last of which comes with a heartwarming backstory involving a chocolate-loving employee named Lisa who one day reported to work to find a surprise new product created in her honor. ("Did you cry when you learned that your dream beer existed with your name on it?" I ask her. "I tried not to," says Lisa.)
When I propose a future in which Georgetown Brewing Company products are available around the globe, Chao balks. "We want to stay an independent company. Selling out to a big manufacturer would be too much like work. I really like everyone who works here, and we just want to keep doing what we love." 
5
Throughout the weekend I continued to seek it out and found it wasn't just situational- it's a great beer, for just the reasons described in this article. I like IPAs but I don't need them to hit me over the head with the hops. This is a fantastic, well balanced beer.
6
God bless you Manny's!
17
I sometimes drink Manny's but it does have an aftertaste.
I'd say it's probably the 3rd best.
19
The best beer in the world doesn't come pressurized out of a keg, that's for sure. It doesn't even come out of the US. Manny's is good beer, to be sure, but it pales (see what I did there?) next to proper Real Ale, as served fresh from gravity taps in pubs in the North of England.
One of the things that kills off American beer is the absurd quest for super strength. Those beers @16 likes? They're freaking 8 percent! By American standards, Manny's, at 5.2%, is very mild, but it's right in the sweet spot of tolerable. American ales also dump in the most flowery hops by the ton, which is a horrible thing to put in beer. Manny's scores high on this scale, too, being very moderately hopped.
But best? Not on the same continent as best.
The best beer in the world is Banks's Mild, now that Cain's has killed their mild ale.
The best beer that's available in the US is still a properly poured pint of Guinness. The Irish know a thing or two about malt as well.
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If only they'd can it. I have to settle for Dale's Pale Ale from Oskar Blues.
25
While I do consider myself a huge fan of Manny's, one thing I've noticed is a pretty large inconsistency from keg to keg. Sometimes it's real hoppy, other times not, sometimes a bit flat, sometimes over-carbonated. When I drink the first few sips of Manny's, it's only about half the time that I get that "Yep, that's a damn good Manny's" taste. But it's always drinkable.
I don't know if it's just a consequence of a micro brewing process (can they really be considered micro?), inconsistent ingredients, or kegs going flat (how that could happen to a keg of Manny's, I'm not sure), but it's not really something I've noticed with other micros.
I like how it's able to accommodate a lot of different beer preferences. When you want a pitcher for a group that includes a devotee of Rainier tallboys, a stinky-skunky hops lover, 2 people who don't care and a nerd who'd rather be drinking scrumpy, Manny's works.
And note to Northern England Beer Superiority Guy: while warm, flat, tasteless beer may make you nostalgic, it’s not in the same league as 90% the beer available in this city.
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@32, you got a groovy thing going there with Will in Seattle. Good luck with that.
So you can fuck right off with whatever beer helped you feel superior when you were ever so recently abroad.
Also, I can't be the only person who gets the splatterpoops from unfiltered beer. Manny's tastes fine, but it isn't worth upsetting my delicate digestion.
Manny's is OK but there is that aftertaste. Maritime Pacific, served fresh at the Jolly Roger Tap Room, is fantastic!
47
Melrose Place? Ah yes, the Bud Light of television viewing.
48
Personally, I'll take the Belgians over the English. But they have lambics, and Flanders red ales, and those will sway me to anything.
Worked for me, anyway. :)
I mostly like Manny's and a 6$ growler fill is an absurdly good deal but it far from the best beer in the city, region, world.
I'm assuming that you are trolling for comments with that ridiculous declaration, if so nice work.
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