New beers from a (new) old brewery

They say everything old is eventually new again, but you shouldn't exclusively take your life lessons from the crack PR squad behind Value Village. Making something old new again, minus the grandpa pants, the Emerald City Beer Lab.

After years of being used as artist lofts, and by Tully's to roast coffee, the Old Rainer Brewery is again making suds thanks to ECB, who've turned a portion of the old cold fermentation area into a high-ceiling'd/green-and-white-painted miniature brewing facility where they're developing commercial brews, as well as sharing the one-off, mico-batch results of their beer experiments, also when the St. Pauli Girls see if they like kissing other St. Pauli girls, though everyone knows it's only to get a reaction from the St. Pauli boys. ECB's flagship (and first commercially available) beer is a medium-bodied session-style called Dottie Seattle Lager made with hops and grains grown in Washington; they're also planning limited runs of experimentals ranging from the maple syrup/roasted malt Maple Brown Ale, to a Chocolate-Cherry Dark Lager aged on coca nibs and Bing Cherries, which unfortunately for Microsoft, lots of people still have. Starting tomorrow, in addition to tours and tastes, ECB's offering music, brats cooked on an industrial-sized grill, and pints of their brews at regular beer-garden style events that, for now, are cash only, but not Johnny Cash only, since not even he could drink that much by himself.

Future plans call for the transformation of their warehouse-style lair into a permanent taproom/lounge, where they'll do their innovation thing in a third of the space, and let you try the results in the bar/TV-outfitted remaining two-thirds, which, much to the chagrin of their PR squad, is also how much older shopping at Value Village makes you look.