Lucky Envelope Brewing Debuts First-Ever Pickle Beer Day This March

Lucky Envelope Brewing, tucked into Seattle's Ballard brewery district and known for its culturally inspired, Asian-inflected beers, is doing something this Saturday that no one in the tasting room has attempted before. Pickle Beer Day arrives on Saturday, March 28, with three small-batch pickle beer releases brewed just for the occasion. Doors open at noon.

The brewery is owned and operated by Barry Chan and Raymond Kwan, and the event's anchor beer tells you exactly how the whole idea got started. The Dilly Dilly Dill Pickle Lager, coming in at 4.1% ABV, is described as "the salty-sour beer that started the Pickle Beer Day idea." It begins with a Japanese lager base, then gets blended with real refrigerator pickle brine, specifically not the shelf-stable kind, plus fresh dill and garlic. It will be available on draft only.

The second confirmed release leans harder into Lucky Envelope's pantry of house ferments. The Kimchi Sour (5.5% ABV) is billed as tart, funky, and spicy: a base sour brewed with gochugaru chili flakes, green onion, and housemade kimchi sourced from Boohan Oriental Market in Edmonds. Like the Dilly Dilly, it will pour draft-only. A third small-batch pickle beer rounds out the lineup; full details on that release had not been confirmed at press time, so check Lucky Envelope's website for the complete list before you go.

Sea Dawgs will be on-site with their hot dog cart from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m., which is either the brewery's most on-theme food pairing of the year or a very deliberate bit of snack comedy. Probably both.

Pickle Beer Day isn't arriving in a vacuum. Lucky Envelope recently released two fresh beers, including a collaborative lager made in cooperation with Tumwater brewery Triceratops. Triceratops's Rob Horn and the Lucky Envelope duo of Barry Chan and Raymond Kwan produced a lager known as Yinz Jawn Lager, with shared ties to Pennsylvania serving as the inspiration. Brewed with a hop trinity of Citra, Mosaic, and Chinook Cryo, the beer draws notes of orange or grapefruit peel, tropical fruit leaning toward pineapple and passionfruit, and dank pine resin. It is available at the brewery in takeout or draft.

The tasting room at 907 NW 50th St. is open Saturdays from noon to 9 p.m., which means Pickle Beer Day runs through the brewery's regular closing time. A Spring Fling event is already on the calendar for April 4, with details expected at luckyenvelopebrewing.com.