Old Stove Brewing marks 10 years of growth across Seattle taprooms

Old Stove Brewing will mark its 10-year anniversary on April 18 with live music, a special 10th Anniversary Kölsch, and surprises and giveaways at all three of its Seattle locations. The celebration reaches across Pike Place Market, Ship Canal in North Queen Anne, and Old Stove Gardens in Ballard, turning a single brewery birthday into a citywide taproom event.

That spread says as much about the company’s strategy as the beer itself. Old Stove began on First Avenue near Pike Place Market, but that original location is now closed. What replaced it was not a retreat from the brand’s roots, but a broader Seattle footprint built around the same market-facing identity that helped the brewery stand out in the first place.

Pike Place Market gave Old Stove a highly visible launchpad at MarketFront, where it became one of the first anchor tenants. The brewery’s space there was designed around an 80-foot window wall with views of Elliott Bay and the Olympic Mountains, a setting that tied the brand to one of Seattle’s most recognizable public destinations. Pike Place Market says Old Stove has 20 house-made rotating beers on tap there, while Old Stove’s own Pike Place page now advertises 24 taps of beer made on-site, along with local cider, wine, and a full bar.

Old Stove’s growth did not stop at the market. The company now says it operates three taproom locations in Seattle. Its Ship Canal site in North Queen Anne is described by the brewery as the 49er Taproom, a restaurant and brewpub with indoor-outdoor service and event space. In Ballard, Old Stove Gardens pairs the brewery’s beer lineup with barbecue, an outdoor beer garden, and live entertainment. That mix gives the brand a different kind of reach in each neighborhood while keeping beer production visible in the experience.

The company has also leaned on its place in Seattle beer culture. Old Stove says it was named Seattle Magazine’s best brewery taproom of 2018, and its Pike Place Market page says the brewery has always aimed to carry on the market’s Meet the Producer tradition by making beer onsite. That mission helped turn the original market taproom into a recognizable part of the city’s beer identity, even as the footprint expanded.

For Seattle beer fans, the anniversary is more than a birthday toast. It is a snapshot of how a brewery can grow from a single market-adjacent taproom into a multi-location operation without losing the things that made it matter: beer made on site, a strong neighborhood presence, and a setting that still feels tied to the city around it.