For us, the New Year begins on Labor Day. Labor Day is when everything shifts for us; the weather finally cools back down, the foot traffic shifts from visiting tourists to returning students, key members of staff inevitably move on so new staff step in, and both of my children return to school, necessitating and facilitating changes to my personal work schedule which affects everything else. All as we clean up and recover from our personal weeklong New Years Celebration, PAX.

And with every new year, comes changes. The two biggest for us so far this year are taps and our schedule.

Yes, that’s right. I just said TAPS! With custom D20 tap heads no less!

Thanks to an unprecedented collaboration between ourselves, Maeloc Cider, Fremont Brewing & the Seattle Indies, we were able to get our initial tap system fully installed, tested and operational just before PAX and now it’s ready for you try out too.

We’re currently offering our ever popular Strawberry Cider, Fremont’s amazing seasonal Lush IPA and Odin’s Gift Amber on tap and will be rotating through a range of seasonals, many of which will be selected by you through our tip wars voting system.

Draughts are $6 and pitchers $15. We look forward to serving you.

Additionally, after seeing how many people were trying to get in early every day to get some of our great espresso now that Stumptown has closed, we’re going to be opening every day at noon and staying open until 11pm, 1am on Fridays and Saturdays, making us a great stop for all your lunchtime and afternoon coffee needs.

So come on by, get yourself a drink, play some pinball, and check out some of our events. You’ll be delighted that you did.

– Eric

Fall is upon us. No really, it is. Think of the clouds as a warm fluffy blanket covering the earth and keeping you and everything around you warm, snuggy and well watered and you’ll do just fine with it.

And with this changing of the seasons, comes our new schedule…

…and new food…

…and drink menus;

all designed by the incomparable Zan Christensen as part of our collaboration to provide the Northwest Press a permanent retail presence and administration space on our beloved Capitol Hill (kind of like that Subpop/Fantagraphics joint down in Georgetown except weh mehr kewler).

FALL SCHEDULE

In addition to being open 2 – 10pm EVERY DAY (what what!), we’ll still also be open until Midnight Friday and Saturday night and open at noon every Saturday for our usual drafting as well as this weekend’s upcoming Kaladesh Prerelease (Slots still open! Come by, call in, or email us to reserve yours now!).

FALL MENU

We’ve gone hyperlocal, national, and international in our quest to bring you the best options possible this season and are excited to bring you:

SODO Pizza
Located in the most rustic corner of Sodo that you are never gonna find without a seasoned guide, Sodo are the real deal. They’ve been working with local bars like ours in Seattle for years now and they know what’s up. They prep and par bake all of our delicious personal pizzas for us so we can bake them off fresh in our oven and provide you hearty meals featuring both vegetarian and gluten free options.

Moonlight Mead
We’ve been carrying mead from the very beginning and, frankly, we’ve taken a few wrong turns. It wasn’t until we found this New Hampshire based meadery that we knew we’d found our match. Moonlight strikes that very difficult strike balance between classic fermentation and innovative recipes that slaps and caresses us right in our palette. Our fall seasonal Moonlight Mead menu includes black cherry, blueberry, black currant, Sumatran coffee and, our most popular, ginger vanilla, by both the glass and the bottle for your sipping pleasure.

Maeloc Spanish Cider
Lest it weren’t obvious from their love of mead and our growing hard soda selection (now featuring Orange Cream!), our customers tastes run a bit on the sweet side, which is why it came as no surprise to us at all when they took strongly to what may well be the sweetest cider we’ve ever tasted, Maeloc’s legendary Sidra con Fresa, or as we call it stateside, Strawberry Cider. So we are super excited to be partnering with them bring in our very first tap for it this fall, thus making us, as far as I know without having done even the slightest actual research into the subject, the only venue in our entire city serving Spanish Strawberry Cider on tap.

So come on out and try some of the great new food and drink items that we have for you today (I didn’t even mention these amazing new deep fried peanuts that we have!). We’re an all-ages retail gaming space in vibrant Capitol Hill with spacious tables, an open gaming library and a great menu for you and your friends. We have frequent public events, reservable tables and event space rental options to serve whatever food, drink or gaming needs you have. We look forward to seeing you soon.

Hello, I’m Aric Fehrenbacher. You may remember me from such blog posts as Aric’s Last Shift (I came back) and Why You Should Be Watching Professional Starcraft (WHY AREN’T YOU!) or you maybe more familiar with my work was “that guy who is always behind the bar who wears stripped button-ups gesticulating wildly at the beer cooler”.

I’m here today to share with you some exciting news about my personal favorite subject booze. We here at The Raygun Lounge have slowly been refining our menu to more accurately resemble an establishment that sells awesome, interesting beers, ciders, and now, meads. As much as I love Deschutes and Newcastle they are pretty basic as far as beer choices go and we live in the PNW home to hundreds of small independent breweries making amazing brew!

With the help of Orcas Distributing we now carry some of the most unique and tasty brews available to a small gaming establishment without access to draft beer. But enough jibber jabber allow me show you some of my new favorites which a few of our bar regulars have “agreed” to model for us.

Uncommon Brewing Bacon Brown

So we picked this assuming it would be a kitschy novelty beer and probably be terrible in reality. I mean Bacon+Beer? Turns out it’s just an amazingly solid bodied brown ale with a subtle hit of delicious gristle at the end. Also, yes it is actually brewed with a pound of uncured bacon.

Celt Thirsty Warrior

I cannot say enough good things about this cider, and I think drinking cider is a sin against Raugupatis (look it up). If you think you like Angry Orchard (you don’t) one sip of this will make you realize that you’ve been wasting your time and money all this time sending you into an existential crisis the likes of which only protagonists in Lovecraft stories have ever experienced. I may have gotten carried away there but trust me, it’s really good (Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn).

Lost Continent Double IPA

You think you know what a Northwest IPA should taste like? Not until you’ve laid your lips upon one of these mega-hoppy bad boys you presumptuous fool. A miracle of modern brewing that somehow treads the line between tasting like you’re chewing straight hops and being immensely drinkable. Schrodinger’s beer?

Moonlight Meads

Some people (losers) say that mead is for neckbeardy weirdos who can’t handle real alcohol. Well those people hate and , hence losers. Regardless of your feelings towards nordic subjects this mead is bomb as #$*&.  Every flavor is different and interesting capturing the sweet honey core that any good mead should have while experimenting with berries, ginger, vanilla, and currants in ways that morph the flavor into something truly unique.

Are you thirsty yet? Well then come on down to the Raygun for this weekend’s Magic Origins Prerelease or come in next week for our other amazing events which I guarantee will make you want to drink. That’s a little bartender humor for you. Stay classy Seattle.