I started to list some of my favorite beer places way back in July 2007....the last one I did was in September. You could argue for many places for a Top 10, but these are 10 of MY favorites.

10 - Summit Public House
9 - The Latona Pub
8 - Elysian Tangletown
7 - Big Time Brewing
6 - Duck Island Saloon

That brings us to the Stumbling Monk, located on Olive Way in Capitol Hill. The Monk isn't fancy. It's not stocked with 400 different bottles of beer. I don't think it has much more than 10 taps of beer. They don't have food. I'm not sure I've ever heard music in there. Yet, it manages to be one of my favorite places to grab a pint in the city.

The Monk started out as a bottle shop years ago, but it has been a pub since at least 2004(But, you can still get any bottles to-go). It's open from 6pm to 2am every day and draws a solid crowd of mostly local, neighborhood types looking for a couple of drinks; you don't see tons of beer geeks in there. The fact that it is unpretentious and chilled is one of my favorite things about going there. It's the perfect place to relax with a beer and a book after work when it is nice and quiet, or you can belly up to the bar and hang around till 1am when it can get busy. Seats can be hard to come by starting as early as 7pm. They have a wide selection of board games to keep you busy, including Sorry!, Battleship, Trivial Pursuit and chess. You can bring in food, and there are plenty of options for takeout nearby.

The concentration is definitely on Belgian style beers, and they do a great job of having a solid mix of staples while rotating some interesting taps and bringing in special bottles. They stock all the well known beers from Belgium, as well as American brewed Belgian styles. They always have a few other styles available as well. On Thursdays, they tap a cask of something local, often from Elysian. You can sometimes find rare beers in here, such as the Port Brewing Older Viscosity they had for $15 this past weekend.

The Monk also has some of the most reasonable prices for beer in town. Their offerings are priced about $1 less than what you would pay somewhere else. They always have a few bargain local selections priced at $3/bottle, and most domestic crafts are around $3.50/pint. Belgian drafts can run up to around $4.50 to $6, but that isn't bad at all comparatively.

The Monk is the type of place you can just keep going back to. Their beer selection doesn't vary that widely in short periods of time, but it really doesn't matter....they've got enough great beers to keep you busy for months. Hell, it's a great place to just kick back and drink an Orval. The Stumbling Monk is one of those bars that makes Seattle such a kick-arse beer town. I've never been anywhere quite like it.

When you get there, give the door bell a ring outside. Instead of chiming anywhere inside, it plays multiple snippets of George Bush spouting random things; it gets funnier the more you drink. Also, make sure and check out some of the art on the coasters stuck to the wall....there's some pretty cool stuff up there.

Stumbling Monk
1635 Olive Way
860-0916
6pm to 2am daily

Pic thanks to 58hrs on Flickr