Urban Family Brewing began as a dream small enough to fit inside a pint glass. In January 2012, Sean Bowman, Timothy Czarnetzki, and David Powell opened Urban Family Public House in Old Ballard — a cozy refuge pouring other breweries’ beers before slipping in their own 15-gallon experiments. Curiosity bloomed into obsession, and two years later the family traded the bar for a 7-barrel brewhouse in Magnolia and a new name: Urban Family Brewing. Soon after, Andy Gundel joined to wrangle logistics and story, eventually taking the helm in 2016 and guiding the brewery back to Ballard, now home to a 20-barrel system, cavernous walk-in, and a taproom pulsing with fermentation dreams.
By 2025, Urban Family stands as both resurrection and evolution — its mixed cultures sharper, its wilds tamed just enough to sing in harmony. This is Seattle brewing’s paradox made flesh: disciplined chaos, reverent rebellion. Today’s flight traces that journey in five movements — from dark prayer to tropical dawn, from mist to flame — a Sunday communion of fruit, funk, and feral grace.
Peaks & Pints Sunday Urban Family Flight
Urban Family Brewing Dark Hymn
7.5% ABV | Raspberry Black Sour Ale
Darkness meets desire in this brooding, fruit-stained incantation. Dark Hymn hums with raspberries, strawberries, and faint chocolate, candle-lit and cathedral-deep. The pour glows bruised-velvet; the air smells of temptation. Tart red fruit flashes against roasted malt, acidity slicing clean through sweetness before collapsing into velvet hush. Equal parts séance and symphony, it’s wild yeast singing in Latin while berries whirl in the flicker of the fermenter — a decadent communion for those who know even the night deserves worship.
Urban Family Rum Dawn
7.3% ABV | Rum-Barrel-Aged Sour Ale with Pink Guava
Rum Dawn feels like sunrise stumbled into a tiki bar and never left. Pink guava glows first — nectarous, neon — then oak and rum drift in with caramel hush. Sweet collides with tart; guava light brushes against molasses shadow, a soft funk murmuring beneath like forgotten jazz from the next room. It finishes clean yet haunted, rum echoing long after the fruit fades. Island ritual meets Northwest gloom — proof that even Seattle’s gray can taste like a tropical dawn reborn from a barrel.
Urban Family Stratasphere Fresh Hop
6.2 ABV | Fresh Hop Hazy IPA
Urban Family’s Stratasphere lifts you off the ground. Brewed with fresh Strata hops from Crosby Farms and hazy intent, it pours gold-green, smells of melon and rain-washed pine. The taste glides between citrus blaze and soft haze, finishing crisp but lingering like a dream just before wake.
Urban Family Emerald Clouds
7.3% ABV | Fresh Hop Hazy IPA
Like breath after thunder, Emerald Clouds floats alive and electric — a hymn to fresh hops’ green gospel. Brewed with Spokane’s Lumberbeard Brewing, it stuffs the kettle with just-picked Dolcita cones still humming from the field. The result: tropical mist and lemon oil swirling through pale-gold haze, citrus pulp and rain on cedar. The sip glides creamy, alive with orange zest, melon, and ghosted pine before fading herbal and cool. Seattle weather in liquid form — luminous, unpredictable, and somehow heavier than air.
Urban Family Forgotten Lore Porter
5.9% ABV | American Porter
Forgotten Lore reads like midnight ink spilled across old parchment. Coffee roast murmurs to cocoa and caramel, the malt whispering stories instead of shouting them. Every sip moves like a turning page — warmth, then shadow, then silence. Hops nod politely and fade; the finish slips into rain and reflection. It’s Seattle distilled to prose and drizzle, a beer for quiet hours and flickering light — one that doesn’t ask for attention but rewards those who listen.
LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory
