seattle

Drinking my way through the Pacific Northwest

As Emily has mentioned in some other posts, we went to Portland/Seattle a few weeks ago to visit her brother and his family. We did a lot of fun things while we there, and in between them, we enjoyed one of the other things the area is known for: great beer! We didn’t over do it by any means, but we both were very “beer’d out” by the end of the week. We love good beer, so you know it was a good amount when we opt to skip the final brewery Nick and Kim were going to take us to. We decided we should put all that drinking to good use and note all the ones we had for each day, and pick out our favorites! (All scores are out of 5)

DAY ONE

Sprinkles (Everybody’s Brewing) – 3.75
Covfefe (Thunder Island Brewing Co) – 3.5
NW Red (Ancestry Brewing Co) – 3.00
Scaler Single Hop (Backwoods Brewing Co) – 3.75
Kumite (StormBreaker Brewing) – 4.00
Space Cake (Clown Shoes) – 4.5

Small note about this first day – we had a sampler so five of the six beers were just tasters. We didn’t drink as much as it appears!

As you can tell by the ratings, my favorite of the day was the Space Cake. It’s an Imperial IPA with an ABV of 9%, so it will catch up to you quickly if you’re not careful. It’s got a good malty taste with a bit of hop to it, and a nice mild bite at the end. The west coast style of IPA is definitely different, and this was a great introduction.

DAY TWO

Inversion IPA (Deschutes Brewery) – 3.75

I didn’t realize until I was looking back that I only had one beer this day. This was actually because we had planned to go to a Bar/Arcade that night, but we were all fairly beat after spending the day downtown and just ordered a pizza and crashed at home instead.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a Deschutes beer that has disappointed me, and the Inversion IPA was no exception. It is a hoppy IPA with a floral taste to it, and is also quite smooth. It went really well with grilled cheese and tomato soup I had to eat. I easily could have had two or three, but had to much walking to do to warrant it.

DAY THREE

I’m just going to preface this with that fact that this was the day we visited Seattle and signed up to go on a Road Dog brewery tour. There is a lot of beers listed here but keep in my mind many of them were samples (although some were larger than what I would consider a “normal” sample size). The brewery tour was awesome by the way, and I would highly recommend it to anyone in the area. Sufficed to say, a good time was had by all.

Supergoose IPA (Hale’s Ales) – 4
Night Troll Porter (Hale’s Ales) – 3.5
Hale’s Cream Ale (Hale’s Ales) – 3
El Jefe Weizen Ale (Hale’s Ales) – 3.75
Pale American Ale (Hale’s Ales) – 3.5
Holy Basil Pale (Outlander Brewery) – 3
Tiramisu Brown (Outlander Brewery) – 4.25
Ancho Amber (Outlander Brewery) – 3.5
Imperial Peanut Butter Stout (Outlander Brewery) – 4
The Sister Imperial IPA (Fremont Brewing) – 4
Proletariat Porter (Fremont Brewing) – 3.75
Keys. Phone. Wallet. (Cloudburst Brewing) – 4.25
Trickster (Black Raven Brewing) – 3.75

I would have to say that the Tiramisu Brown was the winner of the day followed closely by Keys. Phone. Wallet. The Tiramisu was so smooth and easy to drink it was ridiculous. It had some great spice to it as well. I’ve never had real Tiramisu so I couldn’t tell you if it tasted similar, but if it did, I really need to try some.

DAY FOUR

Long Ball Ale (BridgePort Brewing Co.) – 3.5

After drinking so much the day before we decided to take the day off of drinking, and just had one at the Hillsboro Hops baseball game we went to. It was light and crisp, which was perfect to drink while sitting in the stands under the warm sun. It was my first MiLB game, and it was a blast (even though the Hops lost).

DAY FIVE

Pallet Jack IPA (Barley Brown’s Beer) – 4.5
3-way IPA (Fort George Brewery) – 3.5
Supplication (Russian River Brewing ) – 4
Reggie’s Red (Lucky Labrador Brewing) – 3.5
Chris’s Going Away IPA (Lucky Labrador Brewing) – 3.5

I’m going to go against my initial rankings, and have to say my favorite beer of the day was the Supplication. That beer has stuck with me all these weeks later. It’s a sour beer, with a serious bite to it, but it is delicious. It was also one of the more expensive beers I had, although I didn’t know that at the time. It was worth every penny.

I also couldn’t resist getting the “Chris’s Going Away IPA” when I saw it. It was the next to last day of vacation after all! It was a fairly standard IPA, that I’d have again if it I saw it.

And so, we’ve come to end of the drinking adventure. We were in Portland for another day, but took it off of drinking again, as the night before was pretty crazy. I was going to end this with picking my favorite beer overall, but there were so many good ones, that I think I’ll just stick with the daily rankings, and suggest if you like good beer you give those a try. We did a lot more than just drink, which you can read in Emily’s other posts, so it wasn’t just about the beer, but it definitely added to the fun. We had a great time in Portland and Seattle, and are very much looking forward to going back!

Keep Me Weird, Portland – Part 2 [Seattle Edition]

Thursday Chris and I went up to Seattle. Again, Chris had never been in the area before, and I had only been for a weekend… And that was before I could drink.

We first hit the Museum of Pop Culture, which was pretty cool. Things we saw included: a guitar history exhibit, Indie Game exhibit, Fantasy exhibit, Star Trek exhibit (Chris geeked out) and they had a Jim Henson exhibit. I think that one was probably my favorite. I had no idea how big of a deal Jim Henson was; not only did he create the Muppets, he was also along for the ride of Sesame Street and created a ton of commercials for different companies using his puppets. He even created two movies: The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. Both which I haven’t seen, but now know I need to thanks to several “I can’t believe you haven’t seen them!” remarks.

I got two treats for lunch that day. First, I got ramen, which I haven’t had authentic ramen for some time. Two, I got to see Chris use chopsticks. Oh the memories.

Next we hit the Pike Market, because tourism. We spent some time looking around there and checking out the ocean and beautiful views.

Afterwards we went to Seattle Brewing where we were picked up by the Road Dogs for a brewery tour. I love brewery tours; you get to go try different beers at different places and hang out with others who share the same passion as you. The guys we actually went out with had JUST got done climbing Mount Rainier. Impressive stuff.

Road Dogs took us out to the Fremont area to three different stops: Hale’s Ales, Outlander Brewery & Pub and Fremont Brewery. Not only was our tour guide a great guy, we had WAY more tasters than we’ve ever had on a brewery tour. It was pretty much a “Oh you want to try that one? One sec, let me get you that.”

Hale’s Ales and Fremont were both pretty good, but my favorite had to be Outlander Brewery, by far. Their outdoor porch area to chill was super nice, and you had hop vines hanging right above you. They also had an electric harp player. What.

I also got to meet the guy who brewed the beer. Before we went in, our tour guide said Outlander’s brewer looked like a viking. He wasn’t kidding. Super tall, but super cool guy who made REALLY good beer.

My favorite was a tie the Tiramasu Brown; slightly sweeter beer, but not too sweet and the Imperial Peanut Butter Stout; because peanut butter. They also had a very interesting Holy Basil Pale and Ancho Amber. Basil is interesting to drink.. But thankfully it wasn’t too strong of a basil taste. Ancho Amber is what it sounds like; slightly spicy start, but a smooth finish thanks to the amber ale.

To complete our Seattle tour, we got to see the troll under the bridge. I even got to do the Seattle thing to do when you get your picture taken with him. Fun fact: Did you know there is actually a real car buried underneath his hand?

Our third stop, Fremont Brewing & the Troll Under the Bridge