It will run from noon to 9 PM today.  You’ll find lots of good Northwest brews and lots of good food too.

If you go, raise a glass for me.  I’ll be home nursing my sick bones.

Here is a list of this year’s featured breweries from the WBC website:

I like beer, and my reaction could be to join the call for boycotts of veiwing the wedding.  The cry of outrage is certainly getting loud today in the beer community.

But it’s not my wedding, so . . .

“You can read all about them on my blog.”

Allow me to sail off course for a little bit.  I’m not fond of crowds.  I like peace and quiet, and low lighting.  A cold, well-crafted beer is The Great Equalizer for most occasions where there are crowds and noise.  It’s the Chuck E. Cheese Effect.  I cringe when one of the kids say they want a birthday at Chuck E. Cheese.  It’s noisy.  It’s crowded and chaotic, increasing the desire for a cold one. 

This is exactly why Charlie the Rat sells beer by the glass in The House of Noise and Soiled Huggies. 

Chuck E. Cheese sells Big Three beer.  Sure, I’ll have one.  Maybe two if the party runs long.  Its Big Three beer (or Big Two beer those who wish for purity in their business slang), but I’m in a Chuck E. Cheese with one hundred and fifty kids, dozens of frantic parents trying to keep track of them all, thousands of those red tickets the games spit out, hundreds of thousands of flashing lights and the music.  Dear Lord, the music. 

If that’s all that’s available, bet your ass I’m having a Bud Light. 

I feel this way about retail and grocery stores as well.  Any store actually.  Even malls.  One December in my early twenties, two friends and I decided to go buy Christmas gifts for our mothers at North Town, a mall in Spokane, Washington.  It had recently been remodeled with what passed for a pizzeria on the lower level – along with being a beer snob, I’m a pizza snob too – New York style, not Chicago, thank you.  We went there first and bought a pitcher of beer and enjoyed good conversation and televised sports before we trudged upstairs to the chaos of holiday commerce. 

I believe that short time, enjoying a beer with good friends, helped me survive the day.  I don’t remember what I got my mother (sorry Mom!) but I will always remember that time.

I’ve never been to a Whole Foods, and to my knowledge there isn’t one in the Inland Northwest, but I’m sure it’s a very relaxing place.  But it’s still shopping, weaving in and out of aisles and looking for specific items.  Not for me. 

Whole Foods opening bars in the stores accomplishes a few things.  First, it gives a showcase for craft beer and wines that sell elsewhere in the store.  This is very good for the local craft brewer.  Second, if bars are where restaurants make their money, then this should also translate into good news for Whole Foods.  Third, it gives a place for wives to deposit their glum husbands for twenty minutes or so, without hearing “So, is that everything?  Are we done yet?” 

I’m sure my wife wishes our local Safeway would take a page out of the Whole Foods playbook.

Rounding out the top three are Sierra Nevada Brewing Company out of Chico, California and New Belgium Brewing Company out of Fort Collins, Colorado. 

Here are some highlights from the list:

5th Deschutes Brewery, Bend, OR

9th Harpoon Brewery, Boston, MA

11th Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, Milton, DE

12th Alaskan Brewing and Bottling Co., Juneau, AK

16th Brooklyn Brewery, Brooklyn, NY

18th Full Sail Brewing Co., Hood River, OR

19th Shipyard Brewing Co., Portland, ME

23rd Anchor Brewing Co., San Francisco, CA

24th Kona Brewery LLC, Kailua-Kona, HI

34th BridgePort Brewing Co., Portland, OR

39th Big Sky Brewing Co., Missoula, MT

41st Mac and Jack’s Brewery, Redmond, WA

50th Ninkasi Brewing Co., Eugene, OR

Congratulations to all named on the Brewers Association list.  Keep up the good work.

 And with the flirty wink at the end, could Mabel have been an early incarnation of using women’s sexuality as a tool for selling beer?  Swedish bikini team anyone?

I’ll almost bet that clip will be the most popular one I’ve ever posted on this blog.

When one pours a Fire Rock, the first thing that stands out is the fantastic color.  Many good chefs say that people “eat with their eyes” first.  I absolutely believe the same is true with what we drink.

Most beers range from the watered-down light yellow of commercial beers (I once poured a bottle of Coors Light into a glass and could see details in the rug as I looked through the top) to the dark chocolate color of a good stout.  But beer color rarely strays far from its brown base, only shifting in varying degrees. 

Fire Rock, a 6.0% pale ale from the Kona Brewing Company, delves into earthy red, copper-like hues.  Poured into my Eastern Washington University glass mug, the dense, foamy head was off-white, with a hint of coppery brown.  Unfortunately, the picture on Kona’s website doesn’t do the color justice.

Fire Rock also showed a very slight unfiltered look to it with a hint of dark cloudiness.  That’s what I like.  Good flavor isn’t translucent and taste isn’t invisible. 

The Kona Brewing Company states that the copper color comes from “the unique blend of specialty roasted malts.”  They don’t say what that blend is.  If Kona intended to be secretive, it’s a smart move with the prevalence of clone recipes in the homebrew marketplace nowadays.  I can taste why some home brewers would want this one. 

The roasted malts mixed with Galena, Cascade, and Mt. Hood hops results in a balanced mixture of the bitter and sweet, enhanced by Fire Rock’s advertised citrus, floral aroma.  Fire Rock tasted crisp and refreshing without the feel of a lighter beer.  It’s full of flavor without being overwhelming. 

I recommend it for any outdoor grilling event, heavy on the pork.

It’s on the Brew York, NewYork website.

“Brooklyn Genuine Draft . . . 95 calories.”  Now that’s funny stuff!

Hope you had a happy April Fool’s Day.  I know I did.

I had a lot of trouble reconciling my own conflicting opinions about New Belgium’s Fat Tire.  Fat Tire, a 5.2% amber ale, was among my first forays into craft beer several years ago.  I enjoyed it, and still do if the conditions are right. 

There are certain expectations that come from how a beer is served.  Draft beer or a beer poured from a bottle into a glass will taste better than the same beer consumed directly from a bottle, which will taste better than the same beer from a can.  These differences in quality are slight, but still noticeable.   

I sampled Fat Tire directly from the bottle recently and came away very disappointed.  The beer gave off the familiar bready aroma as advertised on the side of the bottle, and the initial taste had some of that good bitter bite I remembered.  Fat Tire also produced a sweet aftertaste reminiscent of New Belgium’s 2 Below. 

But in between the two tastes there was a long pause where nothing happened.  It was almost flavorless and watery, but there was also a very subtle, distant metallic taste. 

Say it ain’t so.  I didn’t like Fat Tire as much as I used to.  I waited several days before sampling another, wrestling with my flip-flop.  Maybe I had gotten a bad batch? 

After a break, I followed New Belgium’s recommended serving suggestions and drank Fat Tire from a glass at about 45 degrees Fahrenheit.  Not bad, not bad at all.  The second sampling remained consistent in its intense flavors throughout, with no uneventful pause in between the bitter and the sweet.  Served in a glass, the malty flavors were also more pronounced. 

My beef – and it’s a big one – with Fat Tire is philosophical.  Of course, expectations are that when a beer flows from tap or bottle, the flavor will peak with the carbonation release.  But flavor is relatively consistent no matter how a beer arrives at one’s table.  These different serving mediums usually bring out only moderate variances in flavor.   So why does Fat Tire have the wide, Grand Canyon-like gap of quality between the two serving styles? 

Fat Tire is a good beer, but not great.  It’s somewhat bland unless a server follows the optimal serving suggestion.  That’s disappointing in a beer that one time was in my top three picks when asked “What’ll you have?”

I’ve read tham.  Well written and thoughtful articles.  But the deal is still sad news to me.