A friend of mine who lives in Seattle will be visiting me over Christmas. He wanted to know what beers to bring me. Actually, he asked for a list of all the beers I’ve tried so he could get me something not on the list. After I stopped laughing at him, I suggested that he look for special releases and such. But I thought I’d try another resource.
OK, if you were going to get me a mixed case of beer, what would you get me from the PNW? We get Rogue and some of the bigger breweries but not a huge selection.
I’d recommend these, they should be easy enough to find at Bottleworks or Malt and Vine, whichever is closer to where he lives/works:
Big Time - Old Wooly (released Dec 1, you have to get it at the brewery)
Hair of the Dog - Doggie Claws or other beers
Elysian - Bifrost is available, others are good too
Midnight Sun, any that you haven’t had and want to try
Pike - I really like the XXXXX Stout among others
And I think it would be appropriate if he brought you some beers from Ninkasi
Hair of the Dog, of course, and Alaskan Smoked Porter, maybe something from Hales, Bridgeport or Deschuttes. It would be fun to have him bring all the special release beers.
I like that one too, but when you say hit or miss . . . I haven’t had a bad beer from them, have you? They’re not all my favorite recipes, but they’re technically fine. :-\
There were a few big releases in Oregon this last weekend including Pelican’s Mother of All Storms and Hair of the Dog Matt, so if he was a dedicated beer geek he could have done a big road trip for you.
Dissident by Deschutes is fantastic and should be making it to Seattle very shortly. It will probably sell out pretty quickly so he might need to watch for it and snag it quickly. Jubelale is a good winter beer by Deschutes and is easy to find.
We also get Russian River beers, and I’ve seen Temptation at Whole Foods recently.
If growlers are an option, he could visit Black Raven in Redmond and pick up one of their limited release beers.
Malt and Vine in Redmond has a good representation of their inventory on their website, so you could take a look at that and see if there is something that interests you:
I really hate to say it, since they’re good friends, but yeah, I’ve had some technically REALLY bad beers from them at times. It kinda depends om what stage the company is at…they go through phases where production can’t keep up with demand, so they rush the beers. Then they expand and catch up again. I once got a keg of Total Domination that had so much diacetyl that my wife even noticed that something was wrong.
