January 2018

Month

Tue
30 ^th

My Top 10 Beers of 2017

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2017 was a shitty year in many ways but it was a good year for beer and below I have listed my top ten. Please note, that these are the top beers I drank in 2017, they didn’t necessarily debut in 2017. Also, these do not appear in any particular order (i.e. they are not ranked) and come primarily from the Pacific Northwest since that’s where I live and the beers I have access to.

Matryoshka With Cocoa Nibs & Raspberries by Fort George Brewery (Astoria, OR): This is the dessert beer to end all dessert beers. I have loved Fort George for a long time (their Vortex IPA is a constant contender for my favorite IPA) but this beer is next level. If you love chocolate with raspberry find a bottle of this-you will not be disappointed.

Bourbon Barrel Aged Noggin Floggin by Hopworks Urban Brewery (Portland, OR): Bourbon is my favorite liquor and as such I have a serious predilection toward bourbon barrel ages beers. I sampled this one evening in December at Hopworks’ Vancouver location and the beer list described it thusly: “2009 BA Noggin Floggin – Our Organic Noggin Floggin Barleywine Aged For 7 Years In Heaven Hill Bourbon Barrels Until Absolute Perfection Was Achieved.” An accurate description indeed. This beer is delicious, perfection even, but it is a lot. It comes in a snifter and I would be very impressed by the person who could drink more than one.

Sun Made Cranberry by Oakshire Brewing (Eugene, OR): Of the northwest breweries who have a Berliner Weisse as one of their core brands, Oakshire’s are my favorites. Their Berliner Weisses are on a seasonal rotation, and last years included Raspberry, Cucumber, Blackberry, and Cranberry varieties. I have enjoyed them all but I am including the Cranberry as it was their fall release and was a nice break from the usual fall seasonal one sees. And it you live in the PNW and see a six pack of Oakshire Sun Made next to 10 Barrel’s Crush, pick the Oakshire.

Tue
16 ^th

Hop Trip: Washington

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For this inaugural Hop Trip I chose the land of hops and one of my former home states: Washington. I also chose it because I was already going for a different reason which we’ll get to in a little bit. As Washington is a large state this Hop Trip focuses on three specific locations and a couple of stops in between. These locations include Seattle, Orcas Island, and Port Townsend.

Seattle

September 15^th 2017

Ah Seattle, a beautiful city that I have a rather complicated relationship with. I lived in Seattle for about three years between 2007 and 2010 while obtaining my master’s degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Washington. I had some good times and some not so great times during those years and I learned that while Seattle is great to visit I did not want to live there. Seattle has many downsides (traffic, gloomy weather, expensive as shit) but one if its big upsides is its beer and as such there is not really a better place to begin a Washington Hop Trip. For this trip I focused primarily on northwestern neighborhoods of Seattle, including Magnolia, Ballard, and Greenwood.

Our first stop was Figurehead Brewing in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle. I lived in Magnolia when I lived in Seattle and since I left a couple of craft breweries have popped up in the industrial area of this neighborhood near the Fisherman’s Terminal (where you can sometimes spot the boat from Deadliest Catch). Figurehead is very new on Seattle’s craft scene, founded in 2016 by three homebrewers and utilizes a 7 BBL brewhouse that feed three 7 BBL uni-tanks. Their beers tend to be English and Belgian inspired but there was a least one NW style IPA on tap. The tap room has a fisherman’s wharf vibe and a small patio out front and appears to be both kid and pet friendly (especially since I saw someone’s dog puke all over the concrete floor in front of the bar). Vomit aside, Figurehead has a nice ambiance and good beer. I sampled the Golden Delicious Blonde Ale and the Belgian Bitter, both of which I enjoyed (although the Belgian was better).

Figurehead Brewing Golden Delicious Blonde Ale

Tue
16 ^th

My Craft Beer Story: Alex Bittner

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Name: Alex Bittner

Title: Blogger @ HopHellion.com & Data Analyst @ GP Analytics

Favorite Beer Style: I love them all but right now I’m really into farmhouses and saisons.

Fun Fact: I write young adult fantasy novels and I recently publishing my first, Daughter of the Mara.

Beer Snob Scale (1 to 10, I’ll drink whatever to Cicerone): I’d probably put myself at about a 7.

So here’s the thing: I didn’t always like beer. That may sound odd coming from a self-proclaimed beer aficionado but it’s true. My first real drink was a Bacardi and Pepsi while hanging out with friends one night during my senior year of high school. This drink led to several more of the same and inevitably to my first hangover. Not an altogether pleasant memory but there you have it. From there I partook in such girly nonsense such as wine coolers (Bartles & Jaymes, anyone?) and had a few not very nice encounters with a little drink called the Long Island Iced Tea.

Beer didn’t really come into my purview at all until my third year of college when I spent a semester in London. It was there, in one of my favorite cities on the planet, that I first became truly acquainted with that drink we call beer. I was already an Anglophile so the magnetic pull that the British pub had on me didn’t come as a big surprise. I’d had a Guinness or two in my time so I started there. From there I slowly expanded to Fuller’s and Young’s (I frequented Founder’s Arms in Southwark while I was living there) and drank whatever other cheap British beers I could get my hands on.