| So here we are in 2008, a significant
year and special anniversary for the Celebrator Beer News,
something that comes along only every 10 years. Yep, I started
this column back in 1998, and we’re coming up on 10 years
of ... er, wait, sorry, I meant the CBN’s own 20th anniversary,
of course. I’ve been involved for just half that time
but have been a reader since nearly the beginning. I still have
a few yellowing copies of the old tabloid-format paper in a
box somewhere. The Celebrator has followed the craft brewing
industry since its first heady days of growth, right through
the flattening of the late 1990s and on through the revived
growth in recent years.
Fast-forward to now, and times are getting interesting. Mac
& Jack’s Brewery in Redmond, Wash., has decided
to stop brewing its IPA, a relatively recent addition to its
beer line. The brewer’s flagship product, African Amber,
does well in Seattle-area restaurants and pubs, and this may
be just one of many ways brewers will be coping with the current
and ongoing hop shortage.
In more cheerful news, Elysian Fields, the third and largest
of Seattle’s Elysian brewpub group, really is a brewpub
now, having put its own kettle to the fire to produce a range
of in-house ales. The first beers were added to the tap lineup
just before the end of 2007. Elysian also did well at last
December’s Winter Beer Fest.
| As consumers, the best we can do is be supportive with
our beer-drinking dollars and choose breweries that work
hard to satisfy our tastes. |
Brouwer’s Café’s sixth annual Hard Liver
Barleywine Festival will take place on March 15. Coming a
month after the Toronado’s near-legendary Barleywine
Festival in San Francisco, Brouwer’s festival has really
come into its own, featuring an extraordinary lineup of more
than 50 barley wines on draught from across the Pacific Northwest
and elsewhere. Keep up-to-date at hardliver.com for more.
For Washington state’s beer lovers, one of my all-time
favorite brewfests comes up on March 22, when the 2008 Washington
Cask Beer Festival returns to the Seattle Center Fisher Pavilion.
The Cask Beer Festival has now become well-established, and
this year’s edition will be the perfect spring season
kickoff. Last December’s Winter Beer Festival, the first
to be held over two days to cope with popular demand, was
well-attended, and this year’s Cask Beer Festival promises
to be an early sellout.
The 2007 Winter Beer Festival, by the way, was well-attended
for a very good reason: It was simply the best ever for the
choice and quality of beers offered. This showed in the list
of People’s Choice winners, with Ellensburg’s
Iron Horse Brewery winning first place for its Black Belgian
beer, Elysian Brewing taking second for its Bye-Bye Frost,
and tiny newcomer Schooner Exact nicking third for its Hoppy
Holiday Winter Ale. To see Elysian Brewing in a list of best-of
winners is no surprise, but Iron Horse changed hands last
year, and Schooner Exact is just one year old, brewing commercially
on a tiny half-barrel system. Iron Horse is stretching out
in new directions with a couple of Belgian-inspired brews,
and Schooner Exact faces the dilemma of meeting demand in
2008 during times that promise to be challenging for all brewers.
Just a couple of weeks after the Winter Beer Festival, the
Kerstbier (Christmas Beer) Festival in Essen, Belgium, provided
an interesting contrast in organization and layout. Washington’s
Winter Beer Festival is staffed primarily by brewers who pour
their own beers at their own stands, with attendees visiting
each stand to fill up their plastic tasting cups; Kerstbier
is staffed by members of a local beer consumers’ association,
so attendees go to a big central serving area to fill up their
tasting glasses (no plastic here). The Winter Beer Festival
provided relatively few places to sit and relax due to venue
size constraints, but most attendees were content to wander
from stand to stand to sample the winter specialty beers on
offer.
The Kerstbier Festival venue provided plenty of space for
seating in a big community hall with a sizeable parking lot
out front. Whatever the contrasts, both venues were abuzz
with happy imbibers basking in the pleasant glow of their
respective regions’ winter specialty brews.
As beer-savvy consumers in 2008, the best we can do is to
be supportive with our beer-drinking dollars and continue
to choose the breweries that work hard to satisfy our ever-more-discerning
tastes. Meanwhile, I’ll still be found at my local,
the Beveridge Place Pub, which will most likely be relocated
to new digs by the time this issue of the Celebrator
hits the streets. |
