It’s hard to believe, but when Rachel Wood and Brandon Fralic came up with the idea to write a guidebook on hiking and beer just five years ago, Bellingham – as well as the entire state of Washington – only had half as many breweries as it does today. Incredulously, hiking [...]
I love chocolate porters, stouts, and brown ales, but most of the commercial examples I have had lack the chocolate depth I desire, and many seem to get their chocolaty flavor more from dark malts than actual chocolate additions. I get it, though. As a homebrewer, I understand how challenging it [...]
Oxymorons. What are some that you know well? Cruel kindness, disgustingly delicious, busy doing nothing. There are a few out there, but how about this one, coffee IPA. Two seemingly contradictory terms colliding in one unassuming can. Hotbox Coffee IPA comes to us courtesy of Longmont, Colorado's Oskar Blues Brewery. [...]
Let's do something a little different today and grab something a little vintage. It may be sacrilegious to willingly cellar and drink an IPA, but I assure you all that this beer is an IPA in very few ways. It is much more so a funky dry Brett beer, courtesy of the [...]
Happy Monday folks and welcome back for another Tap Trail Review. As it continues to warm, albeit slowly, I keep reaching for lighter and brighter offerings. Todays offering comes from Salt Lake City's Uinta Brewing. Back in Colorado I would find myself consistently reaching for their flagship Hop Nosh IPA, it [...]
Happy Spring folks! We're officially out of Winter, at least as far as the calendar is concerned. The rain and cold may continue, but I wanted to reach for something bright and vibrant in hops of encouraging the weather to do the same. Hopworks in Portland is going through a [...]
Oh, how I love me some fragrant and brilliant American wheat ale. Been missing this kind of stuff since the Dude Man at another famous B’ham brewery stopped production. Enter our friends at Menace Brewing! Menace Brewing’s American Wheat is beautifully brilliant and golden, made with 50% each wheat and pilsner [...]
Happy Monday! We've got a freshly released hoppy treat to sample today. Fort George has long been a staple in my fridge, their Three Way IPA is always a treat, Suicide Squeeze is one of their rotating IPA releases, along with Magnanimous, Overdub, and Fresh IPA. These beers are always heavily [...]
Happy Tuesday folks, we've got something a bit different today, a somewhat obscure style. Roggenbier is a traditional German style beer brewed with a very heavy portion of Rye in the malt bill and a strong yeast profile to balance the spicy rye. Pelican is nestled in Pacific City, OR [...]
Happy Monday folks, happy snowy Monday. I didn't quite anticipate the amount of snow we'd get today, but I am thankful that its visit doesn't appear to be a long one. I've taken a reach on todays selection, I know you're not supposed to read a book by its cover, but [...]
Good evening and welcome back to another installment of Tap Trail Reviews. We've got a fun one today and one that has brought a prediction to fruition. Firestone Walker has long been one of the greats and one of the pioneers in Barrel Aged Beers. Their Parabola is repeatedly ranked one [...]
Welcome back for another installment of Tap Trail Reviews. It was a wonderfully bright and warm day out today but we are still in the heart of winter, the prime season for dark roasty stouts. Today's choice was quite easy as I am a sucker for a good stout in [...]
Happy Snow Day! I thought I left Colorado to avoid the snow, but truth is I love the snow...In small doses. I can do a snow day here or there, just don't give me sustained temperatures below 10º with snow and ice that never seems to fade. A nice fresh [...]
Hello again all craft drinkers and advocates. We've got a fun one today that I was pleasantly surprised to see and find. We did a collaboration beer last week of Evil Twin & Westbrook's Imperial Mexican Biscotti Cake Break, which was quite good. Today we journey to the other side of [...]
We've got one hell of a collaboration brew on the table today. Each of the collaborators is best known for their dark beer efforts, particularly their Imperial Stouts. Evil Twin has long been a brewer without a brewery, Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø founded Evil Twin in 2010 and has quickly climbed the ranks [...]
It's here, Founders Brewing has officially launched in Washington state! The core beers have been out for about two weeks now, and the specialty beers are just now starting to reach the market, move quickly because they likely won't last too long. Perhaps the most famed Founders beer is what we've [...]
Welcome back for another installment of Tap Trail reviews. We've got an interesting collaboration beer here today. Collaborations are always a nice idea, especially if it affords you the opportunity to try a beer from a brewery you wouldn't normally be able to. There have been quite a few local breweries [...]
Happy New Year and welcome to 2017, I hope you all have enjoyed the holiday splendor with family, friends, and good beer, I know I did. We've just closed out a fantastic 2016, replete with numerous new beers, and plenty of old favorites making their newest vintage debuts. 2017 promises to [...]
Welcome back to Tap Trail Reviews, it has been another stellar year for beer. We are clearly still on an upward trajectory in both quality and quantity. There are so many superb beers out there that it is tough to taste even one percent of them in a year. Fortunately we've [...]
Welcome back to another installment of Tap Trail Reviews. We've taken some time off as we've been inundated with some awesome Fresh Hop beers. Some of my favorites were from Fremont, Fort George, Laurelwood, Skookum, and well, too many to name. This years crop was fantastic and the multitude of [...]
With all the new breweries opening in Bellingham and across the country, it’s easy to forget that this growth isn’t occurring in every city. Anacortes is one example, which, until recently, has had just one brewery for many years. The Anacortes Brewery (at The Rockfish Grill), which opened in 1994, is [...]
Fresh hop season is upon us and I could not be any happier. Fremont has been giving us delicious but limited fresh hop beers from their kick ass Cowiche Canyon hop program, where they partner with hop growers to grow small plots of organic delicious hops. For the first time this [...]
The latest book from Brewers Publications, Brewing Local: American-Grown Beer, examines the increased demand for locally brewed beers as well as beers made with “non-traditional” ingredients. Author Stan Hieronymus chronicles the history of how distinctly American beers came about, visits farm breweries, and forages for both plants and yeast to discover how brewers are [...]
Welcome back again to another sip on the Tap Trail Reviews. We've just conquered yet another epic Bellingham Beer Week. Replete with numerous stellar beers, familiar faces, new friends, and many memories to add to the logbook. To decompress and celebrate a bit I wanted to go for a beer [...]
Off Color has been cranking out delicious and off kilter beers for what seems like quite a while now. Everything from their delicious flagship farmhouse Apex Predator, to their famed Dino Smores Imperial Stout. Their reaches are far and their competencies are many. If you'll recall, we quite liked the base [...]
Welcome again to another Tap Trail review installment. It would appear imminent that Fresh Hop Season is upon us. The hops are being harvested and dumped into brews left and right. However, the first package on the scene this year comes from Two Beers. They are usually the first to the [...]
Ah the venerable Berlinerweisse, the approachable lightly tart German wheat beer. A delicious low alcohol treat on a hot summers day. I much prefer a clean and tangy Berlinerweisse to a sweet and sticky Radler on warm days like we've been having lately. These sour wheats do have a broad spectrum [...]
Welcome back folks, and welcome to another Tap Trail review of epic bottle proportions. I want to extend a warm welcome to Terry who is going to be gifting us with some hyper local reviews of the good stuff being cranked out by our local breweries, while I'll continue to focus on [...]
Welcome to Bellingham Brewed Reviews, where we review ONLY beers brewed in Bellingham. Opinions held here are not necessarily those of Tap Trail. This new brew from Fairhaven’s Stones Throw Brewery features a Single Malt and Single Hop, (thus the name SMaSH) in this case a Skagit Valley grown and [...]
Good morning to all, this installment of Tap Trail beer reviews is coming in extra early. I am heading out for a quick camping trip and didn't want to leave everyone hanging again. Also reading this before you do your beer shopping might inspire you to grab something new today, maybe [...]
Welcome back beer advocates, associates, achievers and admirers. It has been a little bit since I've posted a beer review, I have been traveling and haven't gotten to sit and write about many of the beers sampled. I wanted to take this in a different direction and post a review of [...]
Welcome back again beer lovers, sippers, fanatics, dabblers, and dynamos. This past weekend saw one of six Beer Camp festivals come to Seattle. Complete with 100+ breweries from across the country, hundreds of beers. Good times were had. The culmination of this has been made available to nearly everyone through the [...]
Welcome back metal mavens, sour sucklers, funk floggers, beer brothers, and welcome to the most recent installment of Tap Trail Reviews. We've got a fun one today, from a small brewery in Denver called TRVE (pronounced true). TRVE was one of my most memorable stops during my trip back home over [...]
I put little superstition or thought into Friday the 13th, it is just another day. However this most recent one, donned "Freaky Friday" by our beer brothers at Crux Fermentation Project brought us the release of something quite special and unexpected. My ears, and taste-buds always perk up when I see or hear [...]
Welcome back all you Tap Trail trekkers, ale admirers, IPA initiates, and Saison scourers. We've got a fun one for you today from the new guys on the block, State Street, that is. Structures has consistently released a nice array of beers since their inception late last year. They have enjoyed [...]
Welcome back again for another rendition of Tap Trail Reviews. We've got a fun one this week from Wander, who just celebrated their second anniversary on Saturday in epic fashion. Loads of incredible beer, people, and community made for a great party. Prior to their anniversary, Wander re-released bottles of their Wild [...]
Welcome back beer lovers from near and far, pundits of Porter and sippers of Scotches. I was fortunate enough to have spent the last week with dear friends in the UK, exploring many new beers and pubs, some which stuck out to me the most however, were from BrewDog. Our gracious hosts [...]
Welcome back masters of malt, guzzlers of Gueuze, sippers of Stout, to another installment of Tap Trail reviews. As much fun as it's been getting down on some spectacular beers from all over the land, we wanted to take another look back at the wonderful homegrown scene we've got here in [...]
Welcome back all you hop hawkers, bottle browsers, draft drinkers, and new release raiders. Friday saw the worldwide launch party of Melvin Bottles at Elizabeth Station. The house was packed and folks were clamoring to get their hands on the beloved 2X4 IPA for the first time ever in bottles. Up to this point [...]
Irish red ale, or simply red ale, is a top-fermented beer with an amber, red or copper hue, moderate strength (typically 4-6% ABV), a malt-forward profile, and a relatively low or moderate amount of hop character along with a low hop bitterness (typically in the 15- to 30-IBU range). Some versions [...]
Welcome dark beer brewers, lovers, consumers, and aficionados. We've got a special one today, a beer of epic proportions, this is perhaps the epitome of coffee beers. Sump is an Imperial Stout from Perennial, in St. Louis, MO, along the banks of the mighty Mississippi River. Established in September 2011, Perennial has [...]
Beer fans, connoisseurs, enthusiasts, and adventurers, welcome back, and welcome to an extra special day of beer. That's right, this year has granted us an extra day, a day that only arrives once every four years. It brings us opportunity and the possibility to explore more of the outdoors, more of the [...]
Welcome back beer geeks. I wanted to spring for something a bit unorthodox this week. We're still firmly planted in Stout season, and there have been many killer beers in that category but I wanted to go down a different path. What we've got here is an Omnipollo beer brewed domestically [...]
Welcome back craft beer fans, hop heads, barley wine braggadocios, and lager lovers. We've got a new entry from our friends at Reuben's tonight. Recent winners of Washington's Best Places for Beer > Brewer's Tap Room according to RateBeer. I've long been a fan of their beers, Crikey is a solid NW IPA, their [...]
Welcome again beer lovers. It was an easy pick this week, I needed to get away from some of the fruit accentuated IPA's that have been all the rage this year, and step into a delicious dark beer. There are a plethora of delicious dark beers out there though, OB TenFidy, [...]
Not long after Anheuser-Busch purchased Elysian Brewing early last year, I learned about an Elysian brewer named Steve Luke and his plan to open Cloudburst Brewing. At first I thought it was one of those ship-jumping scenarios we’ve seen before, but Luke’s plans had been in the works well before A-B’s [...]
Welcome back all, I thought today would be an excellent opportunity to showcase two new beers from Ballast Point. Recently acquired by Constellation Brands for $1B Ballast Point becomes their sole craft beer brand. Since that acquisition, Ballast Point has been on a bit of a war path with fruited beer releases, [...]
Welcome all dark beer lovers to another installment of Tap Trail reviews. I have been waiting quite some time for this little guy to be released. Off Color has been consistently climbing the ranks in my own personal favorites. They have killer, unique artwork, and brew consistently well made inconsistent and [...]
Welcome back for another week of reviews, there have been some remarkable releases lately, most notably Cognac Abyss, as much as I'd love to post a review for that beer, it won't be today. Perhaps we can revisit it at the six month mark or so when it really hits its stride, as [...]
Saison, which means season in French, is among the most varied and wide-ranging styles of beer. Interpretations vary greatly from simple to complex, and from light (in color and strength) to dark and strong. Historically, saisons can be traced back to the nineteenth century, when they were made in small farmhouse breweries [...]
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