Chill Out in Style: What to Wear to the Great Alaska Craft Brew and Barley Wine Festival in Anchorage

It’s time for the Great Alaska Craft Brew and Barleywine festival here in Anchorage, Alaska!  This annual event happens in the dead of winter every year. Well…every year, unless we happen to be having a pandemic.  In our defense, even the Germans cancelled Oktoberfest that year. Fortunately, now that the ‘Ronassance is over we are back on track to have the barleywine-guzzling, beer-swigging, bagpipe-marching, hootenanny drunkfest that is the GABBF.  

I want to talk about what is appropriate to wear to the this shindig.  First off, dress warm! Today we woke up to -19F degrees outside, here in Anchorage, and that is not a pleasant temperature to be wearing skimpy dresses and no coats. Downright dangerous when waiting curbside for a ride home! Fortunately, there is a coat check at the event, so you can stash your outerwear and emerge from your parka to show off the good looking attire underneath.  Men and women probably want to wear different things, although I am sure Johnathan Van Ness would totally rock a gorgeous beer themed dress to the fest. Beer leggings are probably more for gals than for guys. Lederhosen are traditionally dude wear, and if you have a pair, now is a good time to show off your German heritage.  Of course brewery gear is a  great idea. T-shirts, sweatshirts, ball caps, beanies, brewer button down shirts, and, although most people won’t see it unless you get really really drunk, brewery brand underwear. Yes, Ted at Turnagain Brewing, you should wear your special Turnagain Brewing boxer shorts.  Clark Pelz from Cynosure Brewing wears an elaborate western button up shirt with a hop pattern embroidered on it, he looks very stylish in it.

If you wonder why the rubber chicken is a GABBF staple, then you can read about it here in my previous blogpost. The rubber chicken necklaces are a gift from Phil Farrell, a long time attendant, and BJCP beer judge at the fest.  Pretzel necklaces serve two functions: they look cool and keep with the German vibe, but also feed the hungry beer drinker.  It is important to eat a lot of food when imbibing in as much beer as you probably will drink at this event.  I suggest preloading with greasy, heavy foods that coat your stomach, so you won’t get the spins before the session is over. 

We offer a lot of my artwork on beer themed clothing at our RedBubble site.  We also have two kinds of beer-themed socks available at our booth. Did I mention I will be there selling my art? Have a drink, or three then stop by and visit me! I want to see your cool beer apparel. There just ain’t nothing quite as cool as seeing someone slurping the suds while wearing cool beer duds.  So grab your pretzel necklace, eat some fries, get on down at Dena’ina Center for the big beer and barleywine festival!!!  

How to Mail Beer

by Maria Benner

If you are a homebrewer, you may want to mail your beer to share it with close friends, or family who live far away. Or maybe you are a beer nerd who loves to try new releases from other States, and you have trading buddies. There are many reasons why people want to mail beer, and especially during the holidays, because beer is the best gift! So, here is some information about how to mail beer successfully.

Legality of Mailing Beer

Basically, it’s illegal for consumers to mail beer to other consumers. You are breaking the law, so if you decide to mail beer, you’re doing so at your own risk. There are many laws pertaining to various destinations: intrastate, interstate, international, etc. Here is a picture of a letter from the Enforcement Unit Supervisor for the Alaska Alcohol Beverage Control Board, stating that Alaska does not regulate alcoholic beverages imported into the state for personal consumption and not for resale.

UPS: Shippers must possess a valid retailer or brewery license in their home states, and where applicable obtain a license or permit in the destination state. All beer shippers must enter into a UPS Agreement for Approved Beer Shippers.

FedEx: Individuals (consumers) cannot ship alcohol via FedEx. Businesses that hold appropriate alcohol licenses and are enrolled in the FedEx alcohol shipping program may ship to their customers in select states or countries.

USPS: Completely illegal.

How to Pack the Beer

If no one finds out what’s in your box, then are you really breaking the law? Well, yes, but you better hope no one finds out. One way for everyone to find out is if beer starts leaking out of your box. Oops! To prevent your bottles/cans from breaking, I recommend following these steps:

• Pack the beer as if you are mailing raw eggs. Do not take any chances. If your box leaks, the shipping company will immediately throw it away, and the liquid could also damage other peoples’ shipments. Even worse, you may have to face consequences for breaking laws.
  • Use a brand new, sturdy box. If possible, double up boxes.
  • Line the box with bubble wrap.
  • Wrap each beer in several layers of bubble wrap. Obviously, glass is more fragile, and the bottle cap could be knocked off, so take extra care wrapping glass bottles. Tape the bubble wrap so it does not come unwrapped.
  • Place each beer in it’s own Ziploc bag, and seal it. This will prevent leakage if the bottle/can breaks.
  • Then put all the beers in a big plastic bag, place that bag in your box, and tape the bag shut.
  • If there is any empty space in the box, fill it with packing paper, cardboard, bubble wrap, whatever. As long as there is no space for the bottles/cans to move.
  • Seal the box with package sealing tape. Seal all the folds, gaps, corners, etc. Make sure it’s bomb-proof.
  • Put a note inside the box that says “liquid yeast samples”.

Mailing Your Box

Choose the most affordable carrier to ship your box. Mail it as early as possible in the week, so it doesn’t end up in a warehouse during the weekend, or a holiday. Make sure the recipient has the tracking information, so they can receive the box as soon as possible. You don’t want it sitting out in the heat too long. Opt for ground shipping when available, to minimize the chances of bottle caps failing due to pressure changes in airplanes. If anyone asks what’s in the box, say it’s jam, bbq sauce, anything but beer. I know that’s lying, but everyone does it, so that makes it okay, right? Yikes.

Good luck! I hope your box arrives at its destination safely! In the meantime, lobby your lawmakers to legalize mailing beer, so we can all enjoy it no matter where we live!

Cheers!

Why the Great Northern Brewers Club is the Best Club!

Alaskans love beer, and we have some pretty great ales, lagers and barley-wine here in the Greatland!  Alaska Beer Week is this week, culminating in the Alaska Craft Brew & Barley Wine Festival on Friday and Saturday. I am lucky enough to get to vend my beer art at this event, and I hope to see you there. You probably already know that during Alaska Beer Week, Alaska hosts beer events at restaurants, bars and brewery tasting rooms. What you probably didn’t know is that the best beer event is hosted at 49th State Brewing by the Great Northern Brewers Club.

The GNBC is a homebrew club in Anchorage Alaska, and was founded in 1980.  It is hard to believe this club is as old as I am! The GNBC mission statement is: to educate people about beer, beer tasting, beer judging, and brewing techniques based on shared knowledge and experience. To engage in enjoyable social activities focused on home-brewing as a common foundation. To promote the hobby and enjoyment of home-brewing. To promote the responsible use of alcoholic beverages.  

The best part about the club is the January monthly meeting during Alaska Beer Week, which is also known as the “Industry Meeting.”  This meeting is a mini beerfest in itself, held at the theater at 49th State Brewing.  A keynote speaker is invited to speak, and I’ve listened to some great brewers from famous commercial breweries in the past including: Ken Grossman (Sierra Nevada), Greg Koch (Stone Brewing), Jeff Lebesch & Kim Jordan (New Belgium Brewing), Geoff Larson (Alaskan Brewing), Jerry Vietz (Unibroue), John Maier (Rogue Ales), and many others.  There are a lot of complimentary commercial and home-brewed samples, enough that you should arrange transport other than driving yourself, since you will not be legal to drive after this event.  There’s also a great spread of food from the kitchen at 49th State Brewing.  Not to mention, a great amount of door prizes that are available if you donate to the club for drawing tickets.  Overall, I like this event more than the beer festival itself, because you get to find out why people are wearing chicken necklaces at the beer festival (Phil the chicken guy is almost always in attendance), and you will get to meet the brewers from around the State if you are a social person. 

There are a number of reasons to join this club, especially if you love making and drinking beer, mead, cider and other fermented alcoholic beverages. First, you get 10% off at La Bodega, and 10% off at ingredients at Arctic Brewing Supply. Then there’s the December meeting, which is a holiday party that is almost as good as the January meeting. There is a campout in the summer with free camping spots at an amazing campground (it changes yearly). The reasons keep going. You can sign up to become a certified BJCP judge (Beer Judge Certification Program), and participate in the numerous home-brew contests throughout the year. And lastly, this is a great group of people that like to have fun and be social! It was tough through the pandemic, but we survived by drinking socially over Zoom, although it wasn’t the same!  We are back, baby! Get your membership and come on down to hang out at 49th State with one of the funnest clubs in Alaska! 

Cheers to beers and the GNBC! 

Here are some photos from previous January industry meetings: Jerry Vietz from Unibroue with Maria, beard twinsies with John Maier from Rogue Ales, and a photo of the meeting hall.

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Drinking on the Southside

Yesterday was a great day to go to the south-side of town to grab a beer at Midnight Sun Brewing and  Turnagain Brewing. My art show is up at MSBC for the month of January, and yesterday the brewery busted out dusty bottles of Sloth Belgian-style Imperial Stout from 2017! For those in the know, Sloth is one of the best beers MSBC has ever made. A Russian imperial stout that was originally brewed as part of the Seven Deadly Sins series in 2007. The brewery hasn’t brewed it since 2017! Sloth has a rating of 95 on Beer Advocate and is rated as the 90th best Russian Imperial Stout in the United States!  It is big, bold, dark, black, and has a nice Belgian yeast note to it. If there is any left on draft today, I would get on down there and get a glass.  If not, you can always find something noteworthy from the big offerings from MSBC.  I made this painting of Sloth in 2016 and it immediately sold. Limited edition prints are available at my Etsy shop. If you prefer an original oil painting, rather than a print, I can paint a custom one for you.

A 6oz pour of Sloth Belgian-style Imperial Stout

Meanwhile, right down the street, an amazing sour beer called Solera Eclipse was released today at Turnagain Brewing!  Since Maria and I are in the Mug Club at Turnagain, we had the opportunity to stop by to get first dibs on this amazing beer yesterday.  It is a pineapple and blueberry sour that originally was brewed in summer 2021 and was released in early November 2021.  Every year there is a contest called the Turnagain Tartside Challenge, and Anchorage home-brewers come by Turnagain Brewing to get a gallon of mostly fermented sour wort from the Solera. The idea is to flavor, finish, and package the wort to make a delicious beer. In 2021 I was the winner of this contest with the concept behind Solera Eclipse. Ted Rosenzweig (owner and brewer at Turnagain Brewing) and I conferred, and I designed a label, and Ted packaged the beer for individual bottle sales. It has to be one of the tastiest sour beers I have ever had, and today it is released again. At $7 for a 12oz pour or $7 for 12oz bottles to go, it is a good deal. My original recipe called for a whole pineapple and 1lb of blueberries per gallon!  Little to say, the fruit in this beer is very expensive, and I am unsure how much profit can be made when using so much fruit here in Alaska! I have included a picture of Ted stealing a sample from the barrel on Halloween in 2021.  I wanted to show off my original label and bottle design, because the packaging is different this year.  The pineapple brings the flavor, and the blueberries bring some aroma, and a great color!  

Anchorage is a great beer drinking town and I hope you brave the cold to get out to one of our lovely brewery destinations to revere our beer! Cheers to beers brewed in the North! 

Brewing Beer with Alaskan Ingredients

I am a home-brewer, and I live in Alaska. The majority of beer ingredients are not found in Alaska. Although barley does grow in Alaska, no one malts it here on a large commercial scale. Hops do not really grow well in Alaska, they don’t seem to flower before they wilt, due to our extreme daylight in summer and cold fall season. Yeast is totally available in Alaska.  I have harvested yeast in my backyard successfully. It is a wild ingredient and the outcome can vary wildly. We have a lot of water in Alaska, and that is probably the most important ingredient in beer. You can substitute all kinds of other things, but if you don’t have water, you can’t make beer. We have plentiful soft water in Alaska, that is similar to the water found in the southern part of Germany. It is easy to work with, and can be manipulated to produce water chemistry similar to anywhere in the world. This is probably why beer from Alaska is some of the best to be found anywhere. 

The most classic Alaskan ingredient is spruce tips — you can find this in commercial examples like Alaskan Winter Ale, and Sprucesplosion by 49th State Brewing.  Spruce tips have been used since Captain Cook sailed to Alaska in 1778. His crew made malt extract beer and used spruce tips as a flavoring and enriching ingredient. Spruce tips are high in vitamin C, so the beer prevented Cook’s crew from getting scurvy.  Another interesting ingredient used by Alaskan commercial breweries is rhubarb.  Turnagain Brewing’s, Rhu Framb, and Girdwood Brewing’s, Rhu Hefner, are both excellent examples. There are a lot of commercial blueberry beers made in Alaska: Turnagain uses it frequently, Glacier BrewHouse makes a blueberry IPA, and Matanuska Brewing makes a blueberry beer. My favorite blueberry beer is Anchorage Brewing’s Experiment, a sour blueberry beer. Raspberry is often used to make a delicious fruity beer, not just in Alaska, but it has traditionally been used in Belgium to make Framboise.  Glacier Brewhouse makes a raspberry wheat, and Turnagain makes a beer called Framb Was.  Basically, you can put anything you want into a beer to create unique and interesting flavors. 

This year I made a 10 gallon batch of pale ale, around 5.5% ABV, and pretty basic. It is lightly hopped with Mosaic and Citrus hops, and the base recipe is a fairly sweet ale. I took five gallons and dry-hopped it with Azacca hops and put it on draft in my kegerator. The other five gallons I racked into five one-gallon jugs, and then flavored each one differently.  I put blueberries in one, lingonberries in another, gooseberries in a third, raspberry in the fourth, and to the last one I added a lot of dried yarrow flowers. I pureed all the fruit, which was frozen first, with an immersion blender.  I let them age another week before I bottled all five batches.  I’m waiting two weeks to try them, and I hope they are as delicious as the beers I brewed last year. Maybe next year I will use wild Alaskan yeast, but this year I used American ale yeast, which is a go-to in our home-brewery.

Cheers to Alaska! Cheers to Alaskan ingredients! Cheers to Alaskan beers!

Drinking and Reviewing NA Beer during Sober October, Part 2

In my last blog post I explained why I’m currently drinking NA beers, and reviewed three that I had tried so far. So, today I’ll be reviewing the rest.

We are in week 3 of sober October, and I have to say that we’ve been pretty good. I didn’t have any beer at the Alaska Craft Brew Festival, but I did have some at the Great Northern Brewers Club meeting.  Why would I go to a beer festival when I’m not drinking? I had a booth at the event to sell my beer art. Anyway, I am back on track and have just over a week left, and intend to finish strong.  It’s been great — I feel good, physically, and about myself too. I always tell people if they slip up on a detox from drinking to take heart and get back on the wagon. Your body won’t even notice the day you cheated on your discipline, but going back to old, bad habits is definitely going to hit you in the liver.  

So, I left off last time talking about Non-Alcoholic, or NA beer options.  I went into La Bodega and bought some beers to review: Athletic Light, Bitburger 0.0, Weihenstephaner Non-Alcoholic, Athletic Upside Dawn Golden, and Samuel Adams Just the Haze Non-Alcoholic Hazy IPA. 

I can’t recommend the Athletic brand, all three I’ve tried have that bad flavor of cooked alcohol in the beer.  And same with the Bitburger 0.0.  I was surprised, as Germans love their NA beers, and I would have thought Bitburger would have come through for me. I wanted something crisp and clean, but the beer Bitburger offered can’t hold up to the alcohol removal process.  I wonder why more breweries even try to make a beer and then remove the alcohol. Why not just make a malt and hop flavored soda? It seems to me that a beer-flavored drink would be easier to make than removing the alcohol.  The Russians have been enjoying Kvas for hundreds of years, and it has very little alcohol to begin with. I actually like drinking carbonated fruit juice beverages like IZZE and Blue Monkey more than an NA beer.  I normally cut them with sparkling water to extend the goodness, and to tone down the super sweet flavor of straight juice. 

The NA beers I can recommend are the Weihenstephaner, and the Sam Adams Just the Haze.  Germany comes through with the Weihenstephaner, it is a hefeweizen style of brew and has that estery quality that a good German weissbier should have.  Hazy and golden yellow with an aroma of cloves and banana. The mouthfeel is full bodied like a hefe, and the flavor is just like the aroma. If you love German wheat beers and can’t drink alcohol, this NA beer is a good choice for you. 

The Sam Adams not only won Gold at GABF for NA beer this year, it is actually really good! Also hazy and yellow, this NA beer provides a nice aroma of clean aroma hops.  The mouthfeel is slightly more watery than I would have liked, but the flavor makes up for it. They must have an expensive machine for taking the alcohol out of the beer, because if I didn’t know any better, I would call it a session IPA.  And session you can, since it has less than .05% alcohol content.  You would have to drink 100 of them to have the same alcohol that is in a regular beer.

Cheers to your health, your mind and your body! 

Drinking and Reviewing NA Beer during Sober October

Today is day five of sober October, yeah I started a day late.  I’m doing well, and haven’t had a sip of alcohol since Saturday. The first time I took a whole month off from drinking was in 2012 in McCarthy, Alaska. There is an event at the Golden Saloon that happens at the end of every season called Last Man Standing, which is a party the bar throws for the whole town to get rid of all perishables, such as food, beer, soft drinks, and NA beer.  Everything is free! In 2012 the bar shut down later than usual, in mid-October, and so that was the first time I ever drank non-alcoholic beer. At the time, my options were St. Pauli Girl NA, and O’Doul’s. I tried both. The O’doul’s was alright, it had a bit of a sweet and sour, grainy flavor and not much hops, but I had a couple at the party.  The St. Pauli Girl NA was definitely worse. The owner had a hard time getting people to drink the NA beer, so he gave me a 12-pack to take to my cabin.  I drank one every night, until they were gone.

Today, I am in Anchorage, and I thought some NA beer might be kind of good. I wasn’t hankering for O’Doul’s, so instead I got a six-pack of Lagunitas IPNA.  I have been drinking one per night for the last five days, and I have to say it is better than O’doul’s, or St. Pauli Girl.  Today I went to La Bodega and bought a mix pack of other NA beers.  Let me tell you, the NA beer market has really expanded since 2012! I had heard that Athletic Brewing Co. made a decent NA beer, so I picked up a few of those, as well as a couple German options and a Sam Adams Hazy NA IPA. I will review both the Lagunitas IPNA and Athletic Brewing Company’s Run Wild IPA today. Next time I will give you a rundown on the other five.

Lagunitas IPNA smells great, just like a regular IPA. It tastes like watered-down beer, but has a pleasant IPA and malt flavor.  The beer is clear and light brown, and doesn’t retain any foam like a real IPA should.  To me it tastes like the brewers took a bottle of the Waldo’s Special Ale, poured it into a gallon of water, added some caramel coloring, then carbonated, and bottled it into 12 bottles.  Overall, I would consider buying it again. It is good, and possibly a decent alternative to real IPA when one is trying to stay away from alcohol.

Athletic Brewing Co’s Run Wild IPA has a copper color, and beautiful foam that stays around for a long time. The flavor is weird, not really like an IPA. It reminds me more of an O’Doul’s. It has a nice body to it, and the mouthfeel is spot on. The smell is grainy, and a bit like smelling malt extract straight from the barrel. It only has a hint of hops. There is a pronounced bitterness after the sour grainy flavor dissipates.  As it warms up, the weird sour grain flavor gets stronger. But, if you want to look like you are drinking IPA, it fits the bill perfectly.  And I would drink it again, especially during sober October.  

Next week I will review a few more of these beers, and let you know which one is the best. So far Lagunitas IPNA is the best NA beer I have had.  I know the Germans like to drink a bunch of NA beer, so maybe they make something decent. NA beer has got to be better for you than sugary sodas, and more tasty than drinking sparkling waters. 

Cheers to sober October!  I hope you are having a good time, whether participating, or not!    

My Salmon Stock Recipe

Finished salmon stock ready for the canner

Today I would like to talk about salmon stock. Not the music festival now known as Salmonfest, but the base for making soups.  Maria and I always participate in the annual Alaskan salmon harvest, whether we catch fish, or buy it directly from a commercial fishing boat.  I lean towards buying fish, because every time I go fishing, there’s another piece of gear I need to buy, plus ice, gasoline, and not to mention the wear and tear on all the equipment, including our truck, that all adds up. It also takes a bunch of my time, which takes away from activities and work that I prefer doing.  When Maria and I bring home the fish we start processing it right away. Maria is on the filleting, and she hands me the heads. I stock pile heads in a bowl, while I prepare the vegetables.  I get the vegetables sautéing in some avocado oil. When the veggies are ready I add a bunch of water, about 2.5 gallons, to my 5 gallon stock pot. I remove the gills and fins, and clean out any guts that might be lingering in the head cavity. I leave any meat there, it is good for the stock.  I usually use 15 heads. The stock needs to simmer/lightly boil for about an hour, or so, after all the heads are prepped and plopped into the stock pot. Then strain out all the particles. We normally wait over night to do anything more, in order to let the stock cool down, and then Maria makes a soup, freezes some, and cans the rest in quart-size mason jars.  We take the shelf-stable jars to the cabin, and Maria makes yummy ramen there. I always drink a pint straight from the pot. This stuff is nectar from the sea gods! Cheers to the liquid gold, and I don’t mean beer this time!

Salmon Stock Recipe

Ingredients:

2.5 gallons water

15 Salmon heads (Sockeye, Coho, or Chinook)

Avocado oil

2 large leeks

2 large onions

2 large carrots

1 bulb of garlic

1 bunch celery (optional)

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Sauté vegetables in avocado oil

2. Add water

3. Prepare and add salmon heads

4. Boil until the heads disolve into mush

5. Remove everything but the liquid

6. Can, freeze, or eat

7. Can at 10 pounds pressure for 25 minutes for quart jars

Stirring the pot

Salmon stock makes amazing ramen!

And the Winner of the Tart Side Challenge is… Me!

Turnagain Brewing graciously hosts a contest each year for members of the Great Northern Brewers Club called the Tart Side Challenge. Ted and Mary Rosenzweig, owners of the brewery, give each club member one gallon of wort containing the brewery’s proprietary sour culture from the solera tank we all affectionately call Big Bertha. Our task is to flavor the wort any way we wish, and to ferment it into beer. The entries get judged at the GNBC annual summer campout, and then Turnagain Brewing brews the winning recipe. Last year, Maria won the contest. When I created the recipe for my entry this year, I referred to my experience making small batch beers. I had been mixing beer and fruit for a couple of years now, and I know how much fruit to add to make a beer explode with flavor. I wanted to bottle-condition this beer, since oxidation is one of the easiest and worst things that can happen to a beer at this stage.  I also know that people generally tend to like slightly stronger beers over weaker ones. Since this was a beer tasting committee I was aiming to please, I added a 1/2 cup of malt extract to not only slightly increase ABV, but also to restart fermentation. I also added some of my own yeast from my yeast ranching project, since bottle-conditioning doesn’t work without yeast present.

I was unsure what fruit I wanted to put into the beer. Last year Maria won with a blueberry recipe, so I knew blueberries were a crowd pleaser. I also love the Piña Colada beer Ted has been making for Serrano’s Mexican Grill. It all became clear to me when I was making my morning smoothie with a healthy dosage of sour yogurt, pineapple, and blueberries.  Blueberries and pineapple would play the starring roles in my beer.

Ted didn’t have enough space to ferment my beer, so he used a French oak barrel, which added Brett to the equation. Ted and I were sipping on the finished beer at the brewery and I suggested that he bottle my beer, so we could cellar it to allow the Brett to develop. Since I’m the local beer artist, I also offered to make a label design for my beer. 

I had to design the label quickly, and I think best when I am out running on the trail. The next morning I figured it all out when doing my five mile loop.  I came up with the name, “Solera Eclipse” and decided upon a design inspired by the yin yang of T&C Surf Designs.  Ted’s solera is where the wort originated, and an eclipse is a noteworthy astronomical event.  The yin yang showed off the the contrast of the blueberries and pineapple perfectly.  Since it was fermented in Ted’s favorite old wine barrel, I included some barrel parts in the design making a sun. 

I am very excited to try the commercial version, I have one bottle left of my homemade version, and I look forward to sampling them back to back! The beer will be released at my art opening at Turnagain Brewing tomorrow (12/03/2021)! I’ll be there 5-8pm, and hope you’ll stop by to try my beer, check out my art, and buy a couple bottles to cellar.

Cheers to Turnagain Brewing for doing this fun contest for GNBC!

Ted taking a small sample of my beer from the barrel to see if the Brett flavor had sufficiently developed.

My design for the bottle label.

Solera Eclipse sour ale with blueberries and pineapple.

A Surprise Trip to a Hop Farm!

We recently got back from a trip to America — I hadn’t left the State of Alaska for over two years!  Maria and I had to go to Pullman, WA to attend my aunt’s memorial service.  We decided to make the flight worthwhile by extending our trip a bit to go see some of the Olympic Peninsula and Olympic National Park.  Did you know there are 63 National Parks in the US? The Olympic National Park is pretty wet in late September.  The highlights for me were walking to the Sol Duc waterfall, and soaking in the hot springs there.  Hot springs are nice in the rain. We also saw the biggest Sitka spruce tree in the world, and the largest red cedar tree.  They are huge! 

The largest red cedar tree in the world!

We had to drive to Pullman for the memorial, so we decided to stop in Yakima along the way, because we knew it was time for hop harvest!  First thing we did was go to the hop shop, Yakima Valley Hops.  Surprisingly, this year’s hops were not available there yet.  I bought a little bit of last year’s harvest, which smelled pretty good.  The sales attendant was very helpful and told me to come back in three weeks when the hops would all be ready for sale.  We asked about stopping at a local farm, and she recommended going to CLS Farms, and maybe we could get a tour there.  That evening we went to the Public House of Yakima, and sampled about 15 different fresh hop ales!  Some were good, and some were quite… interesting.  We learned about NDA — non-disclosure ale, which means the hop variety used in that beer is a secret!  The Public House offers 5oz pours and serves up flights of different brews.  Saturday was going to be the big fresh hop beer festival, but we had to be at the memorial at that time.  Still, I feel I got a pretty good example at the Public House of local fresh-hop IPAs.  

All fresh-hop IPAs!

NDA – non-disclosure ale

In the morning we planned to stop at Bale Breaker Brewing, our favorite brewery (with a small hop farm) in the Yakima Valley, to get supplied for the trip to Pullman, but they were not going to open until 3pm.  Instead, Maria found directions to CLS Farms, and we followed a hop truck into their parking lot.  I nervously knocked on the office door and a strapping young man came out.  We told him what we were about, and asked about a tour.  He said he could give us a tour right now!  They were actively harvesting El Dorado hops, a critical ingredient in some special West Coast IPAs.  He said a lot of it goes straight to California to Stone Brewing, for their “Drink By” series, and the El Dorado IPA.  Huge plants were being loaded onto the conveyor and being stripped of flowers.  The air was astringent with pungent hop aroma!  It felt like breathing IPA.  There are two hop stripping machines at CLS, but what was really interesting was the kilns that dry the hops.  Rows of huge flat trays about 50×50 feet large, and four feet deep were filled with full cone hop flowers!  After a couple of hours they pull up ropes from the bottom of the trays, and the hops from the bottom are stirred to the top — a cool, low-tech way to ensure an even drying process.  Next, we went to the baling station.  I wanted to buy a bale from our guide, but it was 200lbs, and I don’t know how I would have gotten it back to Alaska.  I could have bought some fresh hops on the spot, but our tour guide said they start going bad after 24 hours.  We got a picture with the hop pile at the baling station, and I guess that will have to be good enough.  Our guide said that most of their hops go straight to CA, with Sierra Nevada, and Stone Brewing showing up with fleets of trucks and getting the stuff straight from the farm.  I have to say I was a little jealous of the quality of the hops that were not available to me, a super small-time home-brewer-artist guy.  

We stopped at Fred Meyer and bought a few six packs of Bale Breaker brews, and headed to Pullman.  I will never forget the hop farm experience!  Those guys need a brewery at the farm to give the whole hop experience, something for us hopheads to wet our lips with, and not just smell!