The Pour Fool steps in it

Sounds like my ex got a sex change and became a beer blogger!

Joking aside, I take a little exception to this clown myself, as I rather like T-Town. I find it more akin to my my own city of Spokane than to the metropolis of the north. Here in Spokane there's a guy who pretty much does the job of the Pour Fool. I can't recall his name, and that may be the point - he doesn't make himself the story, just reports on local beer developments without inserting his opinions. In short, he acts like a journalist. If you read something interesting, you can go to the brewery, try the beer and form your own opinion.

 

He's also wrong about other breweries in the state making sours and doing barrel aging. He contends three other breweries have attempted it, and all failed... Last time I visited Ramblin' Road, somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of the beers on that day were either sours, sour variations, or barrel aged. That was about 5 weeks ago. But, yeah, he probably is afraid he'll get caught in Spokane's "time warp," or maybe he thinks it's in Idaho.

 

You are talking about Rick Bonino. His blog is called ON TAP. He does a killer job reporting on Spokane's beer scene and we are lucky to have him.

 

I'm ashamed to say that I only recently stumbled across his blog, but I've found it a tremendous fount of information about the local beer scene.

 

A thread we all can agree on

 

I wonder who the 3 breweries are that he's referring to.

 

Kevin Pierce at Anacortes Brewing has been cranking out sours for a few years now, and doing a nice job with them. But, because they are a lowly "IPA/Amber/Stout/Pale" brewery our boy couldn't possible be bothered to go check them out.

Plus, I have a theory: BuckeyeOne is The Pour Fool, and he just trolled us into generating clicks for him. Well played Buckeye!

 

Whoever he's talking about they "failed" so I'm guessing he doesn't think they're worthy of dwelling on.

 

Those are fighting words

 

Possibly Wild Earth in Roslyn? BTW, was at Whitewall Brewing in Marysville a few days ago, and they've got Wild Earth's brew system, and they'll be increasing production soon. Owner at Whitewall says he expects the guy from Wild Earth to reopen within a year, or as soon as he can get some capital behind him.

 

Wow, I've totally forgotten about Wild Earth. I seem to recall a thread a couple of years ago where it sounded like they had some really wild expectations about growth. Is that what did them in? Or was it the fact that whenever I drove west on I-90, I'd left the 'kan so early they weren't open yet, and heading back east I'd got on the road too late and had to get my ass back pronto (since things are generally my fault, I should probably go with the latter).

 

I stopped by Wild Earth once and bought a bottle of theirs at the big fruit stand west of Ellensburg along I-90. Good stuff.

 

Is this guy still an active member here? What was his username? Maybe he can fill us in on the failed breweries. A lot of breweries will do a wild ale every once in awhile, but I don't recall anyone trying to do it on a regular basis and failing.

 

Just my guesses here, so keep the appropriate amount of salt handy: Roslyn doesn't seem to be a craft beer hotbed, and it's really near anything (although, it's not truly far either), so I don't think he was getting a ton of local sales. IIRC, he was maybe a one man show over there, so brewing, running the tasting room, and trying to get what product he could kept him pretty busy. The guys at Whitewall (very nice folks BTW, I strongly suggest stopping in for a few of their tasty brews) seem to think that we'll be hearing from him sooner, rather than later, but we will be hearing from him again.

 

I would think people from Tacoma are pretty used to the insults by now. It does seem like they kind of live in the own world there though. I notice at a lot of the beer festivals the Tacoma breweries never participate. Looking at the beer list for Saturday's Cask fest, only Harmon is participating.

 

E9 is generally at Belgianfest, and usually with some damn tasty brew. And, I think most of them show up for the Fathers Day fest. But yeah, I'd like to see them stretch their collective legs a bit more. It's a straight shot up I-5 to exit 253 (downtown Bellingham).

 

Even E9 didn't make it to this years BelgianFest.