Poll: Best Northwest Brewery

I'd shop the hell out of a bottleshop/growler fill station with just these 48 breweries.

 

I take it that you didn't want Great Notion to win by calling them Grape Lotion.

 

@John_M can fix it.

 

While that certainly sounds like me, I can't take credit. With that said, it's Grape Lotion from now on.

 

I believe it may have been the inimitable @dirtylou who gifted us with Grape Lotion. (Please no one take this sentence out of context.)

And speaking of which, they seem to be doing rather well in the early voting, thanks to a hefty New England contingent who suddenly showed up at our polling station. Nothing against GL or my birthplace, but color me unsurprised.

 

Holy shit, you were not joking [about the NE contingent].

The hype train can't slow down.

 

Holy shit is that bizarre.I don't get how anyone in New England could A) care about a Pacific Northwest vote like this in the first place, or B) think they've tried enough stuff from this region to be qualified to cast a vote. I've spent a decent amount of time over the years in New England, but I would never vote in a poll like this for that area. I simply am not familiar enough with their breweries. I realize this poll isn't meant to be taken that seriously but still...

 

I always find it strange that Barley Browns often get overlooked.
I like Block 15 better for most beer types but they do sonme awesome DIPAs

 

I really like Barley Browns. I'm drinking a post-run Pallet Jack right now at Toronado, actually. My votes came down to this:

1. Fremont: they're my local, I've been there since day one. They make amazing fresh hop and low ABV seasonable beers that I drink all year along with a kickass barrel program or tasty tasty dark beers.

2. Holy Mountain: The kings of saison in Washington state. These guys get it. They also make killer Table sours, wild ales and are knocking low ABV hoppy pales out of the park. Plus they do lagers, Browns, steam beer and stouts that I actually want to drink.

3. de Garde: They're doing something that no one else in the region is doing at the scale and price point. I wish we saw some of the older non-sour wild fermentation beers like Cornelio Nunez and Mulligan, but they're making super affordable wild fermentation beers that continually knock my socks off, even if i need a few Tums.

 

It's tough to stand out when you're specializing in IPAs, there's just a lot of breweries out here doing just as good in that department. Regardless of where they rank in an online poll though, I wouldn't say they're overlooked at all as their kegs seem to kick pretty quickly at most spots from what I've seen.

 

Some are amazing at one style. I chose Fremont because they're amazing in many styles. Narrowed it down for me a lot. One horse wonders just don't make it for me.
It's kinda like calling Indiana a craft beer mecca because of 3-Floyds.

 

That's a tough one. I think Barley Browns makes some of the best IPAs in the state (and when the state is Oregon, that is saying something). But if I'm going to pick the **best** breweries, I lean towards breweries that do excellent examples of a wide variety of styles. That is why I didn't vote for De Garde or Boneyard, despite the fact that I love their beers.

That said, I think the lengths I will go to for a brewery's beers is perhaps a better measure of my dedication than a BA poll. After all, I made an overnight trip from Portland to Yakima for the Fresh Hop Festival just so I could drink Barley Brown's Fresh Hop Pallet Jack IPA.

No regrets.

 

"Best" certainly means something, but is so vague and subjective a word without further criteria that I also found myself, like others, gravitating towards any choice that isn't a one (or two, or three) trick pony. It's incredibly hard to be great at any one thing, but perhaps even harder to be truly solid/outstanding, and sometimes great, at just about everything. And at some point, accessibility and availability matters. Can you really be the best for a whole region if your offerings are typically only available to the relatively small audience that can visit your taproom and be present for your limited bottle/crowler releases on a regular basis? Maybe yes, and maybe no.

For me, therefore, the question ultimately came down to what brewery would leave the biggest void in our region if they suddenly no longer existed.

So I chose Fremont first, obviously. NW forum regulars know all my reasons, but just consider the fact that KDS and its variants, all world-class, are now available in multiple states, and unreasonably easy to track down, given their quality. Who else, anywhere in the country, makes barrel-aged beers of this caliber so readily accessible? And just a few weeks ago, this very same brewery was pumping out an unprecedented sequence of fantastic FH beers on a similarly large scale. If they weren't doing this in our region, who would be? In my humble opinion, they've overtaken Deschutes (whom I otherwise love) and become the one indispensable NW brewery.

My other two votes, since I'd rather have voted for all 10 than just 3, were Holy Mountain and Block 15. For the former, I, personally, am not a devotee of the saison or wild ale, but I can still recognize greatness when I see it. And nothing that HM has ever made, in my experience, is far from great. They, like de Garde, are artisans and poets of the first order, whether their beers are in my wheelhouse or not. We're incredibly lucky to have them here, my personal predilections notwithstanding.

For the latter, simple reasonable fairness dictated at least one choice from Oregon. And I just felt partial to Block 15. They know, completely, what they're doing, regardless of style.