NW Cities most "Iconic" brews

I thought of Rainier, of course, but went for something more recent. Plus as noted Rainier isn't brewed her anymore. Rainier definitely has the ability to bring out the drinkers. I went down for the relighting of the big R sign and it was quite the crowd. You had to park elsewhere and be bused in.

 

The Tacoma Rainiers still use the R, and Roosevelt High School does as well, but with a green and yellow color scheme.

The Bardahl sign is still up in Ballard, by the way. The company is still hanging on to Old Seattle.

 

Just a few years ago, I think the Seattle and surrounding areas would have been Redhook ESB. Mac 'n Jack and Redhook were in every tap list it felt like (maybe not the fancier beer places). More current I can't think of anything more ubiquitous than Manny's from Georgetown.

 

Manny's has been the ubiquitous "absolutely everywhere" beer of choice in the Seattle area for at least ten years now.

 

Sadly, for Spokane, it's probably NoLi's fucking Born and Raised.

 

More so than Black Butte?

 

Same with Oly in Olympia. Numerous city govt signs use the Olympia font, and they've bolted the old shift-change whistle onto city hall and blast it at 5pm.

 

Yep, see rationale in post #16

 

That's interesting about the whistle. Larry Sidor at Crux was trying to see who had it a few years back when he was working on the brewery build out hoping he could acquire it.

 

This is ultimately the catch 22 of craft beer. We all started drinking craft beer as an alternative to the macro light lagers that dominated the world. The new flavors and styles were exciting and intriguing. As iconic brands become older, they become standard, less exciting, and ultimately are no longer the same thing that made us excited about them to begin with - new.

That's not to say we only drink things because they are new, but at the end of the day what's the difference between a person who only drinks Coors Light and a person who only drinks Mirror Pond? Of course I still come back to the classics, but it's as a fallback and not something I seek out.

 

I was walking around downtown Oly a few yrs ago and they lit it off at 5 and I didn't know what the fuck was happening!

 

Whoa! That's way too deep for me.

 

"What's the difference between a person who drinks only Coors Light and one who drinks only Mirror Pond?"????? One person drinks a very good beer and the other drinks Coors Light. I always try to have a "Desert Island Beer", something to have when I need to have a Good Beer. Now I live in NY and my go-to beers are Montauk Driftwood and Brooklyn Pilsner. I'm not interested in any of the modern IPAs, but I still try lots of different brews. As for NW, I consider one of my all-time favorites to be a Cask Bridgeport Porter poured at the brewery tap (RIP) many years ago.

 

If we’re talking about all beers, then Seattle’s most iconic is assuredly Vitamin R, but that’s mos def not a craft beer. As far as craft goes, my initial inclination was to say Manny’s, though the fact that it’s not canned makes it tough to be an icon when you think about brand recognition, especially recognition beyond the PNW. I.e., I have plenty of friends that know Rainier but don’t live up here — almost none of those same friends have a clue what Manny’s is.

(My dream: Bodhi becomes the iconic craft beer of Seattle, and Georgetown never sells out.)

 

Heileman bought Rainier in December 1976 - a few months after I left Calif., so I only had the indie-brewed Rainier Ale (while it was an easy find in SF I had to write the brewery to find out the local Los Angeles area distributor, and it was not well distributed in Southern CA at all).

But when did the ale change for the worst? Had it in Las Vegas in the mid-90s and was shocked at the insipid brew inside the classic greenie... (Heileman similarly ruined McSorley's Cream Ale after taking over the brand when they bought Schmidt's of Phila. in the late 1980s).

The brewery itself didn't close until 1999 (right?) when Stroh shutdown and went out of business (they'd bought Heileman a few years earlier).

 

I completely forgot about Rainier being referred to as "Vitamin R". Good one.

 

Even though it's not great..gotta be Widmer Hefe for Portland..
Salem..Coors Light