East Coast BA visiting Spokane, Washington!

@woemad is the guy you'll want to chat with. I strongly suggest finding the time to hop over the border into Idaho and pay a visit to Selkirk Abbey. Great stuff!

 

I'd love to meet up, but I'm leaving town the day you are coming in and won't be back until Monday evening. When my cousin passed away last fall, his mother decided she wanted to have his memorial/wake in the spring, so that's where I will be.

Here's a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene primer - I apologize for the length, and anyone else feel free to chime in with whatever I leave out:

I concur with @beertunes that Selkirk Abbey is a must if into saisons and other Belgian variations. Ramblin' Road is a Belgian-style brewery in Spokane that often includes sours on their taps, and they do quite a bit of barrel aging, but they sometimes have consistency issues. Non-Belgian beers more your thing? You'll want to check out Iron Goat, who also recently made the jump to bottling. Great beers and great people! Twelve String Brewing in the Valley is solid, with a cool experimental streak but they sometimes have some consistency issues, and I've had beers that should have been taken off tap earlier. NoLi is the longest established brewery in the area, and has a great outdoor area along the river, but the beer is mediocre despite their advertising budget. There's a number of other breweries in town that all have good points, as far as I'm concerned.

For watering holes, starting with the ones you brought up, I recommend Pints despite only having been there once (too far a drive for me for drinking). Manito Tap House is solid, though really more like a restaurant that happens to have 50 taps - and the parking lot is downright dangerous, as it's small and seems to have an inordinate amount of old ladies not aware of the existence of other drivers. For whatever reason, Manito is where the leopard print & leather face brigade hangs out, so if old ladies who think they're cougars are your thing, enjoy! The Viking used to be the seminal beer place in Spokane, and while it's still got it's awesome mix of beer paraphenalia, random flags and fake sailing ship figureheads (the space used to be "Ahab's Whale"), it's not that much a cut above other places these days. Hill's is a downtown restaurant (though more people tend to be in the loung than the restaurant portion, in my experience) that only has about 8-10 taps, but they're all quality, as is the hard alcohol and wine, and the food is fantastic. Post Street Alehouse is located in the heart of downtown and has an awesome happy hour, but the food has been disappointing. My personal faves are Jones Radiator and The Swamp, which are both a bit iconoclastic. Some people consider Jones too hipsterish (I don't), and too small (it is, and nights can get crowded as they often have live music), but the taps rotate regularly, the staff is awesome, the food is pretty good considering the closet they call a kitchen, and with no TVs there's an awesome crowd that actually talks to one another. The Swamp is a long-time dive bar that is currently run by a guy who loves beer. There's only 10 taps but there's 80-100 bottled and canned options, from animal beer to Belgians, and there's a patio with a fireplace outside. All sorts come there, from derelicts to wealthy businessmen and Gonzaga professors. No food but you're welcome to bring food in. If planning to drink beer in Coeur d'Alene, I'd try Capone's. It's an old service station from the '20s that has been added onto over time and is now a sports bar/restaurant with 40 or so taps, many of which are local and regional IPAs.

Non-beer destinations? Riverfront Park is right downtown. It was where they hosted the '74 Expo, still the smallest city a world's fair was ever held in. It's a sprawling greenspace with trails, kiddie rides, an ice rink (probably closing right about now if not already) and an Imax theater built around the falls of the Spokane River, despite once being an industrial area/railroad yard. If into wine, Arbor Crest makes good wine and is located in a former mansion of a turn of the century cable car/elevator magnate and is located on the edge of a high cliff with a view of Spokane Valley. The Davenport Hotel is an art-deco luxury hotel that sat vacant for decades to the point pieces of it were falling into the street, but was massively restored a dozen years ago.Coeur d' Alene is a once small town in N. Idaho that caught on as a resort town about 40 or so years ago, and is located on a very picturesque lake of the same name. There's a lot of money there these days, which you'll note while walking around the various shops and eateries along Sherman Avenue.

Don't know if you are looking for bottles to take home, but Huckleberry's and Rocket Market both have a great selection, and things don't seem to get too old there. Bottles, in Millwood is very good as well, but it can be a bitch to get into and out of due to the traffic on Argonne Road. Best selections and prices tend to be the 2 Total Wines in the area (essentially Wal-Marts of alcohol), but I've had a number of beers from them that have sat around too long. Enoteca in Post Falls is a great place for finding quality beers that don't make it to Spokane (on at least once occaision, the owner has gotten hold of Westvleteren beers), but they tend to be a little bit pricier than other bottleshops.

 

Holy shit. And to think we just drove through Spokane en route from Coeur d'Alene back to Seattle. Should have grabbed some cocaine while I was in town.

 

In some ways, we're backward enough to still think cocaine is cool, but I think the drugs of choice here are meth and oxy. Just ask all the held-up coffee stand baristas!

 

Personal message me when you are in town and I would love to meet up and show you around. @woemad did a nice job of describing everything. Tons of great beer bars in Spokane and I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

 

I like the Manito tap house and if you go up to the South Hill it is worth checking the taplist at The Hop Shop (http://www.taplister.com/bars/the-hop-shop/4bbe95ff4e7bd13a86499b7f/) and stopping by Rocket Market to see what bottles they have.