Seattle "automatic buys"?

The Fremont Winter Ales like Bourbon Barrel Winter Ale (BBomb) are a good bet. There are still plenty around. Also Fremont Dark Star and its iterations (Coffee, Spice Wars). Last I checked you could still find Pelican Mother of All Storms and Deschutes The Dissident at some stores. I'm sure others will have some suggestions too.

 

Everything that guy said is awesome. Try and find some stuff from Logsdon and Cascade, they are from Oregon. Two Beers in Seattle make some good stuff too. Take a short road trip to Black Raven Brewery in Redmond, Wa (near microsoft) it will be well worth your time too. Others....Holy Mountain, Double Mountain, Hopworks (Or.), Sound Brewry, Hilliard, Stoupe...

 

You're about to be pleasantly surprised. Depending on your preferred style(s), Washington's 200+ breweries could have 10 or more examples you owe to yourself to try, 30+ if you're talking about hoppy stuff, and 90 days for something to be "the common brews." You'll run out of days before you run out of worthwhile beers, especially if you are open to multiple beer styles.

 

Just to be clear, though, Fremont Dark Star is their year-round oatmeal stout --- a tasty beverage in and of itself. It is the bourbon-barrel-aged variants of Dark Star that are special releases.

 

Along with the breweries mentioned, I'd try just about anything from Old Schoolhouse.

 

Rueben's Brews is a must.

 

a blanket suggestion: give everything a shot when you're out here and don't focus so much on the typical suggestions. half the time i wander into a bar there's something excellent on draft that i've never heard of. names like reuben's, engine house 9, peddler's, stoup, nw peaks, two beer's, black raven, urban family, populuxe, etc. are all too small to gather any substantial hype for any one single beer, but all produce quality beer.

 

Add in Bale Breaker, Boundary Bay, Skookum, Selkirk Abbey, Chuckanut, Big Time, Naked City, and any number of our other breweries, and I doubt that OP will have time to try 'em all, even with a 3 month window.

 

As others have said, there's a staggering amount of local beer to wade through. One thing I'd suggest is go out to beer bars, try stuff, and when you stumble across something you like, visit that brewery's tasting room if it's a reasonable distance away. Our beer bars do a great job of featuring a good amount of local breweries so you should have an easy time drinking local.

What breweries do you enjoy back in Boston?

 

Nice try, sneaking a north Idaho brewery in there! You want him to lose focus? Pretty soon he'd be drinking all those awful Oregon brews!

 

In all seriousness, I second @ballardbeer. There's a lot of nuance to local beer scenes anywhere. Much as we'd like to disagree, it's not just people like us who are hardcore enough in our geekdom that we hunch over a computer or phone instead of, say, go outside, that drive a beer scene. There's also the millions who drink local out of either local pride or anti-corporatism, but have never really branched out in styles. Some people will tell you Mac & Jacks is the best beer in the area. Some will even hearken back to Rainier or Olympia. I've got an in-law who's permanently hung up on Redhook ESB.

If you come across some "walez", cool. Don't exclude everything else at the expense of them. You've got three months, relax and enjoy yourself.

 

Anything Fremont dipped in Wax. I just picked up KDS and B Bomb Coffee Cinnamon this week and would very highly recommend both.

Good fresh hop IPAs. It seems you are a month past seeing most of them anywhere on shelves unfortunately.

Good IPAs/IIPAs. Most of the countries hops are grown here in Washington and we have the ability to produce damn good IPAs that we take for granted. So many choices I can't even start to list them. Just see what your bottle shop you find has in stock.

Visit a brewery and get samplers. Places like Fremont/Black Raven/Reuben's/etc. They have fantastic every day beers but they love to experiment out here. Some of the best beers I have had are the brewers getting crazy with randals or small batch casks.

 

Since OP is going to be here a while, I'd like to invite him up to Bellingham. We've got a nice little pod of breweries up here, and some beautiful scenery. I'll be happy to show him around.

 

Great idea, OP should definitely take advantage of weekend beer trips to see other parts of the state. Bellingham, the Peninsula, and the South Sound each have multiple worthwhile breweries that don't distribute far, so going to them is sometimes the only way to get their best stuff. If you don't mind a little longer trip, Eastern WA and Portland make great destinations too.

 

Three months is long enough to appreciate something we already know up here: a whale can be had at times but some of the best stuff never makes it into a bottle or a can and can be found pretty much everywhere. It's all about the moment.

 

I think what the OP will discover in his three months is that a good pale ale/IPA can be found at nearly any half-decent restaurant.

 

And by "any half-decent restaurant" you mean every dive bar, bowling alley, chain joint, and ferry boat. Even some bookstores and movie theaters.

 

Add in the North Sound (Mt. Vernon, Anacortes, Oak Harbor, and Port Townsend), and OP is gonna have his bladder full!