Introducing The Little Hopster & the GWB Quest

There are a lot of people out there whose dedication to good beer amazes, impresses, or absolutely boggles me.  Then there’s my sister who not only does all of the above, but delights me by tackling the beer world exactly way I wish I had thought to do. 

Let me tell you a little bit about the Jones women before we get started here, because there’s a baseline level of understanding that some of you have and the rest of you need before you’re going to get where this post is coming from. 

Things we are:

• Opinonated
• Hyper-organized
• Stubborn
• Excited about things that come in sets / doing things in an exhaustive way
• Liable to put our feet in our mouths
• Likely to have beer plans already made for every weekend from now to 2010

Things we are not:

• Demure
• Particularly feminine, graceful, or elegant
• Quitters

What does this mean in general? 

• It means that whatever one of us is excited about, the other is likely to jump onboard relatively quickly and become at least as excited about, in a friendly but semi-competitive manner, whether this is beer, or Seattle, camping & outdoorsy pursuits, history of the American colonies and frontier, or the Iditarod (ok, I haven’t jumped on this boat yet, but I’m on board with Alaska, which is halfway there). 
• It means that we egg each other on to find the next big thing first and to share it with each other before anyone else. 
• It means that we obsessively plan how to take things to the next level, because let’s face it, neither one of us has met a alphabetized, color-coded plan we didn’t like. 
• Finally, it means that we often have moments where we blurt out the same thing at the same time and get progressively louder as we each try to convince the other one we’re right, often not realizing for several minutes that we’re saying the same thing.  (We also just had one of these moments right now.  We’re on vacation with friends, drinking lots of beer.  We’ve each decided that the Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere is the best of the bunch, and that we want to taste it alongside the other Jolly Pumpkins we bought, the La Roja and Calabaza Blanca.  After seeing friends pull beer after beer from the fridge, with little distinction made between the beer we picked out and the Keystone Light, she turned to me and said “I’m hiding one of the Bam Bieres.”  I looked back at her and said, “That’s what I just did.”)

And what does this mean for beer? 

For me, it means that when we went on our microbrewery tour last year, I felt the need to make a 40 page PowerPoint presentation outlining the trip, including directions, lodging, sites to visit, and info about the microbreweries we’d visit. 

For my sister, affectionately known here as The Little Hopster, it means that she is on a quest to visit every brewery in the state of Washington, and that her system of recording her progress towards this goal is as elaborate as any statistician could hope for.  Not only has she set this goal for herself, and made the database to track it, but she’s already about 1/3 of the way there after only 3 months. 

The Great Washington Beer Quest (GWBQ from here on out) began this March when Melissa suggested she wanted to “go where the sunshine was,” prompting Allie to dupe Melissa into driving her out to Kennewick to taste beer, even though Melissa doesn’t even like (most) beer.  They went to seven microbreweries and brewpubs that day. 

Their favorite experience was Roslyn Brewing Company, in Roslyn, Washington, also known as the set of Northern Exposure.  Now, Northern Exposure played a large role in our childhood.   I realize I am betraying here, once again, how young we are compared to most beer fans.  Ah well, it can’t be helped.  In any case, Northern Exposure was my mom’s favorite show, not least of all we suspect due to a latent crush on Rob Morrow, a.k.a. Dr. Joel Fleischman.  Apparently, not quite as many beer fans know this piece of Roslyniana as Marilee of RBC would hope, and thus she was ecstatic when Allie & Melissa asked about the town’s relation to the show.  She whipped out a picture of herself as an extra and entertained the two of them for the better part of the afternoon with stories of the Roslyn heyday.   

However, Allie reminds me that the real origin of this quest is day she began to love craft beer.  It was part of a weekend trip I took Vermont to visit her at Middlebury College during her junior year.  I brought a couple sixers of Brooklyn Brown and Allagash White with me, and in the course of a weekend converted her over from Twisted Tea and Midori sours (I know, I know – that stuff is seriously toxic, I feel like I’ve saved her from early onset diabetes and poisoning by Blue Lake 40 and Yellow #5). 

The Joneses fall hard and fast when we find something new, and the next day Allie was out at the grocery store stocking up what came to be known as the ‘beer fridge’ – the rest of the semester it contained nothing else.  Emily, one of her best friends from college jumps in at this moment to volunteer, “You couldn’t go to the grocery store without buying beer.”  Melissa adds, “You still can’t!”  To which Allie responds, “No that’s not true! I even went into Bottleworks one time and didn’t buy anything!” Melissa: “yeah, one time…”

So back to the GWBQ: She spent the equivalent of two full work days combing Brew News, Beer Advocate, and “some random website I can’t remember” to put together an up-to-date list of all breweries in Washington.  By her count, there are 73 Washington breweries, and this includes recent additions to the roster, such as Laughing Buddha.  She notes that while there are other lists out there, none are as up to date as her own. 

For each one, she collected:

• Brewery name
• Type (brewpubs, microbreweries w/ tasting rooms, microbreweries w/o tasting rooms)
• City
• Region within Washington
• State (you can tell she’s already thinking about future expansion into Oregon and the rest of the US)
• Web-site
• Address
• Phone number
• Whether the brewery is a Washington Beer Lovers (WABL) member
• How many beers they have (e.g. 5 year round + seasonals)
• Their BeerAdvocate BeerFly rating
• The hours they are open to the public
• And whether or not she has visited yet

So far, she’s been to 23 of the 73 breweries, including 17 brewpubs and 6 microbreweries with tasting rooms.  She also created a Google Map of all of these breweries, which she updates as they open or close.  Here are a few stats on what’s out there in Washington and where she’s been, and then I’ll post the full list of breweries below. 

By Region:

Overall:         That Allie has visited:

Seattle/King County:            22                11 (50%)

North WA:                             15                 1 (7%)

South WA:                             11                 0 (0%)

Southeast WA:                      10                  7 (70%)

Northeast WA:                        8                  0 (0%)

Western WA:                           6                  4 (67%)

Uncategorized:                       1                  0 (0%)    

Total                            73             23 (32%)

 

By Type:

Overall:         That Allie has visited:

Brewpub:                               49                17 (35%)

Micro w/ tasting room:         13                  6 (46%)

Micro w/o tasting room:       11                  0 (0%)       

Total                             73            23 (32%)

 

By WABL Membership:

 

Overall:         That Allie has visited:

Member:                           46                19 (41%)

Non-Member:                   27                 4 (15%)      

Total                         73            23 (32%)

 

Complete List of Washington breweries:

Locations visited thus far by The Little Hopster in bold

Name, Type (BP = brewpub, TR = micro w/tasting room, MB = micro w/o), City

• Alpine                                          MB      Oroville
• Anacortes                                    BP      Anacortes
• Atomic Ale Brewpub                BP      Richland
• Baron                                           TR      Seattle
• Big Time                                       BP      Seattle (U. Dist.)
• Birdsview Brewing                         BP      Concrete
• Boundary Bay                                BP      Bellingham
• Cashmere                                     MB      Cashmere
• Chuckanut Brewery                      BP      Bellingham
• Coeur D’Alene                              BP      Spokane
• Diamond Knot                              BP      Mukilteo
• Dick’s & NW Sausage                   BP      Centralia
• Elk Head                                      TR      Buckley
• Ellersick Brewing                          TR      Lynnwood
• Elliot Bay                                    BP      Seattle (W.Seattle)
• Elysian                                        BP      Seattle (Cap. Hill)
• Engine House #9                          BP      Tacoma
• Fish                                              BP      Olympia
• Flyers                                            BP      Oak Harbor
• Georgetown                                  MB      Seattle
• Grey Parrot                                    BP      Long Beach
• Hale’s Ales                                  BP      Seattle (Fremont)
• Harmon                                         BP      Tacoma
• Hazel Dell                                      BP      Vancouver
• Hood Canal                                TR      Kingston
• Ice Harbor                                   BP      Kennewick
• Iron Horse                                     TR      Ellensberg
• La Conner                                      BP      La Conner
• Laht Neppur                                TR      Waitsburg
• Laughing Buddha Brewing Co.        TR      Seattle
• Lazy Boy                                        MB      Everett
• Lost Falls                                       TR      Colville
• Mac and Jack’s                               MB      Redmond
• Maritime Pacific                         BP      Seattle (Ballard)
• McMenamins                               BP      Seattle (QA/Fremont)
• Methow Valley                               BP      Twisp
• Mill Creek                                      BP      Walla Walla
• Naked City                                    MB      Seattle
• North Fork                                    BP      Deming
• Northern Ales                               MB      Northport
• Northern Lights                            BP      Spokane
• Peak’s Pub                                    BP      Port Angeles
• Pike                                             BP      Seattle (Downtown)
• Port Townsend                          TR      Port Townsend
• Powerhouse                                 BP      Puyallup
• Pyramid                                      BP      Seattle (Downtown)
• Ram                                             BP      Seattle (U. Dist.)
• Rattlesnake Mtn./Kimo’s        BP      Richland
• Redhook                                      BP      Woodinville
• Rock Bottom                             BP      Seattle
• Rocky Coulee                              MB      Odessa
• Rogue/Issaquah                       BP      Issaquah
• Roslyn                                       TR      Roslyn
• Salmon Creek                              BP      Vancouver
• San Juan Brewing Co.                   BP      Friday Harbor, San Juan Isl.
• Schooner Exact                           MB      Seattle
• Scuttlebutt                                  BP      Everett
• Silver City                                 BP      Silverdale
• Skagit River                              BP      Mt. Vernon
• Skookum                                    TR      Arlington
• Skye Book and Brew                    BP      Dayton
• Snipes Mtn.                              BP      Sunnyside
• Snoqualmie Falls                     TR      Snoqualmie
• Speedway Brewing Co.                BP      Lacey
• Steffan’s Aldergrove Brewery       MB      Tulalip
• Stix Brewing                                BP      Seattle
• Swinging Arm Rest.                     BP      Black Diamond
• Twin Rivers                                 BP      Monroe
• Two Beers Brewing Co.                MB      Seattle
• Walking Man                               BP      Stevenson
• Water Street                             BP      Port Townsend
• Whitstran                                 TR      Prosser
• Winthrop                                    BP      Winthrop