We've now been on the West Coast of USA for 10 days. The app on my Blackberry tells me that my nearest GBG entry is the Westford Inn, North Uist - just 4,606 miles away!
Before we travelled over here, I made another visit to the Drovers Inn, Memus. Same beer choice as last time (Corncrake, Northern Light and Addlestone's), but all available this time - and in very good condition. Good food too - will definitely go back whenever the opportunity arises.
The same, unfortunately, could not be said for the Boat Inn, Aboyne, which is normally a reliable outlet. The day we were in - a Sunday lunchtime - there were only 2 pumps operational. They usually have a Deeside beer on, but none was available on this occasion. We tried Trade Winds, but they only managed to pour one pint before it ran out. Naturally, this made us look carefully at this pint, but we were promptly instructed to drink it up - "there's nothing wrong with it - Trade Winds is a great beer". Mmmm - I think we'll decide on that, thank you. We moved on to the only beer left - Belhaven 80/-. It was sub par too, but we drank it up quickly before moving on to the Potarch, where we did get a pint of Trade Winds - and very nice it was too.
Over here in USA, it's mostly been bottled beer and BBQ's so far. The ever reliable Sierra Nevada and bottle conditioned Bridgeport IPA always work well. We went to one of Applebee's restaurants here in Grants Pass and they, like most of the big chains, have a decent selection of micros on draft, including http://www.firestonebeer.com/beers/products/union-jack - nice and hoppy.
The local brewpub - http://www.wildriverbrewing.com/ - had its usual selection available:
(click on image to enlarge)
Their seasonal special just now is Blackberry Porter and they had been serving it cask conditioned, but it had just gone off when we arrived - just my luck. Their IPA and ESB were good however.
This weekend we headed north up the I5 to the twin towns of Springfield/Eugene, right in the heart of Oregon, about halfway to Portland. We had heard about the Willamette Valley Blues & Brews festival (http://www.wvbbf.org/) and it seemed too good a chance to pass up. From a music point of view it was very good, but, although there was plenty of beer available, the range offered was slightly disappointing.
The programme promised almost two dozen beers from 12 different, mostly local, micro-breweries:
In point of fact, there were at least 10 other beers available that weren't listed in the programme, but the disappointing thing was the predominance of Pale Ale/IPA's. Apart from a couple of wheat beers and pilsners, there wasn't all that much variety - only one dark beer, in fact - and even it (Hop in the Dark, from Deschutes) was a bit of a wolf in sheep's clothing, as it tasted just like a typical hoppy IPA.
I am generally in agreement with the article that Dod Howie posted on the Yahoo site that USA breweries tend to offer a greater variety of ales than is normally available in the UK, but the choice of ales available at this festival was limited to say the least. Much though I love strong, hoppy, American beers, there's only so many of them you can take at one session.
For the $10 entry fee, we got a one third of a pint commemorative glass. One dollar beer tokens only half filled these glasses - they were very careful about not letting the alcohol get out of hand - or into the wrong hands - particularly given the number of kids there - it was definitely a family event, held in a beautiful riverside setting in a corner of one of the town parks, with tall mature trees providing some welcome shade from the hot sun. I couldn't help thinking how nice it would be if we could rely on the weather in Aberdeen and arrange for our festival to be in such a nice outdoor setting, with stalls and music - dream on.
Here I am at the beer tent:
By sheer coincidence, immediately opposite our hotel, we happened upon a brewpub - http://www.hopvalleybrewing.com/. It had a much more interesting selection of ales, including one cask conditioned - Citra Self Down. Here's their blackboard:
Naturally, we had to have the sampler tray - all 10 of them!:
That's more like it!
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