The Full Pint is running a poll of the "best Pacific NW brewery." As I find polls irresistible, I helplessly clicked through. And then I was confronted with an impossible decision. Best brewery? How would you even begin to assess such a thing? It's far worse than trying to identify a favorite beer (also an impossibility), because you don't even have a standard for measure. Best beer? Best pub? Best location? Best brewer?
Deschutes, which has long had the savviest online presence, tweeted the poll a couple hours ago and are crushing the competition (they've garnered 58% of the vote, out of 32 breweries).
Although I did click a box, I did so out of advocacy--I selected a smaller, non-urban brewery that fewer people know about. Given the impossibility of the task, that seemed as good as any criteria I could imagine.
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In other news, resident techie Bill has a post up at It's Pub Night that will convert any volume of beer into a six-pack equivalent. That four dollar 22-ouncer look like a deal? Well, plug it into the SPE calc and you realize--yipes, $13.09, that's a bit spendy. So go and play around. (It reminds me of the old days, when I stood in front of the beer cooler and regarded 16-ounce Rainier pounders, 11-ounce Heidelbergs, and the usual assortment of 12-ouncers and tried to figure which was the best deal. Of course, that was way, way before the internets.)
What an odd list for that poll... A lot made sense, but I don't understand why they left out Cascade Brewing and then included some breweries like Cascade Lakes or Hales or a couple others.
ReplyDeleteCurious. What's the benchmark for the "Best Brewery?"
ReplyDeleteMost popular?
Most available?
Most commercialized?
Most exposure?
Most consistent?
Most creative?
Most diverse?
Best in-house pub?
Best French Fries?
Best Burger?
The poll is too vague.
"Best" in what way?
Does Deschutes get more votes just because they are widely available, popular and have a nice pub/restaurant? Does that constitute being the Best Brewery?
We have to go down to 4th place to find a NW brewery that isn't widely available and doesn't have a pub.
Kind of big waste of time.
Maybe, "Best Beer" in the NW would/could be just as redundant. ;-}
I for one wouldn't call many on the list full on Crafts by definition...
ReplyDeleteBut I love Widmer, Deschutes, and Full Sail to death... as well as some of the micros like Ninkasi (now becoming more craft), BeerValley.. etc.. but I voted Widmer because of what they have accomplished. Plus it's nice to be currently drinking a great double alt and pale currently.
Deschutes got 134 votes so far? I really don't get online polls, did they sent out a vote for us twitter mail or something?
ReplyDeleteI cast mine for Midnight Sun, but like Matt said, they did leave Cascade Brewing/Raccoon Lodge out, which is a crime.
Is a boring and bland Hazy Wheat Beer served with a lemon considered an accomplishment? The craft beer Budweiser! ;-}
ReplyDeleteOn that basis, I guess we can say Full Sail still be privately owned by the employees might be a major accomplishment. :-)
Quite a strange looking list indeed. Maybe leaving out Cascade Brewing is a mere case of the encoder's unmindfulness?
ReplyDeleteDr. Wort... off the Hefe.. look at their finer accompishments, and their new Drifter, and the big bottles that have just now slowly started... from what I have heard, the stuff at their brewpub is absolutely amazing... they haven't faded into the world of AB. AB is just being hired on as a distributor.. because they care! ;-)
ReplyDelete