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Thursday, June 11, 2009

Best Brewery?

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.


Cost Calculator
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.)

7 comments:

  1. 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.

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  2. Curious. What's the benchmark for the "Best Brewery?"

    Most 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. ;-}

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  3. I for one wouldn't call many on the list full on Crafts by definition...

    But 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.

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  4. 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?

    I cast mine for Midnight Sun, but like Matt said, they did leave Cascade Brewing/Raccoon Lodge out, which is a crime.

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  5. Is a boring and bland Hazy Wheat Beer served with a lemon considered an accomplishment? The craft beer Budweiser! ;-}

    On that basis, I guess we can say Full Sail still be privately owned by the employees might be a major accomplishment. :-)

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  6. Quite a strange looking list indeed. Maybe leaving out Cascade Brewing is a mere case of the encoder's unmindfulness?

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  7. Dr. 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! ;-)

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