Ales of Avista: Fruit/fall beers
This is the second in a series of posts exploring the beer lineup for this weekend’s Inland Northwest Craft Beer Festival.
The Inland Northwest Craft Beer Festival comes on the cusp between the fruit beers of summer and the heartier offerings of fall and winter. Here’s what to look for along those lines at Avista Stadium on Friday and Saturday:
Fruit beers: Schooner Exact will pour its sessionable Seamstress Union raspberry wheat (5 percent alcohol by volume, 20 International Bitterness Units), while Badass Backyard brings a bigger interpretation (6, 24) and Ten Pin pours its pineapple version, Groove (6.3, 24).
On the lighter side are two offerings from Spokane Valley breweries, Twelve String’s Mango Mambo (4.2, 17) and Hopped Up’s Lemon Cream (5, 15). River City has a wine barrel-aged huckleberry ale (5.2, 6) and Big Barn a farm-fresh blackberry porter (5.7, 37).
No-Li’s lineup includes the hearty Barley Bash (10) – a blend of Mosh Pit tart cherry ale and barrel-aged Big Bang barleywine – and Sexy Monkey (8), cask-conditioned, orange-accented Brass Monkey over cranberries and peaches (styled after the Sex on the Beach cocktail).
Sours: Fruit also features in several of the small but growing number of sour beers produced by regional brewers.
Iron Goat is bringing its Blackberry Apricot Sour (6.5), while apricots also star in Hopped Up’s brown Autumn Smash (5, 28). Paradise Creek pours its popular Huckleberry Pucker (4.6, 3), and River City’s TW Frankensour is dosed with naturally soured, 1996-vintage huckleberry ale from its predecessor, Coeur d’Alene Brewing.
On the hoppier side are No-Li’s Amar-Uh-Oh (6.5), a reddish kettle sour brewed with fresh Amarillo hops, and Top Frog’s Jack Frog (6), an Amarillo ale aged for a year in a Jack Daniels barrel.
Pumpkin beers: Pumpkins technically belong to the fruit family, and beers made with them are a fall fixture.
The Avista offerings include several locals that tend toward the lightly spiced side – Black Label’s Roasted Pumpkin ESB (5.3, 18), Big Barn’s homegrown Golden Pumpkin (6.3, 20), Iron Goat’s Punk Kid (7.1, 36) and Steam Plant Pumpkin (4.5, 7) – along with pumpkin specialist Elysian’s original Night Owl (6.7, 18) and Two Beers’ Pumpkin Spice (5.2).
Pumpkin porters come from both Paradise Creek (5.5, 47) and Hopped Up (6, 34).
Schooner Exact has a barrel-aged Whiskey Dick Cantwell Imperial Pumpkin (10, 30) honoring the Elysian co-founder who left that brewery after its acquisition by Anheuser-Busch. And River City’s Pumpkin Peach Ale Made the Hard Way skewers Budweiser’s infamous craft beer-baiting Super Bowl commercial (a factor in Cantwell’s decision).
Oktoberfests: Renditions of the malty German lager style are on the way from Der Blokken (4.8), Georgetown (Tomtoberfest, 6.5, 26), Icicle (Dirtyface, 5, 21), Pike (Harlot’s Harvest, 8.3, 30), Republic (Golden Lily, 5.2), Steam Plant (5.6, 10), Top Frog (Frog Fest, 4.4) and Waddell’s (6.6).
Other seasonals: Also celebrating fall is Boundary Bay’s Harvest Rye (6.5, 38), while winter receives an early welcome from Fish’s hoppy Winterfish imperial IPA (7.5), Fremont’s lightly smoky Bonfire (6, 40) and a sneak preview of No-Li’s upcoming Copper Donkey (8), brewed with lime peel and ginger to mimic a Moscow Mule cocktail.