Craft Beer Week: Collaborations
Like last year, the heart of the second annual Spokane Craft Beer Week is the collaborations produced by pairs of area breweries.
And like the Grinch, that heart has grown three sizes this year. Nineteen beers will be on tap at today’s Collaboration Celebration from 4 to 7 p.m. on the riverside patio at No-Li, up from last year’s six.
Ten dollars gets you in the door with tickets for your first five 4-ounce pours. Live music will be provided by Wyatt Wood.
Your beer choices will include:
Citraweizen, Northern Ales/Quartzite: A traditional banana-and-pear-accented, unfiltered wheat beer hopped with Citra for more fruit character (4.7 percent alcohol by volume, 10 International Bitterness Units).
Farm-Dog Berry Kolsch, Big Barn/English Setter: Clean, crisp German-style ale/lager hybrid enhanced with elderberries for a taste reminiscent of wild huckleberries (6.3, 19).
Ryenot Steam Lager, Slate Creek/Wallace: American-style lager/ale hybrid with spicy rye malt and earthy, minty Northern Brewer hops (4.8, 18).
Dr. G’s American Gruit Ale, Bellwether/Mad Bomber: Hopped herb beer with rosemary, sage, lemongrass and black pepper over a rye-accented malt body (8, 28).
Palouse SMaSH, Badass Backyard/Black Label: Pale ale brewed with locally produced Palouse Pint pilsner malt and fruity/spicy Cleopatra hops (5.2, 34).
Sour SMaSH, No-Li/Orlison: Single-malt, single-hop kettle sour with tart lemon notes and a fruity character from Idaho 7 hops (5, 15).
Tart Saison, Perry Street/River City: Crisp kettle sour fermented with French saison yeast (5.5, 24).
Sour Blood Orange Saison, MickDuff’s/Paradise Creek: Sessionable saison blended with Paradise Creek’s tart Berliner Weisse and infused with blood orange puree (5.4, 15).
Goat Breaker Blood Orange Tart IPA, Bale Breaker/Iron Goat: Slightly sour offering with a wheat and specialty malt body balanced by Citra and experimental hops (6.5, 70).
Indecent IPA, 238/New Boundary: Brewed with chipotle peppers and lime juice (6.5, 90).
Whistling Frog Patio Season IPA, Top Frog/Whistle Punk: Bright, citrusy and juicy (5.5, 55).
Tricky SIMphony, Trickster’s/Twelve String: Single-hop Cascadian dark ale made with four different forms of Simcoe: whole leaf, pellets, extract and lupulin powder (7.3, 15).
Orange You Glad We Said Chocolate, Steam Plant/Waddell’s: Big but smooth-drinking porter with Ghirardelli chocolate, cocoa nibs, fresh blood orange peel plus concentrate and spicy Nugget hops (7.5, 50).
Also on the darker side, look for the 5 Chimneys blend from five North Idaho breweries, made up of Josiah's Revenge imperial stout from Daft Badger; Downdraft's Anonymous Amber; Laughing Dog's imperial oatmeal stout; Slate Creek's Salmon Run Red and Selkirk Abbey's Guilt Belgian-style porter.
And to top it all off, there will be five variations on Spokane's Downtown Collaboration Cream Ale (5.5, 15): the straight base beer by River City; Black Label’s honey-cardamom version; the Steam Plant’s horchata take, with cinnamon and vanilla; and both an orange creamsicle and complex, dark-accented Penumbra interpretation by Young Buck.
For the rest of today's Craft Beer Week activities, see the post below.