Mrs. Beer Blog is a huge Sound of Music fan. She knows the words to all of the songs and everything. She can name all of the children (in order by age) and watches intensely when the movie airs each year at Christmastime. I, on the other hand, just think of it as cute sissy stuff—a mildly entertaining movie that I endure each year because I love my wife.
I do not know the words to any of the songs and I never get scared when the family is hiding from the Nazis behind the headstones in the abbey. I certainly never had a crush on Maria when I was a kid, and even if I did, I’d be over it by now.
I have nothing against girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes and I don’t mind the occasional snowflake sticking to my nose and eyelashes. Sure, “Me” is a name I call myself and “Far” is a long, long way to run, but this is a beer blog and not a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. So for just a moment lets all stop daydreaming about cream colored ponies and warm apple strudels and get on with talking about beer.
Mmmm, strudel.
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Our Favorite Beer Things 2010
Our list of favorite things includes beer places, beer adventures, beer events, and other beer-related stuff. We’ll post a bunch of these between now and the end of the year.
Favorite Thing Number 10 – The Yakima Fresh Hop Ale Festival
In October of 2010 we attended the Yakima Fresh Hop Ale Festival for the first time. We loved pretty much everything about this festival. Of course the beer was fantastic, but there’s a lot more to love about this celebration of the hop harvest. For instance, it’s for a worthy cause, benefitting Allied Arts of Yakima County. The entertainment was outstanding, including a classic rock cover band that got a lot of tipsy people out there shaking their booties (think bad wedding dancing).
Here is what we said about it when we originally posted our coverage of the event a couple months ago.
Originally posted on October 5th, 2010
This was our first time attending this event. We’d been told it was great but we didn’t know exactly what to expect. In short, we absolutely loved this festival. The Annual Yakima Fresh Hop Festival is a big fundraiser for Allied Arts of Yakima Valley. They put on a great event.
The beers were amazing, as you can imagine. Too many great ones to mention, but I’ll give shouts out to a few of my favorites: Yakima Craft Brewing Fresh Hop IPA, Fremont Brewing Cowiche Canyon Organic Fresh Hop Ale, and New Belgium/Elysian The Trip Fresh Hop. I assume this was a fresh hop version of Trip VI? (The volunteers pouring didn’t know).
We loved the vibe of this event. The music was great. The local homebrew club was there amidst it all, brewing up a batch and answering questions. The beer selection was fantastic. They even had a cigar tent and encouraged people to light up. The crowd just seemed to be having a really, really good time in general. We especially enjoyed watching people dance to the sounds of Slideshow, a classic rock cover band that played familiar songs that inspired even the most hopeless dancers to get out there and shake it up.
As for the judging, as we understand it Laughing Dog Brewing came in first, Bridgeport Brewing came in second, and New Belgium/Elysian came in third. I could be wrong. I know for sure that Laughing Dog took home the gold, but beyond that my memory is a bit fuzzy for some reason and the information has yet to find its way onto the web.
Yakima, we will be back.
