Redbones' Northwest Beer Dinner

After years of broken promises to attend this event, we finally got around to booking seats at the thirteenth edition of Redbones' Northwest Beer Dinner.

We're not able to compare with previous years, but this was a fun opportunity to try some unfamiliar beers from a selection of Washington and Oregon breweries. While they serve Northwest brews for several weeks around the time of the dinners, they reserve some of the best kegs for the event itself, and according to some of the speakers, we were drinking, in some cases, seasonal brews no longer available anywhere else.

The full selection of beers was as follows, roughly in order of serving:

Pyramid Broken Rake Amber
Pyramid Thunderhead IPA
Pyramid Imperial Hefeweizen
Elysian Immortal IPA
Big Time Firecracker
Rogue Chocolate Stout
Elysian Dragon's Tooth Oatmeal Stout

The event takes place downstairs in Redbones, and we were seated with strangers since we didn't have enough people for a full table; the beer inevitably made this very convivial.
The beers were served at the table, and while there were occasional hiccups as to what exactly we were drinking at any given time, in the end we did sample all seven options. The food was regular Redbones fare, or at least those items they chose to serve on the buffet line, but was generally very tasty. Interspersed with the food and beer, we had brief talks by some of the visiting brewers; these were a little dry to start, but the final two were more entertaining (though they all spent too much time talking about the wonderful Northeastern brewing tradition!).

Later in the evening, one of the owners asked trivia questions in exchange for (many) prizes, although she seemed more interested in heckling than in actually asking questions (we can't complain: we had quite a haul of loot).

As for the beers, based on my quick survey, the Amber, the Immortal IPA and the Chocolate Stout were our three picks of the night; the Amber was a great, drinkable, malty-hoppy start to the evening, while the IPA was on the drinkably hoppy side. The Chocolate Stout really had a rich chocolately aroma and taste, which made it dangerously consumable, in a good way.

By contrast, we weren't huge fans of the Imperial Hefeweizen, which might have really been a Weizenbock, though there wasn't much clarity on that point.

We were agreed that these smaller beer events are starting to become our preferred method of encountering interesting new beers, or locally unusual brews.