Next week I am going to Seattle for vacation and taking my wife and son with me. Malin and I have already made a list of beer-friendly places to go. Top on the list will be to get to a good package store, find reputable local brews, pack them up in a padded, cardboard box, and ship them back to Georgia. Various other places are on the itinerary as well, including breweries and brewpubs. You can check out this map to see the places we’ve scoped out so far.

Seattle's best friend: beer

On a side note, the Blissful Bock is now on tap at Hump’s (aka my basement). Now that it is carbonated, I’m quite pleased with it. It is not a particularly complex beer, but it wasn’t meant to be. It is a beautiful gold in color, it has a strong aroma of fresh, rising bread, and it is very malty with an earthy and somewhat fruity hop bitterness (thanks to the use of Glacier hops instead of a noble variety).

I brewed a Farmhouse Ale the other week, and I have, quite appropriately, dubbed it Hump’s Farmhouse Ale. I used one of Wyeast’s VSS varieties (short for “Very Special Strain”): 3726 – Farmhouse Ale Yeast (somehow fitting, eh?). I’ll rack it to the secondary before leaving for vacation on Sunday. I also plan on going to the homebrew store on Saturday to get supplies for Hump’s Peachy Ale – a Belgian-style specialty beer made with lots of fresh peaches. I’ll need to hit the store this upcoming Saturday in order to brew on Sunday the 12th because we don’t get back into town until late evening on the 11th. I’m hoping to grab another VSS yeast for the peach brew: Wyeast 3822 – Ingelmunster Ale Yeast.