Tournament of Beer: Northwest Pale Ales Championship Vote and Party
BRANDON CRESPIN: Oh, the carnage! Oh, the humanity! Oh, the late kettle additions!
PHAEDRA MILLER: The prodigious pale ale throwdown finale is on! Voting for Peaks and Pints Tournament of Beer: Northwest Pale Ales Championship Game is live. Hello Tournament tribe! I’m Peaks bartender Phaedra Miller. After three weeks of voting, you have picked the most popular pale ales in the Pacific Northwest. What began as 64 Cascade-slinging pales has been narrowed down to two!
CRESPIN: … I apologize for the delay. I was looking up, “prodigious.” Hi everyone. It’s me, Peaks bartender Brandon Crespin, the guy with the most Tournament mic time this year. It was a blast! But it’s not over yet.
MILLER: First, let’s look at yesterday’s Final Four action, and then vote on the Championship Game. …
Friday, April 28, Final Four Northwest Pale Ales results
Game 1, Washington Region
Georgetown Johnny Utah (#1 seed) vs. E9 Don of Time (#1 seed)
CRESPIN: Did you see the dance, Phaedra?
MILLER: I did. Amazing.
CRESPIN: The “Napoleon Don-amite” show with that dance on E9’s Instagram was pretty much spectacular, gosh.
MILLER: I think the video worked. After mounting quite a tear through the Tournament of Beer: Northwest Pale Ales, number one seed Georgetown Brewing Johnny Utah lost its board after facing E9‘s Don of Time. Don, with the help of head brewer Shane “Pappas” Johns, kept throwing Amarillo, Simcoe, and Mosaic hops at Utah until the Georgetown pale became soft, and got lost in the sauce. With 59 percent of the vote, E9 Brewing‘s Don of Time heads to the Championship Game.
CRESPIN: I wouldn’t worry about Georgetown. They’ll keep on being the largest independent brewery in Washington.
Game 2, Oregon Region
pFriem Mosaic Pale (#2 seed) vs. Boneyard Bone-A-Fide (#1 seed)
CRESPIN: From 12:01 a.m., until 10 a.m. Boneyard Beer’s Bone-A-Fide had a solid lead over pFriem Family Brewers‘ Mosaic Pale. At noon, the pale brewed in Bend, Oregon, had its lead reduce to about 51 percent of the vote. An hour later, the game was tied. At 2 p.m. pFriem was in the lead until 8 p.m. when Boneyard gained the one-percent lead back. Our beer line cleaners called it the game of the Tournament, which is hard to argue with two breweries that know how to brew award-winning pales and the game was that close. When the last pint was poured, Boneyard Bone-A-Fide won the ping-pong game with 52 percent of the vote and moves on to today’s Championship Game.
Saturday, April 29, Northwest Pale Ales Championship Game
MILLER: Welcome to the Big Dance. Voting on Peaks & Pints’ Instagram Stories will end at 4 p.m. Voting will resume at 5 p.m. live at Peaks & Pints craft beer bar, bottle shop and restaurant in Tacoma’s Proctor District. Ballots will be handed out, which will also serve as raffle tickets for a Yeti Cooler covered with stickers from participating Tournament breweries. The live vote will close at 8 p.m. and roughly a half-hour later the Northwest Pale Ale Champion will be announced. The winning brewery will receive a permanent handle at Peaks through the summer.
CRESPIN: Let’s meet our players. …
Player: Don of Time (#1 seed)
Team: E9 Brewing, Tacoma, Washington
Stats: 5.4% ABV
CRESPIN: In the early ’90s, Dusty Trail converted the historic Engine House No. 9 bar into a brewpub at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Pine Street, officially becoming the first microbrewery in Tacoma. Dick Dickens grabbed the Engine House reins in 2002, bringing in head brewer Doug Tiede. Heads turned and medals were hung. In 2011, The X Group added the Engine House to their local restaurant empire, with Shane Johns and Donovan Stewart running the kettles and hanging even more medals, mostly for their sours and saisons. Four years ago, they separated the brewery from the restaurant and opened E9 Brewing in Tacoma’s Historic Brewery District. Stewart, the namesake of E9’s pale ale, is known by many as a rock star in dozens of bands, most notably Tacos! and Gold Sweats. Others know Stewart as the longtime assistant brewer and now sales director at E9 Brewing. He and Head Brewer Shane Johns built a world class sour and saison program together, when they weren’t creating delicious IPAs and the house pale ale, Don of Time, brewed with Amarillo and Simcoe for a hoppy yet balanced pale with subtle citrus notes.
Player: Bone-A-Fide (#1 seed)
Team: Boneyard Beer, Bend, Oregon
Stats: 5.5% ABV, 40 IBU
MILLER: In 2010, Boneyard Beer was started in an old auto shop tucked away in the backstreets of Bend, Oregon’s historical district. Without any outside investors or major bank loans, Boneyard’s inception was unconventional to say the least. After decades in the brewing industry, owner Tony Lawrence built up a “boneyard” of old equipment he collected from 13 different breweries around the country. Alongside co-founders Clay and Melodee Storey, this second-hand brewing equipment was pieced together to brew the first batch of Boneyard Beer in May 2010. In July 2018, Boneyard opened a new taproom at 1955 NE Division Street in Bend; the location was formerly a Chinese restaurant as well as a Texas Hold’em poker room and a short-lived taqueria. Heavily influenced by Three Floyds, Boneyard’s Bone-A-Fide pale is hoppy like an IPA but without the bitterness. The malts used to create the beer balance nicely with some of the Yakima Valley’s most bona fide dank hop varieties: Cascade, Centennial, and Chinook. This medium bodied pale blasts of juicy hops for a citrus/tropical fruit presence with lots of grapefruit, mango, pineapple, and orange peel sweetness that is countered by dry, bitter pine needle flavor.
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