Copper River WILD! Salmon Festival + Denali Brewing Co

Every year, passionate people from many organizations throughout Cordova AK come together to plan the Copper River WILD! Salmon Festival.  In a town where salmon is the backbone of the economy, citizens look forward to spending a 3 day weekend celebrating the essential fish.  Commemorating local harvest is a important part of the Cordova culture where not only can you catch great fish out of the streams, but hunt for moose and deer, also gather all sorts of berries.  One of the important festival needs that we can't find locally is beer, so we look to the greater community of Alaska to find our dance and chit-chat lubricant.  This year we were lucky to serve the brews of Denali Brewing Co from Talkeetna, AK.

 

We started off on Thursday with 9 kegs and a chance to celebrate salmon by eating it!  The Taste of Cordova served the Twister Creek IPA and the Mother's Ale.  Twister Creek is an 6.7% IPA that reminds me of the IPAs of the Northwest: crisp, clean, and full of flavor.  The Mother's Ale is a golden ale which complimented the sunny day really well.  Cordovans sipped on these two brews while enjoying a fillet demonstration by a master fillet-er.  The Mother's Ale was a great compliment to the salmon appetizers and main course, delicious all-around.  The Twister Creek IPA helped everyone to the dance floor at the end of the night to boogie down to the Copper River Drifters.

If we only emptied 2 kegs on Thursday night, what happened to the other 7 you ask?  Friday and Saturday night the party moved to the Ski Hill for the Salmon Jam portion of the weekend.  The founders of Denali Brewing Co, Sassan and Boe set up an amazing system involving 2 huge coolers, copper pipings, 7 kegs, and ice; corresponding tap handles were the icing on the cake.

The beer menu included:

Mother's Ale: probably the most popular beer of the night, we ripped through the 2 kegs of it in no time!

Single Engine Red: the red was a big hit, everyone loved the combo of malt and hop.

Twister Creek IPA: "Give me an IPA" was a phrase I heard a lot Friday night.

Chuli Stout: I was super stoked when I saw the nitro tank strapped to one of the folding tables.  Having that option really bumped up the sophistication of the beer garden.  We had quite a few dedicated drinkers for this brew.

Matt Porter: the porter was my favorite, such a rich flavor but still light in texture.

Louisville Sour: the blonde ale fermented in an oak barrel, people loved trying this new beer.

The moral of this story?  Hang out with us next year at the Copper River WILD! Salmon Festival.  Come for the salmon cook-off, the kids activities, the arts & crafts, the marathon, and the live music.  But most importantly, stay for the beer.

LTAB Tees

The second batch of LTAB Tees are SLOWLY on their way to me.  While we're waiting, I have to give a second round of applause to Alex Harris who designed the logo, it looks great.  Those who already have their logo tee, Let's see some pictures!  You can post them on the facebook page.  I would love to see all the places you go in your LTAB tee.

Have you gotten yours yet?

Click the link on the right to order yours today, only $20!

Midnight Sun Brewing Company Part 2

8111 Dimond Hook Drive
Anchorage, AK 99507

(907) 344-1179

http://www.midnightsunbrewing.com/

This is my second trip to the Loft at Midnight Sun Brewing Company.  How was it different this second time around?  Well, they have a great new addition: a canning system!  Such an exciting addition to any Alaskan brewing company.  I ran into head brewer Ben Johnson when trying to peak behind the scenes.  Ben informed me that not only have they recently branched out their distributing (they can now be found in Washington, Oregon, AND California), they're expanding throughout Anchorage.  Midnight Sun still uses their space in Midtown, brew and can in the space underneath the Loft, plus occupy a warehouse within a stone's throw of the Loft.  Expansion seems to be the name of the game for Midnight Sun, Ben also informed me now that they have mastered canning the Sockeye Red IPA, the brewery is looking to start canning another one of Midnight's creations.  The beers in question?  Kodiak Brown Ale or the Arctic Rhino Porter.  Which would you like to see in a can first?

Midnight Sun Canning System

All of the beers on tap.

Mary and Jessyka

Rotating Taps at the Reluctant

Spontaneous Tuesday night out turned out well for me last night.  Ever since Adam Pierson, the bar manager of the Reluctant Fisherman, gave me a sneak peak at the "kegs on deck" I have been dreaming of the Boulevard Brewing Company's Unfiltered Wheat Beer.  The beer is light with a low hop profile and easy to drink. Very low in complexity, the wheat is definitely a good beer for the hot Missouri summers it was brewed in.  Although we don't get too many occasions for backyard beers up here in Alaska, it was great to have a session beer under the 5% alcohol line.  It could have kept us well-behaved if the Irish coffees were never ordered.... Oh well, thankfully Adam has a 1/2 barrel of the Unfiltered Wheat Beer, maybe we can behave next time.

Beervana here we come!

One month until we leave for Portland!  Jonah and I are heading south for his sister Emily's wedding.  Recently we decided to stretch the trip out to 8 days instead of a 3 day hop in and hop out.

Do you know what that means???

Breweries!

So Portlanders, which ones should I visit?

My IPA Day Celebration!

Happy IPA Day!

One of my favorite holidays of the year, IPA day!  Makes me wonder, do they have celebratory days for other beer styles?  I'll have to put that on my research list.  Anywho.... it's still pretty early in the morning here in AK, so for now I'll just be dreaming of the different IPAs I would love to be drinking this evening.

What are your favorite IPAs?

What will you be drinking this evening?

Crazy July Life

Hey everyone, sorry for being so lame with my lack of blogging this month, but it has been a CRAZY July.  At both my daytime jobs, I had large events that went off wonderfully but took a lot of time and effort.  The goods news, YES! there's good news, is that even though I was working hard, beer was still in my Crazy July Life.  I went to Anchorage where I visited some breweries there AND picked up my first batch of blog t-shirts.  My event with the Copper River Marketing Association included a beer tasting with Alaskan Brewing Co that I got to organize!  Finally, this weekend I ran the beer garden at the Copper River WILD! Festival Salmon Jam, which included tasting some delicious brews from Denali Brewing Co.
I have much more to tell you all about these events, alas I am still so exhausted.  Stay tuned this week for some in depth postings of my Crazy July Life.