Updates: Foggy Noggin, Bellingham festival

   After lunch at Mill Creek on July 14, I headed down to road about seven miles to Foggy Noggin in Bothell, to see that business was booming at this nanobrewery in a garage. I would guess I saw fifteen cars parked on the street out front and as many as the long driveway could hold, another dozen.  Upwards of fifty beer lovers were sitting or standing around, working on pints or sampler flights.  Jim has added a Rufus IPA to his lineup, a growler's worth of which I took home.  As I noted on an earlier post, his first ales were all named for some aspect of PAC-10 football.  If Rufus fits in this naming pattern, the allusion escapes me.
   A worthy innovation I saw here: a cold case of pre-filled growlers, like Kulshan does here in Bellingham.  Given that FN is only open Saturday afternoons, and the line in front of the taps was pretty long, anything that speeds the process is good.

   Query:  How many places in the northern hemisphere are chilly enough to warrant wearing a parka in the 22nd of July:  Chukchi, Alaska...Reykjavic...the outer Hebrides...and sometimes Bellingham. Such was the case last Sunday when the Brewers by the Bay festival, put on by the local Rotary, opened across the street from Boundary Bay.  Eighteen brewers from Washington set up, and eleven from up and down the coast (and Big Sky from Missoula). If the gray, almost-rainy day broke 60 F on the thermometer, it would have surprised me. 

The turnout was not quite what it was for the April Brewsday festival here, but it was still good.  Old Schoolhouse came over from Winthrop with a keg each of their Imperial Stour and Imperial IPA. Gettig a 5-0z glass of either of those, for a $1 sampling token, works out to 20 cents an ounce, a good  deal less that the price of a bottle on the shelf. Dick's Brewing came up from Centralia with some Scottish Ale, the latest in their Dedication series (dedicated to their late founder Dick Young) and it was excellent, too.