Everett festival tidbits

    Downtown Everett saw its first-ever craft beer festival August 18, and it looked to be a great success.  The Beer Commission paid some staff to check IDs, take money, etc., and also signed up volunteers, folks like me who will work for beer.  I spent about four hours sticking wristbands on people coming in, and counting out extra tasting tokens.  It was fun, chatting with folks about the tee shirts they chose to wear (generally brewpub tees, of course).
    My shift ended, I collected my "pay" (seven wooden tokens and a tasting glass) and made the rounds for another hour-plus.  Woodinville, down the road, home of Redhook and umpty-ump wineries, has spawned three new nano-breweries that set up here.  Brickyard Brewing, Dirty Bucket Brewing, and Twelve Bar Brews.  At the last-named, I had to ask the ignoramus question: "what does your name mean? Is that how many retail accounts you have?"  No, the brewer answered patiently, it's a pun on 12-bar blues, a musical term any blues fan would know.
    I was happy to see Gallagher's from Edmonds there and pouring their fine Belgian trippel, The Monk.  I've always dreamed of brewing my own batch of ale that would taste sort of like Pike's Monks Uncle, and this may be my chance someday.
    Fremont Brewing was there, and showing off their three ales in 12-oz. cans.  I posted about them almost two years ago, going on about their plans to start canning beer. Since then, a number of Wash. brewers have come out with cans: Seven Seas, Two Beers, Hilliards, etc.  The folks at Fremont had run into obstacles of one sort or another, but finally got the cans out about a month ago.

(Visited 8/18/12)