Hoptoberfest Hopes

Every year, the Beveridge Place Pub down in Seattle turns October into Hoptoberfest.  They feature around 12 Washington State IPAs that rotate through their taps and customers get a chance to vote on which IPA they want on tap EVERY SINGLE DAY at Beveridge Place Pub in 2012.

At the beginning of the month, you can nominate any Washington-brewed IPA, but by mid-October the voting gets whittled down to the top eight nominees.  To vote, you must head to the Beveridge Place Pub and order a pint of IPA.  You then get a ballot and can vote once a day…repeating throughout month as often as possible!  From October 15th – 24th, customers vote for which three, among the top eight, will advance to the final round.  After that, a general election ballot with the top three will be provided for voters until November 1st.

We’ve won the most customer votes four out of the five years that we’ve been a part of Hoptoberfest and have loved being the house IPA at Beveridge Place Pub!  We’re hoping to retain our title as reigning champ and bring lots of BBAY IPA love to Seattlites through 2012 too.  And we need your help!  If you’re already in the Seattle area, go to the Beveridge Place Pub as often as your spouse or wallet allows (which is no hardship, we’re sure!) and vote for Boundary Bay Brewery when you get your ballot.  However, if you’re not in the neighborhood, why not plan a road tripping to Seattle when we do!?!  We’re planning a Brewers Night at the Beveridge Place Pub on Monday, October 24th…and we’re hoping to have a whole crowd of BBAY fans show up too.

The festivities will start, officially, around 5pm.  But we’ll probably show up a little early to rub elbows with the regulars, so swing by if you manage to wriggle out of work a little early.  There’ll be special treats (like our beloved Mac N Cheese and locally made pretzels from Ralf’s Bavarian Pretzels), raffle prizes and $3 pints during the brewers night, so come join the fun!  If you know anything about last year’s Boundary Bay Brewers Night, you KNOW this is an evening not to be missed.  Cheers!

Boundary Bay Brewery and Beveridge Place Pub

Seattle Times just named Beverdige Place Pub as the #1 beer spot in all of Seattle!  They say that the bar, “located in West Seattle, just has a perfect balance of good beer wrapped up in a welcome atmosphere.” We agree and we think you should go check it out…especially since their Barleywine Bacchanal begins this Friday!  What is a Barleywine Bacchanal, you ask?  Well, it’s “…a decadent celebration of the biggest, boldest brews” according to Beveridge Place Pub!  The style known as Barleywine originated in England and is typically defined by an alcohol strength of somewhere between 8 and 12% by volume.  Which means that although it is still a beer (made from grain, not fruit), this style is often as strong as wine.

Between February 25th and March 5th, you’ll find 50 rotating barleywines on draught at the Beveridge Place Pub and 24 dedicated Barleywine Taps at all times!  Beveridge Place is torturing the beer lover in us all by boasting that they’ll have “…barleywines on draught from the West Coast’s best breweries including many new releases as well as vintages from the cellar!”  Trust us, you do not want to miss this event!  They’ll have our IPA on tap (since it’s their House IPA for 2011 – thanks to the votes from customers!) and they’ll be pouring our Old Bounder Barleywine too.

The Boundary Bay Brewery Old Bounder is a rich, full-bodied barleywine with a smooth caramel sweetness, warming alcohol content and balanced hop character. It’s excellent with desserts or as an after diner beverage, but it’s a heavy hitter at 9.6% ABV, so it’s to be appreciated in moderation.  We make it with Amarillo, Mt. Hood and Columbus hops along with Premium 2-Row, Munich, Crystal, Carastan and chocolate malts.  Our barleywine has brought home a silver medal from the Great American Beer Festival in 2002 and 2004 and from the North American Beer Awards in 2003 and 2005.  And, in 2008, Old Bounder brought home the gold medal from the North American Beer Awards!

You can almost always get our barleywine to go in 22 oz. bottles here at the brewery and it rotates through our seasonal taps occasionally so keep an eye out for it.  We’ve even got a recipe on our blog for using our Old Bounder to make barleywine gelato!

The Best of 2010

It’s hard to believe, but another year is already drawing to a close and it’s got us in a reflective mood over here at Boundary Bay Brewery.  So, today…we’re looking back!

Cheers to our 15th Anniversary!

2010 marked our 15th anniversary and we had a fantastic party here at the brewery to celebrate!  We ranked as the largest selling brewpub in the nation for the third year running and were voted the Best Brewpub in Washington by the readers of Northwest Brewing News – also for the third year in a row.  The Northwest Brewing News Readers choice awards also named Boundary Bay Brewery for Best Scotch Ale and Best IPA…which makes our IPA the winner for the last five years consecutively!

In 2010, we brewed our first Tripel, made an anniversary ale called “15” and created a special brew to help celebrate the 30th anniversary of Village Books…and all were met with rave reviews! We got a new Mash Tun and installed our very first beer engine which now lets us provide our thirsty customers with not one but TWO cask ales every day.  We brought home medals from the North American Beer Awards, the Great American Beer Festival and the World Beer Cup:  Silvers for our Dunkles Bock (WBC) and our Porter (NABA) and Bronzes for our Cabin Fever (WBC), Imperial IPA (WBC) and Imperial Oatmeal Stout (GABF).

our logo come to life in St. Paddy's Parade!

We had the pleasure of helping over 100 local nonprofits and in bringing the community together for Bellingham’s first annual St. Patrick’s Day parade (thanks to Janet, our General Manager!).  We had a Locks of Love donation party with free haircuts in our beer garden and brought together lots of local and sustainable businesses for our very first Earth Day Sustainability Fair.  We surpassed 10,000 fans on Facebook, held our first (possibly THE first ever?) Virtual Brewers Night and took back the tap as the House IPA at Beveridge Place Pub!

And, besides all that, we’ve kept on keeping on…brewing and bottling all our usuals that you’ve come to know and love, serving up fresh and local Northwest food, hosting events here at the brewery throughout the year and doing our best to help keep Bellingham a strong, local, sustainable community.  It’s been a whirlwind and we’ve had a fabulous time!  We just want to say thank you to all of our incredible fans who are such an important part of what we do.  We could never be a success without the love and support we receive from our community.  So, cheers everyone…and thank you!

 

 

Oh Yes We Did

Last night, around 9 pm or so, our owner Ed Bennett received a very welcome phone call.  It was from Beveridge Place Pub and they were calling to tell us that the Boundary Bay Brewery IPA has been named the official Winner of Hoptoberfest 2010!  If you haven’t been following along with us as we’ve tweeted, blogged, etc. about this for the last month, here’s a very, very brief overview from last night’s post to the Seattle Beer News blog:

“With people across the country closely watching political results this week,Beveridge Place Pub will be announcing a much more important winner tonight [November 4th] at 8pm. They’ll be announcing which Washington IPA earned the right to become the Beveridge Place Pub house IPA for 2011 by garnering the most customer votes during their month-long Hoptoberfest, which featured IPAs from a slew of Washington breweries. The field was narrowed down to three favorites on October 25: Black Raven Trickster IPA (reigning champion), Boundary Bay IPA (former repeat winner), and Two Beers Evolutionary IPA. Becoming house IPA at Beveridge Place Pub is a serious honor and a lucrative business incentive (BPP goes through a lot of pints of IPA…). Good luck to all 3 breweries this evening.“

We are thrilled to have been named the House IPA for 2011 at Beveridge Place Pub!  We want to thank everyone who came out to vote and to support Washington craft beer!  Thanks for helping us Take Back the Tap!  Cheers to all the amazing Washington breweries who participated in this Hoptoberfest competition and especially to Black Raven and Two Beers Brewing Co. who made it to the final three with us.

 

Take Back the Tap This Hoptoberfest!

 

 

Hoptoberfest, to those in the know, is the best time of the year for hop heads in Washington State!

Every year, during the month of October, Beveridge Place Pub in West Seattle features rotating taps of Washington State IPA’s and is also when the bar lets their regulars pick which IPA the Beveridge Place will have on tap for them for a full year!  Here’s how it works:  during the month of October, every time you head over to the Beveridge Place Pub and order a pint of IPA, you get to place a vote for your favorite IPA that you’d like to see become the 2011 House IPA.

This year, Hoptoberfest kicks off on October 4th and the Beveridge Place will feature up to 16 rotating Washington State IPA’s on tap for nearly a month of “bitter revelry”!  The elimination tournament kicks off with regulars being allowed to nominate (until October 15th!) any Washington-brewed IPA, but no Imperials.  Then, as each week progresses, the field of IPA’s gets smaller and smaller with the field narrowing to just three finalists after the first three weeks of the competition.  The last IPA standing is the one who received the most votes over the month and will be declared the House IPA for the following year.

Our Boundary Bay Brewery IPA has been the Hoptoberfest champion for years…except for 2010.  Last year, Black Raven won the title of House IPA and ended our reign for “as long as anyone can remember” (according to Seattle Beer News!).  We were in the top three finalists last year, along with the Black Raven Trickster IPA and the Harmon Point Defiance IPA.

And while we are fully in support of Washington craft beer we want to Take Back the Tap in this year’s Octoberfest!  And we need YOUR help!  Come on Boundary Bay Brewery fans, rally the troops and head to West Seattle!

Here’s what you can do: head to the Beveridge Place Pub as many times as you like during the month of October and drink many, many pints of IPA so that you can vote many, many times. We suggest marking Boundary Bay Brewery on that ballot, but we’ll leave it up to you!