The Tour de Kitsap continued, albeit quite briefly, from Sound Brewing to Slippery Pig, just a mile away but up a hill and down a dirt road — we needed to expend a small amount of effort to get there.  The Pig’s on a family farm belonging to Dave and Shawna Lambert, and they use a wonderful amount of home-grown or local ingredients.  So it seems like all their beers are seasonals — I’ll have to re-visit sometime in the future to see what’s new.  They had five taps pouring, one of which was a cask-conditioned version of their Scotch Ale with strawberries.  Usually I don’t include cask versions in my posts, but since all their offerings are pretty small batches, I figured why not.  I forgot to ask about logo glassware, but I think I just assumed they wouldn’t have any.  They did have Battenkill logo growlers for sale — must have gotten a good deal on them when that neighboring brewery closed earlier this year.

Update! 8/15/2012: I ended up re-visiting sooner than I thought, during my Tour de Kitsap 2 ride in early July.  I thought I’d spend an hour here, but they had six beers on tap that I wanted to sample, and then a friend I hadn’t seen in a while randomly showed up, so time just kind of slipped away, so to speak.  They had a bourbon barrel aged version of their Rhubarb IPA, and as word got out about it, the guy from Bainbridge Island Brewing showed up to give it a try.  I said hello, but I don’t think he remembered me from earlier.  Then the Valholl guy showed up.  Pretty cool beer community over there in the west Sound.

Tasters at Slippery Pig Brewery — Poulsbo, WA

Rob’s Picks
• Rhubarb IPA – 9.8% – Fun aroma.  Subtle sweet rhubarb flavor and good bitterness, solid malty base, and an alcohol edge.  Really nice!
• Bourbon Barrel Rhubarb IPA – Strong bourbon aroma.  Nice bourbon/rhubarb mix.  Really smooth, and much more mellow.  Aged 20 days.  Dave had been hoping for more oak flavor, but I wasn’t about to complain.
• Hogsbreath Honey Wheat – 11.5% – Looks like a glass of cloudy honey.  Nice zing on the tongue, probably from the lemon verbena herb in the mix.  Good honey flavor, solid body, very unfiltered.
• Dandelion Sour – 5% – Interesting sour aroma.  Nice unfiltered haziness to color and body.  Subtle sweetness and good malty undertones.  Pretty cool sour.  At only 5%, this could be considered Slippery Pig’s session beer…
• Hogwash Sour Stout – 7.4% – Stout aroma with sour edge.  Light on the tongue for a stout.  Chocolate start, strong tart sourness.  Very unique.  Just kept sipping it.
• Curly Tail Stinging Nettle Pale Ale – 8% – Nice malty aroma.  Good malty taste with subtle spicy nettle flavor.  Quite drinkable.
• Hampshire Stout – 7.1% – The most normal of the lot — solid chocolate/coffee flavors.  Not creamy, kinda dry, but very nice.
• DamnedEleven Sour – 10.3% – Really unique!  A very drinkable sour.  Dandelion for initial bittering agent — “wacko” but just crazy enough to work.
• Strawberry Scotch Cask – 7.7% – Tasted like a more sour version of the Scotch Ale.  Smooth, and the strawberry flavor seemed subtle to me (although Dave thought it was pretty strong).  Quite nice.

The Rest
• Dandelion Bitter – Interesting.  Sweet (caramel and other flavors), malty, not too bitter.
• Mixed Berry Scotch Ale – 6.8% – Pretty crazy — berry blast but with a sour/alcohol edge to it.  Malty base, but berry flavors galore.

Slippery pigs at the Slippery Pig. (Note: I did not wrestle any of the pigs, so I really can’t say for certain whether they are slippery or not.) — Poulsbo, WA

Took me a while to get this written.  Had a couple weddings to attend, and then I got distracted importing all the brewery posts from my old blog to this one.  I’ll need to step up the pace a bit if I want to get through the next nine before the year is out.