Less than a week after wrapping up Bike Tour 2012, I headed out on a five day camping trip in the Pasayten Wilderness, bookended by visits to Old Schoolhouse Brewery in nearby Winthrop. Started out with just one sampler flight on the first visit, but since I wasn’t driving and would be burning plenty of calories over the course of the trip, I signed up for extra credit with a second sampler to cover everything they had on tap. Post-camping trip we were thinking about going somewhere else, but the options in town were a bit limited mid-week  after Labor Day weekend. Made up the calorie deficit for the day (and then some) with way too much delicious fried food. Not sure why we even considered going elsewhere.

Beer Tasting 101 at Old Schoolhouse Brewery — Winthrop, WA

Rob’s Picks
• Epiphany Pale – 6% – Crisp floral/citrus hop flavor blend, with decent maltiness. Nice light lingering bitterness.
• Ruud Awakening IPA – 7% – Citrus aroma. Strong grapefruit/citrus flavor and spiciness on the tongue. Underlying sweet caramel maltiness, with a bit of an alcohol edge. Big but balanced.
• Backcountry Coffee Stout – 7% – Nice coffee aroma. Smooth, creamy stout. Coffee flavor not too strong but pervasive. Some chocolate, too, and a bit of alcohol.
• Imperial Stout – 9.9% – Really chewy. Sharp alcohol aroma and flavor. Good chocolate flavor, too. A great meal.
• New School ESB – 5.5% – Smooth maltiness with some caramel notes, and some balancing hoppiness. Pretty crisp and quite drinkable.
• Uncle Big’s Brown – 5.5% – Pretty rich for a brown. Chocolate/coffee flavor, as well as some caramel. Smooth and a touch dry on the finish. Also pretty drinkable.
• Hooligan Stout – 7% – Very similar to Backcountry Stout. Smooth, coffee/chocolate flavors, but with stronger alcohol edge.

The Rest
• Double D Blonde – 5.5% – Bready and a bit bubbly, with a touch of lemon flavor. A hint of bitterness, but somewhat watery.
• School of Rock Imperial IPA – 9% – collaboration brew with Anacortes Brewery – Alcohol and citrus aroma. Alcohol, citrus, and caramel flavors. Big, strong, and bitter. Pretty crisp, too. Just too big for me, though.

I’d had a small taste of the School of Rock collaboration beer at the end of Bike Tour 2012, but for some reason I decided to include it only here. My thinking was I should only list it in one post, as an anti-redundancy thing for folks reading my blog from beginning to end as some sort of narrative thread. But I think that’s just wishful thinking on my end. So I should just include it with the Anacortes Brewery post, as well. (That will also make some upcoming collab beer updates easier, but I still have to decide whether to make this a retroactive change. Who knew there were so many subtleties to maintaining a beer blog?)