I don’t remember how I first heard of Bushnell Craft Brewing, but I wasn’t quite sure what to make of them. Their website features cartoony high school/college/old-timey sports characters for each of their beers and, in general, has a kooky suburban family vibe to it. Not your usual brewery, but I did my best at keeping an open mind when I biked over to Redmond on a hot summer day. Ordered a sandwich and a sampler flight, and, well, was pleasantly surprised by the beer. Not quite so much with the food, though it was a large portion, but the beer is the main focus as far as this blog is concerned. And no, I did not try one of the pickled eggs in the background of the picture below.

Sampler flight at Bushnell Craft Brewing — Redmond, WA

Rob’s Picks
• Dirty Shirley Blonde – 5.6% – Light. Lightly bready with light lemon flavor. Good summer post-ride beer.
• Bofuss Amber – 5.2% – Light citrus and tropical hop start to big caramel finish. Smooth, easy drinking. Decent lingering flavors and a touch of bitterness.
• Dunkadelic Milk Stout – 7.2% – Big coffee/chocolate aroma and flavor with sweet lactose edge. Roasty maltiness, too.
• Pine Tar Porter – 8.3% – Coffee/chocolate flavor with subtle citrus edge. Very light smoke. Pretty light on the tongue.

The Rest
• Crack Back IPA – 7.6% – Fairly malty IPA with earthy, herbal hops and a bitter finish. Kinda muddled.

They have since hired a head brewer and added to their initial line-up of five beers, so I guess I’ll be re-visiting one of these days. I’m still not quite sure what to make of Bushnell, but as long as they make decent beer I’ll keep trying to figure them out.