I’d been meaning to check out the Snoqualmie Falls Brewing Company for years and finally made it there this summer after an afternoon of rock climbing. I forgot to bring along my little Moleskine for jotting down my random beer tasting notes, but fortunately, I had my nifty new iPhone with me and was able to tap them slowly into the Notes app, and then email them to myself. Too bad I didn’t just write this post while I was sitting there tasting their beer rather than two and a half months and four brewpubs later. It hasn’t been a very good summer for keeping on top of things.

Update! September 9, 2011: I stopped by again after a fun bike ride on the Iron Horse Trail from x38 to Snoqualmie Pass. I was pretty thirsty but only had one beer — had to get back to Seattle to see Archers of Loaf play a reunion show.

Snoqualmie Falls Brewing Company taster tray — Snoqualmie, WA

Rob’s Picks
• Harvest Moon – 5.3% – seasonal – Good complex maltiness. Subtle breadiness on the finish. Not too light, not too heavy. A fine beer.
• Copperhead American Pale Ale – Quite nice, with a bit of a floral aroma and good hoppiness. I’ll have to try the nitro next time.
• Steam Train Porter – Strong chocolatey flavor, almost coffee-esque. Slurped thisone right down.
• Wildcat IPA – Not as crisp as I usually like, but fairly solid.

The Rest
• Summer Ale – Pretty good. Drinkable and not as light as I expected (more of a pilsener), but nothing really stood out about it.
• Haystack Hefeweizen – Okay. Citrusy edge, so no need for a slice of lemon.
• PGA Amber – Pretty blah. Not much of anything going on with this beer, unfortunately. At first my geek side thought the acronym stood for Pretty Good Amber, which would’ve been a misnomer, but the beer menu had all sorts of golf lingo sprinkled in its description. Oh well.

In case you’re wondering, I’m trying to figure out how these beer posts should look. When I first started them I thought I shouldn’t say anything bad about any given brewery and/or their beers, and so I decided to only mention the beers I liked (or, in one or two cases, disliked the least). Hence, the “Rob’s pick” and “Runner(s)-up” devices. The number of runners-up was my nudge-nudge-wink-wink way of letting you know if I thought the brewery made good beer or not. But yeah, enough of that. Not only is this an inconsequential blog on the internet, but beers I’ve liked and disliked have sometimes been almost complete opposites to the preferences of friends who have been with me, drinking the same beer. So basically, what I scribble here doesn’t really matter, except to me. But if for some reason a brewer is scouring the web looking for some sort of validation, stumbles across my amateurish tasting notes, and gets all depressed and weepy by the opinions of a complete stranger, well, at least they have plenty of beer on hand in which to drown their sorrows. Anyway. I like the “Rob’s pick” thing, but I’m not sure how to incorporate that with a list of all the beers I’ve tried. A paragraph followed by the pick and runners-up? Bulleted lists of the beers I liked and didn’t? Some sort of ranking? Hmm.

Update! January 8, 2011: Well, not too long after this post I decided on what format to use, and now I’m finally digging through my early, sometimes sparse, notes and adding the rest of the beers. You can thank me later.