What's the Pacific NW craft beer scene like? Quite a few on that list that I haven't heard of, any good ones available nationally?
It's really quite good. The whole west coast has a great beer scene- it's a lot bigger than back home in MN BUT...I don't get half the Stout, Ales, Porters, etc that I get back home. Or at least the sort of quality that I find there. There are so many IPA and PA's here that I have become overrun on them and no longer want them much anymore unless it's a hot day. If that's your thing then boy you won't find a better place for beer. A lot of great Lagers though.
What is fun about Seattle proper and it's immediate neighborhoods is that you can kind of bike around and drink really easily, even year round. Hell, in the Fremont and Ballard area alone there are probably 12 breweries to walk around to over a afternoon that all have food trucks and family/dog friendly atmospheres.
EDIT: I was thinking about it, and there are obviously lots of kinds of beers here. The thing is that there is a lot of experimentation, which I believes comes as a result of a certain determination for distinction going on between all 900+ breweries on the Coast. Rogue alone has some of the strangest and coolest seasonal beer lists around. But there are lots of seasonal (especially around the holidays) beers that have all kinds of non-beer-ish items in them.
But there are breweries everywhere out here. There's around 200 breweries in WA and another 200 in OR..and of course there are more than 500 in California. So the craft scene is very large.
