Day trip to Vancouver, Wa.

Today Joshua drove across state lines in search of Lost Abbey and a decent homebrew store. Success! Bader Brewing turns out to have quite a fantastic yeast and hop selection (unlike Steinbarts), and damn good prices on base malts. We also determined that the grain mill is set up to make a finer grist, hopefully resulting in a higher- gravity brew. They even knocked off sales tax with proof of Oregon residence.

We then moved down the street to By the Bottle, a strange little bottle shop next to Salmon Creek Brewing in downtown Vancouver. While we opted not to stop for a pint in the brewery, By the Bottle proved to be on par with pretty much anything you can find in Portland. Some interesting sights were a Boon Mariage Parfait Geuze, a $30 Malheur Brut, last year's Gouden Carolus Cru D'or, and North Coast's Le Merle Saison, which we can't get in Oregon for some reason. picked up three bottles of Lost Abbey: the Belgian farmhouse, a Biere de Garde, and a dark Abbey style brewed with raisins. Josh grabbed a Berliner Weisse 1809 and a Malheur 10. Check out the brewing process for the 1809, as described by Ratebeer:

"1809” is fermented in traditional open fermenters and horizontal lager tanks. The applied mashing regime is a single step decoction mash with 50 % wheat malt.The total amount of hops is added to the mash so that isomerisation takes place in the decocotion part of the mash. The wort is not boiled but only heated up to boiling temperature and then transferred to the open fermenters and pitched with yeast and lactic acid bacteria (isolated from malt) at 18 °C (64°F).

After the bottle shop, we grabbed some tacos/burritos from Muchas Gracias, a small, cheap taco wagon with a few locations around Vancouver. Joshua says they make the best fish taco in the Northwest.

-Andy