Day5, Friday 4 August

Today we pcked up our rental car that we are going to have for the next week for our trip down to San Francisco. Mattias offered to drive and this was the first time he drove an auomatic car. Anyway we managed to get out from Seattle without too much difficulties. The first place we aimed for was Snoqualmie where we visited Snoqualmie Brewing Company and there we had a good lunch and I drank their Copperhead Pale Ale which I liked but it wasn't anything really special.
After that we looked at Snoqualmie Falls and then continued on towards Ellensburg and Iron Horse Brewery. This one wasn't easy to find, I don't know how many people we asked for the waybefore we managed to find it. (we had ordered GPS for the car but when we picked it up we were told that you could only get that when you rented at the airport, why???)
The brewer was very nice and friendly and we tasted all beers that he had
Rodeo Extra Pale Ale
Wheat & Rye
IPA
Brown Ale
Locomotive Ale
They were all very nice but my personal favourite was Rodeo Extra Pale Ale.
We continued on and managed to visit one more brewery Snipes Mountain and the motel that we found happened to be a couple of hundre meters from the brewery, sometimes you just have to be lucky, which Mattias liked very much so that he also had a chance to get some beer this day.

Best beers today
Stefan - Iron Horse Rodeo Extra Pale Ale
Mikael - Iron Horse Brown Ale
Mattias - Snipes Mountaing IPA
Maria - Iron Horse Rodeo Extra Pale Ale

Thats it for today tomorrow its on to Portland and the Bones & Brew Festival

Day 4, Thursday 3 August

I didn't sleep so well this night so I woke up tired. First we had some breakfast at some deli on 5th avenue and then we went up in the Space Needle. Awesome view but it could have been even better, it was hazy and you couldn't really see the mountains very well. What we did see was the Blue Angels practicing for the Seafair.
Then it was time to visit some pubs and breweries. The ones visited today was
Pyramid Alehouse
Collins Pub
Virginias Inn
Belltown Bistro
Elysian Brewing Company
Elephant & Castle

Best beers today
Mikael - Elysian Fields Pale Ale
Stefan - Hale's Moongoose IPA
Mattias - Pelican IPA
Maria - I don't really know I'm divided between Walking Man IPA, Mirror Pond Pale Ale and Elysian Fields Pale Ale

That's it for today, tomorrow we are going to get our rental car and drive east into Washington state...

Day 3, Wednesday 2 August

We continued on to Seattle, we took the Greyhound bus from Vancouver at 11.20. The bus trip went OK we managed to cross the US border without any problems but it took some time which led to that we were about half an hour late to Seattle.
After a very speedy checkin at Ramada Inn Downtown we went to Pike Brewery to get some dinner, we were very hungry by now, hadn't eaten anything since breakfast and now it was about 17. For dessert I just had to try their Stout Float which is ice cream in Pike XXX Stout and it was really good.
Then we went to Rock Bottom and after that to Six Arms. At Rock Bottom I drank the beer that we all agreed on was the best beer of this day, Peashooter Pale Ale.
We ended the night at Gordon Biersch, not because I'm that fond of their beers, which I have tried before in San Francisco and Las Vegas, but because Mikael and Stefan hadn't been at any Gordon Biersch before.
Not much more to say about this day, I was very tired when we returned to the hotel and hoped to get a good nights sleep but I didn't.

Best beer of day 3

Ok, more details later but here is the best beer of day 3 and we all had the same opinion

Rock Bottom Peashooter Pale Ale

Over and out from Seattle

Mattias blog

This is another blog that blogs about the same Canada-USA trip. I'll write about Day 3 later but I'm too tired right now.

Day 2, Tuesday 1 August

Our first whole day in Vancouver. We started with some walking first in Stanley Park and then across Liongate Bridge which Mattias and Mikael found a bit scary, too high and it moved a little. Then according to Stefans plan it should be a walk of 5km to Sailor Hägars but I'm not convinced that it was only 5km, we walked and walked and the walked some more and after a very long hot while we by chance found the brewery Taylor's Crossing. It was very welcome and a much needed rest. I had an Indian Arm IPA and it went down very easily. After that we continued on to Sailor Hägars Brewing Company, it was still a bit to walk. There we had a rather late lunch and some beer too. There I had a very nice IPA, Bengal IPA.
On we went and took the SeaBus back to downtown and then the bus to Granville Island. On Granville Island we sampled the beers on Granville Island Brewing Company and also on Dockside Brewing Company. Then we thought that we should walk back but we realized that we didn't really know how to get up on the bridge and probably would have to walk a rather long bit to do that so we went and took the Aquabus to Yaletown and visited another brewpub called Dix.
That was what we had time with this day. Tomorrow we are going to take the bus to Seattle. The general impression we had of Vancouver is that it's a very nice and beautiful town and there are a rather lot of micro breweries, especially if you compare with Stockholm, but we didn't taste any really really good beer. Most of the beers were good but nothing that was really special.

Best beers today
Stefan - Sailor Hägars Bengal IPA
Mikael - Sailor Hägars Bengal IPA
Mattias - Sailor Hägars Bengal IPA
Maria - Sailor Hägars Bengal IPA

Day 1, Monday 31 July

This was the first day of our trip to Canada and USA. The plan was to get up at 6:30 but at 6:24 we got an SMS from Mattias mom so it was just to go up. About the flight to Vancouver via London there isn't much to say, it was long and boring and the entertainment system didn't work very well. But finally we arrived at the hotel in downtown Vancouver. After a short stop in our rooms to freshen up we went out and went to Steamworks Brewing Company at Water Streetvand had our first and much anticipated beer. I had a Nirvana Nut Brown Ale, I liked but the others didn't but at that point had probably any beer tasted good so maybe my judgment wasn't the best.
After some sightseeing we went to Yaletown Brewing Company to eat and taste their beers. There I had a Red Truck Ale. When we had eaten there wasn't any energy left, by that time we had been awake more than 24 hours, time for bed and the idea was to write this blog entry but there was some trouble with the internet access, that's why I'm writing this today and not yesterday.

We = Maria, Mattias,Mikael and Stefan

Best beers today of todays samples
Stefan - Yaletown Yipee IPA
Mikael - Steamworks Signature Pale Ale
Mattias - Yaletown Yipee IPA
Maria - Steamworks Signature Pale Ale

Thåström

Last night we(me, Mattias and Stefan) were at Joakim Thåströms concert in Tantolunden Stockholm. It was nice but it could have been even better if he had played some more of his older material, some more Ebba Grön and Imperiet. But I'm very pleased with the concert anyway and it was a very nice summer evening.

Before the concert we and also Mikael were first at OT (Oliver Twist) to drink some nice beers and also have something to eat. Right now they have a lot of beers from American microbreweries. Here are photos of two of the beers I had, Hoptical Illusion from Bluepoint which is a very nice IPA and Smuttynose IPA, also very nice.

They also have real ale and I had a Summer Solstice from Darkstar, not one of my favorites I like Festival much better.

After that we went on to Akkurat and had some more beer until it was time to go to Tantolunden. There I had a Rosé de Gambrinus from Cantillon which they had on tap.

And here is a photo on my friends when we are at Akkurat.

Mattias, Mikael and Stefan.

This is the first post in this blog and so far I have no idea what I'm going to write about.