REAL Strong Ale Festival at Collins Pub Starts Off A Month of Great Beer

Starting tomorrow, the next month is going to be a whirl-wind of good beer:

REAL Strong Ale Festival at Collins Pub - 2/22 to 2/28
Elysian Winter Beer Festival - 2/23
Barleywine Bacchanal at Beveridge Place Pub - 2/29 to 3/8
Hard Liver Barleywine Festival at Brouwer's - 3/15
Washington Cask Beer Festival - 3/22

Throw in the Seattle releases of Full Sail Bourbon Aged Porter(Mar 1), Oskar Blues Ten Fidy(Mar 1) and the Bottleworks Anniversary Ale from Russian River(Apr 1), and we've got one of the biggest WA beer months ever.

You'd better get your drinking shoes on.

Kicking it all off tomorrow (Friday, Feb 22) is the 4th Annual REAL Strong Ale Festival at Collins Pub on 2nd and James downtown. There will be more than twenty beers rotated throughout the week, along with a special food menu. While the main focus is vintage barleywines, owner Seth Howard does a great job of mixing in some other strong ales. You can get them one at a time, or trays of three large samples will be available for $15.

Some barleywines you'll see at Collins this year are Bridgeport Old Knucklehead(2004 vintage), Stone Old Guardian(2004), Rogue Old Crustacean(2004), Sierra Nevada Bigfoot(2005), Hales Rudyard's Rare(2005), Full Sail Old Boardhead(2005), Pike Old Bawdy(2006), Anchor Old Foghorn(2006 & 2007), Great Divide Old Ruffian(2006), Avery Hog Heaven(2006), Moylans Old Blarney(2006), Boundary Bay Old Bounder(2007), Left Hand Widdershins(2007, and Hair of the Dog Fred(2007). Holy crap. 9 of those beers have the word "Old" in their name; maybe it's time to get more original.

Other strong ales will include Oskar Blues Ten Fidy(Doesn't have the hype the Abyss had, but it's just as good), Deschutes The Abyss, Rogue Imperial Pilsner, Avery The Reverend Quadrupel, Stone Double Bastard and probably a few other surprises.

We're thinking we need to prep ourselves tonight. Now, does that mean we should take the night off from drinking, or that we should get a few barleywines in us to lay a good base?

Find out more about Elysian's Winter Beer Festival on Saturday after the break. We'll detail the other events as they approach.

Image thanks to brewer on Flickr.