The waystop just got better

When I was younger, my family often took road trips to Seattle. En route we would usually stop at Ellensburg to refuel the car and stretch our legs, occasionally hitting a fast food joint for lunch before moving on. This is what people knew Ellensburg for; a city you passed through to go somewhere else.

The Iron Horse Brewery is going to change all that for those who love the pints, if it hasn’t already.

The High Five Hefe has a honey tint that is just delicious. The nose doesn’t betray any sweetness, so the flavor comes as a real surprise. Instead, the nose is doughy and almost a touch sour, like celery. A surprising beer for me, because I find many hefes to be uninteresting but this beer was complex and tasted great.

The Quilter’s Irish Death however was the hit of the party for me. A real eye-opener because it says it’s a dark ale and as a general rule I don’t like dark ales. But this beer has a velvety quality to it, almost like a stout, but without the density of stouts or the bitterness that a stout or porter ought to have. I really, really liked this brew a lot and recommend it.

Or, I would if I could find the beer. Ellensburg is probably four hours north from me and I have the damnedest time finding Iron Horse’s beers in my vicinity. I don’t know why it’s so difficult to get beers from smaller breweries in Washington, or beers from Vancouver, Canada in Portland but my searches are frequently fruitless and in the case of Iron Horse that’s a shame, because people ought to know how good this stuff is. Fuz can find them but apparently it’s much more difficult to get beers to Portland than Tacoma.

That sentence should never have to be written in a just world.