I think you're overthinking this. It's just a list of 25 breweries to watch not a ranking of of small breweries. Their intro even mentions that it's a list of up and coming breweries along with old dogs learning new tricks.

Speaking of Firestone Walker, they are holding their international beer festival tomorrrow.

In addition to their own beers, they'll have:

3 Floyds
Alesmith
Alpine
Ballast Point
Beachwood Brewing
Beer Republic
Bell's
Boneyard
Boulevard
Braufactum
The Bruery
Cigar City
Brasserie de La Senne
Dogfish Head
Fifty Fifty
Figueroa Mountain
funkwerks
Golden Road
Green Flash
Hollister
Kern River
Lagunitas
Port Brewing/Lost Abbey
Mahrs Brau
Mikkeller
Moonlight
Nebraska Brewing
New Belgium
Odell
Pizza Port
Rahr & Sons
Revolution
Russian River
Sierra Nevada
Southern Tier
Stone
Sun King
Triple Rock
Trumer Pils
Yonasato
Avery
Birrificio
Ommegang &
Surly Brewing

Pretty impressive list. I think they sound out tickets in 20 minutes which is probably 10 minutes longer than last year. Not going myself but would like to make it there some year.

just left Portland, heading north. There were way, way too many places for one small man with a family to try. I did my best. Many were just normal, a few were exciting. In many cases you would bike for a mile or two and pass 8 or 9 separate small breweries. It is insane, and quite probably "too much."

Those are both impressive lists.
I like the idea of a canned beer festival, and would love to see what sort of beers a few of those breweries will be pouring at the Firestone Walker event.
I can't wait to cover Great Nebraska Beer Festival for Nebraska Beer Blog this summer, and I plan on sharing a batch of my homebrew there at the Lincoln Lagers booth this year.
Firestone Walker will be at that event as well as Stone, Deschutes, Funkwerks and all the usual regional breweries.

Why oh why does most Canadian beer suck so badly? Soon as you cross the border beer culture stops cold.

I don't think it completely sucks, Montreal has some nice craft breweries and craft beer bars, and things aren't so bad in British Columbia either, but for the most part the it is due to how beer is distributed in Ontario. You can only buy beer at the brewery or at The Beer Store, which is owned by the three main Ontario Brewing companies.

Get a suitcase of Kokanee cans and start pounding like its 1994.

I hit a brewery today that at least had a dipa, but... Craft beer here is maaaybe what it was in the US in 1994. So small and timid. I asked several bartenders what sells the most, expecting "fizzy yellow shit" but they all said ipa by a landslide. So people like hops, but Californian beer just slaughters these guys. Something like what Prom said must be up... Because I cod make better beer than this, and I am a novice. Must be incredibly hard to get licensed or something.

http://www.ratebeer.com/RateBeerBest/table_2012.asp?title=Best+Beers+of+Canada+2012&file=canada_beer_2012.csv

The Best Beers of Canada 2012.
It is pretty sad and amazing that two or three breweries dominate the list.
I've had most of the Dieu de Ciel and Unibroue products listed, so I don't feel too bad about missing out the rest of the list, and only two of those beers were brewed in the province of Ontario.

[url][http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/funkwerks-leuven/186291//url]

Funkwerks Leuven: A Berliner Weisse.

COMMERCIAL DESCRIPTION
Leuven was produced similar to a Berliner Weisse. After running the wort off into the kettle, we seeded with lactobacillus overnight, before bottling. We then added Saison yeast and Brett C to the fermenter. The result is a refreshing tart saison with a massive citruy pineapple aroma with a hint of apple and clove. The flavor is noticeably tart without being overly sour. More pineapple and citrus flavors give way to a bit of earthy wet hay at the finish.


My Description: I don't think I have ever smelled a beer as funky and nasty as this one. It was foul and putrid. I am currently having sinus issues and I could clearly smell it, so I can't imagine how bad it would be with clean and open sinus cavities. It tasted fine. There was no outstanding quality. It was mildly tart, extremely crisp, but didn't have much for flavor. Sans the awful odor, it would be an outstanding example of a sessionable Saison or a nice Belgian Summer beer.

I was strolling the aisles of Costco last night and was surprised to stumble upon 22 oz bombers of product from Stone, Eagle Rock, Port Brewing and The Bruery. When did Costco start carrying craft beer?

Was it any cheaper than it'd be in a liquor store?

about 20% less than the price from a really good bottle shop and even more heavily discounted from the average store. They only had about 5-6 different beers but great prices on the ones that they had, most of which were things that I'd be happy to drink.

I went to a double tapping party for Goose Island tonight that featured their 25th Anniversary ESB , which I had already consumed prior to this event and an Illinois Imperial IPA, which is a special batch of their Imperial IPA with different hops. I had the DIPA or Imperial IPA, but I can't find a legitimate source that states what hops they used in this batch that they didn't with the original. It was a great beer, but the original version receives near perfect marks from rate beer, so it is really hard to tell what they did to the alternate version without doing a side by side taste test, and I didn't have the means to do that tonight.

I'm continually impressed with the increasingly good selections at grocery stores around here. Hell, I was way down in South Alabama for work yesterday and asked Loogs if there was a store in the area that might sell Good People IPA. He suggested just going in the local Publix grocery store--I did and was blown away by the selection they had. (They had the Good People but its born on date was February so I passed)

Ok, I have a shitload of beer pics / stories. May take a bit but I'm working on it.

all of our prayers answered!
http://beerstreetjournal.com/make-your- ... -squeezes/

that... is fucking disgusting.

yea.
but dont you wanna try it?

No one wants to try that. You either buy fizzy yellow shit or you don't. And if you do, then why would you buy this?

I'd do a taste test to see how it tasted in Bud or something, but I wouldn't buy it.

Shiv... did you try that fucking homebrew yet or not?

Hah, not yet. Been laying off the booze for a few days but will definitely get to it then.

Ok, first Portland. There are too many breweries there. Too many. Previously I wouldn’t have been able to guess how many is too many, but after 6 days there of biking past countless breweries on city corners (not craft beer bars, mind you, but full-on brewing facilities with tap rooms and gluten free pastries and charcuterie boards and gourmet pickled vegetables), I came to the conclusion that Portland is what “too much” looks like. The standard of brewing is good there, these weren’t crappy products. But with just a week to sample so many, you could swap the labels on ten of those breweries and most people wouldn’t notice. Everybody makes an IPA, and a DIPA, and a pale, and a hefe. One might be called Stevie’s IPA and the other one YETI BALLS or whatever, but 80% of everybody is pretty much in the same groove. It’s a good groove, but… too many breweries in one city.

The standout breweries in town: Cascade and Hair Of The Dog.

Cascade specializes in sours and barrels, so they’re already staking out the upper end of the craft market from the word go. Several breweries had a “we don’t do normal IPAs and shit” theme going, because everyone else does it. With these guys it meant sours etc, with Occidental it meant all germans. I understand why… in a city FULL of IPAs and such, you have to try to stand out somehow. So these guys appear to have figured out a good set of sours, they got a good drinking space, and they were popular. Good on ‘em… if they stay smart they should make it. Apprently the Vlad The Imp Aler was the one to get, but at 10+%, I couldn’t start the day that way. Right after this we biked a heavy dutchy and a full-on bakfiets cargo bike up a goddam mountain, so I was NOT going to start with a liver bomb. I went Strawberry Cream, because I asked the bartender “what are you most proud of” and Vlad and this were the answers. –shrug- And sure enough, it was balanced and GOOD.


(Daughter is napping inside a cargo bike just out of view on the right…)


Hair Of The Dog
Another great space, right downtown a few blocks from the river. They make a lot of big beers, and they barrel age some. These stood out in my foggy, beer-soaked memory banks.

Inside HOTD:



What I had, so I’d remember…


And some of the rest…
Now Old Lompoc, Amnesia, Captured By Porches, Good Life, Hub… all respectable and probably deserve a lot more attention than I could give them. But nothing stood out in my tiny one week sample size.



On to greener pastures.

Another humble but welcome brewery was Occidental. The beer wasn't amazing, but they do faithful german styles and nothing else, which was a relief after so much West Coast beer. It's a small space and not fancy, and was a mid-length bike ride out of the city (maybe an hour?), but the guy was nice, and the beer hit the spot. Note also the Hop In The Saddle guide book we used, awesome book with bike routes and breweries mapped out.



May I present… Belmont Station. Half beer store, half bar. All beer store bottles can be opened by the bartenders for you to drink there. 1300+ choices. Insanely wonderful joint. Huge back room with massive open windows for the whole back wall, and more tables outside in back and in front. If you’ve ever wanted to find and try a beer, it’s probably here.



And then two breweries that I had in several places. First, Ninkasi, the surprise hit of the trip. So many good choices from them, all just unique enough to stand out, all well executed. I kept returning to them when I needed Train Beers, or a woods sixpack. They’d be a favorite steady date if I lived out there.



And then of course, Logsdon. Billy had me prepared to be wowed, and even so I was surprised with how good these two saisons were. Simply outstanding, and the best saisons I’ve ever had. Oddly cheaper in Vancouver, and they have massive booze taxes. Drinking there is as bad as Boston, price-wise. So I was VERY happy to see Logsdon (period) and see it cheaper. Thus, I got to try two styles. If you get to the west coast, it is a MUST.



I’ll do some more later.

That's great that you got to HOTD. I love the beers that I've had from them. Blue Dot is an elite DIPA every bit the equal of Pliny. Ruth is probably the best 6 pack beer I've every had and my go to every day Pale Ale. Michael is a really strong Flanders Ale but a bit too expensive ($25 for a 12 oz bottle around here). Fred, Adam and Doggie Claws are big beers that benefit from a lot of aging. I've enjoyed them at times but they are huge beers that you have to be in the right mood for. Would love to make it up there though to visit as a bunch of their stuff is only available at the brewery.

Obviously, I love Logsdon. I still haven't tried that Oak aged Bretta. I buy every new release I see from them but I haven't gotten around to drinking that many of them. I was pleasantly surprised the other day to find that I have a stash of about 8 Logsdon Bombers including that Oak aged Bretta and the Hopped Bretta. Not sure what I was saving them for.

New trys for me:

Golden Road's Cabrillo Kolsch

These guys are a couple year old LA brewery. I think I've mentioned that I've found their beers to be respectable but not really that great. This however is outstanding - the best Kolsch I've ever had and the perfect warm weather beer. That's not to say that there probably aren't a ton of German Kolschs that are better but they aren't available fresh here. Golden Road hired a new head brewer about 6 months ago so maybe they are upping the quality a lot.

Prairie Standard - Prairie is Oklahoma brewery that makes Farmhouse Ales, Saisons and Sours. This is their everyday, 6 pack (I think?) farmhouse ale. Pretty damn good for $2 for a 12oz beer. I'm relieved that I like it because I've been stockpiling their more expensive beers based on their reputation alone and I recently realized that I'd spent a lot on them for having never tried one.