(SpoCOOL) A Spokane Blog

We're fans of Nectar Tasting Room, and are happy that they are helping us support the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation! From today through Saturday, $1 of each bottle of wine sold will be donated to the CFF. That is awesome.

So, if you suck and never read our review, Nectar is, indeed, a tasting room where you can drink wine. Good wine. The menu changes all the time, but you'll likely see great wineries like Northwest Cellars, Terra Blanca and Skylite Cellars featured there.

In fact, you should probably check out Nectar's website if you don't already do so on a regular basis. (It also doubles as a wine blog.)

We are fans of Nectar, and it's great that they're helping us support such a worthy cause. Now get your butt down there and buy some bottles -- nothing says "helping out" like drinking good wine!

Lindaman's has been around for a while, and it's definitely still one of the most interesting places in Spokane. I say "interesting" because it's such a mix of average and greatness.

The ding-food, for example, all warmed up by microwaves is not worth your time. A recent experience with a Mediterranean chicken was... Not good. The plate had been sitting in a display case for too long, and after it came out of the microwave -- with a ding and all -- it was just one big let down. Soggy. Flavorless. Pointless.

So, no, if you go there to eat, try one of their salads instead. Granted, they're far from mindblowing, but definitely edible. Here is really where average comes to mind. Not bad. Not great. But something you can eat without being scared.

The reason you want to go to Lindaman's is the coffee and the baked goods. Few places in Spokane does coffee right, but Lindaman's has it down. Here you can get real macchiatos -- Starbucks has ruined that word for most of us -- wonderfully pulled with DOMA. We're fans. Cappuccinos, too, are made the way they should be made.

Expect a bit of a wait for your coffee, and revel in the fact that is how it should be.

And pair it with a cookie, possibly a seasalt chocolate one. It's a good way to live.

Remember the original SpoBREW? Of course you do! Some beers were well received, like Brad Hauge's ale. Here is his recipe and notes:

Basically I just wanted to rip off Stone's Cali-Belgique... I've had worse ideas!  After doing some research it seemed the safest way to do it is to brew a Stone IPA and just ferment it w/ a Belgian yeast.

My grain bill was:

10.5# Palel
1# Munich
1# Crystal 20L

1 oz. Warrior 60 minutes
1 oz. Centennial 15 minutes
1 oz. Centennial 5 minutes

THE KEY! Is to use WL Belgian Ale Blend #575 instead of just a regular ale yeast for an IPA

THEN...

Dry Hop with 1 oz. Centennial in secondary for 12 days. 

I keg... so I just transferred it to keg, gave it 20psi for about 5 days... turned it down to 10psi and it sat there till the competition-- roughly 3 weeks.

That's it!

Also, for extract brewers (if anyone actually cares)

It'd be:

1# 2 Row Caramel 60 for steeping grains
6.5# Light Dry extract
1# Munich liquid extract

Well, consider us blown away by the amazing turn out for our Spobrewing for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation event! We actually sold out of the commemorative tasting glasses and saw about three times the amount of traffic we had expected. That is awesome.

Manito Tap House turned out to be as great of a venue as we had hoped it would be. The gastropub's emphasis on craft beer meshed well with the crowd, and we noticed quite a few enjoying the place's food and brews after they had passed through the homebrewing gauntlet. Consider us fans of Manito Tap House.

Same goes for Big Sky which provided three types of beers for us -- the IPA, the brand new Powder Hound (which lived up to the greatness of last year's edition) and a special "Montana only" (though not anymore) Mexican Dark Lager which was the crowd favorite.

And finally, Savor Sweets provided suckers, which was all kinds of awesome. People were curious after hearing the media buzz about the local candy, and everybody seemed to be very much into the products.

So, Manito Tap House, Big Sky, and Savor Sweets -- thanks for supporting this event! The donations collected for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation will be greatly appreciated, and we couldn't have done it without your support.

And of course, we could not have done it without the brewers either, and what a brew-off it was. With all respect to the original SpoBREW, the quality was higher this time around, likely because Inland Brewers Unite had such a strong showing here. The average scores for the winner and lowest placed entry were extremely close, but in the end, there could only be one winner:

1. Bad Seed: Juniper IPA
2. Stephen: Pompous Pale and Harvest Ale
3. Michelle: Raspberry Cream, Barley Wine
4. Cody: Hazelnut Brown, Greenbay Pale, Smashing Pumpkin Ale
5. Joe: Oatmeal Stout
6. Team SpoCOOL: SpoBREW Classics, including a coffee porter that literally exploded.
7. Adam: Oktoberfest
8. Rick: Pale Ale

Again, this was a very close race, but word was the Juniper IPA was something very special. Sadly we didn't have time to taste all the ales ourselves, but what we did try was amazing. (Personal favorites: Michelle's Barley Wine and Cody's Pale.)

A big thanks to all the brewers! Hopefully everybody had a good time and saw this as a good venue to showcase their beer.

As for the future of SpoBREW, there has been some interest in doing something larger than any of our previous outings -- stay tuned for more info about that.