I’ve written before, and mentioned several times since, about the recent craft beer explosion in the Boise area. What I often tell people is 4 years ago there were 4 on premise brewing BrewPubs in town…now there are 9…I think..with 4-6 in various stages of planning, funding, building whatever.
I try to visit each regularly. 10 Barrel, one of the new kids in town, gets a lot of my beer business mainly because they cater to my obsession of seeing something that I’ve never had before, and with 19 or 20 taps, there is a good chance that anytime I stop by there, something I don’t recognize will be on tap that demands my attention.
I have a sentimental thing in my heart though for Sockeye Brewing. It was the first BP I visited when I saw the light of CraftBeer back in 2004 and the fact that it is just 2 miles and a straight shot from my house, it right away became a bit of a regular. I fairly quickly had gone through their regular line up and I had come to find out much later that they had all the work they could handle keeping up with demand at their onsite, brewing facility. I suspect this was probably why I didn’t very often see many experimentals and “one-offs” from them.
Over the last 10 years, I’ve had almost 50 different beers that have come from the original Ustick/Cole location. The Dagger Falls IPA is their flagship beer,also Purple Haze espresso stout and Wolly Bugger Wheat are usually on and they are a few of my favorites.
Their new facility a few miles west, will allow some expansion and has already provided the benefits of a canning line and much greater production. Spotting some of these regular offerings on the shelves of local bottle-shops and grocery stores in the last year or so is a good thing.
Just today I stopped in at the original site after a few hours of Christmas Shopping and was pleasantly surprised to see a new beer on the chalkboard. “Lightning Creek” Belgian White IPA. It was delicious and it was good to see an old friend have something new on tap.
Cheers to old friends
