I’m not going to lie. Our craft beer passion happened by total accident. We live in Beer City USA, so you’d think we’d absolutely be one of the hipsters that LOOOOOOVE craft beer before it was cool. Eh, not really. We have an over-saturation of craft beer here and they all start to taste the same. The best parts about all of the craft beer walking distance from us are the soft pretzels and beer cheese. (No, really, try that cheese! It makes my mouth orgasm). Shout out to Founders.
Anywhoooo… But Sarah and Ant, why do you like craft beer? It’s really an obsession right now. For stickers!
We took our yearly summer vacation in 2017 to Alaska. Anthony’s sister lives there. Yes, she has a flushing toilet in her apartment. No, I did not see a bear (sadface).
We had a week long trip visiting Wasilla, Anchorage, Denali National Park, and Seward. Probably one of my favorite vacations I have ever been on (next to our honeymoon).
As it turns out, we were in a mini-Beer City USA. 3,700 miles from home and we were home. Our first night there, we visited a brewery called BearPaw River Brewing Company and we downed a few beers.
IPA’s are my beer of choice. Anthony likes a lighter lager (don’t laugh, he has changed his pallet since summer 2017). We knew we were going to have a great trip and Ant had to remember his experience. He took a sticker from this brewery.
Over the next week in Alaska, it was our personal mission to visit as many craft breweries/brewpubs we could to collect stickers. Some breweries we had one beer, some breweries we had two, but never more than 3. In Alaska, you can have only 48 oz of beer per visit. While I would love to educate you on all of the weird brewery laws in Alaska, this entry is meant to educate you on our journey to get as many stickers as possible.
We did a neat tour in Anchorage called Big Swig Tours. We were in a conversion van with two other couples and had a a blast. At first no one would talk to each other but after the first beer, we all had some major social lubrication. There was a military couple from Texas and another couple, one works at the airport in Fairbanks as an air-traffic controlled and the other was a teacher in Kansas City. This tour took us to four breweries around town. I’m kind of sad, missing our couple friends now.
This was our first brewery we visit on the tour. It was just a brewery, with popcorn. We had a behind the scenes tour. Ate some grains. Talked to a Brew Master that had some of the shortest shorts I have ever seen. He was from Australia though, so I had to give him credit with his golden locks. Their canning process was impressive. We even got to open a can in the back and enjoy a nice luke-warm beer.
2. I can’t remember for the life of me what we went to. I’m sure I have a sticker of it.
We got a pretty neat tour of the facility here. All I really remember is this place we got some delicious apps (third stop in, we were all staaaarving), saw an oosik (it is also a beer at Midnight Sun), got a sticker, and got an IPA out of a spawning salmon on the wall.
The day is pretty spotty here… but this is probably my most favorite brewery we went to in Alaska. Why? Because they have the bestest softest sweatshirt I have ever worn. Their Master Brewer was very friendly too. He talked to us a lot about our hometown, since it is Beer City USA.
We were beat by the end of the day on our brewery tours. All we wanted to do was eat. So got pizza and some diablo cheese sticks from Moose Tooth’s. My mouth was on fire, but it was all good. I was drunk and eating pizza, not at work. Life couldn’t get much better than that.
We still had more breweries to visit while in Alaska. Some weren’t as eventful as our tour. While we were in Seward we went to Seward Brewing Co. We each had a beer and soft pretzels while we were waiting to go to the Alaska Sealife Center (my childhood dream come true). Seward was a cute town. Definitely a summer town, though. Not a whole lot around it and on the water.
The final brewery we went to was on our way to Talkeetna. I was particularly excited to go to Talkeetna because their mayor was Stubbs, a cat (you will hear about our love of cats in another post)! I have heard about Stubbs for years and always wanted to meet him…. HE DIED ONE WEEK BEFORE WE GOT TO ALASKA! FML. I’m always late to the party.
The brewery was the Denali Brewing Company. This place was quite small, but had nice outdoor seating with a food truck in the parking lot. We were sitting outside because it was a beautiful low-70’s degree the first week of August! Perfect day…. besides the native Alaskan sitting outside with TWO guns on his belt with his mistress? Who knows, but what we do know is that we were definitely in a different culture outside of our big-ish city!
So now our sticker collection has officially grown and we have at least 7 stickers from Alaskan breweries….
Me, being the typical wife with a plan, asked him what was he going to do with the stickers? He went blank then it all snowballed from there…. He was going to start a sticker collection from the craft breweries (that he loves so much?) he visits, since we live in Beer City USA? What was he going to do with all of those stickers you ask? He was going to put them by the bar in our basement… THAT WE DON’T HAVE! WTF!!!! Our basement isn’t even finished. Our house was built in 1940. The basement is concrete (better than a Michigan basement, amiright) with a coal room and a fruit cellar! No bar, no bathroom, no laundry room, no bedroom!! So here we go.. thank you Alaska for starting the plans to finish our basement just so we can have a wet bar to display all of our craft brewery stickers, that we don’t even like!
I’m not even mad about it. I get a soaking tub and laundry room out of the deal. AND it gives us a reason to travel to get more stickers!
So follow us on our path of collecting stickers, smoking food, finishing our basement (to display our stickers), and traveling as Married without Kids: Life of an Early 30’s Couple with SOME Disposable Income continues….
Married without Kids 