Zeeks and Great American Beer Festival Winners

We say all the time that Zeeks is the Gateway to the Northwest.  If its amazing, happening in the Northwest and we can somehow tie it to pizza, we are on board.  This whole premise is why beer is nearly as center stage at Zeeks as pizza.  Beer obviously ties to pizza quite famously and the Northwest is one of the world’s foremost beer regions.  Beer has become such a central force at Zeeks because of our Gateway to the Northwest mindset that we often call ourselves Zeeks Beer and Pizza internally.  We feel it is central to our mission to bring the best beer in the Northwest to our customers.

Evidently, we are doing a good job.  Seven different beers from five different Northwest partners recently won medals at the Great American Beer Festival.  The GABF is North America’s highest profile beer event and the awards are the most coveted in this hemisphere.  It is also a top two show and award set worldwide.  Given the Northwest’s Meccas status as a hop and beer producing region, it is not surprising the Northwest shows well at GABF and given how serious we take our beer mission, it does not surprise us we had so many beers medal. It may not surprise, but it sure does still get our stoke on!

Here is a run-down of the winners:

 

 

Bale Breaker is one of our favorite Northwest partners.  It is not surprising they make great beer.  Nobody knows hops better, as the Smith family not only makes beer, they have been farming hops in the Yakima valley for generations.  Their Hazy L IPA won a gold medal GABF and we had it on tap last spring.

 

 

Our friends Mari and Will at Chuckanut Brewing in Burlington make some of the best Lagers anywhere.    They won three medals at GABF:  a gold for their Maibock; a silver for their Chuck Light; and bronze for their Rye Lager which we are pouring this winter. It’s freaking delicious.

 

 

We love the folks at Pfriem, not only because they make incredible beer, but because Hood River is our favorite Northwest windsurfing hang.  Pfreim won two gold medals – one for their Kolsch and one for their Japanese Lager.  We had both on tap at Zeeks and Pfriem Pilsner is a mainstay of our Bottleshop.

 

 

Zeeks and Reuben’s have a special relationship. They are our closest brewing partner and Reuben’s brews Hop Tropic, our house beer and only permanent handle. We also regularly bring other Reuben’s beers in on a seasonal basis and they are a mainstay of our Bottleshop as well.  We had several versions of their Crush on in the past year and it won a silver at GABF.  They also won a bronze for the Fresh Hop version of Hazealicious, the regular version of which is our Bottelshop’s core Hazy IPA.

 

 

Our friends John and Chris from Lowercase brew great beer down in Georgetown.  They won a bronze at GABF for their Brown Ale.  The coffee infused version of the Brown Ale that we poured last summer was delicious.

 

Cheers!