I have a bottle of this in the fridge that I plan on drinking tomorrow night. Am I going to like it?

That beer is one of my girl friend's favorites, and is probably one of the best from that brewery. Some complain that it is a bit too sweet, but it is pretty in line with the style. She and I actually want to start a door to door mission Jehovah witness style to educate people about good beer. "May we speak to you today about the beer that is in your refrigerator?..."

Now I'm not sure how I didn't notice this thread sooner, but it looks like it is because it was hiding until recently. My beer snobbery has been getting out of hand over the last couple years and it is always nice to find beer geeks or try to convert others. I lived in Denver for a couple years and just moved to Seattle which hasn't really hindered it much either. Moving from one of the best areas for variety micro-brew centers to another and all that. We recently went on what ended up being a beer vacation down to Oregon and stopped in at a couple breweries. The Rogue brewery was pretty cool and to get to the pub/tasting room in the brewery, you get to walk through the brewery first. Unfortunately, we missed the times for a tour, but that didn't really matter since once you've been on a brewery tour, you pretty much know how it works and you can take the "short tour" also known as skipping to the sampling. Rogue is definitely an above average brewery and pretty much everything we had was good. (I've had most of it before, but usually from bottles.) Highlights were:

http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/rogue-brewer/29405/ -- Rogue brewpub version, special batch made in memorial of John's dog, Brewer.
http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/rogue-imperial-stout/5266/ -- Very nice imperial stout, though I think it has a little too much hops for my taste in a stout.
http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/rogue-c...te-stout/7177/ -- GF's favorite here. Very chocolatey and smooth.

Also, the bathrooms at the Rogue pubs and brewery have the signs "Hops" on one and "Barley" on the other. I'll let you guess which is which.

Next, we went to Portland and ended up stopping in at the Hair of the Dog brewery. Despite being such a small place, the brewer makes some awesome beers. The brewery pretty much consists of a large shop that Alan Sprints bought and is just one large room and is run by just one guy (Alan). He says that on bottling days, he hires some temp workers to help, but otherwise it is only him. We happened to be there on a brewing day so we got to watch him finish the boil on a vat of Adam and bullshitted about beer while he poured us samples from the beers he keeps on tap there. This was pretty much my best brewery experienc to date now. I also got to see the casks that the current batch of Adam from the Wood is aging in, but I think he said it wasn't due to be bottled until 2012 since it is only bottled every seven years. (You can buy magnums of the last oak aged batch from 2005 for 80$.) We picked up a few bottles of things that are hard to find even as close as Seattle there and tasted everything else that Alan is currently making.

http://www.ratebeer.com/Beer/hair-of-the-dog-adam/568/ -- Awesome beer, even if its not the aged version.
http://www.ratebeer.com/Beer/hair-of...he-wood/37102/ -- Bought a couple bottles of this. Also an great beer.

Finally, as we were driving around Portland, we randomly stopped at one of those upscale grocery stores and found some beers that are hard to come by up here:

http://www.ratebeer.com/Beer/alesmit...y-stout/14232/ -- One bottle going in to storage for a special occasion.
http://www.ratebeer.com/Beer/alesmith-grand-cru/2488/ -- Will probably share this with some friends soonish.

Also, www.ratebeer.com is a pretty good place to find good beer places in your area or peruse through beer geek forums. I've found that the ratings on beer there is fairly close to mine for the most part and have seldom had moments where I wonder what the hell the other people were thinking. My tastes tend toward strong ales and stouts, but there are definitely some lagered beers that I really enjoy. In fact, it was Optimator that started me down the path to true beer snobbery.

Anyway, this post is getting toward Slug size so I should probably cut it short here. I can tend to go on too long about beer.

I didn't see belhaven's scottish ale mentioned anywhere. I'd highly reccommend it. I'm lucky, we have it on tap at one of the better pubs near my friend's house.