Congratulations to West Seattle’s Schooner Exact Brewing ^[1] on their one year anniversary. A year ago, the small batch brewery unveiled their beer to the public at Beveridge Place Pub. I knew from the beers I tasted that evening that they were going places.

During 2007, Matt and Heather McClung and Marcus Connery worked hard to craft quality beer and make it available throughout Seattle. Back then I had to trek all the way from Capitol Hill to West Seattle to find their beers, but now you can find the occasional kegs of their excellent flagship beer, the 3-Grid IPA, at places like Brouwer’s and Über Tavern. Locals are liking their stuff, as shown by a third place for their Hoppy Holidays Winter Ale at the Winter Beer Festival and a top-three finish in the yearly IPA house tap vote at Beveridge Place.

On Saturday night, I bused it over to the anniversary party at Beveridge Place. It was a great time. Regrade Pale Ale, 3-Grid IPA and Hoppy Holidays Winter Ale were available on draft. They also tapped special cask versions of the 3-Grid and Hoppy Holidays. A lot of us agreed that the dry-hopped cask version of the IPA was the beer of the night. It took an already excellent beer to another level and was dangerously difficult to stop drinking. In addition to all the tasty beer, the Schooner crew raffled off schwag like t-shirts, pint glasses and stickers. If you didn’t go home with something, you didn’t drink enough.

You can always find kegs of Schooner’s beers at Beveridge Place Pub ^[2] and the West 5 ^[3]. If you can’t make it out to West Seattle, keep an eye out at Brouwer’s ^[4], Über Tavern ^[5] and, hopefully, many more spots in 2008.