Thursday, March 19, 2009

Geo-Beers: Sleeping Lady Brewery

Continuing on with The Sleeping Lady theme of our most recent Where in the West contest, Sleeping Lady Brewery of downtown Anchorage, Alaska, makes some fine brews - which I will have to call geo-beers because of the name of the brewery.

The Sleeping Lady Brewering Company is inside and part of the Snow Goose Restaurant. In fact, as you can see from their website, the two are inseparable.

building When we arrived, it was snowing pretty hard - but first we had to use a recalcitrant parking-lot pay machine, which had an exceptionally slow wi-fi access for running credit cards; so, we used cash and gave cash to everyone in front of us so we wouldn't have to stand in line forever. The machine was very picky about how fresh and crisp your bills were. And it didn't like the new large-face-Abe $5 bills at all.
frontNow, having duly paid our parking fee, we can cross the street and approach the front entrance.
snow goose The Snow Goose Restaurant sign and logo, with a stylized Sleeping Lady under the goose. It's really not very many restaurants that have a roche moutonnée as part of their logo.
brew pub We are now about to enter the main front entrance, which is labeled PUB and is draped with the commonly seen white lights of Anchorage, sometimes known as The City of Lights. Still snowing.
ipa Finally, we are inside, where Mom, Dad, and I order an IPA - at least one each. There are several beers to choose from, including all their unique beers, their specialty brews, and their year-round taps - all of them good as far as I know, good depending somewhat on your own personal tastes in beer. I'm referring, of course, to the brews made by the brewery, not to other beers or ales. Also, check out this current beer menu with color chart [former link no longer available].

I think we had the Fish-On IPA, seen above in the Sleeping Lady Brewing Company glass. The Sleeping Lady is shown as a black or dark brown mountain covered with white snow under a blue sky.

Another tempting-sounding brew is the Forty-Niner Amber Ale, which would be a true geo-beer, except - as Andrew pointed out below - "Forty Niner" refers to Alaska being the 49th state (1959) rather than to the California gold rush of 1849.

porter MOH ordered this dark brown Portage Porter, named after the Portage Glacier. Portage Porter is a true geo-beer and glacier beer. Brown is not usually my flavor in beer, ales, or porters - so I didn't order one. Again, the white shape beneath the goose is Mt. Susitna, The Sleeping Lady, a roche moutonnée. (I keep emphasizing that so I can practise my spelling!)
outside Looking out the windows of the Snow Goose Restaurant, one can sometimes see The Sleeping Lady herself - but not this time. This time it's just snow and reflections. A nice night to stay inside.
quilt The restaurant walls have various Alaskan-themed art, including this quilted wall hanging showing The Sleeping Lady (the mountain) in all four seasons. In Alaska, the four seasons are winter, breakup, summer, and freeze-up. Winter is the longest season, of course.

Stick around for awhile, it's still a little nasty outside, and maybe there are some more geo-beers to taste!

4 comments:

Cath@VWXYNot? said...

I love brew pubs. This looks like one to remember if I ever make it to Anchorage!

Andrew Alden, Oakland Geology blog said...

"Forty-Niner" refers to Alaska's statehood, entering the Union 50 years ago as the 49th state.

Now I'm thirsty.

Silver Fox said...

Hmm... about the Forty Niner, maybe I should revise the post a bit.

Suvrat Kher said...

thirsty! heading for the bar right now. That Porter looks delicious.