My experience with Northern Ales is, at best, minimal. I know they're from Kettle Falls, which kinda makes them semi-local, and apparently their brewery doubles as a grocery store. So that's quite something.

Their Flume Creek IPA is not a bad beer either. It's not amazing, and I wouldn't travel to Kettle Falls just to drink it again, but it's worth picking up if you find a bottle. Heck, even a six-pack for that matter.

It pours a copper color with an OK head and decent lacing. Pretty inviting looking, and the scent of hops hits the nose straight away. A little bit of grapefruit might be noticeable too, but there's little here to suggest this being a particularly complex IPA.

And what do you know, the nose tells most of the story. The flavor follows it to a proverbial T. There are hops here, and little else, other than just a vague maltiness toward the end. That's not to say Flume Creek is a hop-bomb, it's just that there is little else to the medium bodied beer.

This isn't an exceptionally exciting IPA then, but it's refreshing all the same. Worth trying, particularly if you're a fan of this style of beer. Those who are still on the fence about IPAs might look elsewhere—you should still be able to find this year's Celebration, for example.

So here's one from Alaskan Brewing Company that is, at least, interesting. It's not wonderful, not something bards will write songs about, but I do respect what Alaskan is doing with their "Pilot Series".

The Raspberry Wheat is by no means bad either. It pours an incredibly cloudy amber color, with a bit of hue from what I assume is raspberries. A sniff is… not too pleasant… I can live with sweet scents, but the raspberries kinda reminds me of Lifesavers. With all respect to the many fine people at the Lifesavers factory, I don't really want that smell coming from my beer.

Flavor wise things are better, but not by much. The raspberries aren't too overpowering, but they still have an artificial flavor, and they aren't helped much by the flat characteristics of the wheat. The beer might have been a good idea, but the execution seems a bit lacking so far.

So. The Pilot Series has some potential, I think, but I've yet to blown away by it. Some day, maybe, though not yet.