You don’t have to drive far to find good craft beer in Seattle. Heck, at times you don’t even have to walk all that far. But then sometimes, the open road calls… and when she calls, you have to get in your Ford Fiesta and answer, dammit. And hope you can bring back something worthwhile in your growler.

The open road recently led the mister and me to the oft-ignored North Central part of Washington State, where the old-west themed town of Winthrop sits cute as a button in the middle of the verdant Methow Valley (pronounced “MET-how”). This area is the most awe-inspiring geographic mullet – farmland in the front, mountains in the back. And, like a mullet, look at it from any direction and you won’t be able to look away. This is a strange and beautiful vortex of the universe where farmer and mountain men rub shoulders. And then decide to open up a wild-west themed bookstore together.

We first made a quick stop just south of Winthrop in the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town of Twisp to get a taste of what Methow Brewing is up to at the Twisp River Pub. We immediately spotted a lovely patio area along the river, but further inspection revealed a hand-written sign that read “CAUTION – LOTS OF BEES!” and a drawing of a big, smiling honeybee – so we sidled up to the bar for a tasting instead. We tried 6 of the 12 beers Methow had on tap that day, including their popular Vienna Lager and an interesting Cherry Weizen that looked sweet as juice but had fairly nice, subtle hints of cherry instead. The atmosphere was laid-back. The bartender chatted familiarly with the locals. The bees stayed outside. All in all, a lovely place to drink beer. But we had more fish to fry, so we hightailed it up the road to the main event: Winthrop.

Winthrop’s wild-west-inspired storefronts are not as hokey or embarrassing as you might imagine. Now, at no point did I expect Al Swearingen to step out on a deck in his skivvies and holler obscenities down at the thoroughfare, but it also didn’t seem like some cheesy reenactment of the shootout at the OK Corral might unfortunately be foisted upon us. This town gets it just about right, and the people who live and work there come off as authentic, unpretentious, and clearly passionate about where they live and what they do.

Sounds a lot like what goes into a good craft beer, no?

Well on that front, we were not disappointed. In a bright red “you can’t miss it” old schoolhouse towards the end of the thoroughfare, Old Schoolhouse Brewery (OSB) is making craft beer that is turning heads statewide. They were recently voted Small Brewery of the Year at the Washington Beer Awards, where they also cleaned up with medals for four of their individual brews. They tout each award right on the menu–proudly, not boastfully–and thereby make it almost impossible to make a selection.

So we didn’t.

After tasting almost every beer on the menu (they were out of the Backcountry Coffee Stout, which caused me to cry), we were believers, too. I really didn’t think a brewery could get so much right on my notoriously unpredictable palate. I mean, if a hop-fussy lady like myself can willingly–nay happily–down TWO different varieties of IPAs, I start looking for signs of the apocalypse. The Ruud Awakening IPA (named for OSB brewer Blaze Ruud – that is his real name) lives up to every rave it gets, and we eagerly snatched up 22s of that punch-packing hop party as well as the smoother Imperial IPA. The only disappointment of the evening was the New School ESB, which the mister and I agreed did not hold its own among many other tasty competitors.

My only regret from our visit to OSB was that we didn’t get the chance to slowly sip a chilly Epiphany Pale on their incredible riverfront back patio (no bees), which was packed with contented patrons enjoying live music on such a pleasant August evening. All the more reason to return–soon–and drink some more perfect beer in a perfect locale.