Legends of the West IPA Fest Arrives With a Roar
It was the kind of day that made the sun feel like it had taken a personal interest in your scalp—pure sky, 89 degrees of heat shimmering off asphalt, and the scent of 40-ish West Coast IPAs mingling with food cart spice and sunscreen. Legends of the West, Grains of Wrath’s inaugural beer bacchanal, unspooled in the industrial expanse behind their Washougal production facility—a blacktop coliseum ringed by food vendors stationed at Recluse Brew Works’ down the way on one side of the West Coast IPA fest and a stage of righteous local music on the other. In the middle: a sun-drunk IPA fantasia with titans like Green Cheek Beer, Highland Park, Cloudburst, McIlhenny, and Riip Beer pouring liquid bangers into sweaty glass while matching the heat with haze, clarity, bitterness, and beauty. Umbrella-shaded tables provided fleeting refuge. Camaraderie flowed freely. And you could practically hear the hops sizzling in midair.
The attendees were a cast of characters worthy of a modern-day Yeastwood film—Grant from Matchless with a crew, Ezra from The New School scribbling tasting notes in the margins of his mind, Brad Benson from Stoup talking shop with Kevin Lind of Westbound & Down while GOW’s Mike Hunsaker materialized and dematerialized like a caffeinated IPA deity. Jeff Carlson of the Independent Brewers Alliance made the rounds with intent, and Shanleigh Thomson of Shan Ferments floated through the crowd with radiant, fermentation-fueled energy.
And then there were the beers—oh the beers, those sun-slicked hop sermons poured in sacred communion by volunteer prophets from West Coast-spanning temples. Bale Breaker’s Bubba’s Brew was a grapefruit-glazed gravel road ripping through Mosaic country with pineapple in its teeth and ALS advocacy in its heart. Loowit’s Unreel felt like licking pine off celluloid; Cannonball Creek’s Project Alpha rotated hop vinyl like a lupulin DJ set; and Comrade’s Dankonomics lectured our palate in economic truths and cryo efficiency. Westbound & Down’s Coleman Estate was terroir wrapped in velvet, while Shred’s Hey Zeus! lit our soul on hop fire with cryo thunder riffs. Alvarado Street’s Double Cone, an 8.5 percent hop leviathan cloaked in dank grace, roared through our skulls. Burgeon Beer’s Trail Guide and Craft Coast’s Great Outdoors were compass points of clean clarity and pine purpose.
North Park’s Dead As A Doornail left Nectaron ghost notes and Simcoe snarl. McIlhenny’s Bestest Buds was a citrus-soaked embrace, while Riip’n Greens offered a barefoot cannonball of grassy rebellion. ISM Brewing’s Idiomatic rewrote the West Coast lexicon with crisp conviction. Everywhere Beer’s Peripheral Visions hollered pine truth to our third eye. Highland Park’s TDH Jumbo Timbo arrived like a blueberry-kush freight train. Green Cheek’s Pendulum swung wildly between orange candy and devil’s lettuce revelation. Pinthouse’s Mosaic Takedown was a title bout of bitter ballet, and Varietal Beer’s Blimmin’ Drongo! shouted gooseberry gospel from the Tasman depths. Cloudburst’s Tall Poppy didn’t whisper—it strutted, a Nelson-and-Nectaron-powered tropical tempest dripping gooseberry glamour and citrus swagger like a rock god in mirrored shades refusing to stay humble, because why the hell should it? And then, finally, our last taste of the day, Stoup Brewing’s Good Times Machine delivered the closing hallelujah—a radiant, joy-throttled hop jam of Citra sunshine and Mosaic mischief that left our souls shimmying.
And somehow, it all worked: the heat, the beer, the bands, the asphalt radiance, the gravity of nearly 40 elite breweries summoned to a Columbia Gorge parking lot to celebrate a singular beer style with cult-like devotion. Legends was not just a festival—it was a sun-blasted sermon, an IPA communion in the Church of the Hop. And this was just the first.
LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory
