On Matters Washingtonia

As many of you may already know, I recently moved to Seattle. While I certainly miss Texas--especially the food--Seattle is a pretty nice place to live. The weather is mild and not quite the depressing constant rain that we've all undoubtedly heard so much about. The people are polite on the surface and I can go grocery shopping, get drunk, and eat great Thai food without ever leaving a few block radius of my apartment. One thing stands out, however. The Northwest is home to many, many microbreweries. Alas, I can find lots of great IPAs made locally. This post is not about great IPAs. This post, gentlemen, is about Rainier beer: Washington's version of Lone Star. Note the white, red and gold color scheme. It tastes about like Lone Star, but not as good. Although I have yet to see it sold in bottles, I'm told that their bottle caps contain the same kind of puzzles found on Lone Star caps. [This guy](http://www.geocities.com/shabber_1/rainier.html) has an archive of solutions. Whether Rainier was made in the image of Lone Star, the contrary, or the two are products of convergent evolution, I'm not sure. That would require about 10 more minutes of searching and I'm due to a Memorial Day BBQ* soon. *There will be a grill, but whether or not Northwesterners actually know their asses from their elbows when it comes to BBQ remains to be seen.

sausage and a pork loin and salad

how was the bbq?

I went out to the race track for memorial day, while I didn\'t come out ontop with my race selections (a combination of too many out-of-town trainers/jockeys and unknown horses coming in for million dollar stakes), I did get to enjoy the 75 brew tasting tent. There were american brews broken down by region (northwest, northeast, etc.) along with a few international brews (european mostly). I don\'t remember seeing a Rainier in there, but then again I didn\'t get to sample all of the brews (lack of funds and the ability to drink ~75 brews in a 4 hour period) so maybe I missed it.

Just FWI, Rainier and Lone Star are both regional brews of the [Pabst Brewing Company](http://www.pabstbrewingco.com/portfolio/), I’m almost certain they (Lone Star and Rainier) were started independently, but now they are both owned by the same parent corporation. As a result the puzzle caps are exactly the same, and [THIS GUY](http://thismatters.net/hobbies/lonestar/) (me) has all the caps and solutions archived.