Take a huge group campsite at one of the most beautiful locations on the West coast, add a bunch of beer geeks with coolers full of great beer, throw in enough wood for a fire big enough for NASA to see, and you’ve got yourself a hell of a night.

We had an enthusiastic, yet small, group of beer geeks gathered this past Saturday for the first annual Beer Geek Campout at Deception Pass State Park. The group campsite was seriously huge, with plenty of room for more people to come next year. A few people cancelled just prior to the weekend, and we also had several no-shows, which was unfortunate. We didn’t let that dampen our fun though; and there was no rain to dampen the fun, either! The weather was beautiful and we had a full afternoon/night of beer drinking and conversation by the fire. We managed to put down our beers for a bit and walk down to the beach to admire the pass and watch fisherman try to pull salmon out for dinner, and we also all huddled around the radio call of the 2nd half of the fantastic UW upset over USC. I think almost all of us hit a local brewery before coming to the campground as well, with some of us going to Flyer’s, some to Anacortes, and some to Skookum.

At a quick count, we shared somewhere between 30 and 40 beers between the 10 of us, including such gems as Three Floyd’s Dark Lord 2008, Full Sail Bourbon Barrel Aged Black Gold 2006, Deschutes The Abyss 2009 (hits stores in Oct), a multi-beer/brewery flight of barleywines from 02 through the present, some great homebrews, New Glarus Belgian Red, a bunch of East coast brews, some surprisingly good beers from our Canadian neighbors up north, and many, many more. I didn’t keep a list or any ratings of what we drank, but if someone did I’d love it if you post it. Also, there was that nice bottle of scotch that Craig brought…

A big thanks to everyone that attended, and I hope you’ll all make it again next year!

I’ll be adding some photos later today or tomorrow.