Beer Haven: Is a giant beer station worth your time at the fair?

It would’ve taken me weeks to try the beers at all the local taprooms.

That’s what I kept telling myself after paying about $10 a pint at the Great American Beer Station, a roving beer truck with room for 60 beer taps. Signs at the Washington State Fair advertise it as Beer Haven and that’s fairly accurate when considering the number and quality of beers served in one location.

Here’s a look at how the beer truck works, and whether it’s worth your time and cash.

Find it: Near the Blue Gate. Must be 21 to enter.

Background: The beer truck is from Brett Enright, also the owner of Juicy’s Outlaw Grill, widely called the largest mobile barbecue grill (or at least on the fair circuit). It’s right next door to the beer truck.

The concept is pretty simple: Pay a flat fee — $20 for 30 ounces was the minimum — and get a plastic tasting glass and an electronic card that monitors how much beer you’ve had. In other parts of the country, patrons pour their own brew straight from the taps after a swipe of the card, but Washington’s liquor rules require someone with bartending experience do the pouring here.

Selection: A terrific selection of Northwest taps you’d be hard pressed to find in one spot. And there were 60 of them. Taps change frequently.

Pricing: The beer, like everything about the fair, carried high fair prices. At $20 for 30 ounces, that’s $10 for just shy of a pint.

Service: The serving format was annoyingly slow. And that was a big problem on the busy opening day. We followed around the beer server — one per side of the truck for much of our visit until reinforcements showed — asking for a small taste of this or that. One server was visibly annoyed when we’d ask for a small pour. Tough for them. We asked anyway. I wanted to see if I could get 10 pours out of the $20 buy-in. We didn’t make it. We managed eight pours for our $20.

Unusual finds: We scored on seasonal beers tough to find outside of taprooms or taverns with terrific tap selections. There was the the Elysian Imperial Great Pumpkin. We scored a sip of Puyallup River Brewing’s Cucumber Lemon Saison just before the tap blew. We should have drank that one after we had the Pineapple Ghost Pepper Saison from Puyallup River. I thought my lips were going to fall off. Tacoma’s Odd Otter Brewing’s Momma Otter Pancake Porter was a nice follow up to the spicy stuff. So was Iron Horse’s High Five Hefe. I would have drank the Blood Orange Wit from Northwest Brewing all day.

Worth the price of admission? Only if you’re a diehard beer fan who doesn’t want to spend the time trekking to taprooms to try stuff you can’t find in the stores. But $10 a pint is high, even for fair prices.

Beer haven event: Check out a Beer Haven gathering featuring Northwest brewers and unlimited pours for $40. 1-4 p.m. Sept. 19. Buy tickets at thefair.com.

This story was originally published September 15, 2015 at 11:00 PM with the headline "Beer Haven: Is a giant beer station worth your time at the fair?."