As part of our mission here at Why Daddy Drinks to revel in the humorous lunacy that is fatherhood, and to promote the drinking of quality beverages, we bring you our weekly segment highlighting something that should be in your glass. This is The Drink Of The Weekend.

The purpose of this feature is to be a weekly spotlight of something that I have had the pleasure of drinking over the weekend, and which I think you should consider for slaking your own thirst, especially during these hot summer months. Lately, while I have been partaking in some good stuff, I have been slacking on the “weekly” part of this feature. Kids and work and trying to maintain eight hours of TV day have a way of eating into one’s spare time for writing about one’s drinking adventures.

And, since it’s summertime, vacations with the family also manage to keep one away from the keyboard. I wrote a bit about one of those vacations just this week. And while the majority of my time involved activities with my kids, such as a trip to Tacoma’s Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium, there was one stop I made specifically in the name of, uh, “research” for this column.

That was to the best specialty craft beer store that I know of: Pint Defiance, in Tacoma. And no, that name is not a typo, even though it definitely is a play on the name of the local zoo.

I discovered Pint Defiance a year ago on the recommendation of my brother, and it is where I discovered Kent, Washington’s Airways Brewing Co., and its Pre-Flight Pilsner and Sky Hag IPA. I didn’t bring nearly enough of Airways, or any other Pint Defiance offerings back to Oakland last year, so I was determined to load up this time around.

I think this photo shows that I put in a respectable shopping performance:

Every beer in this photo is from either Washington or Oregon, and I can’t find any of them [aside from the odd-occasional Rainier Tall Boy at BevMo] anywhere near my home in Oakland. Wherever I get out of town I always like to try a new, good beer that I haven’t had before, and I knew that in going to Tacoma I was going to load up and do some serious product-muling back to the Bay Area. These beers take up a lot of room in my Beer Fridge, but I figure a full fridge is a happy fridge. And drinking them makes me happy, too.

But, every beer that gets drunk is one less beer I have from the Northwest, and makes me all too aware that it will probably be a year before I get back up to Pint Defiance and can re-fill my stock. Still, beer is for drinking, and this past weekend, I drank two good ones.

The first was Base Camp Brewing Co.’s Ripstop Rye Pils, with an ABV of 5.7%. Typically, I prefer India Pale Ales, but there was something about the look of this pilsner which said it would be perfect for drinking while grilling up some steaks on my back deck. Base Camp also uses its own 22-ounce aluminum “bottle”, which seems to make the beer colder than those in traditional bottles or cans. Whether this was just my imagination, but downing a bottle of Rye Pils while working some steaks and lobster tails on my barbecue sold me on Base Camp’s philosophy: “Soak in a mountain river. Chill in the snow. Cool off in a lake. Refrigerate if you have to.”

I wasn’t done grilling by the time I finished that bottle of Ripstop Rye Pils, and not wanting to drink up the one remaining bottle I had, I switched over to another new beer, this time with a little more muscle to it. And since I had such good luck with Airways Brewing’s Sky Hag IPA last year, I went back to the Airways catalog for its Seat Kicker IPA.

Seat Kicker isn’t a strong as its cousin Sky Hag, but that doesn’t mean its lacking in flavor. It has a 6.5% ABV, and balance very well with my ribeye. And my lobster tails. And my grilled corn on the cob, too. And like Sky Hag, and all of Airways beers, it comes with a sense of humor that plays upon the in-flight situations many of us have been in, and hope to never experience again. From it’s label:

“Will it ever stop? Just like his foot on the back of your seat, the citrus-forward hop aroma of this beer keeps going and going.”

You may not want the seat kicker behind you on that flight from Seattle to Hawaii, but you should definitely try to get some and take a seat with it at home.