The third installment of this series takes us to 461 Ellicott St, which is where the Washington Market is located. Odd, I know, Washington St. being only a block away and all- but it’s named for this, not for the street it is on. This makes sense, because they are, after all, the first market to operate in downtown Buffalo for some time, and serve a very needy group of pioneers that are making downtown living hip again. When I first got back to Buffalo, they were my market, too, living as I did on the 700 block for just over a year. While I always found their strange closeout Croatian product vibe a little off-kilter, I was grateful for the service nonetheless, and especially glad for their beer selection. No remarkable surprises, but plenty of good brews to choose from.

Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

If you’re really interested in the stuff on the right, you’re tuned to the wrong Beer-O-Vision, I’m sorry to say; those coolers house the many fine malternative products that, while technically beer, we don’t really discuss much here. That “Seagrams” “Mojito” sure is convincingly limey, though. Anyway… The good stuff is on the left, mainly.

At the top there sits some Red Stripe and Pacifico, and two more I can’t make out, or recall- next down, please find the “Boston” shelf with several varieties of Sam Adams and Harpoon, including their UFO heffe. The middle shelf combines Flying Bison’s Aviator Red and Buffalo Lager with some Great Lakes from Cleveland and Long Trail out of Vermont. The Shelf below is all-Saranac, all the time- I was especially glad to see their Imperial IPA, brewed with ten hops, ten malts and a wonderful bitter complexity. Coming in at 8.5% abv and 85 IBUs, it’s a fun beer. On the next shelf down, the Vermont madness continues with some Magic Hat and we return to NYS with a lone Southern Tier and a six of Brooklyn’s fantastic lager.

So much for the domestics. In the next cooler, we have a fair selection of imports- again, no surprises, but solid choices nonetheless. You find Heineken, Stella Artois and Newcastle Brown (Sitting next to PA’s Yeungling- in cans as well!), Guinness (bottles, not cans with widgets) and Smithwicks. Spaten and some Pilsner Urquell can be found in the case next over along with Blue Moon and some of the standard cervezas of the times. I’m happy to note that they carry a cider as well- Woodchuck sits over there, sort of alone it an otherwise malty world.

So there you go, Washington Market’s beers- not totally exhaustive, but you get the point. I’d deem theirs a solid Tier II selection, though not huge. Still, they’re all cold, and the Washington Market is there for you if you’re downtown. I know they’re better than the Holly on Pearl St, I checked to be sure.