Category: Pacific Northwest

I am proud to say that I joined the 400 club last night with Hopworks Urban Brewery being the milestone brewery added to my tally. A couple of friends joined us as we enjoyed the HUB beers. And we even ran into our father and son friends, Ben and Matt, who we met last year at the festival.

But I am jumping ahead, as I need to update our travels with our arrival in Portland on Wednesday.

We left Astoria Wednesday morning, but not without running into Chris from Fort George. Having missed him the night before, it was good to run into Chris, even if it was just to say ‘Hi’.

Our first stop in Portland was Alameda Brewhouse, located in the Beaumont Village area of Northeast Portland. Here we enjoyed lunch and a sampler set as well as a conversation with the owner Matt Schumacher. The highlight beer for us was the lager.  This sounds kind of boring but in the current world of hops and barrels, a nice crisp lager is a welcome change.

Then, we rambled down the road to Amnesia Brewing, located in what looks like an old garage. Good beer, good sausages and a great neighborhood location are what stood out for us.

But with the preliminaries over, it was time for the Beer Festival events to begin.

The major event for Wednesday was the Brewers Guild Dinner. The kickoff to the Oregon Brewers Festival, the dinner features some beers not found at the festival in a relaxed atmosphere. This gives you time to hook up with friends and try to figure out when to hang out during the rest of the week.

The beers were weighed heavily towards Belgians, barrels  and sours, but I was able to get Super Dog from Lucky Labrador again.

We were up bright and early on Thursday for the Brunch hosted this year by Widmer at PGE Ballpark. Not to criticize the host location of last year, but this year’s venue was much more enjoyable. It was a beautiful morning and to be able to relax out in the sun was great. It did wonders for rejuvenating our tired bodies.

Then, of course, there was the parade. I was just jealous that I wasn’t able to be a monk.

The finale of our festival on Thursday was the media tasting. Last year, they walked us around the festival and got us drunk. This year we got to sit in a tent and the beer was brought to us. Despite the change, the same result happened.

We sampled 17 beers and many were on my list of beers I wanted to try. For me, the standout was Ginger Ale from Caldera because I really like ginger. Other beers of interest were the Porter from Bell’s, Love Fish Abbey Dubbel from Flying Fish and the Calypso Ale from Roots; a beer made with apricots and scotch bonnet peppers.

We did spend a few more hours at the festival on Thursday mainly because Thursday is the most relaxed day and the toilets are still clean.

And we ended our day with the 400 milestone.

Today brought more exciting things, including our volunteer shift, but Merideth will tell you about that later.

 

It was one year ago at the Oregon Brewers Festival that Chris and I got our first taste of being part of the media scene. We felt like we didn’t really belong and it was all so exciting.  We kept thinking that we would be exposed any minute as the fakes we were and we would be humiliatingly stripped of our media badges. How things have changed for us over the last year! I still sometimes feel like a poser, but overall, I think we feel a lot more comfortable. And it’s still very exciting for us.

Tonight, the festivities begin with the Brewers Guild Dinner and we will be in a bit of work mode. Of course I use the term ‘work’ loosely. We’ll be drinking beer.

Not only is this trip the anniversary of our “coming out” as beer media, but we will also be hitting another important milestone. Chris and I will visit our 400th brewery. We began our countdown by driving the 2 hours to the Oregon coast and the quaint historical town of Astoria.

We went straight to The Wet Dog Cafe/Astoria Brewing Company for beer and lunch. We then walked the beaches of where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean. It was beautiful and the force of the waters was surprisingly strong and loud. When I mean loud, I mean not only the water, but also the scream of the Caspian Terns. A sound that was kind of neat at the beginning became more tiresome as the day and night wore on. In a group, they sound like a cat fight or babies crying. Despite the call of the wild, we just enjoyed being in the fresh Oregon air.  A nice change from the Basin Complex fire induced smokey air of home.

For dinner, we went to Fort George Brewing to drink beer (what else?) and to see Chris, the owner/brewer. We first met Chris and his beer earlier this year in Alaska and were looking forward to seeing him again. Unfortunately, he left the pub about 15 minutes before we arrived, but we were still able to enjoy a few jars of beer (yes, jars), tasty food, and a game of Scrabble.

One of the cool things about Fort George, besides the great beer, is that they serve everything in mason jars. Wine (what’s that?!) was served in small ones, beer in regular sized ones, and even the “growlers” were large jars. Very interesting and quite novel.

In preparation for the big days and nights coming up, we hit the bed early. Plus, Chris got up at 3am yesterday, so needless to say, he was a bit tired. Today, we head back to Portland and will be visiting Amnesia Brewing and Alameda Brew House before going to the brewers dinner tonight. Our count right now is Chris: 397, me: 396. We’ll keep you posted.

 

The Year in Beer visits Portland, Oregon in July as we attend the 21st Annual Oregon Brewers Festival. Portland is a mecca for craft beer in the United States and the OBF is arguably the best craft beer festival.

This will be our ninth time and what keeps us going back is not only the great beer, but also the people. We will be seeing tons of old friends and most likely meeting some new ones as well. Plus, the weather is always glorious.

Best of all, both us should be reaching our 400th brewery on this trip.

Our festival schedule includes:

• Wednesday night Brewer’s Guild dinner
• Thursday brunch and parade to the opening of the festival
• Friday watching the Sasquatch Brew Am
• Volunteering for the 12:00-4:30pm shift on Friday

Our non festival plans include heading out to Astoria to check out the two brewpubs: Fort George Brewing and Astoria Brewing.

On Saturday, we are also planning on doing the Mt Hood/Hood River loop where we will hit four breweries: Elliot Glacier Public House, Big Horse Brewpub, Double Mountain Brewery and Walking Man Brewery. We are trying to organize this as a larger tour so if you are interested, please email me.

We expect another great time in Portland, so join us if you can!

I am not talking enlightenment here, but rather the lofty goals we set out for ourselves for our trip to Seattle: eight new breweries and all the good beer bars we could get to in four days. With the help of our friend Chris Devlin, I am happy to report that we exceeded what we set out to do.

Saturday dawned rainy and cold, with me depressed because I was back wearing dreaded pants instead of my comfy shorts. Merideth and I met up with Chris and his significant other Francesca and searched out an antidote for my woe. Beer you say? No… chocolate.

The Theo chocolate factory is not just your average, run-of-mill, award-winning, organic, fair trade chocolate company… it is also housed in the original Redhook Brewery in the Fremont district of Seattle. They have free samples, too, so after a few minutes of trying an interesting array of chocolate nibbles, I was ready to face the rest of the day.

And the rest of the day began just across the street at the world-famous Brouwer’s Cafe.

Brouwer’s is on many ‘top 10’ lists of best beer bars in the United States and it is easy to see why. An incredible draft and bottle selection awaits the thirsty customer. And they have the cool glass washer thingy too.

Following my rule to always drink local brew when I can, I stuck with the Washington beers on the menu. I ended up drinking two cask ales: Hop Diggity from Port Townsend and Bosun’s Black Porter from Maritime Pacific and two keg beers: Big Daddy’s ESB from Silver City and Snoqualmie’s Spring Fever Belgian-style Grand Cru.

I don’t want to gush on about Brouwer’s, but I have to say, I feel pretty fortunate to have had a pint at some of the best beer bars in the States over the last few months… Toronado, Monk’s, Publick House and now Brouwer’s.

Though the rain had finally stopped, it was still chilly as we walked from Brouwer’s down to Hales.

I have fond memories of our first visit to Hales ten years ago, but I have to admit that we were a bit disappointed in the beers this time around. Not that they were bad, they just lacked any ‘wow’ factor.

From Hales, we walked down to Maritime Pacific Brewing and enjoyed a few standout beers such as the Flagship Red Alt Ale and the Nightwatch Dark Amber.

But what really stood out was two items on the food menu. Lil Mahis are fish versions of the famous slider burgers and were to die for. And the deep fried pickles were also out of this world.

Before we hit the last brewery of the trip, we had a bit of business to take care of at Bottleworks, Brouwer’s Cafe’s bottle shop. Namely, we had to pick up the last few beers for our beer tasting next weekend.

The last brewery of the trip was Stix, located on the shores of Lake Union. There is really nothing to say about Stix, except that they brewed their last batch of beer yesterday. The equipment is already sold and the brewer has a new job somewhere else. So, we got there in the nick of time to be able to count it on the list. Oh… Chris D beat me two games to one in pool… and we also got to ride the S.L.U.T.

We finished the day downtown at the Collins Pub basking in the glory of all that we had accomplished over the last four days. We visited twelve breweries- nine of which were new for us – and over a half-dozen beer bars.

I’ll admit that I came to Seattle with a certain amount of skepticism regarding it’s lofty beer reputation, but I am now somewhat a convert. I have to thank Chris D for helping me see the light.

Click here to view all the images of our Seattle adventure.