Winter is supposed to be low season for beer festivals, right? Apparently the folks in Portland have turned a blind eye to that news and forged forward with (at least) four beer fests taking place today. Who knows, there may in fact me more that I just tuned out after realizing that I was going to have a tough decision to make seeing as how I've not yet obtained the ability to clone myself.
CellarFest at Bailey's Taproom
In its sixth year now, Bailey's will be pulling "a bunch of old beer from our cellar." The beers range from barley wines to sours to stouts but they have one thing in common - they're all big boys with nothing clocking in at any less than 8%.
Collabofest at Base Camp Brewing
Presented by #PDXNOW, Travel Portland's current marketing campaign, the fest will offer 10 different collaboration beers from local breweries. With gose, hefeweizen, sour and radler beers, the offerings are the polar opposite of Bailey's line up.
NW Coffee Beer Invitational at Goose Hollow Inn
Coffee and beer are my two favorite drinks so when Dave Fleming introduced this festival last year I quickly hopped on board. Clearly a successful endeavor, the number of beers has been upped from 12 to 16, all made with locally roasted coffee.
Westmoreland/Sellwood Winter Brew Fest at Portland U-Brew & Pub
This festival, now in its fourth year, offers a combination of six beers made by Portland U-Brew and four made by other breweries. Most will be big, over 9%, and all winter beers.
So can you guess where I'll be? Those of you who know me well probably answered correctly - I'll be at the coffee beer festival. If, and this is a big if, knowing that I'm usually not good for much after a festival, I have any energy left I may wander over to Base Camp, seeing as how we live within stumbling distance from there. Whatever your plans are, cheers to craft beer, friends!
Writing on an assigned topic takes me back to high school and college classes and after having penned this blog for seven years without assignments I must admit that it's a lot harder than I thought it would be. However dangling the dual carrots of free registration to the 2014 Beer Bloggers Conference in San Diego and a free trip to the National Beer Wholesalers Association's Annual Convention in New Orleans was enough incentive for me to take a crack at a post on the wide topic of "America's Beer Renaissance: Consumer Choice and Variety in the U.S. Beer Market."
Portland, whether or not that other city believes it, is the craft beer capital of the U.S. and last Saturday was a perfect example to support that claim. January is historically a quieter time of year for beer goings-on with some people recovering from the hectic holiday season, others slogging their way through winter by hunkering down and a few determined souls sticking to their New Year resolutions to eat better/drink less/be healthier. You wouldn't have guessed that by the fact that the lucky beer ducks in Portland had a choice of four, yes four, beer festivals happening simultaneously.
1. Portland U-Brew Winter Brew Fest - The combination homebrew supply store/brew-on-premises facility/brewpub hosted a beer festival showcasing 10 beers, six of their own making and the rest from other local breweries. If that doesn't sound exciting enough, there was one beer brewed with gummi bears and another with candy canes and M & M's.
2. NW Coffee Beer Invitational - The organizers of this inaugural festival clearly didn't think a January date was undesirable to host an outdoor festival that brought together 12 breweries, all utilizing coffee in the creation of their brew. The offerings weren't just limited to the usual suspects - stouts and porters - but also included a berliner weiss and a couple of IPAs.
3. Bailey's Taproom CellarFest - One of the best taprooms in Portland, Bailey's annual festival digs deep, into their cellar that is. The beer list featured over 20 beers going back as far as 2008. Most of them topped 9% ABV, being imperials and barleywines, but there were also a few aged sour beers to keep things interesting.
4. Belmont Station Bigger Badder Blacker Week - One of the top bottle shops in Portland was in the midst of their week-long festival, an "annual trek to The Dark Side" that offered a multitude of rare, big beers. Saturday featured imported beers, a departure from the other festivals that were pouring beers primarily from Oregon or West Coast breweries.
Admittedly these festivals were smaller than the five-day extravaganza of the Oregon Brewers Festival held in July along the Portland waterfront and its winter counterpart, the Holiday Ale Festival. Nevertheless, I challenge you to find any craft beer lover that wasn't torn trying to decide where to spend their Saturday imbibing. In total there were over 50 beers available from these four events alone expressing the creativity of the brewers that so generously keep us from going thirsty. If that doesn't illustrate choice and variety I don't know what does.
The new event space above and part of Bailey's Taproom, The Upper Lip, hosted Oakshire Brewmaster Matt Van Wyk for a seminar that was touted to pour Hellshire III, 2012 Very Ill Tempered Gnome, 12 Proof and Biere de Mars. We were treated to a walkthrough of not only those four beers but an additional four - Hellshire I and II, 6th Anniversary and Funk the Farmhouse - and the opportunity to buy three-bottle sets of Hellshire I, II and III.
For those who follow Oakshire's beer, you might recall that there was "an issue" with Hellshire II, which led Oakshire to do a voluntary recall. Matt described that the base beer, an imperial stout, "wasn't fantastic" before it went into the bourbon barrels. Attempting to improve the end product a variety of things were added including vanilla beans, oak spires and coffee. Somewhere along the way some lactobacillus made its way into at least some of the bottles, souring it and prompting the recall. While I agree something might be a bit "off" with this beer, I enjoy sours and found this to be my favorite of the eight beers we tasted.
Second runner up for me was their 6th Anniversary beer, a barleywine aged in brandy barrels. It had a trifecta of aroma, mouthfeel and flavor that made me wish they were selling bottles of this. Their 7th Anniversary beer will be released in October and "may" be a sour cherry Baltic porter. Or not.
Taking the bronze was their Funk the Farmhouse, a variation of the beer they made for NAOBF, Save the Farmhouse. Bottled only nine days ago it already has a beautiful sour aroma and light, tart flavor. It is a bit thin but there is definitely potential.
I've had very few of Oakshire's barrel-aged or specialty beers (I'm a sucker for O'Dark:30 and Overcast Espresso Stout) so even though I didn't love all of the beers we tasted it was a great experience. I'm always up for trying something new to me and getting to hear about what went into the creation of each beer from the brewmaster takes it to the next level. Thanks to Matt, Adam and Bailey's for a great seminar!
Recently I overheard part of a conversation about Untappd. The non-user didn't ask the usual, "Why would I want to log my beers?" but instead, "Why would I want to know what other people are drinking?" At the time the answer that readily came to my beer geek mind was, "Why wouldn't you want to know what your friends are drinking?" Clearly that's one aspect of others' lives not everyone finds as important as I do.
A couple days ago, I found a different and possibly more important answer to that question. The answer I discovered was, "so I know what to drink." Not that I can't make my own decisions about what to drink, but by knowing what others are drinking, I might become aware of other beers I might like to try. Here's how it played out.
I was going to be in the vicinity of Bailey's Taproom with just enough time for one beer. A couple hours before my arrival, through a tweet, I learned they had just tapped a firkin of Laurelwood Ink Heart. While a firkin will always peak my interest, this announcement was particularly intriguing due to a recent logging of this beer by one of my friends. It was getting good ratings and I made a mental note that if I found it somewhere I should probably give it a try. That turned out to be a good decision. The beer was delicious as I had anticipated.
So beyond having an interest in keeping track of what I'm drinking (which I've referred back to more times than I can remember) and knowing what my friends are drinking, I can now add that it clues me into beers that I may well want to seek out. If you use Untappd, or something similar, why? If you don't, why not?
