As I mentioned in my Round One post my first visit left me with plenty more beers to drink at the Oregon Brewers Festival this year. As it turned out it took me not one, but two more visits to feel like I'd covered as many bases as I needed to feel satisfied and that I hadn't missed anything.
Although I did have some additional, non-sour beers, overall it was the offerings from the Sour Tent that I found most pleasing. Those included Mt Emily Pear, an effervescent brew with light pear aroma and a slightly cloudy appearance, 10 Barrel Go Go Boots, a session sour that the brewer described as Sour Patch Kids with grapefruit and McMenamins Black Cherry Sour, a darker, heavier sour beer that I would swear is the cousin of Rosie's.
Probably the most outstanding non-sour, non-IPA beer to cross my lips was Occidental's Kellerbier. I've said these things before and I'll say them again: 1) I typically don't like German beers and 2) Occidental is turning out some great beer, regardless of the fact that they primarily make German styles.
Once again OBF offered a great time and great beers for beer geeks as well as non-beer geeks from near, far and everywhere in between. You can bet I plan to be there next year; hopefully you will, too.
My first day attending the Oregon Brewers Festival I went, as usual, with a fairly well outlined plan of attack. Cheat sheet in hand, I was determined to cover many of the fruit beers first so as not to muddle my palate with the delicious hops I was sure to find in the IPAs that I love. Of the 12 I'd identified wanting to try I made it through 10 of them with minimal "interruptions" - a few of the "here, try this" variety, two IPAs and a visit to the sour tent.
Of those 10 fruit beers there were a few I would politely refer to as, "refreshing, like a cold glass of water is refreshing." There are bound to be some of these in any offering of fruit beers, ones where the fruit flavor just didn't come through as strongly as I was hoping (and maybe not even as strongly as the brewer was hoping for...who knows though?). The one that easily topped my list was 10 Barrel's Raspberry Crush. The raspberry flavor was well rounded, not too sweet and of course, the beer was visually breathtaking. One of my drinking companions suggested that it would make a great sorbet. I think he's right however I'm not sure I could part with any of it to make sorbet.
Also high on my list was Old Market's Cherried Alive. This 7.8% beer could be a dangerous one as it drinks more like a 4%. If you like fruit beers this will probably provide the most bang for your buck.
My only trip into the combined Buzz/Sour Tent yielded utter happiness in the form of Deschutes' Blackberry Sour Ale. I'm generally hesitant every time I plunk down two tokens, wondering if what will be poured into my glass will really be worth the heftier price. This most certainly was!
I mentioned that I had deviated, briefly, from my fruit beers first plan, inserting two IPA on my list. Both Elysian's Space Dust IPA and Flying Fish's Exit 16 Wild Rice IPA were of the delicious, stanky IPA variety that is my most favorite. They were so good that after each one I was tempted to ditch my original plan and go after more hops.
By the end I hadn't made it all the way through my list, but I'd had my fill for the first round. So I guess that means there will have to be a round two. Stay tuned for more.
The Oregon Brewers Festival starts next week and just like any good beer geek I've taken a fine tooth comb to the beer line up. One very exciting, new addition to the festival this year is the Sour Tent. Like the Buzz Tent, the offerings here are special and specially priced at two tokens each, samples only (no full pours available). They'll be trying to tweet out when new beers go on in each tent but I'll probably also be keeping my eye on Untappd check-ins as a supplemental source of information.
Being a Minnesota transplant I was particularly interested to see two Midwest breweries represented - Summit Brewing hailing from St. Paul, MN and Sprecher Brewery from Milwaukee, WI. As far as I know these breweries are new to OBF this year and are not currently distributing to Portland. That begs the question, "Are they considering it?" Summit EPA used to be one of my go-to beers, a beer you could find in my fridge virtually any day of the year. I'd be awfully happy to see it nestled in with my Oregon favorites in the future.
IPAs, double IPAs and special/mystery beers will be high on my list of ones to try and I'll likely be dropping plenty of tokens in the Sour and Buzz tents. The beers I can typically find around town, even the ones I really enjoy, I'll leave for the out-of-towners, which make up 56% of the estimated 80,000 people expected to attend. What beers are you looking forward to drinking?
As I mentioned in my Round One post my first visit left me with plenty more beers to drink at the Oregon Brewers Festival this year. As it turned out it took me not one, but two more visits to feel like I'd covered as many bases as I needed to feel satisfied and that I hadn't missed anything.
Probably the most outstanding non-sour, non-IPA beer to cross my lips was Occidental's Kellerbier. I've said these things before and I'll say them again: 1) I typically don't like German beers and 2) Occidental is turning out some great beer, regardless of the fact that they primarily make German styles. 
