2013 Oregon Brewers Festival Kicks Off

For the first day of the 2013 Oregon Brewers Festival Portland put on its summer best - clear blue skies, warm temps and a refreshing breeze coming off the water. From atop the Morrison bridge the bright white festival tents beckoned.

In typical festival fashion, I arrived shortly before the gates opened and found a short line at the south entrance waiting in the cool shadows under the Morrison bridge.

As I made my way to the middle of the festival grounds to get my glass and tokens the tail end of the parade was making its way in. I had time to grab my first sample before the official toast and subsequent tapping of the complimentary Blueberry Belgian from BridgePort.

After that I got down to business, making my way from one end of the beer trailers to the others ticking off beers on my hit list while enjoying talking to the many, many friends I ran into along the way. Tops on my list were:
Boulder Beer Co Pump Up the Jam - Not as visually appealing as many fruit beers, there was a great berry/jam aroma, a surprising mouthfeel similar to drinking apricot juice and a flavor that was pleasantly fruity without being too sweet.
West Highland Brewing Mango Moon Ale - Have you ever had those peach rings candies? You know the gummy ones? This beer smelled like a mango version of that and followed with a fruity flavor that was slightly tart and overall very good. I don't know if I've had a mango beer or anything from West Highland before but this first experience with both was very good.
Old Market Pub & Brewery Dilution of Grandeur - While I've been to Old Market once, and with a huge sampler tray their beers were all over the board for me, their version of a berry Belgian lambic turned out quite well. Not as tart as some lambics but one of the better beers I've had from them for sure.

I didn't quite get through my whole list but there's still four more days of the festival. Perhaps I'll make it back for another round of drinking and chatting with friends. Perhaps I'll run into you and we'll talk about some of your favorites (or feel free to leave them in the comments).

Oregon Brewers Festival
July 24 - 28, gates open at noon daily
Tom McCall Waterfront Park, Portland

The Old Market Pub & Brewery

The Old Market Pub & Brewery has been around since 1994 and although they show up from time to time at festivals (notably Berried Alive in 2011 and Cherried Alive in 2012 at OBF) for the most part it seems that they quietly go about their business. No doubt contributing to that is the fact that they're located in far southwest Portland and even though their second location, The Broadway Grill & Brewery, is more central (1700 NE Broadway) I've yet to hear about an event or beer release there. So in such a beer soaked town as Portland if you're not tooting your own horn it's easy to get overlooked, which is just what we'd done up until recently.

The drive from my inner southeast residence to Old Market isn't long and since Multnomah Blvd nearly sideswipes the pub and brewery it's easy to find. With a large parking lot, large patio and a cavernous interior it feels more suburban chain restaurant than Portland-esque brewery. A quick look at the tap list shows that even though you can get a BMC or a Killowatt Energy Drink on tap, they ARE in the business of beer with 13 house brews pouring.

Following the usual routine when visiting a new location we ordered a sampler tray, consisting of nine beers, plus four additional to ensure that we were able to try the entire lineup. The beer offerings included all of the standards - a golden, IPA, stout - as well as a couple of potentially gimmicky ones - Hot Tamale and Ol' Granny Smith. You'll have to go there if you want to know about all 13 but here are a few I found to be worth noting.

Rauch Bier - This smoked lager, not generally a style I'm thrilled with, turned out to be very smooth, so smooth that I would have guessed it was served on nitro. It isn't and although there is that liquid smoke character to it, it's pleasant for what it is.

Mr. Toad's Wild Red - While I wouldn't consider it a red, there are considerable coffee and roasty flavors not typical in a red, I enjoyed it.
Hop On - As with Mr. Toad's, this isn't what one would expect from an amber. Instead it is a hoppy - dry-hopped in fact - bugger that is far from balanced and I loved it. This is an amber for hop heads only and was my favorite of the day.
British Bombay IPA - Billed as a NW style IPA, it was more balanced and less hoppy than Hop On yet still tasty. This one would likely appeal to most IPA fans.
Hot Tamale - Our waitress gave fair warning that really this would be HOT and I was prepared to be walloped. With no aroma and virtually no flavor the only thing you'll find in a glass of this is capsaicin and pain. Not one to waste beer, I ended up having a bloody mary made with this sample, less the two small sips that had been consumed.

Overall their line up is a solid one without any real stinkers. The Old Market won't be making it on my list of regular places to visit but if I find myself in that area of town I'd happily stop in. And when I see an offering from them at a beer festival, you can bet I'll give it a try.

Have you been to The Old Market or their Broadway location? What did you think of any beers you've had from them?

OBF: Round One

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.

Oregon Brewers Festival 2011

I have a pretty solid ritual when it comes to writing about a beer fest: grab my notes (for memory assistance on my favorites), grab a copy of the program (for the full names of the beers and their corresponding breweries) and plug in the camera (for things I may have forgotten but seemed worth taking a picture of at the time). This year I just sat down and knew, for the first time, there were two clear, stand-out winners in my mind at the Oregon Brewers Festival. This excludes any Buzz Tent beers, but I’ll get around to more about that in a little bit.

#1 – Old Market Pub & Brewery Berried Alive! Belgian Boysenberry Ale

It seemed there were quite a few more fruit beers at the festival this year but as is often the case, particularly with fruit beers, there’s a wide range in how well they’re made. This beer was chock full of fruit flavor, nothing artificial, sported a beautiful color and hit that just right balance of sweet and tart.

#2 – Dogfish Head Black & Red Raspberry Mint Imperial Stout

This is one of those love it or hate it beers and in all honesty, when I decided to get a sample of it I didn’t think I was going to like it. Oh, how wrong I was. Besides the pleasing combination of flavors, it was the incredible mouthfeel that hooked me. Not many beers have that silky, velvet-in-the-mouth quality so when I find one that does it’s memorable. Finally, this had to be the best deal of the festival, 10% ABV and not in the Buzz Tent.

Circling back to my earlier mention of this year’s Buzz Tent, I must warn you, this is where things are going to get a little negative. I generally follow the “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” rule in my musings but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my disappointment in the Buzz Tent as a whole. Last year the Buzz Tent was well run, but this year there were three huge issues:

• There was no listing of the tapping order of the Buzz Tent beers. Clearly it’s impossible to assign a day and time to these beers but having the knowledge of whether the beer I’m hoping to try is five keg or 15 kegs away from being tapped is very useful.
• The use of the Buzz Tent Twitter account was nearly non-existent (until the late Friday night tweet saying that everything had been blown). Last year’s announcements, along with the tapping order list made it very easy to figure out if I needed to make a run to the fest to get some object of my desire.
• The overall poor organization and signage in the Buzz Tent was surprising and disappointing. We were there at the beginning of the festival on Thursday and they weren’t even close to being ready to serve beers. When they were finally ready, the signage was so poorly hung that getting in the right line was difficult. Beyond that, at least one of the (hand written) signs was blatantly wrong. The name of the beer, which described the ingredients, was correct in the program, correct in one of the few tweets that was sent out and it was something I’d had at the brewery the day before. Yet the sign in the tent was wrong.

Although the disappointments of the Buzz Tent are something that the organizers need to take a long, hard look at, overall, I still enjoyed the festival and am sure I’ll be returning next year.

Thanks go out to festival organizer Chris Crabb for contacting me about a media pass and providing me with a mug and a portion of the tokens that fueled my OBF adventure.