A Roundup of Items You Will Find Fascinating

I've been working on my headlines--did that one grab your attention?  (The product is the same old crap, but exciting headlines is an objective improvement.)  I have the firm intention to do a bit more blogging on some of these, but best I apprise you of them in the meantime.

1.  Full Sail's 25th
Full Sail was one of the pioneers of Oregon craft brewing, and they celebrate their quarter century on Thursday:

It's been 25 years since we brewed up our first batch of beer and to celebrate we have crafted “25,” a pale doppelbock to celebrate this special occasion: the brewery’s 25th anniversary. The Full Sail crew invites you to join us in toasting to “25” in Hood River on September 27, 2012 at our Tasting Room &; Pub at 5:00pm. At 6:00pm the celebration will continue with a toast and tapping of “25” and a showcase of Full Sail beers at Portland’s iconic Horse Brass Pub, a place that helped nurture and grow craft beer and Full Sail for the last 25 years.

I will definitely be blogging about this one, but put the event on your calendar.

2.  Capturing the Craft
John Cizmas and Larry Kozial are traveling the West Coast and stopping in on dozens of breweries (two at current count) in a project to look at the lives of brewers, both in word and picture.  "The goal of our project wasn't to visit the 'best' breweries or the largest breweries. It was to capture what it means to these people to brew beer and be a part of the beer community."  Follow the link to see more.

3.  President of Beer
Willamette Week is doing a running series on the "flagship beers" of every state, which they blind-tasted with a group of Portland beer luminaries.  More to come, but if you haven't seen it, surf over and orient yourself.  It is, if nothing else, great blog fodder.

4.  New Maltings in the Evergreen State
Cool: 

Beer is only as good as the ingredients that compose it, and Skagit Valley Malting LLC says those ingredients should come from right here at home. The new malting company is working with grain researchers to develop barley suited to the Northwest and looks to be who microbreweries will turn to for premium beer malt. A test batch receiving hops, courtesy of Andrew Ziegler (above) Friday at the Kneading Conference West in Mount Vernon, brought together many of the parties involved the company's creation. "The barley was grown in the valley by John Roozen. It was created by the breeding program at Oregon State University, tested by Washington State University researchers in Mount Vernon, and malted by us. And the hops came from Bayview," said company founder Wayne Carpenter. "Every ingredient came from here," Carpenter said. "It's kind of cool." The malting company is scheduled to start moving equipment into a 11,745-square-foot facility at the Port of Skagit's Bayview Business Park on Dec. 1. Carpenter said the facility should start to fill large orders of malt in the first quarter of next year.

5.  Ezrablogging with a Bill Night Chaser
Alan might not call it journalism, but I call it news: Ezra on the new fresh hop pils from BridgePort and the new brewery, Sky High, in Corvallis over at the New School.  Also, Bill's begun to swing back into blogging action, no doubt aroused by the aroma of fresh hops in the air.  Also note the latest Portland Beer Price Index info is live.  At some point, Bill may get tired of doing the PBPI and we will all be the poorer.  I have found it immensely interesting.  For example, last month prices seem to be spiking after a long plateau, but this month, they've dipped again.  (If you look at the chart, it looks like prices jump during summer.)