The OBF Parade

The Oregon Brewers Festival begins with a parade, as the ceremonial cask is ushered into the fest for a ritual tapping. Below is a photo essay. I should also admit, sheepishly, that this was the first one I'd attended. It will definitely not be the last. Big fun--

The ceremonial cask.



Portland's mayor, Sam Adams, who leads the parade.



The parade attracts a surprisingly large number of people.



I always obey the exhortations of t-shirts.



The band was playing a kind a mardi-gras polka, which seemed appropriate.



The mayor taps the keg and then everyone in attendance gets a pour. (Free!)
This year's beer was Deschutes Jubel 2010. That's Fest founder and Raccoon Lodge
owner Art Larrance to Sam's right.



This is Cascade brewer Ron Gansberg. The picture is unrelated to the parade,
but come on, you gotta post that.

OBF First Reactions

It takes a certain kind of person to walk into the Fest with the opening parade and stay through til the taps run dry, and I am that kind of person. There's an adjective that describes this behavior, but you may supply it yourself. In any case, my exploration was fruitful, and I will pass along my discoveries for those of you are yet to visit the Fest.

Duds
Not every beer is going to be a winner, and you have to admire breweries that try something different. Still, honorable failures remain failures, and you shouldn't waste precious stomach space on them.

• Laht Neppur Strawberry Cream Ale. It wasn't shocking that this beer was treacly, but I was surprised that it was such a muddy, indistinct treacle.
• Caldera Hibiscus Ginger Beer. The razor's edge between success and failure is the difference between this beer and Caldera's rose-infused beer at PIB--the best I tasted there. Hibiscus Ginger is overly sweet--a few more hops would have helped--and too gingery. All the ingredients are right, but the recipe needs tinkering

Solid Performers
Generally speaking, the beers at this year's OBF are solid. I got very few poor pours, and spent the day nodding appreciatively. These were highlights for me:

• Boulevard Tank 7 Saison. A complex, slightly edgy interpretation. I like Sofie better, but reasonable people can disagree.
• Collaborator Sunstone Pilsner. A vividly-hopped, rich pilsner. If this were available in bottles, I'd buy it all the time.
  
• Deschutes Fresh-Squeezed IPA. I saved the IPAs for later, so my palate and memory aren't precise, but I was impressed with how multilayered the Citra hops tasted.
  
• Goose Island Sofie. The best head at the fest--dense as cream cheese and just as white. Anyone who's at all interested in farmhouse styles should try it.
  
• Green Flash Le Freak. Possibly the best hoppy beer I tried, but definitely a lot of Belgian character. Quite a bit of fun, and I'm happy to know it's a bottled beer.
  
• Hop Valley Alpha Centuri Binary IPA. I recall this being fantastic, but why? That I don't recall.
  
• Rogue 21. This is just a big ol' homebrew, with all the fun and idiosyncracies left in. I might have brewed it. Probably quite a bit how old ales used to be brewed, too. Burly, sweet, rich, fun.
  
• Three Creeks Creekside Kolsch. Didn't smell as I expected--a bit of sulphur, not much hops, but on the palate it was pure summer. Crisp, fresh, dry.
  

Best in Show
My two favorite beers both came from the Buzz Tent. At two tokens a pop, they were major steals. (Keep in mind that the OBF's token prices have never gone up--they have always been a buck, which means the price for a beer has steadily declined through the years. Two bucks for four ounces of rare beer is a deal I'd take any day.) The terrible downside to the Buzz Tent--and one the Fest must fix in future--is that no one knows what the beers are. They have a name and that's it. As a result, my report is incomplete.

• Oakshire. This was some dark, rich beer aged in a pinot barrel. Man, it was good.
• Full Sail Imperial Stout. The white board said this was from 1997. 1997! I don't know if that's true, but it was an amazing beer either way. (Sally and I got married in '97, so let's just pretend that was the vintage, what say?)

Bill has some comments; so does Matt. I'll update this post if I see more bloggers weighing in. Update. More: Jason, Beeronomist, Angelo, and Dave.

Did you go? What'd you like?

Also: Matt S, John H, Bill S, Matt W, John F, Van H, Bill C, Lisa M, Dave S, Jason W, Angelo, Margaret, Ezra and anyone else I missed--great to see you all.


Update. John Harris emails to confirm that the Full Sail Imperial Stout was indeed a 1997 keg. A man not given to hyperbole, he described the beer as "beautiful, if you ask me." Agreed.

Buzz Tent

I didn't mention the Buzz Tent in my preview because the beers featured there will come and go unpredictably. The list is here. After last year's overly complex system, this year's will be far easier: anyone can go at any time, and you just have to spend two tokens on a pour. The current list will be posted on a white board outside the tent and you can follow updates via Twitter. His Eminence Preston Weesner has assembled the beers, so they ought to be good.

Oregon Brewers Festival - The Five-Rupee Preview

Note: the post has been updated annotated following my visit to the Fest.

And so it begins.

The Oregon Brewers Festival is perhaps the most famous non-award fest outside of Munich, and it's a force of nature--hurricane or solstice-like celebration, your choice. No matter what beer shows up, if the temperature is below 90, the throngs will arrive. Once the showcase event for craft beer, the OBF has become something more--and less. With no fewer than a half-dozen other serious Portland fests, the Brewers Fest no longer boasts the best beer. And because the season and location has fostered a party atmosphere, beer geeks long ago downgraded this from a "must see" fest to a "if I'm in the mood."

Ah, but I wonder: are things changing? I have complained in years past about what looks like a cartel on brewery selections. The same old breweries were always invited, and the little guys got left out. This year they've tightened things up. Here's just some of the wee folk who got a nod: Natian, Upright, Vertigo, Laht Neppur, Hop Valley, 10 Barrel, Mt. Emily, Three Creeks, Double Mountain, Seven Brides, and Southern Oregon.

But it's in the beer list where hope is kindled for a OBF revival. In past years, you could be forgiven for thinking the OBF was the IPA fest. This year, more than any in memory, there are some delicate, light beers. With 33 offerings at 5.5% or under (and 13 at 5% or under), you can easily turn this into a session fest. IPAs are here, of course, but big beers are rarer; none exceed 10% and only 18 exceed 7%. Mostly what we have are nice, mid-range beers; perfect for a summer day.

So, onto the preview. These things are always fraught with difficulty--do you aim it at local audiences or visiting audiences? I'm excited about beers from Minnesota, but visitors from the Twin Cities may yawn at Surly's Bitter. Those folks want to try beers like Double Mountain's Vaporizer--certainly a delight, but a familiar one to Portlanders. This year I'll go by category and suggest beers that look good in each, and for good measure mention the ten beers I most want to try.

As always, the two most important things to remember are to lay down a layer of protein before you go and stay hydrated. After that, have fun--

Starters
With so many small beers on offer, this category isn't the usual first-beer-and-go. I might well spend half the day with these little guys.

• The Bruery 7-Grain Saison. A small saison of 5% made with rye, oats, wheat, rice, and corn. It sounds like what saisons would have tasted like if they'd been invented in the US.
• Caldera Hibiscus Ginger Beer. The name sort of says it all. Brewed specially for the Fest, it will either be a fascinating experiment or something to remember. [Not recommended. The balance is a bit off--too sweet and too gingery. All the pieces are there, it just didn't quite come together.]
  
• Collaborator Sunstone Pilsner. The homebrewer/Widmer collaborator project is a German pilsner made with 35% American wheat. Should be both tasty and fun.
  
• Laht Neppur Strawberry Cream Ale. Talk to people before you try this, because it may be a horrible travesty. Made with lactose and strawberries. Could also be lovely. [Not recommended. Tends more toward travesty.]
  
• Natian Destination. One of Oregon's smallest breweries arrives with an interesting beer--a red sweetened with honey and hopped with Palisades.
  
• Surly Bitter Brewer. Made with oats for extra silkiness, a 4% beer with 30 IBUs--just like we like it.
• Three Creeks Creekside Kolsch. Among the kolsches, this looks most promising: a bit of bitterness from traditional German hops should make it a tasty update on a classic style.

The Hoppy Beers
We may lobby and cajole people to try other "interesting" styles, but at the end of the day, Northwesterners want their hops. There are as usual many, many options--31 have 50 IBUs or more and ten are north of 90. But you can't judge a hoppy beer by its IBUs. Here are the ones that look good to me.

• Boundary Bay German Tradition Double Dry Pale. That confusing name needs some unpacking. Boundary Bay has for years been making single-hop beers, and this year's is made with newly-introduced German Tradition hops. "Double dry" refers to two infusions of dry hopping.
  
• Deschutes Fresh-Squeezed IPA. A single-hop IPA made with Citras. If you're not familiar with this new belle of the hop ball, here's a chance to make her acquaintance.
• Green Flash Le Freak. A Belgian IPA all the kids are talking about. Green Flash knows hops, so this should be a winner.
  
• Hop Valley Alpha Centauri Binary IPA. With no Pliny this year, we have to sub in a late-fest, shattered-palate hop monster. Five hop varieties plus dry-hopping make this look like a good pick.
• Lucky Lab Summit IPA. This beer, made with obscene amounts of Summit hops, will not be for me. But the orangey (and sweaty) Summits will probably thrill many.
• Terminal Gravity Single Hop IPA. Okay, single hopping isn't an obsession with me, but these all just seem interesting. The single hop strain in question here is Columbus.
  
• Widmer Captain Shaddock IPA. The Widmers always make a special beer for the fest, and the 2010 brew features what may a case of hyper-literalism." Since many hoppy beers have a grapefruit note, the Brothers reasoned, why not actually use grapefruit peels? Or maybe it's transcendent. Worth a pour either way.
  

The Belgians
This fest features fewer Belgian-style ales than recent years, but here are a few that look mighty tasty:

• Flying Fish Exit 4. New Jersey's Flying Fish brings their much-lauded tripel, which last year won gold at the GABF. She's big--9.5%--so be careful.
• Goose Island Sofie. One of the best saisons I've had--and I have frustratingly only had it once. I'll rectify that today.
• Rock Bottom Oud Heverlee. Flemish Brabant, the "style" of this beer, is actually a Belgian province--and Heverlee is a town in that province. I think Van Havig's pulling our leg here. In any case, the beer's made with tulips and is otherwise obscure. Should be fun.
• Boulevard Tank 7 Farmhouse. Boulevard has really been a leader on the farmhouse front, but I've failed to experience their bounty. This is like a bigger version of the Bruery's made with corn and wheat and 40 IBUs.
  

Local Faves
If you are visiting from elsewhere and want the best of the local beers, here are a few to start with.

• Beer Valley Leafer Madness (Ontario, OR). You know how Reefer Madness is a cult fave? So's Leafer Madness. Mad hopping, so beware.
• Cascade Summer Gose (Portland, OR). Ron Gansberg makes many offbeat beers, and I knew one of them would become a beloved local fave. I never would have guessed it would be a gose.
  
• Double Mountain Vaporizer (Hood River, OR). These guys know how to make hoppy beers that don't assault but still please the most discerning hophead.
  
• Fort George Vortex (Astoria, OR). There are so many good IPAs that this one often gets overlooked. Drink this and you can brag to your friends back in Indianapolis that you had the best Oregon IPA no one's tried.
• Laurelwood Organic Deranger/Hopworks Rise Up Red (Portland, OR). A style has emerged in the Northwest that is sort of like a stripped down IPA--none of the sweet biscuity malts to interfere with the lupulin enjoyment. These are two good ones.
• Oakshire Overcast Espresso Stout (Eugene, OR). No, not every style brewed in Oregon has scads of hops. Some have coffee!
• Pelican Kiwanda Cream Ale. One of the best summer ales available. A great first beer, too.
  

My Top Ten
It's all well and good to praise and recommend 26 beers as I have done--but I can't drink all of those. I'll definitely try a number of the beers above, plus a couple others. From the list above: Boundary Bay German Tradition, Bruery 7-Grain Saison, Caldera Hibiscus Ginger, Collaborator Sunstone Pilsner, Flying Fish Exit 4, Goose Island Sofie, Natian Destination, Surly Bitter Brewer. There are two more I haven't mentioned that are on my list:

• Great Divide Hoss Rye Lager. Described as an Oktoberfest, but looking a bit like a roggenbier, this whatever-it-is has caught my eye.
• Rogue Ales 21. John Maier always brews a new beer for the Fest, and guess how many years he's been doing it? This is an old ale, one of my fave styles, made in the old way with molasses and licorice.

I'll be headed down to the Fest today, so I should be able to update you on some of these beers. Meanwhile, you should mention what I missed or got wrong in comments so festgoers are not lead astray. Cheers and happy OBF--

Trends at the OBF: 41% Adulteration

The waxing and waning of trends is fascinating to behold, particularly when you adopt the long view. Take fruit, for instance. Shortly after the inception of craft brewing, fruit beers were huge. The popular ones, however, bore a stronger resemblance to wine coolers* than beer, and this led breweries down a dark path. They ultimately died of shame in 1995. But then, Lazarus-like, they started to appear again a few years ago, often flavoring beers like Cascade's sour ales. Some of the sweet ones came back, too, but with more balance and way less sugar. Fruit had gained a measure of respect. As evidence of this, eleven beers arrive at the OBF bearing the blush of juice.

The use of barley has gone through a similar transformation. When craft-brewing started, all-barley beers were the mark of quality. To brew with any "cereal grains" was to be tainted with impurity, moral more than zymurgical. Wheat was granted an exception, but still regarded with mistrust. Well, at this year's fest we have nineteen beers employing wheat, five using oats, and two each using rye, spelt, corn, and rice. Yes, corn and rice--the hated, tainted, immoral cereal grains! Of course, these ingredients are no longer tainted, and haven't been for a few years. As craft brewing matures, brewers will use anything to improve a beer, including the use of ingredients that were formerly used to ruin beer.

Finally, we have adjuncts, which were once used only in gimmick beers or witbiers. Now--and I think you have to give some credit to Craig Nicholls for this--they're used the way cooks and Belgians do, to add a hint of flavor. A partial list of the additives in this year's OBF beers:

• cocoa
• coffee
• dried tulips
• ginger
• grapefruit peel
  
• hibiscus
• hyssop
  
• lactose
• lemongrass
  
• orange blossoms
• pepper
  

As a reaction to the corporate adulteration of beer in the 1970s, early craft brewers went for an austere, almost reinheitsgebot-like purity. But we're Americans, foes of hidebound tradition--it didn't take. By my count, of the 81 beers in this year's fest, 33 have been "adulterated" in some way. This is a good trend. The breweries are maturer now, and they recognize that additives can help draw out the essential beeryness of beer. That was the mistake early brewers made; they used additives to transmute beer into abominations.

So, in general, viva la exotica. You just can't have enough pomegranate and hyssop spelt beers.
_____________
*Back in the olden days, wine and fruit juice were combined to make a beverage called "wine coolers" that were irresistible to 16-year-olds. (And possibly 90-year-old women.) After finding one too many peach-breathed youths lying naked on a park bench, the feds finally taxed them out of existence in 1991.

2010 Oregon Brewers Fest, By the Numbers

The last few years, I've done an edition of OBF by the numbers--and it often came off as a bit of an indictment. There weren't very many styles, a huge proportion of the beers were IPAs or pale ales, and major breweries were just bringing their same old beers. Ah, but numbers can also tell you when things are looking good. And after a few years of grumbles, it looks like the OBF has begun to shake things up. To kick off week-long coverage of the venerable Oregon Brewers Fest, feast your eyes on these numbers.

Years since inception: 23
Total beers: 81
Total breweries: 81
States represented: 16
Percent Oregon: 43%
Percent California: 22%
Percent Washington: 9%
All Others: 26%

Ale to Lager ratio: 9 to 1
Total styles (by broad category): 27
IPAs: 20% (16 total)
Belgian styles: 12%
German styles: 14%
Pale ale to farmhouse ale ratio: 1 to 1
Other well-represented niche* styles:
__- Pilsner: 5
__- Brown ale: 4
__- Cream ale: 3
__- Bock: 3
__- Kolsch: 2

Beers using wheat: 23%
Beers using spices/adjuncts: 15%
Fruit beers: 15%

ABV of smallest beer (three examples): 4%
ABV of largest beer (Flying Fish Exit 4 Tripel): 9.5%
Fewest IBUs in Fest (Upright Reggae Junkie Gruit): 0
Most IBUs at the Fest (Lucky Lab Summit IPA): 111
Minimum years in a row 21st Amendment has brought Watermelon Wheat: 9

More to come ...

_________________
*Niche styles in the Northwest, anyway.