A Few Quickie Recommendations at the OBF

Source: @RogueAles

I braved the liquid skies and mud bogs for opening day at the Oregon Brewers Festival yesterday, and aside from the very unusual weather, things went just as you would expect.  Lots of people, nice conversation, and good beer.  One of the topics of conversation begins with the question, "what have you had today that was good?"  In the spirit of that, here are my (necessarily incomplete) answers.

• Boneyard Bone-a-fide.  You have certain expectations about Boneyard: a sweet malt base that lifts up an intense infusion of hops.  Boneyard meets your expectations.  At 5.5%, it's a perfect festbier.
• Boundary Bay Double Dry Hop Mosaic.  Very much in the  Boneyard mode--vivid but not oppressive washes of hops.  They build through mid-palate, and you expect a shattering finish, but no, it fades out into a sunny, fruity finish.
• Heathen Megadank.  This is listed, wrongly, at 120 IBUs.  It's actually not hugely bitter, but it is saturated in hops--dank, slightly fruity hops.  
• Klamath Basin Breakfast Blend.  A coffee IPA that is just a notch below the best I've ever had, but which nevertheless demonstrates the potential of hops and coffee (which just shouldn't work).
•  Sierra Nevada/Ninkasi Double Latte Coffee Milk Stout.  The name pretty much says it all, and it really hit the spot as the rain was hammering down.

We don't all have the same palates, so I'll throw out a few more that were good--and perhaps in your mouth, great.  Bayern Amber (a graduate course in rich malting), Crux Off-Leash Session Ale (a Crystal hop special that will probably show better under hot skies), Ecliptic Crimson Saison (interesting balance, but my palate was gone), Payette Blood Orange IPA (more IPA than blood orange, but good), Logsdon Straffe Drieling (just had a sip, but it seemed really impressive), Sixpoint 3Beans (a bit hot, but rich and creamy).

I didn't encounter any disasters.  There were beers that didn't hit me in the happy spot, from Upright's overly spiced (those damn pink peppercorns again) saison to Caldera's coconut porter (too coconutty--but others were going crazy for it).  Even Laht Neppur's latest non-beer confection, a peach pie beer that tasted 100% of the former and 0% of the latter, was well done for what it was. 

That's the report; go forth and enjoy--

Twenty-odd Years at the Oregon Brewers Festival

I have been attending the Oregon Brewers Festival every year since somewhere in the 1990-1992 range.  (I have a spectacular inability to remember the years things happened.)  Just to put that in perspective, we're talking about the Bush administration--the first Bush administration.  Not only were there no real cell phones (and consequently no vintage selfies to offer), but the internet didn't yet exist.  (!)  Neither did the Pearl District, Voodoo Doughnuts, or food cart pods.  You could, however, smoke wherever you wanted, and there was a kick-ass old brewery wreathing downtown in the scent of wort and hops.

The OBF did exist, however, and the experience was almost identical to the one you can enjoy over the next five days.  There have been a few changes on the margins--it has gone from two to five days, and those old opaque-plastic mugs were finally dumped in favor of glass.  But the experience has not changed.  The fest is still located on a green ribbon between the buildings of downtown and the mighty Willamette River.  It's still "always the last full weekend in July."  There are still north and south constellations of trailers, each with eight taps manned by smiling volunteers.  You still saunter up to one of those volunteers and offer a $1 wooden token for a pour (four for a full glass), and take it back to your clutch of friends, standing in a circle in some shady spot.  As inflation eats away at that dollar, the real price for a pour has been roughly halved since the first fest.

In three hours, I'm going to meet friends for the annual ritual.  We always went on the opening day, and fortunately, we're all old men who have managed to get jobs that allow us to take a Wednesday off to go drink beer all day--when we started, the first day was a convenient Friday.  We'll still stand around in a circle and tell each other familiar old stories.  (Next year, a friend's son will be old enough to join us if he wishes.)  Wars and famines have come and gone, regimes have risen and fallen, the world has shrunk and sped up, and yet each year in July, Portlanders can step into a bubble where time has been frozen--and where the beer is always fantastic.

I made this little video back in 2006, and except for those plastic mugs, there are very few clues to suggest it wasn't made last year (or next year, if you're feeling quantum).  If you're a lucky old (or young) man (or woman) and are heading down today, say hello--

Oregon Brewers Fest By the Numbers

What is that deep rumble I hear shaking the earth like a refrigerator-sized subwoofer?  Why, it's the sound of beer trucks trundling toward Tom McCall Waterfront Park for the annual Oregon Brewers Festival.  And as surely as those trucks make their trek, so do I journey deeply into the database of beers to provide you with a by-the-numbers look at the grandaddy of American beer fests.

For those of you who are too busy to read the details, two trends that will amaze and astonish: there are more beers using fruit (23) and almost as many flavored beer (18) as there are IPAs of all types (21); the huge trend last year in Dortmund exports (3) seems to have run its course.  Also, for the first time, the OBF is styling itself the Oregon Brewfest.  Dunno what you want to make of that.

The Numbers
This year, the specialty tent returns (formerly called the "Buzz Tent"), but we don't calculate those in the figures.  (I am nevertheless delighted to have it back.)   Also note that in the numbers below, the bolded text refers to 2014, while the text in the (parentheses) are last year's.  Here we go...

Years since inception: 27
Total beers: 88 (84 in 2012)
Total breweries: 87 (82)*
States represented: 14 (12)
Percent Oregon: 58% (57%)
Percent California: 14% (14%)
Percent Washington: 11% (14%)
All Others: 17% (15%)

Total styles (by broad category): 25 (28)
Lagers: 6 (13)
IPAs: 24% (14%)
__- Standard IPA: 10 (9)
__- Double IPA: 4 (1)
__- CDA: 1 (2)
__- Fruit IPA: 4 (N/A)
__- Flavored IPA: 3 (N/A)

By style:
__- IPAs: 21 examples (12)
__- Fruit Wheats: 11 (10)
__- Pale ale: 10 (9)
__- Pilsner: 3 (3)
__- Berliner Weisse 3 (N/A)
__- Abbey: 3 (0)
__- Stouts and porters: 3 (0)
__- Kolsch: 1 (3)
__- Gluten-free: 2 (2)
__- Dortmund Export 0 (3)
__- Witbier: 1 (3)


Beers using spices/flavors: 23, 26% (14, 17%)
Fruit beers: 18, 20% (16, 19%)
Belgian styles: 13% (12%)
German/Czech styles: 15% (18%)
Totally weird beers**: 8% (15%)

ABV of smallest beer (Cigar City Blood Orange/Dragon Fruit Florida Weisse): 3.5% (3.5%)
ABV of largest beer (Dogfish Head Oak-Aged Strong Ale): 11% (10%)
Average ABV: 6.11% (6.0%)
Beers below 5.5% ABV: 31 (31)
Beers above 7% ABV: 21 (14)
Fewest IBUs in Fest (Beer Valley and Elysian): 0 (8)
Most IBUs at the Fest (Heathen Megadank): 120 (116)
Average IBUs: 40 (38)
Beers between 0 and 40 IBUs: 50 (58)

___________________
*In past years, the Fest allowed some breweries to surreptitiously double up--like Rogue and Issaquah.  This year the only double is Widmer and gluten-free Omission--which is nearly permissible.  (But  I doubt Harvester would agree.)
** A big caveat here.  A ton of these beers are brewed to no style whatsoever, and about half have either fruit or flavors added.  But there's a "black wit" and a few oddballs like that which, even by today's free-and-loose standards, are totally weird.  To me, beers like this year's smallest, Cigar City Blood Orange/Dragon Fruit Florida Weisse, is not totally weird.  Your mileage may vary.