Oregon Brewers Festival Recap
And what a weekend it was. As we look back on a great weekend at the Oregon Brewers Festival, it's pretty amazing to think that there's still nearly an entire week left to enjoy Oregon Craft Beer Month. But before gearing up for the home stretch, I wanted to offer up my impressions of the OBF.
Having moved to Portland just after last year's fest, this was my first Oregon Brewers Festival experience. Overall, I thought the festival was great. While beer obviously plays a central role in any beer festival, I appreciated the fact that OBF includes a variety of festivities and experiences that work to create a real festival atmosphere. Unfortunately, I missed the opening day parade and keg-tapping, but in reading reviews from others in attendance, it's obvious that the opening ceremony really helped set the tone for a great weekend.
Before the festival got started on Thursday, I had posted my picks for the Oregon Brewers Festival. These were all beers I had never had before. And after visiting the fest a couple times this weekend, I'm pretty happy that I was able to try all but one on my list (sadly, the beer I wasn't able to try was Flying Fish Exit 4 - which was well received and made several peoples' best of the fest lists).
Zwickelmania 2010 Recap: Our tour of Portland
As breweries across the entire State of Oregon opened their doors for tours and tastings on Saturday for Zwickelmania, we decided to stay close to home and check out some of what Portland's breweries had to offer. With more than twenty breweries to choose from in the Portland area, charting our course proved to be a pretty difficult task. And while we didn't get to see everything we would have liked to, we did check out some great breweries, drink some good beer and talk with some cool people along the way. Our day looked something like this:
Lompoc 5th Quadrant
