Portland International Brewfest 2010

Friday's Live Report

The crowds are picking up at the PIB.

Picks so far: Double Mountain Devil's Kriek, Mikkeller Bourbon Black Hole and Chipotle Porter, 21st Amendment Double Trouble IIPA, Flyers Kentucky Uberwine.

The vibe is great. Lots of great beers I didn't mention.

Saturday's Thoughts

Seeing Jeff's list of grievances towards the PIB made me realize I should give you some more helpful info about the fest:

• Bring your own drinking water.  The servers will rinse your glass if you want, but there's no free drinking water ($1/bottle).
• The Cantillon Kriek is 6 tickets, not 3.
• These beers are in the program, but not at the fest: Rogue Chatoe OREgasmic, Rogue John John Juniper, Deschutes Black Butte XXII, Firestone Walker Double Jack, Dieu du Ciel Rigor Mortis Abt, Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast Bacon, Haandbryggeriet Odin's Tipple.
• Beers to avoid: Epic Mayhem (OK, but not 4-ticket good), Trois Mousquetaires Imperial Weizen (nasty), Sierra Nevada Southern Hemisphere Harvest (this is not a fresh-hop beer).

There may have been other missing beers, but those are the ones I noticed.  Maybe the Rogue choices have arrived by now.  As for the other ones, there was usually a very decent replacement.  The Dieu du Ciel Aphrodite (replacing Rigor Mortis) was nice and chocolaty; the Mikkeller Chipotle Porter (replacing Breakfast Bacon) was a home run if you like hot peppers and dark beer.

Anyway, the weather is beautiful, have a great time!

Spring Beer and Wine Fest 2010

The Spring Beer and Wine Fest is an oddity in Portland -- an Easter weekend beer festival largely eschewed by beer geeks and Catholics.

The hard core turn up their nose because of the pedestrian offerings at the festival. Nevertheless, there are a few unusual beers that merit your attention.

Best in show: Block 15's Pappy's Dark. A bourbon-aged Old Ale with beautiful vanilla, whiskey, and molasses goodness. Right now both taps at Block 15's booth are Pappy's, despite the stout label on the other tap.

Check out the Black Mamba from Salem-area brewers Gilgamesh. Their IPA is homebrewy, but the cloudy no-hop Mamba flavored with black tea had a delicious fruity flavor.

Try the burly Collaborator Ale-X (poured by Rob Widmer in the picture). I also liked the Astoria West Coast Pils - a cloudy masterpiece that is like a beefy Victory Prima.

Yellowstone Vacation Beers

Finding surprisingly good beer on a family vacation to Yellowstone. The Old Faithful Inn has a few good taps, like Bozeman Brewing's Bozone Amber in the grainy picture - my favorite here. A few safe bottles from Big Sky and Idaho's Grand Teton are available at the inn and the general store.

There is a pretty good beer culture in Montana. We stayed one night in Missoula and had a couple nice ones at the hotel. Kettlehouse Cold Smoke tasted like Lompoc Strong Draft to me, though lighter in color and a little sweeter. Blackfeet IPA was also tasty - think Ninkasi Total Domination.

Red Lodge Pale Ale is the only Wyoming beer I've gotten to so far. Well done, but not as satisfying as the Montana ales.

What's on iTap?

My cellphone -- hardly the latest model -- knows a lot about my beer-drinking habits.

It usually takes me awhile to adopt new technology, even though I work in a technical field. First CD player: 1995. First laptop: 2005. Maybe by 2015 I'll get my computer's MP3s and my daughter's ipod tunes hooked up to the stereo.

So instead of using a cellphone that has a qwerty keyboard or touchscreen, I still use my 10-digit phone keypad for any text messaging, live-blogging, or twittering I need to do. As a result, the iTap predictive text system on my phone now shares my beer obsession. When you enter a word that's not in its dictionary, it silently remembers it. Now it offers to complete a lot of beer-related words for me after just a few keystrokes:

• bar: barleywine
• des : deschutes
• hopw : hopworks
• laur : laurelwood
• nink: ninkasi
• grow : growler
• higgi: higgins
• lupul : lupulin

The phone has a great memory for beer, but never seems to predict the right word for simple things like go vs. in or on vs. no. My phone has become my drinking buddy, but I probably shouldn't count on it to loan me any money or remind me about birthdays or romantic holidays.

Speaking of twittering, Steve Novick's robotic minion is still roaming the internet, even though last year's U.S. Senate primary is long in the past. I accidentally discovered that if I put his name in a blog post, the robot tweets a link to the post (Update: the robot's tweet for this very post beat my own Twitterfeed announcement). Very useful for the 36 diehard followers that haven't given up hope that he may yet defeat that hot-dog chomping Jeff Merkley. Go Steve!

More Holiday Ale Fest

Some updates from the Holiday Ale Fest:
get the awesome Three Creeks Red, the dry-hopped Full Sail Wassail, and the Deschutes Double Cinder Cone. The Firestone last night turns out to be Parabola Stout - look for the rest today - it's awesome.

[Update (later Thursday): Some surprising missing breweries: Double Mountain, Caldera, Roots, Walking Man. What gives?]

Thumbs Up for Lupulin No. 3

I'm sitting here in the Pilsner Room with a pint of the third batch of Full Sail's 2008 Lupulin Ale, this one made with Nugget hops. Lighter in color than batch number one, the flavor reminds me much more of last year's awesome brew, more vegetably and less bitter than the batch made with Mt. Rainier hops.

Get it while it lasts -- it looks like the second batch (Cascade hops) went on while I was out of town, and it's already gone (though I hope to catch it at a Tastival).

San Jose Airport Beer Blues

What a wasteland! Once I got past security at terminal C of Mineta Airport, my only draft beer options were Bud and Bud Light at the sports-themed bar. No one was taking them up on it. Compare PDX, with Rogue and Laurelwood pubs, and at least some Widmer taps at the hot dog stands.

The other bar in the terminal at San Jose -- called Martini Monkey -- used to have a couple of taps: Sierra Nevada Pale and Widmer at least, but now they only offer the bottles in the picture above. Gordon Biersch Marzen was the least of all evils. Six bucks... What's the six-pack equivalent price of that? Oh, $36? Guess I'll stop complaining about growler prices.

There is a GB pub in the other terminal, but there's no connection behind security as at the Portland airport. Get me outta here!

Live from the Brewers Dinner

The Brewers Dinner, annual benefit for the Oregon Brewers Guild, is a fun kickoff to the Brewers Festival.

Some highlights: Rogue Imperial YSB, Oakshire (formerly Willamette) IPA, Bridgeport Hop Czar from the firkin.

Good times, have fun at the OBF!

Live from PIB 2008

In a few days I'll do a recap of the 2008 Portland International Brewfest, but today I'm experimenting with posting live via cell phone.

Each year it seems like there is one beer at the PIB that sticks in my mind. Something I never had before that really opens my eyes. Last year it was Eel River Triple Exultation; a couple years ago it was de Dolle's Belgian Stout. What will it be for 2008?

And the answer is... Jolly Pumpkin Oro de Calabaza. Dry and yeasty, just delicious.

Go to the festival, have a good time!