So what exactly am I walking into? According to the festival’s Website, there will be more than 80 beers, 30 wineries, local spirit makers, a curious and diverse food selection and cheese and chocolate. The festival press release also states there will also be “a global shopping marketplace, cooking demonstrations and educational seminars on the Chef’s Stage, and live music featuring Northwest bands including Keegan Smith & the Fam.” 

This year the festival is hosting a fundraiser for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA). At the MDA booth you can purchase a 14 oz. beer or a 4 oz. pour of wine for $5. The beer and wines at the MDA booth are not available at the regular festival booths.

The festival has a people’s choice award, so be sure to vote for your favorite festival beers as well. Astoria Brewing’s Bitter Bitch was winner the last two years, so we’ll see if they can make it three in a row.

The fest runs from noon – 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday, April 2 & 3.  If you’re cheap like me, show up during the first two hours and get your $5 admission waived. Costs are pretty standard, $5 admission, $5 taster cup and tasting token are $1 each.

Be sure to check in with us on Twitter @BSBrewing for live updates from the festival.

After a night at the KLCC Microbrew Fest and some sampling of the local bar scene, we started our day at the Broadway Inn where as you can see, all the classy out-of-town brewers stay. I also recommend the hotel’s neighbor, Burrito Boy, to satisfy your stomach after last call.

Hop Valley Brewing

Our first stop was Hop Valley Brewing in Springfield.  You couldn’t miss the giant sign right off of I-5 and the Gateway Mall.

The location has quite a local history. Prior to producing beers for Hop Valley, the building and the 15-barrel system was home to Spencer’s Butte Brewpub and where the first Ninkasi beers were made.

Open for one year, Hop Valley makes a wide variety of styles including the DD Blonde, 541 Lager, Step Child Red, a Vanilla Porter and, where they really excel, the Alphadelic IPA and the Alpha Centauri Imperial IPA.

Stay in touch with Hop Valley on Twitter and Facebook.

Ninkasi

Our next stop was Ninkasi. Our trip was during Zwickelmania and Ninkasi’s new tasting room was packed. The purple shirted clan was a “drinking club” named the Royal Drunks and some members certainly lived up to at least half of their name. The tasting room is open 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. daily.

Head brewer Jamie Floyd led us on a tour of the brewery and showed us where the brewery will be expanding. Ninkasi’s growth is explosive. They started on a 15-barrel system at what is now Hop Valley, opened the brewery with a 20-barrel system and are now up to a 30-barrel system. Last year the company produced 19,500 barrels and estimates 32,000 barrels in 2010.

Helping fuel that growth, Ninkasi is now available at all Safeways and most Costcos in Oregon.  Total Domination is the company’s top seller, accounting for 60 percent of their total sales.

Information from Ninkasi can also be found on Twitter and Facebook

Oakshire Brewing

Our day concluded at Oakshire Brewing which is growing at a significant rate as well. In 2006 the company started on a 4-barrel system as Willamette Brewing.  They are now up to a 16-barrel system and took production from 300 barrels in 2007 to 2,000 barrels in 2009. Built for growth, they have the capacity to produce 7,500 barrels and are aiming for 3,600 in 2010.

Brewer Matt Van Wyk was our host for the day and seeing as how it was Zwickelmania, he poured us a couple of tastes from the fermenters. Most notable was the 2-day old O’Dark:30 that to the surprise of everyone was already tasting great.

Oakshire’s biggest sellers are the Watershed IPA and the Overcast Espresso Stout. The stout features cold pressed espresso from local roaster Wandering Goat that is added to the beer as it is being transferred from the fermenter to the brite tank.

You can find out more straight from Oakshire by checking them out on Twitter  and Facebook.

Next stop… Corvallis.

After last year’s surge in post-game web traffic, I knew we had to do something spectacular this year. This time, inspiration came in the form of a slab of shelf-stable Broadbent pepper bacon I acquired from bacn.com (now owned by baconfreak.com). The predictable thing to do would have been to chunk it up into lardons (French for thick-ass pieces of bacon) or simply slice it thick for superdelishtstic BLT’s. But the meat stuntman in me wanted to stuff it with something.

So of course I went to the best stuffing of all: more pork. I picked up a whole pork loin from Gartner’s, along with some pork sausage-stuffed pork tenderloins. If you’re counting, that’s four types of pork product so far.

I had a plan going in, but it was just a bit of stray cholesterol until I actually opened up the slab. I had no idea how much room there was in there! I got so excited I forgot to take photos of the assembly process, so instead I’ll let you digest the photo below, and describe what’s going on after the break.

Back? Not what you were expecting, was it? Heh. So the body’s the pork loin, sliced at one end to form a mouth. Inside the “mouth” are two garlic cloves acting as incisors, and the traditional apple. A couple more garlic cloves form the eyeballs, and two apple slices form the sow’s ears. The legs are those sausage-stuffed tenderloins I mentioned, with garlic toes (Mmm, garlic toes). Now, I wanted this thing to actually be tasty, and I was a bit concerned about overwhelming samplers with a lot of grease. This creation was going to be wrapped in bacon for a few hours, after all. So before I tucked her in, I sprinkled her back and legs with fresh rosemary “bristles” and lots of chopped up garlic “garlic.” Beneath the sow, I cut some drainage slits in the bottom of the bacon blanket.

I set the oven to 350, and tried not to open it every 15 minutes to see how my monster was developing. The house smelled … so delicious it was actually almost sickening. Imagine a foggy morning so thick you have to turn your headlights on. Now imagine that fog in your nose, and the whole thing smells like bacon, rosemary and garlic. It was difficult to concentrate. But four hours later, I pulled the pig and … wow. I wish you could have tried it. It was delicious, and those that could get past its eerily lifelike appearance were able to taste all four meats in one bite. Best of all, no one got sick, despite the Russian Roulette-like meat game we played. Four chances to get trichinosis, but all cylinders came up empty.

Soooo-ey!

I give this fest high marks, more than 50 breweries and 110 beers, a homebrew competition, vendors selling classic vinyl records, live music and a People’s Choice Award (won by Hop Valley’s Alpha Centauri). The lines and crowd were very manageable, hardly waited more than 30 seconds for a fill and it’s a pretty standard $1 ticket per taste and your $12 admission gets you an actual glass taster. Proceeds benefit the listener-supported station.

Definitely the most interesting aspect of the festival was the inclusion of a collaboration brew, where participating brewers each developed their take on a (get this…) Belgian Style Cascadian Dark Rye Ale. In the description of the beer below they used the phrase “Because we can,” perhaps because some said “Oh no, you didn’t?” Overall, I think each of the beers suffered from being a bit of an over-engineered concept, any two of the three (Cascadian Dark, rye malt, Belgian yeast) would have been fine, but all three together created some odd flavors regardless of the skill of the brewer making the beer. A good thing to remember is just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Dave in his quest to drink 999 different beers over 999 days reviewed Ninkasi’s entry here.

Aside from the collaboration brew, there were handful of seasonals but most brought beers that are available in some form here in Portland. That didn’t crush our enthusiasm for seeking out old favorites like Maui Brewing’s IPA and breweries we’ve never tried such as Wakonda Brewing’s Imperial Pilsner.

As our Twitter post summed it up that night, it’s like a mini-GABF but instead of beer geeks there are college girls and old hippies. I would definitely recommend checking the festival out in future years, either on its own if you’re in the area or as a part of of a beer weekend to check out the all great breweries in the area.

More on our Zwickelmania trips later…

A couple of weeks ago, the fine folks at Widmer invited us over for dinner to celebrate the release of W’10 Pitch Black IPA. Due to the enormous success of Brrr, W’10 was already in stores, but that didn’t deter our enthusiasm for this Cascadian Dark Ale.

I’ll leave a more detailed review of the beer to Dave at 999 Beers but I really like W’10, easily my favorite in the series, challenged only by W’07 that eventually became Drifter.  I think it’s a safe bet we’re going to see a lot more Cascadian Dark Ales this year and that style will be the choice of backyard BBQs and camping this summer. It’s a great blend of roasted malt flavor and hops without being too heavy.

I was joined for dinner by brewer John Eaton who generally works the overnight shift at Widmer. I was a great opportunity to discuss the entire W series at Widmer, the collaborative creative process and the success of 07 and 06 turning into Drifter and Brrr in the company’s line. In general, the brewers get together and discuss a few different styles and then they work together to hash it out and determine what that year’s W beer will be. It’s a great opportunity for the brewers to flex their creativity outside of the company’s standard brews.

It also seemed some at Widmer were a little miffed/disappointed at the lack of success of W’09, the Belgian Golden Ale and to a lesser extent 08’s Crimson Wheat. In thinking about the Belgian Golden, it reminded me of Bridgeport’s Supris and a similar tepid response.

It makes me think that major production brewers such as Bridgeport and Widmer become well known for certain styles and the consumer just doesn’t think of them as an outlet for something so different. I’m certain that in addition to letting brewers create new styles, the W series also helps Widmer stretch the consumer’s mind and while a certain year may not sell as expected, it can help open the door for future, more commercially successful new styles.

You can learn more about W’10 and the W series by going here and can find Widmer Brothers on Twitter and Facebook.