Lemon Your Widmer?

Alright, I'm going to put aside whatever feelings I may have about extraneous fruit slices garnishing my beer because this is pretty darn cool.




You can check out more videos, or submit your own, at the Lemon Your Widmer homepage.

Beer List For FredFest 2007

You may recall my previous post about FredFest 2007, and I promised an update when I knew which beers were pouring, so without further ado I present the initial list of beers scheduled to make an appearance during the fest.


1- BridgePort Brewing - Cask Old Knucklehead
2- Deschutes - Coffee infused 20K Imperial Bourbon Porter
3- Full Sail - TBA
4- Hair Of The Dog - Cask Fred
5- Laurelwood - TBA
6- Lucky Lab - Russian Imperial Stout
7- New Old Lompoc - Oak aged LSD
8- Max's Fanno Creek - Belgian Dubbel
9- Pelican Brewing - Gran Cru
10- Racoon Lodge - Sour Wild Blackberry aged in oak
11- Rock Bottom - Ned Flanders Red. ( the original!)
12- Rogue - Dad's Little Helper Malt liquor
13- Roots Organic - Pinot-barrel aged Epic
14- Widmer - Collaborator Continuum Brown

Whoa. Seriously, if that list doesn't get you excited enough to drop $20 I don't know what would. Remember, all the proceeds from the event go to help longtime craft-beer supporter Merle Gilmore, who has been battling leukemia and faces astronomical medical and prescription bills. Gilmore has been an inexhaustible volunteer at beer fests and often assisted Hair of the Dog owner Alan Sprints in bottling and other duties around the brewery.

Cost for the event is $20 in advance or $25 at the door and includes a souvenir glass. To get on the list for advance-purchase tickets, e-mail fredfest@comcast.net.

Go. Buy tickets. Now.

Special Thanks to John Foyston for the great picture of Fred!

EDIT Tuesday, May 8, 2007: Just Announced! Laurelwood is featuring Green Elephant Organic IPA (2006, I believe) and Full Sail will be pouring the 2006 GABF silver-medal winning Black Gold Imperial Stout.

Meet The Brewer @ Concordia

Who: Ron Browning, Brewer/Owner of Skagit River Brewing in Mt. Vernon, WA

What: A chance to taste a handful of otherwise unavailable brews from Skagit River, as well as a chance to rub elbows with Portland beer geeks and possibly meet the new owners at CAH.

When: Thursday, March 29, 2007 from 6PM until ???

Where: Concordia Alehouse NE 33rd Ave and Killingsworth, PDX

Why: Why not? Ron makes great beer, and he'll be armed with kegs of oak-aged porter, a "hoppy brown" and perhaps a few other surprises.

How: I don't know what to say here....

It should be a good time!

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EDIT: I just realized that this was the 200th article posted on our blog. Horray for me! ;)

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A Conspiracy is Brewing in the Northwest

Release Parties Scheduled in Portland, OR

Portland, Oregon • 14 March 2007 — The Pelican Pub & Brewery (Pacific City, OR) and Midnight Sun Brewing (Anchorage, AK) are inviting beer fans to join them in their Conspiracy:

Conspiracy is a collaboration brew between Midnight Sun Brewing and Pelican Pub & Brewery. During a trip to Alaska for the Great Alaskan Beer & Barley Wine Fest, Ben Love of Pelican conspired with Gabe Fletcher and Ben Johnson of Midnight Sun to brew a Belgian-Style Black Beer. Conspiracy features a rich, spicy aroma with hints of dark fruit, raisin, roast and caramel. A toasted and slightly roasty flavor lead into caramel and a super smooth finish. Debittered black malt was used to get the jet-black color and tan head without adding significant roast flavor. The brewers also added Belgian candi sugar and Mexican Piloncillo sugar (a maple-sugar-like brown sugar) to increase fermentability and depth of flavor. Conspiracy comes in at 8.5 percent ABV and 25 IBUs.

"We had a great time brewing Conspiracy in Alaska, and I’m really looking forward to hosting Gabe here in Oregon,” said brewer Ben Love.

A release party is scheduled for Thursday, April 5 at 7 p.m. at the Horse Brass Pub, 4534 SE Belmont St. Gabe Fletcher (Head brewer at Midnight Sun) is making the trip to Portland for the release party and is also bringing along kegs of Midnight Sun's Envy Imperial Pils (9% ABV), Gluttony Triple IPA (11%) and FH Double IPA (9%). This will be a one-time-only chance to try these beers on draft outside of Alaska. All the beers will be tapped at 7pm. Conspiracy and Envy will be available at $3.50/glass & FH will cost $5/pint.

There will also be a bottle release event on Friday, April 6 from 5-7 p.m. in the new café at Belmont Station. Gabe Fletcher & Ben Love will be there to pour and talk about Conspiracy. Guests will be able to purchase a 4oz taster or a bottle to enjoy there or take home.

Bottled Conspiracy will be available in limited edition 22oz bottles. The bottles will be available at selected bottle shops in Oregon and Alaska.

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Event Calendar Added!

As the new cafe approaches a state of readiness I thought it would be good to add an event calendar to keep everyone abreast of current happenings, both in the store and elsewhere in the area.

There's not much there yet except for a few festival listings, but I'll be adding more events as I'm made aware of them.

If you have something beer-related in the works please drop me a line and I'll add it to the calendar.

I'll be working on updating the other pages of the site so they all connect to one another, but for now this page is really only accessible through this link.

I suppose you could click here as well...

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I'm Back, and Bearing Tidings of Great Beer!

It's been a long, lonely three weeks since I had my cat5 umbilical cord severed in the move, but they've finally plugged me back in to the intrawebs so I can resume rambling about beer and other stuff in a semi-coherent fashion.

I want to start things off on a good note so I'm going to put aside my tirade on the OLCC's new ruling regarding the OBF and the hypocrisy of not "punishing" the big wine events in the same manner, but rest assured I've got plenty to say about that decision.

New Arrivals:

Sierra Nevada - Big Foot 2007: Year after year, this is one of the most consistently delicious and reasonably priced barleywines on the market. If you like your barleywines big, hoppy, and aggressively flavored you NEED to buy a case of this before it disappears. Yes, a whole case. If you don't I can almost guarantee you'll run out and suffer withdrawal symptoms sometime in March or April.

Sierra Nevada - IPA: This limited release spring seasonal is supposed to fill the gap between Big Foot and Summerfest, but they seem to have gotten ahead of themselves and released them both at the same time. Oh well, no complaints here. This 6.9% English-style IPA has lots of nice earthy hop flavor and a wonderful malt backbone that helps separate it from the current batch of west coast IPAs that seem to rely entirely on the "Big C" hops. Quite tasty, and quite limited, so grab a 6 pack while it lasts.

Rogue - Dry-Hopped St. Rogue Red: Not to be confused with Salmon Nation, Santa's Private Reserve, or any of the myriad other red ales from Rogue, this is in fact a NEW beer from the venerable Newport crew. This tasty little concoction can be summed up in only a few words: Clean and neat, with a well-defined hop character. Unfortunately I haven't seen any of the 22oz bottles of this yet (and the small bottles don't list the ingredients), but if I had to guess I'd say it was brewed with a singular hop, probably Crystal. That's my amateur speculation of course, but the hop flavors remind me of Fish Tale IPA and Rogue Brutal Bitter, both of which are 100% crystal-hopped beers.

Coming Soon:

The Danish/Norwegian invasion has begun. Denmark and Norway are rapidly making a name for themselves in the brewing world with cutting edge nano- and microbrewers popping up across the country. The first of the new breed to be imported are Nøgne Ø and Ølfabrikken.

I haven't even had a chance to see the bottles, much less try them, but given the reviews I must say I'm excited. With any luck they'll bring me samples today so I can have a write-up prepared for everyone when the cases arrive tomorrow. Since these are new, relatively-unknown beers, the first batch will probably be limited to a couple case of each variety, so don't delay...

Nøgne Ø - Imperial Brown Ale: description coming soon...

Nøgne Ø - Porter: description coming soon...

Nøgne Ø - Imperial Stout: description coming soon...

Nøgne Ø - Pale Ale: description coming soon...

Nøgne Ø - Winter Ale: description coming soon...

Ølfabrikken - Porter: OK, I just cracked a bottle (kindly delivered by the distributor) and all I can say is, "Wow!" They've taken the classic porter formula and added a nice dose of roasty, coffee flavors (presumably from the malt and not actual coffee) and one heck of a lingering aftertaste. This stuff pours dark, thick, and opaque with a tight creamy head that lingers for quite some time. It should be priced in the $5-6 range, which I'd gladly pay for something like this. It's not quite Speedway Stout or Peche Mortel, but it's awfully close and it costs a lot less. I can guarantee this brew will go fast, so we may have to impose a 4 bottle per person limit until we find out how much is available.

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