The Pacific Northwest Cheese Project blog has a review of an event I'd never heard of before: Rogue's Beer, Cheese & Chocolate Dinner & Tasting.

Rogue's Hazlenut Brown Ale, on the sweeter side for a beer, was really nicely paired with a chocolate chip hazelnut cookie - not something I would have thought of previously, but I will now.... And Rogue Chef Alex Gung's outstanding pepper fudge combined sweet fudge with spicy cayenne pepper, a great pairing with the light, slightly sweet Tuck's Cherry Porter.

My favorite cheese/beer pairings were the Widmer Collaborator Kolsch paired with Willamette Valley Havarti and the Rogue Imperial Stout and Rogue Creamery Crater Lake Blue. In both cases the flavors harmonized for me in just the way that Fletcher discussed. Both the Kolsch and the Havarti were initially very mild but both developed flavor after a few seconds, finishing in a remarkably similar mild, tangy bitterness.

I'm having a hard time imagining a better tasting event of any kind...

I've been watching for Oregon Brewers Festival reports all weekend, and am glad to see a few more turning up tonight. Let's go:

• The BlueOregon article added an update, highlighting some favorite beers.
• Gone Ronin has a good post.
• I missed part of this one the first time around: Zeroes and Ones has three comprehensive posts:
  • 2005 Oregon Brewers Festival
  • A Great Friday Afternoon at the OBF
  • Day 2 at the OBF
  Good stuff.
• Here's a negative post.
• I like this report; there's some pictures and even a QuickTime movie.
• A first timer!

I'm not at the Oregon Brewers Festival, but I am watching for mention of it online. It's the next best thing! :) Here's an aggregate of some links so far:

• BlueOregon has posted an Insiders Guide to the Oregon Brew Festival. Fantastic article, there's even links to PDF checklists for hardcore beer tasters: Breweries attending, sorted by style and by state.
• The Willamette Week has a story detailing a few must-try beers.
• A blog named "new girl old town" has a short report.

More as I see 'em.

BlueOregon has a good article on Roots Organic Brewing, the brewery I wrote about back in April. It's quite a bit more comprehensive than my original note about the brewery.

Craig and Jason are currently the whole staff. If you stop in, one of them will pour you a beer (if you find yourself shaking the bartender's hand, that's Craig), and if you order a sandwich, one of them will scuttle over to the side of the bar and make it for you on the spot. And if they blow a keg—as they did last night with the stout—one of them will wheel around to the brewery, which encircles the pub in stainless steel, and whip up a new batch. As I was on my way out, Craig stopped to sniff the air. "Smell that?" he asked. "That's the stout Jason just started." It was eight-thirty at night.

Artists and brewers are not beholden to office hours.

As I wrote over on chuggnutt.com, Chelsea Lane, Bend's long-standing wine shop, is closing, and they're selling everything at discount. I managed to pick up four otherwise harder-to-find beers (hard to find here in Central Oregon, anyway) for 15% off:

• Chimay Ale - okay, this one's easy to find around here, but it was a good deal
• Young's Double Chocolate Stout
• Wychwood Fiddler's Elbow
• Black Sheep Brewery Riggwelter Yorkshire Ale

Those last two I'd not heard of before. I'll review them as I drink them.

Apparently we're smack in the middle of Oregon Beer Week. Huh. I'd forgotten about this, even though I blogged about it two months ago.

I'll be sure to have some (more) Oregon beer this week.

Wow, Miller Brewing Company (grrrr age check nonsense) is going to be 150 next month. That's impressive. The Chicago Sun-Times has an article about Miller, and I found this timeline on a TV station's website, oddly enough.

I didn't know Miller High Life has been around since 1903...

When Frederick J. Miller bought a defunct brewery in 1855 on a plank road on the western outskirts of Milwaukee, the city was already full of German immigrants and there were many established local breweries.

What turned Miller into a regional and then national player was a combination of good genes, hard work, luck, and a commitment to quality, historians say.

In 1903, the company unveiled High Life, called "The Champagne of Bottle Beer." The image appealed to a rising American leisure class and sales soared, even at a premium price.

Goings-on at work may have me heading up to Walla Walla, Washington, for a night in the next few weeks, and out of curiosity I thought I'd check online and see if there are any breweries up there. (Wineries abound; Walla Walla is lately reinventing itself as a top wine region.)

Turns out there is one: Mill Creek Brewpub. Only problem is, it's for sale! So I'm not sure if that means they're still open or not; if I end up going to Walla Walla, I'll call them to see. At any rate, the going price is $650,000. Doesn't seem like a terrible deal for what they're offering:

The 6,100 square foot free-standing building, built from the ground up in June, 1997, sits on a 13,000 square foot lot and features an outside patio and river-rock fireplace. The full service restaurant seats 159 people. A hard liquor license was added in March of 2004, and retail sales have increased approximately 15% per month. All equipment was purchased new in 1997, including the seven barrel brew house.

I didn't find any mention of them on BeerAdvocate, but RateBeer has them and lists seven beers, all getting average scores.

No, it turns out I won't make it to the Oregon Brewers Festival this year. Which sucks. Maybe next year. We'll see.

I was all set to blog it, too. I guess I'll just watch for reviews from other bloggers.

While in Portland over this last weekend, we of course stopped by Trader Joe's for our traditional round of three-buck Chuck and impulse buying, and I noticed for the first time that they were carrying beer under their own label: Trader Joe's Brewing Company. That's a new one to me (there doesn't appear to be a website for it), so I picked up a couple of six-packs: their Hofbrau Bock, and Vienna Style Lager.

So far I like the Bock better. It weighs in at something like 7% alcohol by volume, and seemed like a richer, better balanced beer. I tried the Vienna Lager this evening, and it was good, but not as good. It's 5.7% ABV. It poured crystal clear and amber gold (I didn't pour the Bock into a glass, so I can rate it like that yet), with a fizzy, short-lived head. It probably needs to be served colder than I had it.

They also have two other beers: Bavarian Style Hefeweizen and Bohemian Lager. Next time I'll pick those up.

Bonus link: BeerAdvocate's page for TJ's Brewing.

Wired News is running a story about Vores Ol, the "open source" Danish beer. This, a good six months after both Alan and I (and Boing Boing) first blogged about it. Was it a slow news day for Wired? (Updated from "Dutch" to the correct "Danish.")

Nothing huge, we're just heading up to Portland for the weekend, so the lack of content around here will continue for a few more days. Or not—we are taking the laptop so I'll be checking in, and even posting if something good comes up.

I've seen pointers to this floating around the internets today, so I thought I'd pick them up: Samuel Adams Utopias beer (no direct link, it's a non-linky Flash site). It's a limited edition, and this sucker's a monster: 25% alcohol by volume! And, what's making the news is that it sells for at least $100 per bottle.

Can't be sold in a number of states, due to legal restrictions. Oregon is one of those. Damn, but it's not like I could afford that anyway.

It scored fairly well on BeerAdvocate, too.

An excellent post on Rooftop Brew today—Andy's put together a PDF "map of beer bars and brewpubs in downtown Portland that are accessible by streetcar. The brewpubs and beer bars were selected based on BeerAdvocate.com's Beerfly guide (of which I'm a local guide), which only includes brewpubs or bars that focus on craft beers." That is undeniably one of the sweetest things I've seen lately.

Here's a direct link to the PDF map.

Perhaps I spoke too soon? The bill to raise the limit of alcohol in beer in North Carolina has been stalled in the Senate. There's a couple of good articles on it here and here. Apparently the Senator stalling the bill is worried about "underage drinking." Riiiight.

But on the Senate floor, opponents said stronger beers would enhance underage drinking and drunken driving.

"It doesn't make sense to me that we should try to perpetrate this on our children," said Sen. John Kerr, a Goldsboro Democrat. He likened the stronger beer to "drinking straight vodka." Vodka typically has 30 percent to 60 percent alcohol.

Kerr eventually forced the bill to be withdrawn from the calendar by asking for a fiscal note, a written explanation of how this change in law would affect state finances. He also asked that the bill be referred for further consideration by the Finance Committee, of which he is one of the co-chairmen.

Sen. Tony Rand, a Fayetteville Democrat and the Senate majority leader, argued for the bill Thursday and said he was confident it would be heard before the end of the summer.

And the second article does a good job refuting these arguments:

"If you can have a high flavor beer, you'll drink fewer of them and don't get all the calories," said Sonny Chahal, 25, an East Carolina University student who was hanging out at Christy's Euro Pub Wednesday evening....

The cost of higher alcohol beers makes that scenario unlikely, said T.L. Adkisson, brewmaster at Ham's Restaurant and Brewhouse in Greenville.

"There is no way that a college kid that likes to pound 20 Miller Lites is going to drink any of this stuff," said Adkisson, who won a bronze award for his Charlie's Barley, an amber ale, at the Great American Beer Festival held in Denver, Colo. last year. "They won't like the taste and it will cost too much."

The majority of higher alcohol beers are made in small batches by microbreweies.

Most use twice the grain and take much longer to age, making it expensive to produce, he said.

A six-pack of some higher alcohol beers can cost $11 or more where the average mass market beer six-pack costs between $4 to $8.

"The people drinking this product, it's not made for quick consumption, they are too full-bodied, too hoppy, there's too much flavor," Adkisson said.

And so it goes.

I really like this article on homebrewing: Ale alchemy. It's a good overview of the craft, an interview with and profile of a guy running a homebrew supply shop, and even an interesting source of homebrew trivia/oddities.

Martin poured the dregs of the beer, murky with yeast, into a shot glass. It tasted smooth and sweet. "Usually, the brewer drinks the sediment. It's really good for you, mostly vitamin B, and it'll keep you from getting a hangover," he said.

Back at SA Homebrew, I sample a couple more beers, trying to pick out the hops from the yeast flavors. Huntress sets up a small glass of hefeweizen, made from a wheat yeast that tastes of bananas and clover. Next, he pours a Sierra Nevada pale ale that has a sweet apple flavor from yeast, and a citrus hops finish. It's good but I can't help noticing it's a little warm. In the dog days of summer, Huntress explains, you may crave an icy beer, but it's tastiest served cool, not cold. That said, warmth accelerates bacteria growth, so ideally beer is aged cold. "Most bars serve beer a little too cold," he says. "My advice to consumers is to let it sit for 10 minutes. I know homebrewers who will microwave it for 10 seconds."

I've never known anybody to shoot the dregs from a shot glass, much less microwave their beer. That seems kind of hardcore. Probably not something I'll ever do (the microwaving, not necessarily the shot glass thing).

Over in North Carolina, a Senate committee has approved a bill raising the alcohol-content limit of beer (see Repealing North Carolina's beer laws).

The Senate Commerce Committee recommended the bill to the full chamber after little debate - a contrast to the hand-wringing within the House before its approval in May.

At the time, the bill was nearly detoured as some legislators tried to raise the tax on higher alcohol-content beers to levels comparable with those on wine and liquor.

Rep. Stephen LaRoque, R-Lenoir, the bill's primary sponsor, told the Senate panel that the microbrewing industry - much like the state's burgeoning wine business - would grow and potentially create 300 jobs if the bill passed.

Of course, it still has to go to the full Senate, but that's a good start.

This is like every serious homebrewer's dream: the Mount Carmel Brewing Company, in Cincinnati, is being run out of the guy's basement. This is a great article on it:

Somehow, the term "microbrewery" doesn't capture just how small the tri-state's newest commercial brewer is.

If the Oldenburg Brewery in Fort Mitchell and the BarrelHouse Brewing Co. in Over-the-Rhine were microbreweries, then Mount Carmel Brewing Co. is at best a minibrewery ... maybe a micro-minibrewery.

The month-old venture occupies just 250 square feet in part of the basement of owners Mike and Kathleen Dewey's home in, where else, Mount Carmel. It has an annual production capacity of less than 1,000 barrels of beer and no employees....

Dewey's been homebrewing non-commercially for about three years. He serves as Mount Carmel's co-owner, CEO, brewmaster, taster, deliveryman, and the guy who cleans the spent grains out of the brewing equipment after every 55-gallon batch....

When he delivered the first batch recently to Nicholson's, Greg Wiley, the group's corporate bar manager, told him, "You can expect this to be gone in a couple of weeks." Then he called back later that day and said that at the rate it was selling, it wouldn't last the night. And it didn't.

"We put it on that day. The staff got fired up about it. They recommended it to every customer that came in and we blew that keg that night," Wiley said. "I don't think we've ever done that before."

His own brewing operation and he sells out on the first time... awesome. That's totally where I'd want to be :)

And I actually consider the term "picobrewery" to be the official designation of a brewery that produces 1,000 or less barrels of beer per year... I don't think I've seen a better case of it applying than to this one. 250 square feet. Some kind of record maybe.

This is a cool idea: Brewing establishment offers laboratory for amateurs:

Coffill's place of employment is a do-it-yourself brewing establishment known as IncrediBREW at 112 Daniel Webster Highway in Nashua, N.H. With his assistance, green amateurs are routinely taught the finer points of transforming malts, hops and barley into genuine homemade beer. While Coffill concedes he is a bit of an aficionado, he said brewing can enhance beverage appreciation in general.

"Once you know what goes into it, you can go out and have a better appreciation of what you're drinking," he said. "If all you know is pop the cap off and drink your beer, this is definitely an eye-opener about what goes into the product."

At IncrediBREW, the brewing options include root beer and wine as well, but on this Friday afternoon the focus of patrons was squarely on beer.

Coffill said the first step in making a batch is choosing one out of some 80 recipes provided by the house. The choices include everything from ales to stouts, with comparisons and details provided for those still learning the finer nuances of beer.

The average batch costs between $100 and $130, and it yields 13.5 gallons of beer in the form of 72 22-ounce bottles. That comes to about $4.50 per six pack, which is a very competitive price for micro brewed beer, according to Coffill.

The article breaks down the brewing process pretty well, too; it's extract brewing, rather than all-grain (to save time for a two-hour class).

According to IncrediBREW's website, they're the second oldest do-it-yourself brewery in the U.S. Impressive. And I like that they also do sodas—root beer, orange cream and even black cherry. I haven't seen that too often.

Goose Island beers have (finally?) turned up in New York City, according to this article in New York Daily News. Kind of a puff piece, but good news for New Yorkers.

Two weeks ago, four of the Gooses - Geese? - showed up at local stores in bottled form: Honker's Ale, India Pale Ale, Demolition Ale and Pere Jacques. They are swell. Appropriately, for beers out of Chicago, they toddle across your taste buds, each in its own tasty way....

And there's a lot more where these come from. On June 15, to celebrate the brewery's arrival, the Blind Tiger Ale House in the Village had 10 different G.I.s on tap - and only one of them, the Honker, is among the bottled quartet. (Even though I took tiny samples, I ran out of time after trying eight.)

We visited Goose Island once, a long time back... I don't remember much, but I do remember liking them.