Yeah, I know I'm a little late running this Press Release, but the GABF is still going on today, so I figured, why not? If you're at the GABF, then check out the Oregon brewers.

The 25th Anniversary of the Great American Beer Festival will be September 28th through September 30th 2006 at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, Colorado. The 25th Great American Beer Festival will be the Guinness World Record Holder for most beers tapped in one location. With 1,650 beers on tap, it will be biggest selection of American beers ever gathered at one place together on the globe.

Sixteen Oregon Brewers Guild member breweries have been selected to be on the festival floor.  Representing the Guild are Alameda Brewhouse, Barley Brown's Brew Pub, BJ’s Restaurant and Brewery, BridgePort Brewing Company, Cascade Lakes Brewing Company, Deschutes Brewery, Full  Sail Brewing Company,  Full Sail Brewing at River Place, Laurelwood Public House and Brewery, Ninkasi Brewing Company, Pelican Pub & Brewery, Pyramid Breweries, Ram Restaurant and Big Horn Brewery – Salem, Rogue Ales, Steelhead Brewery – Eugene and Widmer Brothers Brewing Company.

Oregon Brewers Guild members have had great success at the Great American Beer Festival with Pelican Pub and Brewery winning the 2005 Small Brewpub of the year and their brewmaster Darron R. Welch winning the Small Brewpub Brewer of the year.  In 2004, Widmer Brothers Brewing was named Mid-size Brewery of the Year and Kurt Widmer named Mid-size Brewmaster of the Year. In 2002, Widmer Brothers Brewing was named Mid-size Brewery of the Year and Kurt Widmer named Mid-size Brewmaster of the Year.  Also in 2002,  B.J.’s Restaurant and Brewery - Portland was named Large Brewpub of the Year, with Dan Pedersen winning Large Brewpub Brewmaster of the Year.

Good grief, when I mentioned that the Lyke 2 Drink blog would be (sort of) live blogging the Great American Beer Festival, I figured he'd file a blog entry or two for each day... but in reality, he wrote 11 posts yesterday! He's a machine!

Two I'll hightlight are the GABF Day 1 Recap and Great American Beer Festival Kicks Off. The rest are good too; go check them out.

As promised, some more substance to this Oktoberfest thing.

We're smack in the middle of Oktoberfest right now; it runs from September 16th through October 3rd this year. This seems to be a source of confusion for people, since the name "Oktoberfest" seems like it should, naturally, fall entirely in October, but in fact it always starts in September. The reasoning for this is historical and mostly weather-related: it's warmer in September.

Generally, the formula is: 16 days up to and including the first Sunday in October.

Wikipedia has quite an impressive Oktoberfest article; not only is the history comprehensive, but there's also a detailed breakdown of Oktoberfest dates out through 2015 (with some detail on special dates) and even details on the 14 main tents on the Munich celebration.

A good place to find local Oktoberfest celebrations is on BeerAdvocate's event calendar; I notice there's a bunch coming up this weekend.

The Hop Talk blog has a bunch of good Oktoberfest posts, and I especially wanted to point out the "Oktoberfest Beer Battle" posts: Sam vs. Saranac, Round 2, and Defending Champion from Brooklyn. I love it! He even made a chart showing the competition and latest winners (Saranac, Paulaner, Brooklyn) in the latest post.

And, the other day I got into the spirit of it all myself with a bottle of Paulaner, which I'll be reviewing here shortly.

Someday, though, I'll be in Munich for the Main Event...

The Great American Beer Festival starts Thursday! This year it's running from the 28th through the 30th at the Denver Convention Center in Denver, Colorado. It's also the 25th anniversary of the Festival.

There are going to be seminars, beer tastings (naturally!), book signings, beer and food pairings, and of course the beer competition. And more breweries represented than you can shake a stick at.

Rick at Lyke 2 Drink is going to be there, and will be reporting the event on his blog as it unfolds. Nice... one of these days, I'll be there too.

I mean, unlimited one-ounce samples of the more than 1600 beers represented... man.

From the Oregon Brewers Guild...

Guild members double the national growth average

Oregon Brewers Guild members beer production grew at a rate of nearly 24 percent in the first half of 2006 compared to the same period in 2005.

“Oregon’s craft brewers are growing faster than the exceptional growth rate of the craft beer industry as a whole,” said Brian Butenschoen, Executive Director of the Oregon Brewers Guild. “In 2006 Oregon brewers are projected to double the national craft beer growth rate.” The Brewers Association has reported that the volume of craft beer sold in the first half of 2006 rose 11 percent compared to the same period in 2005.

This will be the third consecutive year that Oregon’s brewers have shown production growth in the double digits. Oregon’s craft brewers production grew 16 percent in 2005 and 11 percent in 2004. In 2005, craft beer production in the United States (U.S.) grew 9 percent and in 2004 it rose by 7 percent.

“The strong performance by established craft breweries and brewpubs and the increased diversity of packaged beer brands has driven the double digit increase in growth.” said Brian Butenschoen. “Oregon is the second largest producer of craft beer in the U.S., four of the top 10 craft brewing companies make beer here and five of the 50 largest brewing companies in the U.S. are based in Oregon.”

The volume of beer sold in Oregon was up 3% the first half of 2006. In 2005, the volume of beer sold increased less than one percent. In 2004, the volume of beer sold increased 3%.

The Portland metro area is the largest craft brewing market in the U.S. It is the only area to sell more than 1,000,000 cases of craft brewed beer in 2005 according to Information Resources Inc. Portland, Oregon has 30 microbreweries within its city limits which is more than any other city in the world. Oregon is home to 79 breweries.

I've been hearing about opening bottles of beer with all sorts of various objects and in various ways lately, but this one takes the cake: opening beer bottles via helicopter. I kid you not.

It's a totally insane (yet apparently real) video of a contest between Japan and the U.S. on opening beer bottles with a helicopter.

Utterly amazing.

Pumpkins in Central Oregon

I've got pumpkin beer on the mind... right now, I'm the #1 result on Google for "pumpkin ale recipe", #3 for "pumpkin ale", #7 for "pumpkin beer"... On Yahoo, I'm #2 for "pumpkin ale recipe" and #9 for "pumpkin ale". Does that make me an expert?

Over on BeerAdvocate, they actually have a Pumpkin Ale style, with 110 different beers listed! Not all of those are still produced, though. Still, that's a fair showing for such a unique style.

Their top-rated pumpkin beer? Punkin Ale from Dogfish Head.

I think it would be fun to do a pumpkin beer tasting; gather as many pumpkin ales as you can find (homebrewed included!), draw up some rating sheets, and go to town. Would anyone be interested in doing this? I'd have to get my own pumpkin ale bottled and ready first.

Heck, maybe I'll just do that for myself; buy a bottle or two of every pumpkin beer I can find locally, and review 'em all against each other: Pumpkin Challenge '06. That would be fun to write.

I have yet to run into another homebrewer that makes a pumpkin ale, although the Central Oregon Homebrewers Organization (which, I'm sad to say, I am not yet a member of, though I am on the mailing list) just did a group brew of a pumpkin ale—and apparently were using a giant pumpkin as the primary fermenter! That sounds like a neat gimmick, but I'd be very, very skeptical... pumpkins don't last that long after they've been opened, and I'd be nervous of letting a pumpkin sit for days with a fermenting liquid in it...

Besides, that would have to be a one big pumpkin to hold 5+ gallons of beer in it.

One final thought... that photo I found on Flickr there, that would make a pretty good beer label, I think. Something to play around with.

It pretty much snuck up on me: today is the official start of Oktoberfest! It runs 18 days this year, until October 3rd. I need to pick up some appropriate beer!

Anyway, just a placer blog post as I thought of it; I'll follow up later with more actual substance.

Update: As promised, more Oktoberfest 2006 content here.

When I had picked up the heather ale in Portland last month, I also bought a bottle of Ebulum Elderberry Black Ale, brewed by the same brewery as the Fraoch. How could I not? It was such an unusual-sounding beer. Here's the description from their website:

Introduced to Scotland by Welsh druids in the 9th Century, elderberry black ale was part of the Celtic Autumn festivals when the "elders" would make this strong ale and pass the drink round the people of the village. The recipe was taken from a 16th Century record of domestic drinking in the Scottish Highlands. Elderberries were used for many natural remedies to cure sciatica, other forms of neuralgia, influenza and rhumatism as they contain tannins and fruit oils.

Ebulum is made from roasted oats, barley and wheat boiled with herbs then fermented with ripe elderberries.

I made an elderberry wine once, but I hadn't seen beer made from the fruit. So not knowing what to expect, let's check out my notes...

Appearance: Deep ruby-red-black beer. One and a half fingers of creamy, brownish head.

Smell: Elderberry (I assume), coffee, chocolate—like a stout. Smokey dark malts... no hops.

Taste: Smokey, coffee tones, a hint of chocolate... no real berry flavor there though. No hops of note. Perhaps a hint of elderberry at the edges...

Mouthfeel: Rich, astringent (dry), kind of oily. Medium—like a porter, not thick like stout.

My verdict? It was good, but different—different in the same way that the heather ale was different. More herbal, tangy, malty, partially because of the lack of hops and largely because of the different additives used. I like it. Dry and dark, like a porter, but with a lighter and distinctly fruity/herbal character.

The BeerAdvocaters agree with me; they score it 85 out of 100 with a strong 96% approval rating. On RateBeer, it scores similarly with 3.44 out of 5 and landing in the 79th percentile.

I'll have to seek out the other two beers from the Craigmill Brewery; they are a pine and spruce ale, and a seaweed ale. No kidding!

It's been ages since I've done as much homebrewing as I've been doing lately, and I've been meaning to write a bit about it. Here's what's been brewing:

• The Two-Penny Ale made over the 4th of July holiday. I ended up with something like 30 bottles worth, just over half a regular batch. It's pretty good, I need to write a review of it. I don't know the alcohol content though—if I had recorded the original gravity, I've since lost it. It's not very high, though.
• A Bitter. This is just a standard English-style hoppy-ish pale ale, low alcohol (3.4% by volume) to be a session beer. I bottled using Grolsch bottles, ended up with 36 total. So far, it's pretty decent.
• My standard Pumpkin Ale. We still had frozen pumpkin left over from last season which needed using up. It's going to be a good batch. It's in the primary now, I need to rack it to the secondary no later than tomorrow. When I do, I'm going to add the spices at that time, rather than at the end of the boil, or at bottling time, and see how that works.

I've got some ideas for at least two other beers I want to brew, if I get the chance: a rhubarb wheat ale, using about eight cups of rhubarb I have in the freezer (I'm thinking a Kölsch yeast), and some sort of "fresh hop" harvest ale. I picked four ounces worth (after drying) of hops from my mom's hop plant, and the idea of making a high gravity, fresh hop beer (which seems to be the trend this season) is enticing.

Catching up on more sites generated from my reading list, I found a couple of linkworthy items.

First, I'm finding out here that Rogue is releasing their proprietary Pacman yeast with Wyeast, as a seasonal from September through December. I'd love to get my hands on some of this; Rogue brews every one of their beers with it, so it's pretty versatile.

Next: the Random Beer Name Generator. Goofy fun, but some of the names sound pretty good ("Ancient Epiphany Golden Wee Heavy"). Via Hail the Ale!

The other day I was contacted by a guy who had just launched a new beer and drink blog, called Lyke 2 Drink. It's well-written and I'm enjoying it; the description is

Lyke 2 Drink is a blog created by Rick Lyke, a veteran drinks journalist, covering beers, wines and spirits; alcohol issues; travel to breweries, distilleries and wineries; festivals and events; and industry news.

Worth checking out; I'm subscribed.

It got me to thinking, too, that I really don't have a list of all the beer blogs/news sites I'm subscribed to anywhere on the site (the blogroll, as it were). High time I remedied that. So now you can click through to the Reading List page and see all the various beer sources I'm subscribed to (it looks like a lot, but not all of them are updated daily).

Catching up on my reviews (but not entirely in my beers), tonight's is Mojo India Pale Ale, from Boulder Beer Company in Colorado (warning: annoying Flash site with popups). Good beer, nothing gimmicky or experimental going on here, just a solid IPA at 6.8% alcohol by volume. Not my favorite IPA of all time, but not the worst, either.

Appearance: Clear and golden—the color of honey. Bone-white head on top, very nice.

Smell: Hops—floral and citrusy. Not overwhelming, but the hops are the dominant aroma here.

Taste: Pleasantly fruity from the hops, along with grassy (green) hoppiness. The malt is light and refreshing. You can just taste the alcohol simmering beneath all else...

Mouthfeel: Thin for an IPA. Smooth. Almost a juice-like character.

On BeerAdvocate, the beer scores 87 out of 100 with an impressive 99% approval rate. On RateBeer, it's a similar story, 3.66 out of 5 and in the 91st percentile for its style.

Friday after work, to kick off the Labor Day weekend, we popped in to the Deschutes Brewery for drinks and dinner before embarking on the downtown Bend Art Walk. Deschutes always has a bunch of seasonals on tap that they don't advertise on the website, which I was looking forward to trying.

The two I had were Harpsichord Blackberry Lager and Winged Foot Bière de Garde. Both were very good. The Lager was a dark lager with great blackberry notes in the taste and nose, not heavy, refreshing and drinkable. The Bière de Garde was a good version of the style, a little darker in color than I would have expected but no matter.

Other seasonals on tap (from memory) were: Oak Aged IPA (Inversion IPA aged in oak barrels), Oak Aged Pilsner, Glass Butte Imperial Stout, Mirror Mirror (barleywine), Big Rig Bitter, and some others I don't remember.