Happy Monday once again! Here’s the news in Oregon beer for July 16th. As usual I’ll be periodically updating this post throughout the day so check back often for the latest. And if you have news to share, please contact me and I can get that updated.

Puckerfest with Belmont Station continues for Oregon Craft Beer Month, tonight featuring Portland’s Upright Brewing on hand from 5 to 8pm: “Brewers Alex Ganum,Gerritt Ill, and Bobby Birk present another stunning display of barrel-aging and blending! Come try Fantasia (barrel fermented with Baird Family Orchard peaches and a mix of souring yeasts and bacteria,very “lambic-esque”), Lactovasilios (barrel fermented Berliner-weisse style sour ale), Blend Love (mix of barrel aged wheat and rye beers with raspberries and cherries), Blend Love (Upright Six aged in barrels with wild yeast, raspberries, and cherries), De la Seven (one-off variant of Upright’s strong saison fermented with yeast from the De la Senne brewery of Belgium and aged with brettanomyces in Patton Valley wine barrels), Belmont Station 14th Anniversary (a blend of gin and wine barrel aged wheat beer with apricot puree), Barrel aged Five (hoppy saison matured in former Fantasia barrels with the spent peaches), and Late Harvest (farmhouse-style brown ale aged in Ransom wine, whiskey, and gin barrels) Plus, we’ll sell a limited number of bottles of Belmont Station 14th Anniversary Beer!”

Deschutes Brewery (Bend): The release of Deschutes Reserve Series anniversary beer Black Butte XXIV is set for a week from Wednesday, on July 25th (just before the Oregon Brewers Festival) at both the Bend and Portland Pubs! All day long there will be specials, Black Butte XXIV-themed menu items, bottles for sale, and of course BBXXIV itself. This year’s recipe replaces last year’s oranges and chilies with dates and figs, and sounds like a bit of “wild” in the bourbon barrels too. It’s guaranteed to be good!

Bend Brewing (Bend): Ching Ching is again available in bottles! This Berliner Weisse-style ale is a perfect summertime beer, brewed with pomegranate and hibiscus and with a flavor reminiscent of a SweetTart candy (in a good way, of course). You can find the 22-ounce bottles at Bend Brewing directly, and they may show up at a few places around town as well. It’s worth a trip to Bend to find some!

This coming weekend is the Portland International Beerfest, taking place in Portland’s Pearl District Friday through Sunday, the 20th through the 22nd. “PIB is a high end 3-day beer festival specializing in rare, hard-to-find, exotic beers. Over 150 world-class beers from 16 countries will be on hand, hailing from all over the planet, many from right here in the Pacific NW. Stroll around the beautiful park with a cold one as you listen to music play all weekend.” It’s $25 if you buy online, and $30 at the gate to enter; the fee gets you the official glass plus 10 taster tickets good for 4oz. servings (and $1 each for additional). There are a good number of beer from Belgium and Germany, smatterings from other countries, but by far the lion’s share is from the US which always makes me scratch my head about the “International” part since I’d expect to see less from our own country. Your mileage may vary.