Oregon Beer News, 11/16/2012

Oregon BeerHere’s the Oregon beer news for Friday the 16th and rest of the weekend. In fact, consider this the Thanksgiving edition as well, as I’ll be taking next week off from the beer news posts (I’ll still be blogging most likely, just not the daily news). As usual, I’ll be periodically updating this post throughout the day so check back often for the latest news. And if you have news to share, please contact me and I can get that updated.

Gigantic Brewing (Portland): The Izakaya Festival is taking place today at the Jupiter Hotel in Portland and Gigantic’s special Ume Umai beer brewed just for this event is making its debut there; this is a beer brewed with 15% black rice in the grist and fermented on over 1200 pounds of black plums. Sounds like a most interesting beer (Ezra has the write-up here) and while I’d love to see this appear generally, it may only show up at the Izakaya fest—so if you have tickets to this sold out festival, enjoy!

McMenamins‘ annual Christman beer, Kris Kringle, officially hits the taps today (along with a limited run of 22-ounce bottles of KK available for sale). At 6.84% abv, “This year’s version of Kris Kringle is a hearty and robust ale with a big and bold malt complexity as well as an intense and flavorful hop profile. This “winter warmer” highlights the rich, toasty, aromatic and chocolaty malt flavors as its very sturdy foundation. Generous amounts of four different hop varieties were added in five different additions that delivers a magnificent and massive hop assault. There’s still some ginger and cinnamon added into the batch but the spices are a little more subdued than in years’ past.” I actually had a taste of this last weekend at the Old St. Francis School, where it was put on tap early; it’s a tasty beer!

Worthy Brewing (Bend) is getting ever closer to completion and opening: yesterday they posted a photo of the canning line being installed. They’ll be the first Central Oregon brewery to can their beer; and for those of you who prefer your beer in bottles, Worthy will be doing that too—potentially installing a bottling line in the spring (though I imagine that could be a moving target).

Fort George Brewery (Astoria): They are doing a meet the brewer in Hood River at the Volcanic  Bottle Shoppe tonight from 5 to 7:30pm: “Head Brewer Spencer Gotter and Brian Bovenizer will be here pouring free samples of their 5 canned beers and we’ll also have 3 delicious small batch specialty beers on tap. These guys are tons of fun and make excellent beer so you don’t want to miss them!”

More Worthy Brewing news that came in via email newsletter today: they’ve hired a new Head Brewer to work with Master Brewer Chad Kennedy: Dustin Kellner, formerly of Laurelwood Brewing. Also there’s an end date in sight with construction and an idea for an opening date: “Worthy Brewing is on schedule to begin brewing in early December.  Their 4 vessel, 30 barrel system is being installed at press time and the 3 barrel pilot brew system is scheduled for start up in early December… Worthy will be operational by the end of the year but will officially open it’s doors in early February.”

Pelican Pub & Brewery (Pacific City): Tomorrow, Saturday the 17th, is “Mother’s Day” at the Brewery—the release of the vaunted Mother of All Storms barrel-aged barleywine! Bottles will be on sale when the brewery opens at 8am for $20 each (22-ounces; $240 for a case of 12) and you will only initially be able to get them at the brewery. If you can’t be in Pacific City there’s still a slim chance you can get this beer: “waiting list via EMAIL ONLY. Send your name, contact information and the number of cases you would like to order (if supply allows) to Mother@PelicanBrewery.com to be added to the list. You will receive an auto response indicating your email was received. This in no way guarantees you will receive any of this limited production beer. The only way to be guaranteed any Mother is to be in Pacific City on November 17th.” (Emphasis theirs.) If you truly want some of this beer, though, head over to Pacific City.

Pelican is also looking at further expansion; I blogged back in September how Pelican was going to be building another (production) brewing facility in Tillamook, and news ran today in the Cannon Beach Gazette that Pelican is also looking at potential Cannon Beach locations for another facility. “Pelican Pub and Brewery, a Pacific City landmark, is looking at locations within Cannon Beach for a new facility – although they have not yet selected a location… [Co-owner Mary] Jones said there are several locations within Cannon Beach that they are considering, but at least one would need to go before the city’s design review board for the modifications they would like to make to the site.” That could be an interesting round of expansion for the brewery, two new locations in a short span of time. It’ll be interesting to see how this rolls out.

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