The 31st Oregon Brewers Festival lineup is set

Oregon Brewers Festival logo

Details have been set for this year’s Oregon Brewers Festival in July, the thirty-first edition of this annual favorite festival, and organizers have announced the details, including the brewery lineup.

The fest will run from Thursday, July 26 through Sunday, July 29, in Tom McCall Waterfront Park in downtown Portland. 80 breweries will be represented, from ten states as well as The Netherlands and Baja California (Mexico), and for the first time this year, there will be two ciders, from Cider Riot! and Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider, as well as white and red wine. In regards to the Mexican breweries, the press release said, “The northwestern Mexican state of Baja has defined itself as the country’s largest contingent for “cerveza artesanal,” and the festival is excited to present five breweries from that region.”

Here is the list of breweries that will be pouring beer this year:

  1. 54-40
  2. Agua Mala
  3. Anderson Valley
  4. Backwoods
  5. Baerlic
  6. Bayern
  7. Belching Beaver
  8. Boneyard
  9. Boulder
  10. Boundary Bay
  11. Breakside
  12. Buoy
  13. Caldera
  14. Cascade
  15. Coin Toss
  16. Crooked Stave
  17. Depoe Bay
  18. Deschutes
  19. Double Mountain
  20. Ecliptic
  21. Everybody’s
  22. Fauna
  23. Fort George
  24. Fortside
  25. Freebridge
  26. Fremont
  27. Gigantic
  28. Golden Valley
  29. GoodLife
  30. Great Divide
  31. Great Northern
  32. Great Notion
  33. Heathen
  34. Heretic
  35. Hopworks
  36. Insurgente
  37. Iron Horse
  38. Kells
  39. Laurelwood
  40. Lompoc
  41. MadTree
  42. Maui
  43. McMenamins
  44. Melvin
  45. Migration
  46. Monkless
  47. Natian
  48. New Holland
  49. Ninkasi
  50. Old Town
  51. Oproer
  52. Oregon City
  53. Pelican
  54. Perennial
  55. pFriem
  56. Portland
  57. RiverBend
  58. Rogue
  59. Royale
  60. Rusty Truck
  61. Sasquatch
  62. Scout
  63. Silver Falls
  64. Silver Moon
  65. StormBreaker
  66. Sunriver
  67. Terminal Gravity
  68. Three Creeks
  69. Three Mugs
  70. Thunder Island
  71. Transpeninsular
  72. Upright
  73. Uptown Market
  74. Vertigo
  75. Von Ebert
  76. Wendlandt
  77. Widmer
  78. Wild Ride
  79. Wolf Tree
  80. Zoiglhaus

While I don’t believe the beer list is finalized yet (I’m sure it’s close, but many times there have been last-minute revisions), the press release says, “The festival will present more than two dozen different beer styles ranging from Berliner Weisse to Belgians, IPAs to IPLs, pales to Pilsners, and sours to stouts.”

The format and pricing is the same as usual: free entry to the festival, mugs cost $7 (required for tasting), and tokens are $1 apiece. One token equals one taste, and four tokens fills your mug.

And the Fest has a shoutout to McMenamins this year for the opening parade on Thursday:

In celebration of their impact on Oregon brewing history, the McMenamins family has been chosen as this year’s ceremonial Grand Marshals to lead the parade and tap the official opening ceremony first keg. Soon after McMenamins opened Portland’s Barley Mill Pub on S.E. Hawthorne Blvd. 35 years ago, Brian and Mike McMenamin, along with other craft brewing pioneers, successfully lobbied their elected representatives to pass an Oregon bill allowing people to make and sell their beer onsite. The “brewpub” concept was born and McMenamins opened Oregon’s first post-Prohibition brewpub, the Hillsdale Brewery & Public House in S.W. Portland. Today, McMenamins remains a family run company and offers hundreds of varieties of handcrafted beers.

This looks like a terrific lineup of breweries this year, and if I’m counting correctly, 53 of the 80 are from Oregon—putting beer from the state front and center to its eponymous festival (as it should be). However don’t overlook the others, in particular the ones from Mexico, those are beers that will be new to many.

So start making your plans for the last full weekend in July. Remember, getting there early is best!

One comment

  1. Wow, there’s actually some new names on the list. The same old same old of the last few years has been extremely disappointing but it looks like they may have realized that and started to change it.

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