The 31st Oregon Brewers Festival lineup is set
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:
- 54-40
- Agua Mala
- Anderson Valley
- Backwoods
- Baerlic
- Bayern
- Belching Beaver
- Boneyard
- Boulder
- Boundary Bay
- Breakside
- Buoy
- Caldera
- Cascade
- Coin Toss
- Crooked Stave
- Depoe Bay
- Deschutes
- Double Mountain
- Ecliptic
- Everybody’s
- Fauna
- Fort George
- Fortside
- Freebridge
- Fremont
- Gigantic
- Golden Valley
- GoodLife
- Great Divide
- Great Northern
- Great Notion
- Heathen
- Heretic
- Hopworks
- Insurgente
- Iron Horse
- Kells
- Laurelwood
- Lompoc
- MadTree
- Maui
- McMenamins
- Melvin
- Migration
- Monkless
- Natian
- New Holland
- Ninkasi
- Old Town
- Oproer
- Oregon City
- Pelican
- Perennial
- pFriem
- Portland
- RiverBend
- Rogue
- Royale
- Rusty Truck
- Sasquatch
- Scout
- Silver Falls
- Silver Moon
- StormBreaker
- Sunriver
- Terminal Gravity
- Three Creeks
- Three Mugs
- Thunder Island
- Transpeninsular
- Upright
- Uptown Market
- Vertigo
- Von Ebert
- Wendlandt
- Widmer
- Wild Ride
- Wolf Tree
- 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!
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.