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Being an ACB correspondent definitely has its benefits: entry into festivals, abundant free samples, occasional brewery swag, a guilt-free excuse for (polite) public drunkenness. Yet when you’re tasked with imbibing as many samples as possible within a defined time limit, things can get a little challenging… like social skills and such. Having survived my first summer of Oregon beer festivals, I now feel like a veteran and it was once again time to mercilessly punish my liver the best way I know how to.
Zwickelmania 2014 is a completely different opportunity though, allowing us a peek behind the brewer’s curtain to better understand the process behind the beers that make the state famous. As noted in the preview of the event, the Zwickel is the wonderful “sampling cock” mounted on the outside of a cask or tank, enabling one to assess a beer’s progress during fermentation. And oh did we take tastes. Here’s how it went…
I started out at one of Portland’s largest tap houses,The Green Dragon, which houses 62 rotating taps and the Buchman Botanical Brewery. They hosted both a $10 all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet and a rallying point for the four shuttles that crisscrossed the neighborhoods of PDX. Arriving at 10:15 a.m., I powered through breakfast and a warm-up pint of Laurelwood’sGreen Elephant IPA. Prior to getting on the shuttle, I ran across the street to Cascade Brewing’s Barrel House for 4 small samples, all sours: Marshmallow Apples, Honey Ginger Lime, Shrieking Violet and the Apricot Ale.
While both Cascade and Burnside, the first stop on the shuttle, offered brief, self-guided tours on the brew floor and samples, the next two locations, Coalition Brewing and Migration Brewing, added a more personal touch by providing on-site tours as well. Coalition’s co-owner/brewer Elan Walsky explained in detail the brewing process in their 10-barrel brew house, then offered a taste of Night Cap, their newly released coffee-infused IPA. Migration was offering a 4th anniversary edition of their Bootstrap Imperial Stout, aged in bourbon-soaked oak chips and maple syrup – astounding. After a taster of Old Silenus, a NW spin on the English Old Ale style, and a detailed tour by head brewer Mike Branes, it was on to the next stop, Hopworks Urban Brewery.
After being greeted with a HUB lager (drawn from a keg on their keg-bike) by the owner/brewer Christian Ettinger himself, their tour included a variety of free food tasters, a sample of their IPX Centennial Single Hopped IPA, a 15-minute walking tour (including their bottling/canning line), and a fresh draw of Rise Up Red. By the time I got to the last location, the barrel-aged specialists of The Commons Brewery, it was around 2:30 and the place was packed. A line snaked around their fermentation tanks, with tons of others milling around their bar/merch stand. On hand were tastings of a still fermenting Urban Farmhouse Ale and a nearly finished Pils.
It was my first time doing the event, as well as my first chance to sneak a few tastes of beers not quite ready for mass consumption. Seems like most everyone I met on the voyage was also new to the event, an exciting prospect knowing that even in craft beer-crazy Portland, the growth and impact of the scene is still expanding and drawing in new beer lovers every day.
