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Brian Yaeger

Brian Yaeger is a beer author (including "Oregon Breweries"), beer fest producer and beer-tasting instructor at COCC. Because he’s working on doughnut authorship, you’ll find he occasionally reviews our local doughnut scene. Yes, he absolutely floats all summer long with a beer in one hand and a doughnut in the other.

brian@beerodyssey.com
Posted inSpecial Issues & Guides

Mixologist Profile: Zack Ottesen of Five Fusion

This wunderkind mix-master splashes his spin on a new cocktail menu
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Zack Ottesen may have only been tending Five Fusion’s bar for just over a year, but he’s transitioned the Japanese-centric resto into one of Bend’s most destination-worthy bars, as evidenced by one of his earliest concoctions, The Botanist, being selected as Central Oregon’s best specialty cocktail in our Best of Central Oregon reader’s poll. And […]

Posted inFood & Drink

Bend’s Best Devil’s Food Doughnuts

Storm nixes some doughy chocolatey fixes in our ongoing review of local donuts, but we still review three
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Most doughnuts are frosted, but the frost from our first big winter storm severely derailed the first seasonal doughnut-off of the year. Since chocolate has only been an element of two past roundups, we selected the chocolatiest option there is: devil’s food cake with chocolate frosting and, if offered, topped with chocolate sprinkles. But no […]

Posted inFood & Drink

Red Sheds and Dead Heads

McMenamins’ next generation creates a podcast to document the first 40 years of the company
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Last week’s guests on the Grand Craft Beer podcast, Shannon McMenamin and General Manager Rob Vallance, discussed launching the homegrown beer empire’s foray into podcasting to reveal the hidden stories—much like many of its properties’ hidden bars—behind 40 years of putting out beer, putting on concerts, and putting Cajun tots on the map. This is […]

Posted inFood & Drink

A Love Letter to a Unique Ingredient: Smoked Vermouth

Rancher Butcher Chef’s Prescribed Burn smokes any Manhattan
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E ven as someone who does most of his cocktail drinking at home, equipped only with my limited bottles and unlimited whimsy, I’m really digging Bend’s boom in cocktail bars and revamped menus. For starters, they provide experiential research, which explains my attempts at homemade shrubs, syrups, extracts and infusions. From housemade fruit-infused vodkas to […]

Posted inFood & Drink

The Kokua Project Raises Funds While Raising Pints

Central Oregon breweries participate in nationwide campaign for Maui fire victims
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As Maui residents are still rummaging through the rubble of the wildfires that incinerated the town of Lahaina in August, the scene is an all too familiar visage, just in a place no one expected. After all, Hawaii is a lush paradise. So how is the community of craft brewers responding? Just like they did […]

Posted inFood & Drink

Hooray for Beignets

Bend-Yay cart delivers Oregon-via-New Orleans doughnuts
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I have interviewed hundreds of brewers, dozens of whom told me that they got their start when someone bought them a Mr. Beer homebrew kit. I’ve interviewed scores of doughnut bakers, yet Erick and Kate Capellino, the husband-and-wife team behind the new Bend Yay, are the first to tell me they got their start “when one […]

Posted inFood & Drink

Bend’s Best Pumpkin Spice Doughnuts

Whereas a beer writer moonlights — again — as a doughnut reviewer
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—Beer and/or cannabis will be back on the menu next week here in Craft, but for now, beer writer-slash-avowed-doughnut-lover Brian Yaeger spins another yarn about one popular seasonal flavor. Seattle’s jolly green giant of a coffee chain has weathered years of derision for its pumpkin spice latte to the point where it’s celebrating two decades […]

Posted inFood & Drink

One of the World’s Most Obscure Beers Comes to Bend

The Ale Apothecary made a Gotlandsdricka inspired by smoked Swedish farmhouse ales
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When Paul Arney launched The Ale Apothecary in 2011, he deigned to create beers that were more art than industry. One of his first recipes was an interpretation of a Finnish farmhouse ale known as sahti. But he was clear to point out, “This is not a farmhouse brewery. This is a mountain brewery.” A […]

Posted inFood & Drink

Roll Out the Barrels; It’s Time for Oktoberfests

From bratwursts to weiner dogs, a roundup of stein-hoisting events this season
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It’s been 213 years since the marriage of Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen. While you weren’t invited to the wedding, the anniversary is better known today as Oktoberfest. Some 6 million people will fill the tents and bierhalls of Munich from mid-September through early October. Somewhat confusingly, the primary beer style for the […]

Posted inFood & Drink

Deschutes’ New Brown Ale is its Old Brown Ale

Oud Bruin, aka Flanders Brown, is worth discovering, or re-discovering
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In 2008, craft breweries were still on the verge of tapping into beer’s wild and wooly past. Historical styles were truly all the rage. You literally (not figuratively) weren’t guaranteed to find an “India Pale Ale” on taplists! So-called sour beers were on the cusp of becoming A Thing. Allagash Brewing in Portland, Maine, built […]

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