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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 inFood & Drink

Endangered Brown Ales Come Out of Hibernation for Winter

The style may have fallen out of favor, but never out of flavor
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Getting modern craft brewers to brew a brown ale is like getting the kids on my son’s Parks and Rec basketball team to practice lay-ups instead of chunking three-point and half-court shots. There’s so much interest and emphasis on trickery that the fundamentals get overlooked. In today’s world of double-dry-hopped hazy IPAs, the once-elemental brown […]

Posted inFood & Drink

It Was Beer Before Liquor

Bendistillery and Deschutes Brewery Collaborate on cask-strength Black Butte Whiskey
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While whiskey is essentially a distillate of beer, the primary difference in the contents of your last glass of beer and what goes into whiskey is hops. You have to search high and low to find a hopped whiskey—but otherwise, the mash used for each is quite similar. In the case of Black Butte Whiskey, […]

Posted inFood & Drink

Cascade Lakes Brewing Becomes Not-for-Profit

Profits will go towards positive values
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When Cascade Lakes Brewing opened in 1994 it was the second most profitable brewery in Central Oregon. The Redmond-based brewery was the area’s second brewery, and the Rhine Family became the brewery’s third set of owners in 2018. General Manager Andy Rhine announced that Cascade Lakes is now joining the ranks of Patagonia, which announced […]

Posted inFood & Drink

Fresh Hop Beers Are Now Easy to Pick Up, Hard to Pin Down

For hopheads, it’s the most wonderful time for a beer
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Mercurial. That may be the most defining aspect of fresh hop beers that are not one specific beer or flavor but are a shapeshifting target. When a beer features fresh (aka “wet”) hops (as opposed to the kiln-dried, typically pelletized hops all breweries rely on year-round) it isn’t defined by its brewery or style but […]

Posted inFood & Drink

The Confusing Case of Cold IPAs

No one argues they’re not cold. But are they IPAs?
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If you’re the type of craft beer drinker who casually peruses tap lists but really, you’re just searching for the IPAs, you’ve possibly come across something called a cold IPA. Instead of that being something darker and maltier in the vein of a Winter IPA, it’s actually lighter and drier. In short, it’s an India […]

Posted inFood & Drink

Beer Issue: Is Wine the Next Hot Thing in Beer?

Co-fermented wine-beer hybrids fêted at The Terroir Project Festival
Avatar photo by Brian Yaeger

In Eugene, brewmaster Matt Van Wyk along with brothers Brian and Doug Coombs are the composers behind Alesong Brewing and Blending. They create a wide range of barrel-matured beers from earthy saisons to viscous imperial stouts and, increasingly, vinous, wild ales that are music to sour beer lovers’ ears. Among Alesong’s six-years-running slate of nine […]

Posted inFood & Drink

Bend’s Best Old-Fashioned Doughnuts

In an era of new Instagram delights, can anything beat an old-fashioned?
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When beseeched to write the consummate list of the world’s best doughnut styles for TheTakeOut.com, The Onion’s non-satirical foodie blog, I unintentionally struck a nerve. I awarded buttermilk bars the bronze, but described them as “the augmented version of an old-fashioned…ameliorated by the use of buttermilk in the cake batter in lieu of regular milk […]

Posted inNews

Imagine if Cannabis Farms Operated Like Other U-Pick Farms

White Wolf Cannabis Co. wants to heighten consumer education
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Unlike the idiomatic disinterest in seeing how sausage is made, many of us truly love seeing how stuff we love gets made. In Bend the Deschutes Brewery welcomes nearly a million guests annually, who sip Fresh Squeezed IPA in front of the mash tun. The Tillamook Creamery ushers in some 1.3 million visitors who not […]

Posted inFood & Drink

Over a Pint: Spider City’s Brady Schaner

Bend’s newest beer judge is also potentially Bend’s newest cicerone
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Brady Schaner is one of the newest Certified Beer Judge certification program’s beer judges and is on track to become Bend’s newest certified cicerone. When he passes the arduous exam, he’ll be our town’s ninth. Most of them work at 10 Barrel Brewing, but Schaner, for the past year, has brewed at Spider City Brewing. […]

Posted inBest Of Central Oregon

Best Hazy Beer

Deschutes Brewery’s Fresh Haze IPA
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Deschutes Brewery’s Fresh Haze IPA once again tops the podium for Best Hazy. Since the category is in its second year, the beer is undefeated. A hazy, in beer parlance, is specifically an India Pale Ale that is neither clear nor bitter—the hallmarks of the once-popular West Coast IPA. In 2014 you could not find […]

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