Beer

A crappy winter and spring may result in beer drinkers shelling out more for their favorite swill.
Because of flooding in Australia and Canada, two of world’s largest barley producers, the price of the coveted crop has increased significantly.

Whew. Riding around looking for beers, finding beers, drinking beers…it’s exhausting. But we’re doing it for you, dear beer-enthusiasts, as part of our Bend Brewfest preview.

Imagine our surprise when opened our garage this morning, and found a neighborhood character happily helping himself to beer from our kegerator!
In nice weather, we typically leave the garage door up, but we had foolishly left the kegerator, which is normally kept close to our desks, in the garage. We didn’t realize we were leaving the door open to community beer fills.
The exchange went something like this:
us: “Excuse me??!!”
local (already shwilled at 10am and talking in a voice not unlike Barney, from the Simpsons): “Ohw…I’m just filling up this here growler.”

By Bob Woodward
The great American jazz maestro Duke Ellington once noted: “if it sounds good and you like it, it's good music.”
I feel the same way about beer. If it tastes good and I like it, it's good beer. And thankfully every one of our local craft brewers makes at least three beers each that I enjoy quaffing. Thanks to all for keeping me happy.
But recently I found out how wrong I am in simply “liking” beer. That and how out of touch I am with some local beer fanatics. Here's how it all came down.

This very well may come as surprising news to beer fans not just in Bend but throughout much of the western United States, but Larry Sidor, Deschutes Brewery’s brewmaster for the past eight years, has announced that he’ll be leaving the brewery at the end of the year.
It’s been a lifelong dream of Sidor’s to start his own brewery and upon leaving at the end of 2011, he’ll be doing just that.

OK, so we’re all aware that online polls really don’t mean much, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get fanatical about your hometown for Examiner.com’s “BeerCity USA 2011” poll.