Editor's Note: In this week's issue

It has been a fun week at the Source.
While it would be easy to assume that researching breweries for our annual Beer Issue is fun because of the perks (and, yes, thanks Atlas, thanks Red Tank, thanks Sun River for the samples!), actually what has been most exciting about researching for these articles has been the optimism each of the brewers we interviewed have shown. It is truly infectious.
The theme for this year’s Beer Issue is “on the bubble.” While microbreweries are nothing new, what we noticed were several trends that were percolating—ideas that started small, like Atlas deciding three years ago to bring hard cider making to Bend, and are now booming into major industries. We also noticed small batch brewers like Bridge 99 and Oblivion finding such warm reception to their products that their businesses are growing. And, we looked around and saw that the brewery craze is spilling well past Bend’s borders—and that Wild Ride in Redmond and Sunriver Brewing in, well . . .are establishing that beer is truly a regional industry.
It is fun to report on optimism and success, and we are pleased to present several profiles of businesses and industry trends that are doing better than well, whose primary struggle is how to keep up with demand. Yes, it has been a fun week at the Source. (And yes, we had fun researching.)

NEXT WEEK: Is Bend Ready for Weed?

This article appears in Mar 4-11, 2015.