Wood = Good

editor’s note: Due to a website snafu this post didn’t get up last week. So if it feels a week late, there’s a reason… But I wanted to get it out there. Cheers.

Okay, maybe I’m biased as festival was organized by Lay It Out Events, the Source’s sister company, but damn the Little Woody was an event worth toasting, which I did – repeatedly. Starting with the fact that you got to drink from your own pint glass – no plastic garbage! – the Woody was an intimate affair that seemed to fit perfectly in the Historical Society grounds downtown. With about 2,000 folks tasting throughout the daylong event, the Woody was the answer to every overblown beer fest that crowds the calendar and delivers nothing more than long lines for beers and bathrooms and brews that you can sample at most local bars. Yes there were a few broken pints glasses, which were met with cheers and jeers, but there were no stolen golf carts. Just a bunch of locals doing what we do best: sipping good beer and sharing good cheer. Word has it that all the local breweries burned through their specially brewed wood-age beer, but don’t surprised if one of them finds a lost keg this fall. They tend to do that.

Here’s Microcosmos top tastes from the Woody:

1. Silver Moon’s Nekkid Creeper (Hop-a-licious) 2. Deschutes Mirror Mirror (Thank goodness for lost things) 3. BBC’s Barrel X (9 percent alcohol and counting!) 4. Cascades’ Skookum Street (wood=good!)

This article appears in Sep 17-23, 2009.