As anyone with a love for beer and travel knows, attempting to find something decent to drink at an airport can be a harrowing experience. At Dulles International in Washington, there’s a bar that’s enticingly titled “DC Craft Beer” on the far end of one terminal. It contains a whopping three taps, one of which […]
Microcosmos
Posted inFood & Drink
Low Temps, High Gravity
Bold beer in the air at McMenamins
It’s only natural, once temperatures dip below freezing and the sidewalks all ice over for three months, that a person’s mind turns toward darker, maltier, more robust beer. (For those people of drinking age, that is.) McMenamins Old St. Francis School, just outside downtown, is ready to oblige. The third annual High Gravity Extravaganza, a […]
Posted inFood & Drink
A Pumpkin-Free Fall
Beers to drink if you’re all gourded out
Getting sick of pumpkin beers yet? Hate on them all you want, but—much like Taco Bell and Thursday-night football—it exists because you all secretly can’t get enough of it. Beer flavored with everyone’s favorite late-October gourd is nothing new in craft at this point. Where the Bend Whole Foods would’ve stocked Elysian’s Night Owl pumpkin […]
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Out With the Old, In With the Hoppy
Distributor churn leads to more competition
Beer, by its nature, is seasonal—not just in terms of seasonal releases, but in the natural churn of brands available across Bend’s shiny beer-shop coolers. Take Orlison Brewing, for example. Remember them? The lager-only brewery, based near Spokane, descended onto the Central Oregon scene in late 2013, offering innovative takes on the classic genre including […]
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Elevated Drinking
Colorado’s high-altitude, high-talent breweries
Cory Forster, brewmaster at The Bakers’ Brewery in Silverthorne, Colorado, is high every day of his life. It’s not an unusual state in this ski-resort town of 3,800, an hour west of Denver. But it’s not because of some debilitating drug habit. It’s because Silverthorne is 9,035 feet above sea level. Forster, who worked for […]
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The Other Beer City USA
In Fort Collins, craft grows in Bendian proportions
The northern Colorado town of Fort Collins (population: 155,000) is one of several medium-sized cities around the United States to earn the name Beer City USA from bloggers and travel magazine articles. In the past, that was almost wholly driven by two large outfits: New Belgium, they of Fat Tire and the Lips of Faith […]
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Beer Festival of the Gods
The Great American Beer Fest is like nothing else
It’s seven on a Friday night and the scene around the Deschutes Brewery pub is one of controlled chaos. People from Bend and beyond line up to try some of the new brews off the pilot system, including a smoked gose, a sour Belgian-style quadruple ale, and a variant of Black Butte Porter aged in […]
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European Cider a Stone’s Throw from Downtown
Far Afield prepares to open it’s tasting room
As John Gessner describes it, two major factors drove him to establish Far Afield Cider, which is due to become Bend’s third cidermaker when it opens for business. One was a chance encounter with a couple in Wisconsin running an apple orchard. “My family and I traveled across the U.S. and I got to sample […]
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Three India Pale Ales, Please…
Hold the Imperial.
Settle down, Hop Heads. Sometimes a simple beer is just what hits the spot. Sometimes it feels like brewers are constantly chasing trends. And, too often pale ales are ignored in this hyper-experimental climate. Wacky new recipes are fun and important, but so are the classics. Moreover, pale ales are great because they are about […]