Deschutes Brewery VIP Tour and Media Event

On Thursday I (along with a group of other local media folks) was invited to Deschutes Brewery for a special VIP brewery tour and media event. I was entirely unsure what to expect beforehand, and as it turned out the Brewery had set up a special tasting for attendees beforehand, presented by one of the senior brewers Jimmy Seifert and marketing manager Jason Randles.

While the brewery tour was great (particularly so due to main tour conductor Aaron), it was the tasting that was the main event of the evening. For each beer tasted, Seifert talked about the making and history of the beer, and there were interesting nuggets of information to be gleaned along the way.

Denver Summer Brew Fest

Last weekend was the 4th Annual Denver Summer Brew Fest at Mile High Station. I went. Surprise!
The event, thrown by RightOn Productions, and it’s colder sister event aptly named the Denver Winter Brew Fest, happen right near Invesco Field (where the Broncos play), pretty much right under the highway. This fest is different than most.
Some [...]

Festival Season

When is festival season anyway? I’ve gone to beer festivals in almost every month of the year. Summer is generally filled with some great ones, but I’ve also done back to back fests in the winter. And then there’s the fresh hop / wet hop season in the fall. Avery alone has enough festivals in [...]

SAVOR 2010

This past Saturday was the 3rd annual SAVOR: An American craft beer and food experience!

SAVOR is one of my favorite days of the year. I’ve been to every one since its inception in 2008, and was ecstatic to be able to represent RateBeer this time around!

Boulder Strong Ale Fest at Avery – Preliminary Report

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of having a few beers at Avery with CV, the man with the marketing plan. He’s got a pretty big event coming up, and you might want to be there.
No, you definitely want to be there.
The 8th annual Boulder Strong Ale Fest is upon us! This year’s festival [...]

To Age or Not To Age

I am a bit of a packrat personality: I tend to collect things and in recent years this has turned towards beer (go figure). When I’m buying beer (particularly specialty beer) I have an impulse toward buying extra to “put away”—to cellar the beer with the idea that it will change (hopefully for the better) [...]

The Bend Beer Scene, Part 1

If you’ve taken a peek at my about page you know that I live in Bend, Oregon: right smack in the middle of the state, the largest city in Oregon east of the Cascade Mountains. Bend is unusual in a number of ways; first, it’s relatively geographically isolated: the nearest Interstate is two hours away, [...]

Deschutes Jubelale Vertical (‘07, ‘08, ‘09)

The last couple of years I’ve been doing some (small-scale) cellaring of beer, putting some away each year to save for… well, I haven’t figured out exactly what yet, other than to open up the occasional bottle for special occasions. (In the back of my mind I have an idea that I might have a [...]

Northern California Rare Beer Roundup – November 2009

The season’s heirloom tomatoes are all but kaput, I’ve busted out a goofy white hat to wear under my biking helmet, and our cat’s affections (I’ve done some back-of-the-envelope calculations) are inversely proportional to our house’s temperature. Some things change, but rare kegs and bottles remain incapable of drinking themselves. This is your November 2009 NorCal Rare Beer Roundup.