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Celebrating Oregon Beer
Your fortnightly round-up of all the beer and hop news from the Beaver State.
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We are very excited to announce Celebrate Oregon Beer's first large project, a statewide collaboration of two dozen breweries, so make sure you scroll down to the Spotlight to read all about that. Your taste buds will thank you! Ours is not the only activity in the state, either--with the sun comes an increasingly active calendar. Lots of news this time as well, so read on and enjoy.
If you are looking for more news and conversation between these emails, visit our feeds at Instagram, Facebook, or Bluesky.
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News
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Pouring it Forward
Coinciding with Earth Week, Oregon Brewshed Alliance brewer partners are releasing Earth Day Collaboration Series in honor of their individual watersheds across Oregon.
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The project is designed to expand public education and awareness about the importance of clean water to our communities, our forested ecosystems--and our beer. The brewery partners releasing beers: 7 Devils, Breakside, Cascade Lakes, Coattails, Deschutes, Grand Fir, Leikam, Oak Union, Parallel 45, pFriem, Silver Falls, Sunriver, and Xicha.
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The Year in Beer
The Brewers Association released the final numbers on 2024. Things continued to trend downward (-4%), though jobs and total dollars were up (+3%).
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Hop Valley Closing Brewery
Hop Valley owner Tilray announced they would be shutting the company's Eugene brewery while moving the brand's production to other facilities. The taproom will stay open.
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Oregon Beer Awards
The annual Oregon Beer Awards took place last Thursday, April 10. The state's premier beer competition celebrated its tenth anniversary this year, handing out 90 medals to breweries in 30 categories. Now a model for competitions in several other states, the Oregon Beer Awards was a trailblazer in re-imagining beer competitions. Beers are judged in styles or categories, and the winners are judged less on their fidelity to an arbitrary beer style than their technical excellence and harmoniousness.
Beers are judged in a vigorous multi-round, double-blind process by some of the most talented professionals in the beer industry. Breweries appreciate all awards, but they take special pride in an OBA because it comes from a panel of their peers. This year, 94 judges evaluated 1,054 entries from 100 breweries in 144 flights over six days. This year, pFriem (large), ColdFire (medium), and Terranaut (small) were selected as the breweries of the year based on their performance in the competition.
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Upcoming Events
Please send us all your upcoming event information at the following email so we can include them in our weekly roundups: events@celebrateoregonbeer.com
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TopWire Opening
One of Oregon's best places to drink beer opens April 26th for the season. The open-air Topwire pub, is nestled amidst soaring Crosby Farms hops, where drinkers can enjoy a local beer and live music.
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Stumptown 40
After a 9-year hiatus, this adults-only pinewood derby returns to Gigantic Brewing on Saturday, April 26th. Car kits are available at any of Gigantic's three Portland locations.
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De Garde's 12th Anniv.
You'll find one of the best taplists anywhere in the world on May 3 at De Garde's 12th birthday party. Over fifty breweries from around the world, including rare appearances by Belgian lambic-makers will be on hand, as well as food, music, and more.
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Buoy Lager Fest
Twenty breweries, two days, live music, and all the lagers you can drink! Mark your calendar for Fri-Sat May 9-10 in Astoria. It also marks the public debut of their new taproom on Duane St.
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Bend Brews & Beyond
This debut festival will feature 50+ Oregon breweries & cideries, plus many fun events on Sat-Sun May 24-25 at Bend's Drake Park.
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In addition to sampling beer, festgoers have a chance to meet the brewers at 3-5p, followed by a Brewers Decathlon. DJs and musicians will rotate to provide the fest a soundtrack, and ten food trucks will be on hand. 21+ only.
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Spotlight: Oregon Homegrown
Organized by Celebrate Oregon Beer, Oregon Homegrown is a statewide collaboration among two dozen breweries, nine hop farms, one hop breeder, and the first yeast laboratory in craft brewing. The project's purpose is to highlight the relationship among the various elements that go into the beer so drinkers can begin to spot the "Oregon" inside their beer. For our inaugural effort, we're highlighting Oregon-bred and -grown Strata hops, which breweries have used beers in a dazzling range of styles to highlight this wonderful cultivar. Once drinkers see how Strata scents and flavors pilsners, IPAs, and cask bitters, they will able to recognize it as surely as a wine-drinker can spot a Pinot noir grape.
Oregon's Tradition of Hop Breeding
Oregon is one of the few places on earth where hops are not just grown, but bred. In fact, American craft brewing, with its focus on expressive American hops, traces its roots back to Corvallis. That's where researchers at the USDA bred Cascade, released more than fifty years ago.
Today, one of the most active hop breeders is Oregon's Indie Hops, which funds breeding at Oregon State University. In 2018, they released their first new hop, called Strata, which has quickly come to be one of the state's signature hops. Unlike Washington and Idaho, Oregon's cool climate favors different varieties, and nearly all Strata is grown right here in the Willamette Valley. Indie Hops works with nine local hop farms to grow the early-ripening Strata, which locals might recognize as the first taste of the fresh-hop season.
Strata, a Versatile Cultivar
Breeder Shaun Townsend open-pollinated a German Perle hop to create Strata, and its European and American heritage are evident in her flavor profile. The name points to the different layers of flavor brewers coax from the hop, making Strata one of the most versatile of hops. Strata features an herbal and almost savory dimension that recalls cannabis, which makes it a good choice for European lagers. It also has classic American citrus notes, which can express as pineapple, passion fruit, or lemon--perfect for pale ales and IPAs. Finally, it has one quality that makes it truly unique (and Oregonian): strawberry.
Yeast Grown Here, Too!
For Oregon Homegrown, we reached out to another keystone of Oregon brewing, Wyeast Laboratories. When we think of beer styles, what we're often gesturing toward is the character that comes from fermentation. So when the two dozen or so participating breweries make their beer styles, they'll be using Wyeast's catalogue of yeast strains, which date all the way back to the dawn of the craft brewing era, and which helped build the industry. As a bonus, Oregon breweries donated a number of strains to Wyeast that will be used by the breweries in the Oregon Homegrown Project. There are many strata of Oregon-ness in this project!
The Beers and How to Taste Them
The beers will be available in late May. Breweries from around the state are busily brewing their Strata-hopped ales and lagers, so stay tuned for a full lineup, including the breweries, beer styles, and farms where the Stratas were grown. As a taste of what to expect, we have hoppy American ales, of course, but also lagers, a cask ale, saison, fruited wheat, and even one IPA made with Brettanomyces yeast.
The beers will be available at taprooms in Portland, Bend--and possibly more locations--on May 23rd and 30th. We will have all the details finalized in the next couple weeks. We're very excited to be working with all these partners on a truly Oregon collaboration. Stay tuned for more information.
Yay, Oregon Beer!
Keeping Up
For everything Oregon, please visit the Celebrate Oregon website.If you think someone you know might like this newsletter, have them sign up here.
Celebrate Oregon Beer is supported by the Oregon Brewers Guild and Oregon Hop Commission.
Excellent journalism is of the many ways Oregon is so special. In between newsletters, be sure to check out these sites for the latest happenings:
See you again in two weeks!
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