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Celebrating Oregon Beer Newsletter
Published about 4 hours ago • 6 min read
Celebrating Oregon Beer
Your fortnightly round-up of all the beer and hop news from the Beaver State.
Over the past two weekends, several dozen judges have gathered in Breakside's drafty warehouse to identify Oregon's best beers. Tomorrow they will be announced at the annual Oregon Beer Awards ceremonyin Portland (tickets are still available!) We like to say Oregon is a special place for beer, and the Oregon Beer Awards are one of the many examples. It's a completely original competition created specifically to find the state's best beers. The OBAs have become a model for other states who have borrowed its unique design (though of course Oregon's edition features the best beers!), and is one of the most respected competitions among Oregon's breweries. If you can't attend the ceremony, look for the results Friday morning.
News
Gen Z Is Drinking
Conventional wisdom--and a hundred articles--tell us Gen Z isn't drinking like previous generations. As they age, however, the data say young drinkers are behaving more like past generations.
West Linn's Ale and Cider House has begun brewing. Founded as a cidery in 2018, they will now expand to beer under the 7Bev name, with pints available in their beautiful old farmhouse-turned-public house.
The McMenamins are in the process of adding a new hotel to what they're calling the “Crystal Blocks,” including he Crystal Ballroom and the Crystal Hotel, Al’s Den and Hal’s Cafe across the street.
Oregon is incredibly lucky to have hops close at hand, and a recent collab celebrates a matriarch of one family. The red IPA is named in honor of Kathy Coleman, grandmother of Annie Coleman at Westwood Farms, and brewed by Living Haus.
According to the Columbia Gorge news, pFriem is "eyeing the development of a 5,280 square foot, purpose-built metal building on the south side of its Port of Hood River property to support packaging operations."
Please send us all your upcoming event information at the following email so we can include them in our weekly roundups: events@celebrateoregonbeer.com
Loyal Legion & B15
Attack at the Block! features beers and ciders from Block 15’s distribution portfolio (Block 15, ColdFire, de Garde, Ferment, Helvetia Cider, and Wayfinder) at Loyal Legion locations on each of three nights: April 1 (Beaverton), April 2 (SE Portland) and April 3 (PDX).
Since 2015, the OBAs have grown to become one of the premier beer competitions in the US, with over 80 expert judges awarding medals in 29 categories. Medals are handed out annually to a sold out crowd of brewers and beer lovers at Revolution Hall. Come sees who takes gold on April 2nd!
On April 11th, the Baker's Dozen returns with 13 breweries, 13 roasters, and 13 bakers for the ultimate Portland experience. Taste a baker's dozen of coffee-beer collabs, and sample the offerings of 13 donut-makers.
On April 11th, the Elakha Alliance and the Oregon Zoo host a festival to restore sea otters to the Oregon coast. The 11 participating breweries are all making their beer with -- of course! -- Maris Otter malt.
de Garde's anniversary celebration has become one of the showcase events in Oregon. On May 2, come taste beer from 60+ breweries from around Oregon and the world as well as some of the best music and food from the region.
The crisp taste of lagers will be in the spotlight when Buoy Beerhosts its annual Lager Fest in Astoria from May 8-9. This year, 18 guest breweries will offer tasty examples of lager's diverse color, fermentation processes, hop profiles, and malt flavors.
On May 23rd, the 2nd annual Bend Brews & Beyond returns to Drake Park in Bend with 50+ Oregon breweries and cideries and a dozen NA options. It will feature live music, events, and more.
Tomorrow evening organizers will announce the latest batch of winners of the Oregon Beer Awards (OBAs). The awards ceremony has become the industry’s biggest bash of the year, with a ton of humor, humility, and IPA-fueled high spirits. But that party belies how seriously brewers take this competition. Oregon’s brewers form a tight-knit group of peers and collaborators, and they are the first fans of each other’s beers. They are also the judges at this competition. Each medal delivers a jolt of pride, but also the sense of gratitude that comes when your peers and friends admire your work.
Source: Oregon Beer Awards
Rethinking the Competition The idea for a competition began in 2015 among three main players: Portland’s alt-weekly Willamette Week, which conducts the awards, Breakside master brewer and current competition organizer Ben Edmunds, and New School founder and publisher and current ceremony director Ezra Johnson-Greenough. They wanted to identify Oregon’s best beers and felt like existing competition models often failed to do that, scoring beers more on their fidelity to a style than their innate deliciousness. The organizers wanted to identify the best beers, so they started from scratch in designing a competition to identify them.
The OBAs offered a new approach that focused on what makes a truly special beer: balance and harmony on one hand, and dynamism and accomplishment on the other. The Great American Beer Festival, the country's most prestigious competition, judges each style individually, no matter how obscure it is. That decision has led to an ever-expanding list of categories—108 in the most recent edition.
“Part of the objective of the OBAs is to reward beers for being harmonious and dynamic…. As such, a beer with no technical flaws that varies from classic style parameters will be judged in greater esteem than a beer with technical flaws that adheres to style.” - Oregon Beer Awards
Organic Organization The OBAs instead feature fewer categories that combine styles into groups like "light German and European lagers" and "dark hoppy beers." It reflects what kind of beers are actually brewed in the state. The more obscure beer styles are collected together, while popular styles may be judged individually. The competition committee also took the opportunity to re-think how to organize those categories. They opted for styles that have similar sensory elements, even if they come from different traditions. Take the long-standing "red beers" category. It combines styles from completely different countries, like German altbier, Irish red ales, and American ambers. But it's an intuitive collection of mid-color, low- to mid-strength, malt-driven beers.
Beyond what it means to the competing brewers, the competition has become an influential model emulated by states like Colorado, Montana, Ohio, New York, and Texas that follow its basic framework. However, as those states adopted the Oregon model, their categories evolved to reflect what beers are brewed more in their states. Montana has an entire category for Scottish ales, while New York has one for cream ale. Oregon's particular focus lands on those green cones we grow in the Willamette Valley. None of the other states has anything close to the focus on hops Oregon does. Nor, of course, do they have a fresh hop category. (Oregon has three.)
Finding the Best Beers Fewer categories (usually around thirty) and a ton of entrants (usually around a thousand) means winning a medal is hard to do. And you can be sure that the three medalists are fantastic beers. This is perhaps the most impressive element of the competition. These beers are judged a lot, and by multiple judges. Here's how the competition describes it:
"Over 80 judges come together each year to participate in six days of rigorous judging. Each judge will taste a series of flights, one style at a time. Three tables will judge the same flight of beer and submit their top three selections."
When the final round is set, those beers go in front of 8-9 judges who must laboriously come to consensus on gold, silver, and bronze-medal beers. If a beer makes it to the final table, it's a dandy. If it wins a medal, you can be certain it's an exceptional beer.
The big ceremony happens tomorrow evening at Revolution Hall in Portland, and there are still tickets left. If you are a bit starstruck by Oregon's brewing talent, there is no better place to be. And if you miss the awards ceremony, look for the list of winners and a detailed report on this year's competition at The New School. Good luck to all the participating breweries!
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