Oregon Brewers Festival

Barbara's favorite event of the year is the Oregon Brewer's Fest. Celebrating their 21st year this is one of the premier beer fests in the world. This year there were 72 craft breweries serving beer from 18 different states. Admission is free, but you have to buy a mug for $5 and tokens cost $1 each. One token gets you a taste of the beer and four tokens get you a full glass. A good strategy is to try a few different brews before you commit to a full glass.

All the beers are from mico-brewers, so no big guys like Miller or Bud. The breadth of choice is pretty amazing with everything from light summer pilsners to watermelon flavored beer to hoppy ales and dark stouts.

One of the keys is to get to the event early as it gets really crowded as the day goes on. This year there were already a few thousand people there when we arrived at 2:00 PM on Friday. It also gets a little rowdy as the night goes on, although there are a lot of "alcohol monitors" and they close at 9:00 PM.

We were missing a few regulars this year. For the last dozen years Barbara has met Mark Ebsen and Jeff Foster there on Friday afternoon, but they were both absent this year (this is like the Lakers missing the playoffs, we were pretty shocked). These two are both beer affectionados and home brewers, so we called Ebsen a couple of times to taunt him.

While beer is the main attraction, there is also food and live music at the festival as well as home brewing info, etc. The best part however is the crowd. The brew fest attracts some pretty interesting people. If you are into utility kilts you will have plenty of company here. There are also a lot of great t-shirts: "Beer, helping ugly people have sex since 1862." Instead of "I (heart) beer" they had "I (beer can) Beer." Barbara wants to design a shirt for some of the bigger guys that says, "Beer Baby."