Saturday, July 26, 2008
PDX is a beer town, baby!
The Portland Brewer's Festival takes place the last full weekend in July each year. This year was the 21st such fete. I have not been for many, many years: not since Dave Frishbergused to amass a septet or sextet and would play pre-WWII whorehouse soundtrack jazz. The only music I heard this year sounded like a Rush tribute band.
If you truly are crowd-phobic, stay away from this event, especially on the weekend afternoons and evenings where it seems there must be close to ten thousand folks wandering around with their plastic mugs. Brewfest is really about lines. There was the line for the ID check, the line for mugs and tokens, the lines for beer, and, in natural cause and effect, the line for the comfort stations. You ask yourself, all of this for a glass of beer, but after you get the hang of the place and a couple glasses to numb the absurdity, it is actually okay.
The craft beer tradition in Portland is one of this city's great legacies. It seems like there is some kind of microbrewery or brewery-related pub on most corners of most of the trendy neighborhoods (Alberta, NW, Hawthorne, et al.) Brewfest is actually a chance to have PDX name small breweries (Widmer, Bridgeport, etc) measure up alongside other craft and micro breweries, primarily those from the West California, but a few midwest and eastern offerings find their way into the tap lines as well.
The cup and token system, and even the crowd size tends to create an equation for the event to stay under control. There are significantly more men than women, and the guys all seem ready to get into some beer talk, especially where brew style details are concerned. It was pretty much a very cheery scene where seemingly most folks wore beer t-shirts although it was damned crowded. My out of town relation seemed to dig it very much and I was more than glad to show how Portlanders event style party. The lines were too long to indulge in one or two token tasters, so I had full glasses. Therefore, my selections were limited to three mugs: An overly fizzy Kolsch from Hales Brewing of Seattle. A wonderful Almond Brown Ale from Standing Stone Brewery in Ashland. And Love Fish Abbey Dubbel from Flying Fish Brewing of Cherry Hill NJ, of all places was a very nice beer indeed and deserved of importation to the fest.
I don't think I would be likely to go to a Portland Brewfest again except maybe during its opening hours on Thursday or Friday. I understand Portland's new mayor-elect (Sam Adams his name, by beer golly!) taped the fist keg poured up the first beer of the festival at the end of a parade that began on 11am on Thursday. Ya just gotta love this town!
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:05 PM
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