Founder Jim Mills packages Caldera's first bottled beer

Ashland, Oregon’s Caldera Brewing has added a new dimension to their craft beer repertoire, a line-up of seasonal craft brews soon to hit shelves for distribution…in bottles. A pioneer in canned craft beer, Caldera is the first Oregon brewery to can their product since the craft beer revolution. Beginning with their brightly hopped Pale Ale and now also selling their India Pale Ale and Ashland Amber in cans, the brewery has won over the hearts and taste buds of several Northwest beer lovers. Now, with the help of Green Bottling, who works with more than 17 Northwest craft brewies, Caldera will feature a special seasonal line-up of beers in 22-ounce bottles. Known as “the Kettle Series,” this rotating assortment of brews, according to brewmaster and founder Jim Mills will feature eight different beers annually.

Lisa Morrison, aka the Beer Goddess, is hosting one of her popular women-only beer classes at Fort George Brewery & Public House on Feb. 20. It’s called Hoppy Housewives. You don’t have to be a housewife to attend, but you do have to be a woman! The two-hour afternoon class takes ladies on an entertaining and educational tour of several beer styles, as Lisa shares tips on pairing beer with food, cooking with beer — participants even get a take-home recipe book — and great stories about beer’s HERstory (instead of history). Light fare in the form of finger food and tapas will be provided so students don’t get hungry!

Don’t forget, it’s also Stout Month at the Fort George, with rotating stouts on draft from countless different breweries all month! Class attendees and their escorts are encouraged to make a weekend of it by booking a room at the newly opened Commodore Hotel, nearly right across the street from the brew pub! Details: http://www.commodoreastoria.com/

There’s a lot going on at Cascade Brewing these days. Their Raccoon Lodge was recently named as one of the world’s top 50 brewpubs in the world by RateBeer.com (See other breweries’ Northwest’s RateBeer accolades on a post here by Geoff Kaiser of Seattle Beer News). Further, nationally circulated Draft Magazine named Cascade’s Vlad the Impaler as one of the best 25 beers of 2009. Cascade’s Apricot Ale made Draft’s 2008 best of list as well.  On top of all this, the Cascade crew are working vigorously to get a new spacious barrel room and pub open at SE Belmont and 9th. They hope to be open some time this spring. We can’t wait!

Cascade brewmaster Ron Gansberg peruses through Draft Magazine

6th Annual Strange Brew Fest pushes envelopes of what beer can be as more than 30 Northwest microbreweries concoct some daring, eccentric, and capricious brews.

Being a Northwest beer geek, one can get a little jaded by the “run-of-the-mill” double dry-hopped India Pale Ale or bourbon-barrel aged imperial stout. For anyone, like us who craves  innovation and enjoys treading into uncharted territory when it comes to  recipe formulation with fermentables, Strange Brew Fest is a must.

Many beer geeks may have heard about a Jeroboam, but what about a Methuselah or a  Salmanazar?

Anyone who knows Preston Weesner knows the guy is seriously geeked about craft beer. When he’s not organizing and orchestrating fanatical beer festivals (Holiday Ale Fest, Portland International Beer Fest), he’s usually thinking about, talking about, and promoting great beer. Now, Mr. Weesner has teamed up with the beerophiles over at Saraveza to coordinate a unique and intimate tasting of world class beers from big ol’ bottles. This sort of  event is unlike anything many beer geeks have experienced before.

Hopworks Urban Brewery staff took the plunge to benefit Special Olympics on Saturday.

A team including brewers Ben Love and Speck Speckenbach threw themselves into the icy Columbia River as a part of a fund raiser to raise awareness and funds for the cause.

Hats off to New Old Lompoc for continuing to knock out mad money brews. They’ve got a great team of dudes making their nectar. The Bald Guy Brigade recently announced the new and improved Side Bar at 5th Quadrant. Now the cool barrel-agin’ space has a fireplace. Hells yeah!

The new fireplace at Side Bar is gonna be the toast of the Beer Craft beer crowd come winter 2010-2011. Thankfully we’ve been graced with warmer days of late. With all the barrel-aged delicious brews Lompoc is churning out these days, you can count on more coolness to come…Look for Lompoc at a special Brewpublicrawl in March!  We’re stoked.

Here’s a video involving some discussion between Oregon brewers about the emerging Cascadian Dark Ale beer style. This took place at a symposium hosted by Abram Goldman-Armstrong at Belmont Station.

Brewpublic at the Cascadian Dark Ale Symposium from Brewpublic.com

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but how many beers is it worth? Who knows. Here’s some pictures we took or came across this week that we thought you would like to see. We also included a few words on each.

The Big Three. Taken on a cellphone camera, we ran into three of Oregon’s brewing big dogs. Curtis of Cascade, Alex of Upright, and Brett of Rogue were at Upright’s tasting room before the last Trailblazers home game against Utah. Curtis a Utah native, forgive him, was happy to see the Blazers fall to his Jazz. Alex was pouring his unique Turkey on Rye brew, a sour chili and chocolate beer unlike anything we’ve ever had.

Separated at Birth? Two great beer minds and all around jovial dudes . We made a visit to Saraveza for a special meet the brewer event featuring Matt Van Wyk of Eugene’s Oakshire Brewing. The brewery brought their new Smokin’ Bagpipes Scotch Ale, Two Wheeler Red IPA, and other delicious faves like Very Ill-Tempered Gnome and Collaboration Eviler. These were served by Van Wyk’s long lost cousin Jonathan Carmean aka Oregon bartender of the year.

The Elder: Tyler the Elder is one of the best barkeeps of all-time. Filling out the all-star line-up of Saravazian sluggers, the Elder and Jonathan Carmean are like the Bash Bros from the Oakland A’s in the 1980s (sans the steroids). Having great beers is not all it takes to run a cool bar. Having a cool atmosphere with great staff is what sets Saraveza ahead of the pack. Thanks for the Sang Noir, sir. Respect your elders.

Only in Portland (in the US): Whilst traipsing about the streets of Southeast Portland, Oregon, I noticed this empty bottle of Kasteel Rouge off the sidewalk by a convenience store. At first I thought it must be a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 or some ghetto booty liquor, but lo and behold, it was a bottle of Belgian joy. I don’t think I’ve seen a bottle of Flemish Red just tossed to the side like this. Cheap beer and empty potato chip bags, sure, but this is a bottle I’d keep in my window sill for a while in remembrance.

Dog’s Digs: We stumbled across this photo on Alan Sprints’ Facebook page. Sprints is the founder and brewer of Hair of the Dog. The brewery is moving to a new close-in Southeast location. Looks like there’s a lot of work a head for the esteemed brewery, but it looks like there will be plenty more space to do what they do best.

Four Play: Upright Brewing have been turning a lot of beer geeks’ heads lately. Brewers Alex Ganum and Gerritt Ill have seemingly boundless imaginations when it comes to recipe creation and flavor development. This week a special soured version of their wheaten Four Ale was drawn from Pinot Noir casks where added cherry fruit gave the brew a one-of-a-kind profiile. It was then bottled for further conditioning. Look for a special keg of this beautifully tart beer at Brewpublic’s upcoming My Beery Valentine event over Valentine’s Day/Zwickelmania weekend (February 13 and 14). Super limited bottles will arrive in future months as well. Stay tuned.

Super Jubel: Once every ten years Deschutes Brewing releases the Super Jubel, a jacked up rendition of the brewery’s beloved winter warmer ale. We saw this picture from a post on Deschutes’ Twitter page and it made us smile.

Rock Art Brewery’s trademark battle with Monster Energy Drink maker, Hansen’s Beverage leads to pursuit of reform in trademark law.

You might remember the story about Rock Art Brewing of Vermont being bullied by Hansen Energy over their beer named Vermonster. Hansen initially argued that this barleywine could somehow create confusion with their Monster energy drink in a can. After a huge outcry of support for Rock Art by the craft beer community, Hansen Energy backed down. Here’s a new video explaining how this incident may open the door to the reformation of trademark law. (Mind the 80’s hairdos)