We’ve never much thought of Finnegans as a craft beer drinker’s place, but when they contacted us about this event, we had to pass it along (if not for the video alone).

For Finnegans’ St. Patrick’s Pint-a-Thon, beer drinkers can simply pledging to drink Finnegans throughout the month of March and can help to alleviate poverty in our community with every sip.

Brewpublic’s Marc Demeule and his homebrewing friends had a one of a kind brewing session, in extreme conditions of the Quebec winter.

We decided to brew an extreme IPA with all the leftover hops we had.  For a 50 liter batch, we included 20,8 oz of whole and pellet hops.  We also threw in all of our leftover home grown hops (maybe a half pound of Mt Hood).  With an anticipated 140,9 IBU, according to ProMash, we only expected something that could be drinkable, but extreme too.  If you want the complete recipe, just e-mail me.

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.

Portland has been blessed by great weather lately considering it’s January! Yesterday, hanging out in the back yard with my friend Dave, I noticed our hellebores had flowered and realized it was the first time I have enjoyed my backyard in some time. As we settled on a few tasty beers a package arrived from Craft Brewers Alliance containing two Red Hook Copperhook Ales. Not a beer I would probably reach for on the shelf, but perfectly quenching on a day such as this. The warm sun felt great on our faces. My cat even enjoyed soaking it in atop our fence. Copperhook has a nice balance of robust maltiness considering its sessionability; coupled with 35 IBUs of hop snap, it was a very nice sunny winter day beer.

A great thing about living in the Pacific Northwest is that with all of the winter rain, you can count on days like this betwixt the grayness. 53 degrees Fahrenheit. Another great beer drinking day.

We opened a bottle of Dominus Vobiscum (Latin for “The Lord Be With You”)Blanche from our friend Marc in Quebec. A great spicy golden-tawny 5% ABV wheat ale that paired perfectly with this afternoon.

It’s great to know the days are gradually growing longer and warmer. West of the Cascades, December showers can bring January flowers.

From my beer fridge I pulled out a bottle of Lake Louie’s Imperial Stout that I purchased when in Wisconsin. Deep, dark, coffee complexity with some mild sour off flavors probably due to age, but enjoyable nonetheless.

My friend Gammet hung out with us and enjoying playing in the grass. After being sick a few weeks ago, he was back to his old self and loving the weather as much as we were.

Being a beer collector, I sometimes find that all I have in the fridge are barleywines, imperial stouts, and sours that I only break out on special occasions. The lighter stuff goes quickly. I found a bottle of homebrew given to me by a friend. Unfortunately I can not remember who gave it to me. Perhaps the bottle cap above will be familiar to that person if they are reading. It was a magnificent imperial stout with a big coffee presence. Thank you to that person!

The sun had to set eventually. Dave left and Gammet and I moved inside. Our friends Ty and Laura came by and shared some great brews with us including a few special beers from Brewdog. The Paradox Smokehead was intensely peaty as the label indicates. 10% ABV. It also was heavily whiskeyed. Can I use whiskey as a verb? Well, I just did. The Chaos Theory was not so chaotic (not compared to Barley Brown’s Chaos or Double Mountain’s Imperial Chaos) but it did have a deep ingredient base for a 7% ABV brew. A little too unbalanced for my liking but hey, I like most beer, so I guess I did like it. Make sense? I’m confusing myself.

All things end with sours. I was anxious to give Cascade’s Sang Rouge another go after uncapping a sample bottle the brewers gave me a few weeks back. Very nice beer. I need to get more stat. I could live off this stuff.

Other delicious beers were enjoyed that I didn’t mention, and it’s too bad, but I didn’t get a picture of the Sang Rouge. Anyhow, I am tired of typing so I will leave you with a few more pictures. Enjoy the sunshine!

Keeping with a somewhat randomness of this post, here’s a video by my friend Stuart Valentine.

By Marc Demeule

All the professional brewers I know have a common point. They started their brewing career at home. Homebrewing lets you create your own recipes and experiment unexpected beers with ingredients like oysters, peanut butter, Mountain Dew and sugar-beets. Those were in four different recipes, rest assured.

More Top 5 lists. You gotta love it!

Looks like fellow blogger, Jeff over at Beervana, has posted his own short list of highlights/trends in beer in 2009. Here is our own take on the matter.

Top 5 Oregon Beer Stories of 2009

1. The announcement of 19+ breweries and brewpub opening in Oregon in 2010 (Beer Around Town, Beervana)

2. Representative Ben Cannon’s 1900% beer tax increase fails

People love lists. While Brewpublic is still compiling the top 5 beers of the year along with some other great lists we wanted to get our readers warmed up with the follow lists:

John Cusack makes top 5 list in High Fidelity

Top 5 Beers to Drink When it Snows

1. BridgePort – Highland Ambush

Well, it’s the holidays and what better time for a holiday version of “You Might Be A Beer SNOB If…”  Here’s 25 telltale signs that the craft malted goodness means a lot to you.

1. You gift wrap beer.

Thanks to BotLpLayA for emailing us this interesting Corona Carol. Invierno feliz!