In case you missed it (and your liver might thank you if you had), Lucky Lab’s Barleywine and Big Beer Fest this year was a huge success. Everything you’d expect from a beer festival, the selection was exceptional, the atmosphere was welcoming, and the crowds were not overwhelming.

The event kicked off for the 13th annual installment on Friday March 5 at noon and lasted until 11PM before recommencing again the next day, again at noon. We did not attend the first day of the festival in fear of us not being able to return for our volunteer shift Saturday. Saturday the weather was spectacular, and a bicycle ride across town to the fest was invigorating. The warm sun shined through the partially opened garage door of the spacious brewpub on NW Quimby Street; a hearty and well needed beer fest was underway. A few people made their way to the tables as the event kicked off. These folks were the beer geeks who live for this kind of thing, some of whom were still recovering from the previous day’s samplings.

Since their inception in 1996, Seattle, Washington’s Elysian Brewing Company has continuously put forth some noteworthy brews. Beginning at their Capitol Hill location, three founders Dave Buhler, Joe Bisacca, and Dick Cantwell grew from simply a small brewpub to a kegging and bottling force throughout the Northwest and beyond.

Today, with three Seattle locations including a Tangletown pub in Seattle’s Greenlake neighborhood and the spacious Elysian Fields brewpub adjacent to the Qwest Field and Safeco Field, Elysian is reaching the palates and sparking the interest of beer lovers from all around the world.  Their line-up of beers includes six year-round favorites and eight seasonals. So far Elysian has brewed more than 60 different beers. This appears to be growing exponentially of late, as the brewery tries their hand in more and more off-the-wall brews. In 2008, Elysian made national brewing news when they agreed to team up with New Belgium Brewing of Fort Collins, Colorado. This was not a merger, but an amicable and symbiotic relationship that has thus far inspired more innovation from both parties. A statement from New Belgium’s blog puts it best:

“Both of our brewing teams will use each other’s brewhouses while remaining independent enterprises. We’ll be brewing small-batch creative and experimental beers in Seattle like the Lips of Faith series while getting closer to our customers in the fertile Pacific Northwest brewing scene. Elysian in turn will brew larger batches in Fort Collins and be able to handle growing distribution needs as their beers become available in new U.S. markets, like New York, which opened July 1st of (2008).”

In this effort, the brewers have “collabeerated” to put out three distinctly adventuresome brews known as “The Trip.”

Continuing in this same pioneering spirit, Elysian once again has put its best foot forward in a collaborative effort. This time is was in conjunction with Green Flash Brewing of Vista, California. Brewpublic spoke with Elysian’s co-founder and sales guy Dave Buhler at a special event at the Horse Brass Pub showcasing four of their exclusive beers, including this consanguinity of  Northwest and SoCal brewers known as Red Queen Saison.

“Chuck Silva (Green Flash brewmaster) and I were sharing a taxi from an event in New York at the Blind Tiger with Dick Cantwell (Elysian brewmaster)” said Buhler.  “Chuck’s beer was just into the Seattle market and we thought it would be cool if we collaborated.”

Green Flash brewmaster Chuck Silva

Both Elysian and Green Flash are well known for their line-up of floral hop-laden IPAs, but the Red Queen is nonesuch a brew. A hazy light orange-copper bodied specimen with a soft wispy whitish head, the nose of this saison is bursting with peppery, appley notes this beer is definitely not a hop head’s go-to beer. The spiciness and ciderous presence is not only imparted by the Westmalle Trappist yeast, but also the utilization of two types od Washington apples, Pink Lady and Braeburn varietals. Further, pink peppercorns and rose hips were added together to unleash magnificent aroma fit for spring. The flavor and especially the mouthfeel was quite dissimilar to most saisons. Lacking the carbonic effervescence of many Belgian-style saisons, the Queen was a balance of sweet fruitiness and toasty breadiness. Not cloying as might be expected, and certainly not tingling the tongue as sharply either. The alcohol is light and barely detectable and rose hips give a flowery bitterness very discernible from hops bitterness.

Buhler, who was also Rogue’s first sales person says the Red Queen was “on the get ‘er done timeline with the beers we’ve got now” and added “We were trying to develop a session beer.” He says that some of the offering Elysian has at the Fields location serve to capture the interest of light beer drinkers and to educate them. “We made an East Kent Golding for the Founder’s Soccer Fan” he said. “We also made a beer called the Men’s Room Ale for a local (Seattle) radio station.” The beer was brewed fro the Men’s Room Show, a popular schlock jock show on KISW. The beer’s proceeds were donated to charity. “If a Pils could be an ale, it would be this beer” Buhler said. “We used an ale yeast with Czech Saaz hops.” The beer finished at about 4% ABV.

Elysian Brewing co-founder Dave Buhler at the Horse Brass Pub

Other Elysian beers pouring at the Horse Brass included a chewy, malt-forward yet healthfully hopped Ambrosia Maibock, the floral seasonal hit, Avatar Jasmine IPA, and a boldy hopped Cascadian-style Prometheus India Pale Ale. Publican and Horse Brass founder Don Younger was on hand and a good time was had by all. We’ve yet to encounter a bad beer from Elysian. Thanks again, Horse Brass and Elysian! Cheers!

Brewpublic visits Eugene, Oregon to explore the beers of the Central Willamette Valley. Here we catch up with Oakshire Brewing, the humble brewers of delicious beer. Fresh off the heals of the beloved KLCC Beer Festival, we get a glimpse into the seasonal, specialty, and one-off beers thanks to brewery founder Jeff Althouse.

“This is the hour of the Shire-folk, when they arise from their quiet fields, to shake the towers and counsels of the Great.” -Elrond, from Lord of the Rings.

This past weekend Brewpublic made the journey south to Oregon’s second largest city, Eugene. In this “Emerald City” which is home to Oregon’s largest University and the birthplace of Nike, a thriving craft beer community is home to well known hot spots like Ninkasi Brewing, Rogue Track Town Brewery, McMenamin’s High Street Brewpub, and  Oakshire Brewing.

Brewpublic was storming the gates when the good folks at Migration Brewing made their official opening on Wednesday February 24, 2010. Right beside us was Portland Beer and Music’s Jason Wallace for the inaugural pours of Widmer’s Collaborator brew, the Hallucinator (Check out Wallace’s site for a nice write up on Migration and an update from Concordia’s Beer Brawl III). According to Migration brewer Mike Branes, the first brew will be coming sometime next week. It will be dubbed MPA (Migration Pale Ale), and promises to be a crisp, hoppy, and aromatic India Pale Ale somewhere in the ballpark of 5.7% ABV. Branes apprenticed at Barley Johns Brew Pub in Minneapolis, Minnesota before moving to Portland, Oregon, and says the inspiration for his first release comes from Bell’s Two Hearted Ale.

Another weekend has come and gone. This past one involved Spring-like weather in mid-February, something we are lucky to enjoy here in the Pacific Northwest. The cherry trees blossoming and several others budding made it clear that the coldest and darkest days of winter here are finally behind us. This lends itself to better accessibility to better beer. And, as you might expect, we took full advantage of this golden opportunity.

Friday

Friday kicked off with more of the same fantastic weather that would ensue all weekend long. The perennial crocuses made an appearance to soak up the warm sunshine along with a number of other budding plants that had remained dormant all winter. We enjoyed it the same, opening the glass facing on the screen door to let the warmth of this pseudo-spring in.

Zwickelmania weekend was awesome! Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time to visit every spot that we wanted to. Still, we did hit up some favorites. Here’s what went down:

Heater-Allen at Bailey’s Taproom

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.

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.

The past week has been teeming with mouthwatering, hoppy dark brews, starting back mid-last week when we attended a Cascadian Dark Ale blind tasting with friends. Here we were lucky to sample ten different CDAs and get a feel of the various nuances from a unique unbiased perspective. Now, as can be expected with any blind tasting, some were obviously more favorable than others. Style champion and all around beer geek Abram Goldman-Armstrong got us excited for the CDA Week at Belmont Station and the CDA Symposium he would be hosting on Saturday morning. All and all, we’ve probably never had as many of one style of beer as we did over the last week.

Thanks to Ezra for hosting and sharing and everyone who participated in the Cascadian Dark Ale blind tasting this past week. Here’s some notes on these ten beer offerings.