From the horse’s mouth. Hood River, Oregon…today!:

Matt has made a tradition of “loading the taps” for our Anniversary Parties. This year’s team is 15 strong:

As you probably know from reading here, Saturday March 20 is the BrewPubliCrawl, a showcase of great beer bars and craft top Pacific Northwest brewers. At the SE Division Street debut, one of the most anticipated breweries will be local favorites, Hopworks Urban Brewery (HUB). HUB assistant brewmaster Ben Love just informed us that his brewery will be debuting a special new lager at BrewPubliCrawl. For those about to bock, we salute you!

More from HUB:

Beginning March 20, 2010, Oregon Beer Odyssey (OBO) will offer classes, tastings, and events designed to promote beer appreciation and education. Classes will be held at sites around Portland, including notable bottle shops such as The Hop and Vine, the Wine and Spirit Archive, Saraveza, Bailey’s Taproom and The Beer Mongers.

In March and April, class topics will include Oregon Beer Odyssey’s signature, introductory class Tasting and Talking About Beer, and one entitled Great Beers of the Northwest.  Future classes will include style-specific workshops and overview courses on the great beers of Belgium, Germany, England, Scandinavia, and Italy. Oregon Beer Odyssey’s full class schedule is available on its website (www.oregonbeerodyssey.com) and on Facebook.

Have you heard the news from Cascade Brewing? They’ve been bottling a deeply complex new Kriek. Plus, we’ve sampled brewmaster Ron Gansberg’s hops shoots that were harvested recently this late winter.

Sometimes we can forget how freakin’ cool it is to have a Deschutes Brewpub in downtown Portland. Not long ago, you’d have to make the three hour trek out to Bend to get your paws on some of the exclusives that are now just a hop, skip, and a jump away. Even better, too, is that now that there are more locations, this means more tasty one-off Deschutes’ brews in general.

This week, as usual, we rolled into Deschutes Portland and were gladdened by the presence of some interesting new brews.

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.

Today, Monday March 8, 2010 you can taste Ninkasi’s Spring Reign seasonal release and and their year-round line-up of Total Domination, Believer Imperial Red, and Tricerahops Imperial IPA. Spring Reign and a very rare small keg of Critical Hit Barleywine will also be featured on draft. If you didn’t try the The Critical Hit at Lucky Lab’s Barleywine fest this weekend this is your last chance. We tried it there and highly recommend it to any fan of big, hopped-the-hell-out brews!

As you are probably aware (seeing as how you’re a beer geek reading this), there’s a lot going on craft beer-wise in Cascadia during the month of March. Really, there’s always a lot going on here. It seems the fun never ends. Here’s three can’t miss events that we recommend you attend for the love of great beer.

March 13 Double Mountain 3rd Anniversary Party

One of Hood River’s top three best breweries, Double Mountain, has been turning heads and captivating palates big time. Now just three years deep in the game, they’re throwing a blow out not to be skipped. Starting at noon on Saturday March 13 and lasting until 11PM, there will be lots of great DM beer, an array of great live music, and delicious food. All this under a heated tent outside of the brewpub. Read more at our earlier post here. We’ll see you there!

Brewpublic interviews Nick Arzner founder and brewer at Block 15 Restaurant & Brewery in the cellar of the old Gazette Times Printing Press where some dynamic barrel-aging is underway.

More from our cellar sampling:

In case you missed it, the Block 15 Restaurant and Brewery in Corvallis, Oregon has been flipping any and all switches when it comes to craft beer. Founder Nick Arzner continues to challenge himself through an ongoing process of designing not only imaginative brews that run the gamut of flavor, but what he’s making is simply delicious.

On Saturday February 27, 2010 Block 15 celebrated their 2nd Anniversary at their downtown brewpub where nearly 400 batches of beer have been brewed to date. With an impressive line-up of at least a dozen (usually more) beers on tap at any given time, Arzner operates on the Belgian brewers creed “Create something new based on age old traditions.” This is not only true of the beers that include high alpha hops behemoths, light session fruit infused pours, and funky farmhouse style wild ales, but it is also indicative of the delectable and sustainable menu options. Pastas, seafoods, salads, all that employ locally harvested ingredients whenever possible. Further, Block 15’s passion for community and art is evident in almost every aspect of the pub. Live music is a regular occurrence here. An ecclectic assortment of zydeco, blues, jazz, funk and blue grass and be felt resonating through the place.