California’s Bear Republic’s HopFest hits Portland, Oregon with some phenomenal hoppy brews.

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

by Michael O’Connor of Bailey’s Taproom

Most people’s basements don’t collect anything more interesting than dust. Bailey’s basement, on the other hand, is where all the beer that’s too good to drink must be hoarded until such time as the world is about to end or we announce another annual festival spotlighting the best in rare and delicious brews.

Here the uber beer geeks of Beer Advocate link up at Bailey’s Taproom to enjoy a plethora of rare cellared treats. As the event unfolds, the mood of the room becomes more jovial. That’s what happens as you drink more favorable and sought after brews.

Brewpublic Visits the January 2010 BeerAdvocate Tasting from Brewpublic.com

I suppose here could exist the year in review, but after five top five lists, I am sure many of you have probably had your fill with those shenanigans. So, once again, we look back to the first weekend of 2010. What a weekend filled with new and exciting brews and a few age old favorites.

Friday was New Years Day, and as expected, not a lot of folks had taken to the streets. However, it was Friday after all, and people love them a Friday. Thursdays mixing of beer, wine, champagne, and hard liquor made for a slow uprising for our posse on Friday. But, this did not deter our weekend beer excursions.

Taste the Roses

Holy freakin’ crap! You know it was a wild weekend when we’re just getting Saturday’s recap up on a Tuesday. Pardon the delay. Myself, like many, have felt like Prometheus for most of the weekend.

“And ready-witted Prometheus he bound with inextricable bonds, cruel chains, and drove a shaft through his middle, and set on him a long-winged eagle, which used to eat his immortal liver; but by night the liver grew as much again every day as the long-winged bird devoured in the whole day.” –Theogony

As we Brewpublicans prepare for the weekend’s festivities, we are honing our palates and conditioning our livers to endure the delicious mind-blowing bounty ahead.

Last night I sat down with tastemaker Geoff Phillips of Bailey’s Taproom to sample a bunch of brews I had around the house. Here’s the notes I took and our ratings on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the highest. Sorry if I botched any of yours, Geoff) :

The interest for microbreweries and flavours from our terroir Québecois is still growing. Sunshine and mild temperatures have attracted a crowd of 65 000 visitors (2008 data) to the 8th edition of the unique Chambly Flavours Festival, an event which every beer lover should attend. I do not remember exactly, but I’m quite sure that I’ve attended every edition of this festival.

Tonight we were able to get our palates around a flavorsome new maltilicious Full Sail fresh hop beer. Despite the hoparazzi not having many cameras handy, we can confirm that Oregon Guildmeister Brian Butenschoen was on hand to quaff the birra delicioso. Here’s an incriminating cell phone photo taken by Brewpublic’s own Margaret Lut.

Gearing up for our Brewpublic Anniversary event at Saraveza on October 9th and our KillerBeerFest at Bailey’s on October 10th, we couldn’t help but feel the vibe of the harvest season. Though we didn’t anticipate the event to be much of a fresh hop event since the Portland fresh hop festivities will be in full effect the same day at Oaks Park, we were happy to recently discover our event will feature some fantabulous wet hop brews exclusive to the weekend. For example, our friends from Barley Browns, owner Tyler Brown and head brewer Shawn Kelso of Baker City were kind enough to share a gem of a beer from their four-barrel brewery’s library. Making the five hour trek from their Eastern Oregon hotspot, these guys brought us a one-of-a-kind Wild Fresh Hopped American Strong Ale. They will also feature some of these unique highly sought after brews at Belmont Station in the near future. During their brief stay in Portland Brown and Kelso also dropped off eight beers to MacTarnahan’s/Pyramid to submit them in this year’s GABF. Expect some medals from these chaps.

Knock, knock…Who’s there?…Monday morning, and a hard liver.

90 degree days seem comforting following last week’s string of triple digits. It helped to justify the kind of beer we subjected ourselves to, like it was the heart of winter and we needed a warming glass of strong beer.