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.

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.

Our friends at Saraveza wanted you to know about the Killingsworth Street St. Patty’s Day Crawl.

Celebrate the luck of the Irish and hit up Killingsworth’s finest! A token buys you green beer, wine or housemade yummy soup at Saraveza. You can also turn your tokens in at the Red Fox (Irish Stew, St. Patty’s Drink Special), Ducketts Public House (Well Cocktail, Draft Beer, Appetizer), Eddie’s Flat Iron Pizza (Draft Beer, Slice of Pizza, House Salad), Hop & Vine (Paddy’s Girl Shot, Guinness, Irish Sausage Roll), Beaterville Bar (Green Salad, Mashed Potatoes & Gravy, Draft Beer), Sagittarius (Chips & Salsa, Draft Beer, Well Cocktail) or Yorgo’s (Hummus Plate, Draft Beer, Well Cocktail).

Purchase your tokens now (or on St Patty’s!) at Saraveza or the Hop & Vine. 5 tokens/$18 or 10 tokens/$30. Killingsworth Crawl Map w/ redeemable items included.

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.

The brewers at Astoria, Oregon’s Fort George Brewery and Public House are getting ready for their expansion. This week, head brewer Jack Harris headed to Houston, Texas to acquire a 30-barrel brew system from Saint Arnold Brewing Company, Texas’ oldest craft brewery who are amidst some incredible expanding of their own. Right now five trucks loaded with the barrels and three 1,800-gallon fermentation tanks are on their way to Astoria. The aim is to have the new system up and running by September. This will quadruple the capacity of the current  brewhouse that will soon take over an entire city block by where they are currently located. In other exciting Fort George news, the brewery has announced that with the beefed up production, they anticipate having 16-ounce cans of their Vortex IPA available sometime during the summer of next year.

Oregon Trail Brewery and Old World Deli in Corvallis, OR

Last weekend on our action packed travel to Corvallis, we learned that the college town was about more than just Oregon State Beavers and their prosperous Division 1 sports programs. The seat of Benton County, Corvallis is home to over 50,000 people as well as a thriving craft beer community.

Orange and black lights up the streets where the Beaver faithful seem to never waiver from cheering on their favorite school. In fact Oregon State University offers a Fermentation Science option that is approved by the Institute of Food Technologists program. In recent news, Indie Hops, an Oregon  supplier of aroma hops, donated $807,000 toward a new program for aroma hop research at the university in the College of Agricultural Sciences. In total, the hops merchant has provided over $1 million toward hops breeding and chemistry research. This is not only good news for OSU and Oregon, but it’s great news for much of the North American craft beer community.

Get your stunt liver primed for this coming Friday and Saturday, March 5 and 6. You’re gonna need it. Lucky Lab is hosting the thirteenth annual Barleywine and Big Beer Festival at their NW Quimby brewpub. The spacious setting is the perfect venue for such an event. In the leading city for craft beer, this brewpub isone of Portland, Oregon’s finest.

A recent tour of the cooler thanks to brewer Ben Flerchinger revealed nearly 60 beers waiting to be tapped. More are still on there way. According to the Lab technician, the average alcohol by volume of all these brews is 9.89%. Hot damn!

Check out the New School blog’s preview and picks for this year’s festival. There’s a list of the beers there, too.

The Barleywine and Big Beer Fest will occur at 1945 NW Quimby in Portland, Oregon.

One of the most affable craft beer personalities in Oregon is undoubtedly Jamie Floyd. The face of Eugene’s Ninkasi Brewing, Floyd’s passion for beer and people is infectious. These days it is seemingly unfathomable how much Ninkasi has grown from their start just a few years back. That is, until you spend a few moments talking with the company’s figurehead and the founding brewer who cut his teeth on Steelhead back in the 1990s. Always willing to spend time with friends and quaff a tasty brew, Floyd is undoubtedly one of the friendliest and most popular Oregon brew icons of recent history.

Brewpublic caught up with Jamie Floyd on a recent trip to the Emerald City and we were wowed by his brewery’s ongoing expansion that now includes a roughly 2000 square foot artsy office space and chic tasting space. On top of this the 30 barrel brewhouse with 100 barrel fermenters/brites is beefing up to facilitate around 32,000 barrels by the end of 2010 and making way for the possibility of cranking out around 90,000 barrels in the not too distant future as they are soon to install two 240 barrel fermenters sometime this month.

Tonight at Belmont Station Southern Oregon Brewing (SOB) founder Dr. Tom Hammond will introduce the brewery’s new labels and their Nice Rack IPA in bottles for the first time. Brewpublic recently visited Medford, Oregon with Green Bottling to help with this bottling. Other freshly bottled brews from SOB will include their flagship Pin-Up Porter, Woodshed Red, Pale Ale, Gold Digger Lager, and a phenomenal limited release 2008 Barley Wine featuring a blend of Wild Turkey and Jack Daniels barrel-aged brew. According to Belmont Station, SOB will have the Nice Rack IPA on draft this evening.