Weekend in Review

You can always gauge how much fun your beer weekend was by how subfused you feel come Monday.  My brother Mario’s Bachelor Crawl was of historic proportions, and having it in Beer Mecca only amplified the magnitude of the whole shebang.  You might have guessed we would have had the circumspection to fold after that festive Friday…right?  Well, this is Brewpublic, and on any given weekend, a new exbeerience can present itself, therefore, it is paramount to keep on ones toes and anticipate the next satiating sacrifice.

As you can imaging, manana following the “Crawl to make you crawl” was off to a sluggish beginning.  Eight-pub-quaffing calls for a liver regrowth period.  But, gleeful was I to discover that by Saturday evening, the old thing was back, and yearning for more.  The early portion of the day demanded a visit to our friends David and Arlene Nunez of Vancouver, Washington’s By the Bottle.  At By the Bottle, its no chore to throwdown a grip of money of a number of craft beers unavailable in Oregon.  The great thing about not feeling well enough to drink beer, is the ability to still be able to purchase beer. At BTB, I was delighted to find the likes of Oskar Blues Ten Fidy, Port Brewing’s Midnight Session Lager, Ellensburg, Washington’s Iron Horse Loco Imperial Red and Brown Ass Brown Ale, and as well as a number  Southern Tier brews (Gemini blend, Chokolat, Cuvee #2, Krampus Imperial Helles) that are like the folklore of Sasquatch south of the Columbia River.  There are reports of them being sited, but its rare, and the pictures are often out of focus and for all you know its some guy in a big furry suit. I digress…

After grabbing a number of awesome beers across state lines, we headed back to town to rest up a bit.  Later, we reunited with the Nunez crew for brews at Alameda Brewing.  A dry-hopped Double Pale Ale really hit the spot and set the table nicely for Alameda’s El Torero Organic IPA.  As we left Alameda and and walked down NE Fremont, we could smell beers brewing at Dean’s Scene across the street.  We thought about dropping in, but didn’t want to impede their productivity, and we feared we may not resurface for some time.

The penultimate hotspot for Saturday was the Illustrious Saraveza.  Beertenders Jonathan and Tyler were pouring some phenomenal brews, including the latest Double Mountain Das Boot Alt.  I had to go for this first as an homage to Matt and Charlie’s 2-Year Anniversary, in Hood River, that I had missed on this fine day.  A Cascade Sour Trippel was sampled.  A quite nicely tarten and crisp pale-bodied Belgian, this was evidence of Dr. Gansberg’s magnificent skills.  Beer geek Brian Murphy even let me get a taste of the newly bottled Mad River Serious Madness Black Ale. The nightcap to end all nightcaps was a bottle of Nogne Dark Horizon 2.0.  At over 17% ABV, this bombastic dark dish of malt, as Jonathan indicated “needs to age a year or so.”  The flavor of the Dark Horizon emitted a muscular alcohol jolt.  I likened the creamy booziness to an estery whiff of Central European potato vodka.  Like the Polish-distilled Zabrowka made from buffalo grass, the mildly tart and deeply creamy fragrance lingered as it mowed my tongue without abandon.

Perhaps the most exciting piece of beer news I heard all weekend was from my friend Joe Middleton.  In honor of his cat’s 18th birthday, Joe has brewed a Cascade dry-hopped catnip beer.  Now that his cat is legal (at least in Canada) maybe he can have a sip, too!