flaskey

A couple friends of ours from Chicago are currently here enjoying the food and beers of Portland and tomorrow we’ll all be going to Portland’s Cheers To Belgian Beers. What makes this an interesting event beside the fact that it’s beer, is the use of 1 strain of yeast. The way they picked out what style of beer each brewery had to make was decided on a dart throw as stated on the site.

Here’s a list of the beers that will be there (see the site as well):

This was P and my second trip to the Spring Beer & Wine Fest (you can see the previous post here: Spring Beer & Wine Fest 2009). We had a great time at last year’s festival, but this one didn’t seem quite as fun (that didn’t stop us from spending like 5 hours there though). I think the problem was that several of the beers they had were the same as last year, or I’ve previously had them already.

List of beers in no particular order:

1. Mateveza Ale – Yerba Mate Ale
2. Schneider-Weisse – Schneider-Weisse
3. Full Sail Brewing Co. – Session Black Lager
4. Crispin Cider Co. – Crispin Original Cider
5. Gilgamesh Brewing – Black Mamba
6. Seven Brides Brewing – Oatmeal Stout
7. Howe Sound Brewing Co. – Diamond Head Oatmeal Stout
8. Hopworks Urban Brewery – Organic Secession Black IPA
9. Oakshire Brewing Co. – O’Dark :30
10. Block 15 – Nebula, Naked Oat Stout
11. Everybody’s Brewery – Daily Bread Common Ale
12. Lompoc – Saison the Beach
13. Eel River Brewing Co. – Porter & Organic IPA
14. Ninkasi Brewing Co. – Reign
15. Redhook Ale Brewery – 8-4-1 Expedition Ale
16. 10 Barrel Brewing Co. – Apocalypse IPA & Sinister Black Ale

I think my favorite out of all of the ones tasted was probably the 8-4-1 Expedition Ale by Redhook. It had a slight vanilla flavor to it along with a taste of bourbon. For the most part though none of them really stood out as a superstar beer unfortunately. I also had a pint of Walking Man Brewery’s Homo Erectus as my beer for donating $5 to the MDA.

One thing that we were both happy about was a particular winery that we ended up buying 4 bottles from. Their website can be found here: Gouger Cellars Winery. Our two favorites were:

“Mine” (a red dessert wine similar to a port)

Blend # 903 which includes: Malbec 30%, Cabernet Sauvignon 30%,  Cabernet Franc 20%, Syrah 20% from the Walla Walla Valley.

Their other wines were also good, but these two stood out the most.

The other winery we liked and bought a bottle for aging is from Palotai Winery called Attila.