Cascade Brewing’s Barrel House Tart Fruit Festival 2015 [Guest Post]

Tart Fruit Festival 2015

[Another great guest blog post from Joe Coulter!]

Nathan and I met up to take part in the annual Tart Fruit Festival at Cascade Brewery. Nathan, a fanatic about sour beers decided to take me up on my offer and educate me on why sour beers are delicious, unique, and good. And after trying six unique, flavorful beers that is exactly what I discovered.

Cascade Brewing is the leading barrel house in the styles of sour beers in the Northwest. This brewery currently houses 750 French oak, Kentucky Bourbon and Northwest wine barrels that house all of their varieties of beers: reds, porters, stouts, wheats, ambers, and blonds.  This unique blend and storage time gives each sour beer a great and unique flavor. Not a single beer tastes, looks, or smells the same.

Also a very cool thing that this brewery does: Every Tuesday at 6:00pm you can watch their oak barrels get tapped. Nathan has done this and says it was quite the experience. But you better sign up soon because the next open date is in December. Good luck!!

Well while enjoying the great atmosphere and conversations, we also tasted some great beer. Here is what we tried:

• Manhattan NW (2013) – This beer started sweet and tart, but then left the taste buds wanting more.
• Cinnamon Rum Runner – This beer is AMAZING. Starts of strong and sweet and ends with a flourish of cinnamon, perfect for a fire side date night.
• Sour Portland Punch – Keep Portland weird, this one is sweet and has a “weird” flavor
• Elderberry – Tastes like elderberry Koolaid…
• Chocolate Bourbonic Plague – Wow. Great sweet beer with a lot of chocolate. Great balance.
• Bourbon Cointreau – Great simply sweet beer that starts with a nice subtle orange flavor that ends with the perfect bourbon finish.

Have you been to Cascade Brewing Barrel House? What have you tried? What did you like? Let me know.