Occidental - BiteSize Brews

Apparently it has been the summer of beer festivals. I’m not complaining at all. Last weekend, my friends Jeffrey, Simon and I hit up the first annual Lager Fest 2013! Like any first annual anything, there were some weird things. $10 for a plastic cup, with a discount sticker on the bottom. (Honestly, you aren’t fooling anyone.) Bracelets for tickets. The $20 entry got you 10 samples, however, there were 12 LagerFest icons on each bracelet. Thanks for the two extra samples, almost makes up for the $10 plastic cup.

While I’m not a big fan of the plastic cups, the bracelet for tickets idea was a new and interesting one for me. You can’t really loose them, which is common with tokens. You could still “share” by handing over your arm for a buddy to get a sample. But I’m not sure how it would work for multi-day events. Plus, having more than one bracelet looks a little funny…

Regardless of “first annual” issues that I’m confident will be smooth out for the “second annual” event next year. I’m a huge lager fan coming from the East Coast, so I was excited to try some new beers. For those of you who don’t know:

Lagers are a type of beer that is fermented and conditions at a low temperature. Pale lagers are also know as bock, pilsners (pils) and marzen, while dark lagers can be called dunkel or schwarzbier. The storage of cold beer was originally called “lagering” in caves during the medieval period.

Here is what we tried:

Float by Breakside
Wild Rice Pils by Buckman Botanical Brewery
Experimental Batch* by Deschutes
Discount Double Czech by Elysian
Pfeifferhorn Lager by Epic
Pivo Pils by Firestone Walker
Down 5 Lager by Fort George
Dark Meddle by Gigantic
Filbert Lager by Gilgamesh – “Filbert” is Portland-ese for “hazelnut”
Octoberfest by Heater Allen
El Comandante by Lompoc
Lager by Montucky Cold Snacks – My favorite of the Fest!
Merica by Oakshire
Dortmunder by Occidental
Black Lager by Rogue
Foam by Sierra Nevada
Downward Spiral by Widmer

What is your favorite lager?

* Seriously, I think it would be a fun job to name beers. Can’t people be more creative?

beer-braul A few weeks back, roommate Jeffrey and I entered the PDX BEER BRAUL. This was a project put on by Hawthorne Hophouse and Fifteenth Avenue Hophouse with locally-owned The Zythos Project (creator and manufacturer of the stainless steel growler Brauler – I definitely need to get one of those!)

The point of the game was to show off your beer knowledge in a blind tasting competition features beers from Portland breweries:

Participants got two flights of six beers, unmarked. First flight was paler beers and the second flight was darker beers. You then had to match each of the beers with a corresponding list.

The top 24 contestants would then be invited back later to complete to be the Grand Prize Winner. Not only does the Grand Prize Winner receive bragging rights, but they also get a Hophouse Lifetime Mug Club Membership, Hophouse hood, and a “2013 Beer Braul Champion” engraved Brauler.

So, Jeffrey and I decide to enter. We agreed on almost every beer except for one set. And when the top 24 contestants email went out guess who was on the list? ME!

First of all, mad props to the four people who achieved a perfect score. The odds of doing that by chance are 1 in 518,400! I was in the second group of 20 people who only mix up one pair of beers.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make it to the finals do to a previous commitment (World Domination Summit) but I was thrilled to participate and get minor bragging rights with a few friends.

Have you ever entered a beer competition before? How did it go?

Lager Fest 2013

PDX Beer Braul 2013

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