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You are here: Home / Archives for Occidental

Lager Fest 2013

Posted on September 3, 2013 · Leave a Comment

lagerfest 2013Apparently 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?

Filed Under: Events Tagged With: Breakside, Buckman Botanical Brewery, Deschutes, Elysian, Epic, Firestone Walker, Fort George, Gigantic, Gilgamesh, Heater Allen, Lompoc, Montucky Cold Snacks, Oakshire, Occidental, Rogue, Sierra Nevada, Widmer

PDX Beer Braul 2013

Posted on July 26, 2013 · Leave a Comment

beer-braulA 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:

  • Migration
  • HUB
  • Occidental
  • Laurelwood
  • Basecamp
  • Lompoc
  • Commons
  • Upright
  • Gigantic
  • Burnside
  • Natian
  • Amnesia

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?

Filed Under: Events Tagged With: Amnesia, Basecamp, Burnside, Commons, Fifteenth Avenue Hophouse, Gigantic, Hawthorne Hophouse, HUB, Laurelwood, Lompoc, Migration, Natian, Occidental, PDX BEER BRAUL, The Zythos Project, Upright

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