Hot as hell, dusty as hell, sweaty as hell …but 81 different breweries with 81 different beers= totally freaking worth it.
So we start off walking about 21,000 blocks to get to the festival, it’s about 93 degrees outside, humidity is at about 70% (it’s not Louisiana, but it still sucks). I think this is intentional to make you extremely thirsty. By the time we get inside we’ve sweated about a gallon of sweat and we’re ready to drink some freaking cold beer. We buy several hundred thousand tokens. Keep in mind, each token gets you about a 4 oz pour. So we start. It’s not crowded because we were smart and went on Sunday, the day after all of the meatheads had their way with the place.
We enter the south tent where about half of the brewery tasters are. We begin working on depleting the beer supply. I was fairly impressed with the beers provided by these breweries, overall there was a good variety and quite a bit of uniqueness. There was a “buzz” tent which they opened up to the public for a few additional tokens. Supposedly this was where latest and greatest beers were being poured. We had small fries with us so we skipped it. I know, totally un-beerfather like behavior, but sometimes that’s just how I roll.
A few tips: wear extremely light, airy clothing. Bring sunglasses. Don’t eat beforehand, even though you might feel like you should. The food is great and all goes well with the endless supply of beer you’ll be drinking. In other words, pace yourself if you want to be in it for the long haul. Break it up with some food. Also, you can always go get more tokens, so don’t buy too many from the start. You can’t return them later. The #1 thing I’d say about the festival is to JUST DO THE TASTER SIZES, don’t try to have balls the size of Texas and drink a whole cup of every beer you try. It’s too damn hot and you will pass the hell out. Plus, with 81 beers, why wouldn’t you want to try as many as possible? You’d be surprised how satisfying the 4oz pours are when you’re actually drinking them. That way you can literally just drink your way from line to line and feel super cool because you can now say, “Oh, yeah. I tried that beer.” whenever someone brings up something you can tell they think is obscure. Boo yeah!
Anyway, it was a good experience, lots of beer for a good price, lots of food, live music and lots of cheering. Not a lot more to say about it, it’s a festival with food and beer and music and dirt. You know what this is all about. If you live in Portland you have to go to this. If you live out of state, I highly recommend making the trip out.
July 28th, 2009
Posted in Beer Talk | No Comments »
Tags: 2009, Brewers, festival, oregon
