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Nice read.
Thanks for the story tlong.
Have you ever had Pale Ale from Blanco Brewing Co. ?
http://www.oregonlive.com/dining/ind..._beers_at.html
The Oregon Brewers Festival is the largest outdoor beer festival on the continent -- a sprawling, family-friendly behemoth that draws brewers and beer tourists from around the world, pumps millions into Portland's economy and is the crowning event of Oregon Craft Beer Month. The 21st edition runs through this weekend at Tom McCall Waterfront Park.
Twenty years ago, it was cheap publicity for fledgling Oregon microbrewers with sub-micro advertising budgets.
"We thought that a festival was a way to raise awareness of our beers without spending advertising money we didn't have," said Kurt Widmer, whose Widmer Brothers Brewing Co. was just 3 years old in 1988. "We figured we might even make a little money selling beer."
Widmer, Nancy Ponzi (who owned BridgePort Brewing Co. with her husband, Ponzi) and Portland Brewing's Art Larrance contacted every small brewery they could find in the region -- 13, which is now about a third of the breweries and brewpubs in the Portland area alone -- and bought three or four kegs of beer from each because they were afraid of being stuck with a bunch of unsold beer.
They guessed maybe 5,000 people would show up -- an estimate that was about 10,000 too low.
Swamped and footsore
"I don't know if we even had gates, but when they opened, we were just swamped," Widmer said. "I look back now and think, 'Wasn't that fun?' But at the time it was just total chaos. We didn't have a tent -- just totally gambled on the weather, and I asked a bunch of friends to come down and pour beer."
Widmer sold the gig as a couple of hours of light labor, followed by a languid afternoon of sipping beer in Waterfront Park. Instead, his friends were slammed for hours straight and finally stumbled away from their empty, foaming taps footsore, dehydrated and sunburned.
The Oregonian
Bring your elbows...
"We were all a bit nervous at how a microbrew fest would be received, but confident that we could at least break even," said BridgePort brewmaster Karl Ockert. "One of the guys at our beer distributor bet me five bucks that we couldn't sell more than 50 kegs in the weekend. My job was to keep changing the kegs as they emptied, so I spent most of the time in the beer trailers. We ran out of beer several times and ran most of the breweries dry. We sold at least 250 kegs -- and that guy never did pay up."
Full Sail brewmaster John Harris was working for the month-old Deschutes Brewery at the time, and Widmer said they need bring only one keg for the weekend. Instead, Harris grabbed every keg he could, which was three. They were empty by 3 p.m. Saturday. He called brewery owner Gary Fish and asked him to round up and fill every corny (a type of 5-gallon mini-keg). Fish brought nine cornies from Bend to slake Portland's thirst, and they were soon dry, too.
"We were working out of little cooler boxes and we had all sorts of problems with beer getting warm and foamy," said Larrance, who now owns Raccoon Lodge and Brew Pub in Raleigh Hills. "We had a pretty steep learning curve, and it started with learning how to dispense beer and how to organize volunteers."
But they were ready to do it again.
"We were delighted with the response," said Nancy Ponzi, "and thrilled that we were able to pull it off."
Awards? No way
Larrance is now the sole impresario, the others having retired from the festival biz in the mid-1990s. The Widmer brewery still handles all the beer shipped to the festival and makes a one-off special brew for each OBF. This year's is Full Nelson Imperial IPA.
Larrance would be the first to say that the OBF is made possible by as many as 1,600 volunteers, many of whom come back year after year for their turn at the taps or the ticket booth. With their help, the festival has evolved into one of the premier events on the craft brewing calendar, with an annual attendance of 60,000 or more.
The Great American Beer Festival has 1,800 beers compared with the OBF's 73, but the Denver festival isn't a place you'd take the family (though the OBF can get crowded and a bit rowdy on a Saturday night). Also, the Great American Beer Festival happens in the fall in a concrete convention hall jammed wall-to-wall with T-shirted beer geeks, not in a park on a glorious late July weekend with riverine breezes a-wafting.
The Oregonian
Cooling off at the 2003 OBF
Winning gold, silver or bronze at the Great American Beer Festival is a big deal for any brewer; in best laid-back Oregon fashion, the OBF doesn't award medals.
"We were conscious from the start that this was about brewers' camaraderie, not compe ion," said Widmer. "It's very different from Denver in that way, and it's one of the reasons that the festival has grown and evolved."
Added Larrance, "We've always tried to come at it with a brewer's mentality, not a promoter's." He sees the festival as a teachable moment as well as a quaffable one, a way to keep Oregonians in touch with the great beers being brewed beyond the Evergreen Curtain. This year, he bolstered the non-Cascadian contingent by sending letters of congratulations to all the 2007 Great American Beer Festival winners -- and application forms for the OBF.
"We brew great beers here," Larrance said, "but I'd hate for Oregon to lose its edge, and bringing in the best of the rest of the country is a good way to keep everybody inspired and creative."
Nice read.
Thanks for the story tlong.
Have you ever had Pale Ale from Blanco Brewing Co. ?
Rogue Dead Guy Ale FTW
Is it better than Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale?
I've had Pale Ales, but not one from Blanco. Is that a Texas brewery? I'm volunteering at the BrewFest Saturday night. Should be fun.
If you see it, be sure to try the FishTale Ale from Olympia, Wa. It's very good, I haven't had it in ages
So when do they have this fest? I would like to go.
their XSI Imperial Pale Ale is ridiculous. but the green flash imperial is just as good and costs $10 less...
Last edited by leemajors; 07-25-2008 at 09:55 AM.
It started yesterday and runs thru Sunday. It's always the last weekend in July for future reference.
A couple of my friends went to this. I ran out of vacation days but we'll probably go next year.
It's a brewery outside of San Antonio. I first enjoyed their beer at a Blues Travelers Concert.
Anyways, here's a link: http://www.realalebrewing.com/beer_styles.php
their anniversary party was about a month ago, good time. you got 4 drink tickets and one food ticket, but no one gave a when you ran out of beer tickets!
Sounds good. Hopefully they can bring their stuff out to the OBF some day.
dirty thirty ftw
from the brewfest...
73 beers? in' A, man.
Hills and Dales forum...
...by the way, you should try Moretti's from Italy....that's some damn good beer...
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