[Bend] 10 Barrel IPA Fest 8/14

Bend: 10 Barrel, Deschutes, Crux, Boneyard
Portland: Pfriem, Burnside, Gigantic, Breakside
Seattle: Elysian, Georgetown, Fremont, Naked City
San Diego: Stone, Ballast Point, Green Flash, Societe

Hope they bring some non-standard stuff, but at worst I'll have Fremont in Bend for a day. Also looking forward to trying Societe. Anyone from the huge Bend BA contingent planning on going?

 

This is also the day before the Bend Brewfest begins.

 

Now that we're closer to the event, anyone planning to come early for the Brewfest and hit this?

 

This was a quintessential Bend event, no line to get in despite $4.00 pint prices of Fremont, Ballast Point, Societe, Priem, Gigantic, and Boneyard IPAs. I chatted with Larry Sidor and his wife about the locations he considered in choosing his next project after Deschutes while waiting in line together. God I love this town.

 

I think by the end of the night, many of the kegs had blown. It was one of the standard IPAs from each brewery: Deschutes brought Fresh Squeezed instead of Inversion, and 10 Barrel brewed a special beer for it which may still be around, but it was Stone IPA, Boneyard RPM, Green Flash West Coast, etc. for the most part, and I didn't get any sense that leftovers would be on at the brewpub. Still, very cool to be able to do side-by-side comparisons of so many IPAs.

I tried to hit all the new to me beers first, but obviously things got a little hazy near the end. I wasn't as impressed by Societe The Pupil as I anticipated, but it was still good. 10 Barrel's S.A.M. IPA was really good, and I was pleasantly surprised by Breakside being more interesting on draft than I remembered in the bottle. Georgetown Lucille is one of my favorites, and again it did not disappoint. Fremont's Interurban didn't hold up as well as my nostalgia for it, but their special/seasonal beers were what I remembered most fondly anyways. No bad beers in the bunch, but everything else was as expected.

The Georgetown guys even brought down a growler of Lovely Reida to share with me because I bugged them about it on Facebook (which was an awesome gesture), but I was never able to reconnect with them later in the evening to actually get to try it. Sorry about that, but I figure it didn't go to waste.

 

The signs at the event read "Portland...ish". I don't know how they chose the breweries, but I suspect personal connections and who had the day free to attend were factors, so they squeezed Pfriem in with the Portland guys.