Who's going to the Bend Brewfest? 3 days August 14, 15, 16 noon to 11 pm each day. 60 breweries tons of beers. Hell Bend only has a population of 60,000 ish but has 14 breweries!!! An epicenter of craft beer for sure! Never been there but can't wait!! Here is the link........http://bendbrewfest.com/ Cheers! IDABEERGUY
Great! I have the Platypus , Newport Market, Growler guys and Whole Foods marked for bottle shop stops. Any where else that you know of that is good? Praying for some Pliny......
Broken Top Bottle Shop and Crow's Feet Commons may have some bottles the others don't. Pliny is infrequent and usually disappears within hours of any store's announcement that they have it, so you'd have to be pretty lucky. Thankfully, we have some local alternatives of similar or higher caliber.
Great, Thanks for the info! I am a big IPA guy, the stinker and more bitter the better. Any recommendations for stuff like that or stuff like Pliny or higher caliber?
I'll let Sharpski list the more esoteric stuff for you, and will just mention the more obvious IPA options. At Crux I'd recommend the half hitch IPA, and at Good Life I'd recommend the descender and comatose ipa's. Bend brewing's hophead DIPA is excellent, and if you happen to see any 10 Barrel DUB DIPA while you're in town, definitely get a glass of that. Obviously, no trip to Bend would be complete without a trip to Boneyard. While you're in town, depending on availability, be sure to try some RPM, hop venom and notorious. Deschutes makes some fairly decent IPA's as well (IMHO), but I assume you get all their stuff in Idaho, and so have no need to drink any Deschutes while you're in Bend. Have fun.
Beyond John's great recommendations I'd keep an eye out for: - Below Grade, Bend Brewing, and Wild Ride bottles, local breweries with little to no distribution outside Central Oregon. All 3 produce good to great hoppy beers - Barley Brown's (not from Bend, but one of the state's top tier hop masters) You can also bet that each brewery will be bringing their A-game for this tourism heavy weekend. Sure to be some one-offs and other specialty beer appearances (Boneyard has a collaboration IIRA with Alpine right now). I'll also take this opportunity to pimp my general purpose Central Oregon thread.
I'll be there with some friends on Friday night. Not planning on going full-****** this year as I have a 7 hour drive the next day...
Aw man, I had no idea this was going on. My wife and I are celebrating our anniversary in Bend this weekend. Does this fest mean that a lot of the breweries will be closed?
Also, I swear I favorited a thread that listed all the hot Bend beer spots, but now I can't find it. Can someone link me, pretty please?
None of the breweries will be closed. Quite the opposite in fact. With the brew fest, more people will be going to the breweries, and they will be offering great beer!
This. Big change in plans as it turns ouit, and so friends, family, etc. are all coming up on Saturday. Can't wait!!
Hit 10 Barrel brewpub tonight, Cucumber Crush is on tap. For anyone remotely interested in Berliners, this and Ching Ching are the best two this town has to offer IMO.
I've got a car club buddy coming down for the weekend and his wife, my fiance and the two of us are all going Saturday with a small group
Howdy! It was breathtaking to say the least. Everything was top notch. The beer was amazing and the entire brewfest was obviously done by pro's. The program with all the descriptions and the beer score card was priceless. Serious beer drinkers in Bend, I was in heaven. Your recommendations were bang on, as well as the ones from John M, Boneyard was just a crazy set up so glad we went there, thanx! Came home with 3 huge coolers full of beer that I have never had before, not one of them! Been needing an excuse to buy a beer fridge, now it is a necessity, actually getting one this weekend! The growler guys fill stations just blew our minds. We visited 10 different breweries and ate at Crux and Bend brewing. Got 10 stamps and the sillypint glasses! We were amazed at how they all seemed to be part of the landscape, woven right into the middle of neighborhoods, plaza's exc, exc. Every one we went to it was really interesting to see people sharing flights of beers and discussing each one, again serious beer town for sure! The town of Bend is exactly how a town should be done in our opinion. My wife is the commissioner of our local planning and zoning commission and has been part of it for many years, she was blown away by the town it's self. It looks like there has been a ton of growth in the last 15 or so years and it has been handled extremely well. As packed as downtown was all three days we were there we never saw any of gridlock that most places have, very well done indeed. We were more than happy to to support every where we went with our spending money! It's clear that Bend is an epicenter for craft beer and should be on every craft beer lovers list of must visit places. Can't imagine it getting any better. I could go on for a month about it, but I'll spare you and hope you read even this far! Man I am gonna be bumming when I need to buy beer here again!!! Thanx again to the both of you and the entire town of Bend, we will be back!!!! IDABEERGUY!!!!!
Just to add on to what IDABEERGUY had to say, but from a slightly different perspective. Just a coincidence, but my sister had flown out to Bend for the week to visit with a girlfriend. I was hoping to drive up to get together on Saturday, but had houseguests and ultimately just couldn't make a trip up from Eugene happen. However, I told her all about the fest and the beer scene in Bend (the limited information I have on the latter), and she reluctantly concluded that maybe it might be fun, provided I was able to come up and meet her there. Come to find out, her friend's husband enjoys craft beer, and so they decided to stop by Saturday afternoon, even when it turned out I couldn't meet them there. Long story short, they had a fantastic time, with my sister texting pictures and comments from the fest back and forth the entire time. They had so much fun, my sister even convinced her friend to go back the next day and visit some of the breweries I'd suggested, and once again, they had an altogether great time. My sister is not a big beer drinker, craft or otherwise (she drinks wine), but I think the festival completely turned her around on craft beer, and particularly the beer scene in Bend. That's how much fun the Bend Brewfest was...
