I want to love you BridgePort, but ...

As an Oregon beer geek, I really want to like BridgePort Brewing.

The state's oldest craft brewery, BridgePort has some great history. Originally named Columbia River Brewing, BridgePort was the first Portland microbrewer to bottle its own beer. They've got a great brewpub in the the Pearl District, a spot which when they moved there in the late 1980s was surrounded by industrial wasteland. And their name and logo might be one of the sweetest in the country.

But how often do you buy a six-pack of BridgePort? What's the go-to beer in their lineup?

I ask these questions because the brewery has released a trio of new beers in what is what seems to be another rebranding of the company. (For more details, Beervana blogger Jeff Alworth has a nice recap of the company's history and constant reshuffling of beer lineups.)
Cafe Negro (coffee porter), Kingpin (double red ale) and Nightcap (seasonal winter ale) are all new brews by BridgePort. The brewery is aggressively marketing Cafe Negro, which was available for $5.99 a six-pack a couple of days ago at Safeway.

Wanting to try some new beer, I put together a mix-and-match pack of BridgePort beers, grabbing a couple of Cafe Negros, a pair of Hop Czars (the company's imperial IPA, which came out in 2008) and one each of BridgePort's old standbys, its Blue Heron Pale Ale and the BridgePort IPA. It pains me to say it, but nothing really knocked my socks off. The Cafe Negro was decent, but I'm not sure I'd have more than one in a sitting. It wasn't as smooth as some of the better coffee porter/stouts other breweries in the state are making.
The Blue Heron and BridgePort IPA were OK, but rather bland. I made me think of some of the gateway beers I drank when I first started getting into microbrews. Both just seemed like really low-risk, low-reward beers.
Of all the BridgePort offerings I had, I enjoyed the Hop Czar the most. Yes, big IPAs in Oregon are as plentiful as bank-owned homes in Bend, but the Hop Czar seemed like the one beer in my variety pack that was brewed without a safety net.

Just my thoughts. I'd love to hear from some die-hard BridgePort fans who can show me the error in my ways. Because, like I said, I love everything about the brewery except for the actual beer.

New beers coming at 10 Barrel

10 Barrel put out a newsletter that detailed some of the news at the brewery/brewpub, including the new brewers from Deschutes and Bend Brewing Company. You can read that here.

Most interesting part was the list of beers they were working on. Here's the list, with some thoughts (read the newsletter for more info on the beers):

- ISA Prototype beer. An Indian session ale, we guess? Anything that would have come from 10 Barrel labeled as experimental would have scared us previously. Now we're intrigued.
- Imperial red. You had us at "imperial."
- Bourbon-aged Sinister: I think they misspelled their own beer. Isn't it S1nist0r? Regardless, we approve of playing around with it. The nitro is a solid beer, adding bourbon barrels to the process sounds promising.
- Cab Belgian Blonde: Personally, I've never had a beer that tried to play with wine flavors that I liked. Hopefully this one will be different.
- Bourbon-aged English Style IPA: English IPAs are generally tasty; see Empire Strikes Back from Double Mountain. Bourbon aging with a non-dark beer sounds out of the box, to us...at least I have never seen it. There's a first time for everything, though.
- Hop Junkie: Calling anything "Hop" brings instant comparisons to the all the awesome Deschutes offerings. Tough mountain to climb, even for a former Deschutes brewer.
- NW Style Red: More red beers being brewed locally can't be a bad thing.

We'll be excited to check these out in the near future...and we'll let you know how they are!

Best beer selection in town?

The Brew Shop on NE Division St. is certainly in the running for best (and most organized) beer selection in town.

Check it.
A cooler which spans one wall, sectioned out by region. From Belgians (stocking the likes of Duchesse De Bourgogne) to Germans, Eastern Europe (I got a Pils, a great Czech beer for $1.65) and on. The North American wall is broken down into states/regions. Genius.
Don't tell anybody, but the side room might be our new favorite hangout. Couple tables, peanuts, a fireplace and a small tv to watch the game. And with a huge selection of reasonably priced brews a few steps away? Perfect.
And of course they stock all manner of brewing supplies and even have a couple beers on tap.

Boneyard commercial/Bend Ale Trail iPhone app

Two bits of news out of one little video. First, Boneyard produced a commercial, which you can watch below:



From that video, we also learn that the Bend Ale Trail is putting together a free app for the iPhone. That sounds cool. If we had an iPhone. Hopefully those of you with one can enjoy it!

Win a free ride on Cycle Pub

If you missed the earlier story, there's a thing called Cycle Pub coming to Bend. Story here. Cliff notes? You can ride on bike/trolley contraption and drink beer. Awesome, right?

Now you can win a free ride, for you and 15 others. Just come up with the Cycle Pub's slogan for their T-shirts. Here's a link to the Facebook page where they are taking suggestions.

The BBBers have already entered some slogans, so excuse us if we're rooting for ourselves to win.

And if you don't win the free ride, they are still planning to launch at WinterFest next month.

Rogue Nation: Is It Time to Secede?

So I have noticed I have been getting a lot of e-mails from Rogue lately. And none of them are about the beer, or even useful. And they are funny kind of funny mildly entertaining tolerable slightly annoying.

When I sign up for an e-mail list using my personal e-mail address, I figure I am going to get useful e-mails. And I think Rogue's have at least been that in the past. But this month they seem to just send out e-mails that are supposed to be clever, I guess, and have no other purpose.

To wit:

That's all there was in the e-mail. No other information. And I have gotten several more like that in the last couple of weeks.

I know, I know, I can always just unsubscribe. Wouldn't it just be better if they reserved the e-mails they sent me for actually important/relevant information? Or, if in addition to the "funny" note they would send me some information about some new beer, or something happening at a pub? If I was subscribing to a blog (i.e. like ours), I would be fine with it. But when I am signing up for an e-mail from a business, I guess I expect more. Am I just being too nitpicky?

I do love a lot of the Rogue beers, and the wife and I usually make a point of hitting the pub in Portland. So, send me an awesome deal, or some free beer, and all is forgiven!

Bend beer > Portland beer

Bend beer is better than Portland beer.

Well, duh. It was determined in a very scientific contest, detailed here.

Cool idea, for sure. But it seems like it should be taken to the next level. Like the Bend breweries head to Portland for a beer vs. beer challenge, or vice versa. With a little more pub and a little more effort put into the ground rules, it could be really big and pretty cool.

Anyway, we missed the first version of the Beer Olympics, but we plan to be there the next time it happens.

In related news, here's what you come up with when you do a Google image search for Beer Olympics.