10 Barrel bottles, in Bend

I might just be behind the curve, but I didn't know 10 Barrel was bottling at all. Apparently, it's not exactly news, but it's the first time I saw a bottle of 10 Barrel when I was at Newport Market today:

Reviews at Beer Advocate go back to March of last year, so apparently some places have been getting 10 Barrel bottles for about a year, if not longer. Read reviews of S1nist0r here at BA.

At Newport you can buy S1nist0r (black ale) and Apocalypse (IPA), Of course, you can go the pub and fill up a growler, too.

Bottoms-up beer pouring

OK, this post doesn't have much to do with Bend beer, other than we saw this on KTVZ's website. But because they don't allow embeded videos, we dug this demonstration of beer being poured, from the bottom up.



We're not sure how we feel about magnets at the bottoms of the beer. And what effect this has on a head if the technique were used with a real beer (i.e. not Bud Light). But it does look cool.

We'll be waiting for one of the local breweries to figure out how to do this with non-plastic, non-crappy beers.

Why Deschutes is among the very best

Deschutes makes good beer. That we all know.

What you get from Deschutes that you might not get from every other brewery everywhere? Owning up to problems and mistakes.

Most of the time, a company pretty much toots its own horn and sweeps problems/mistakes under the rug as best they can. In a review of 2010 (in a blog post you can read here), Deschutes tells us what they did well. But the majority of the post deals with the missteps in 2010 (namely Black Butte XXII and the 2009 Abyss).

I wouldn't expect most companies to even mention that stuff in a review of the past year's operations on their own blog. But they do so in detail, and make you believe that they hate making mistakes.

Anyway, cheers to Deschutes for some refreshing honesty that you see very little of in corporate America.

Ride the Red Chair with Deschutes

OK, so this Deschutes promotion isn't quite so great if you live in Bend. As the main attraction of it is....coming to Bend.

Read the promotion/contest based on Red Chair NW Pale Ale here.

Free to enter, and it's still a pretty good prize, even if you live in Bend. Grand prize is three days of lift tickets at Bachelor, plus equipment rental. And $1,000 in money for expenses. Can we spend it all on Deschutes beers?

And if you don't win the grand prize, you can still pick up some Red Chair goodies via the contest.

Get your entry in by the end of the month to qualify.

Wil Wheaton likes Deschutes beer

You know, Wesley Crusher trom Star Trek: The Next Generation? No? One of the kids in Stand By Me? Alright, I am running out of things you might know him from. Although he is apparently more famous as a Twitterer, as he has 1.7 million followers

Anyway, totally random Twitter sighting...if you use Twitter, you probably know that if you go to the home page, it scrolls through recent interesting tweets. So I saw one by Wil that was pretty funny, so I clicked on his Twitter feed. And lo and behold I saw this tweet:

Black Butte XXII. Proof that, if god exists, she wants us to be happy. 

With this pic:

We agree, Wil. Stop by Deschutes' pub in Bend sometime and buy us one.

Impressions of Hop Junkie at 10 Barrel

So we got the tweet that 10 Barrel was releasing its Hop Junkie Imperial IPA. And with all the changes going on at 10 Barrel, with new brewers coming online, expansion on the horizon, we wanted to head over and try some beer, since we hadn't been there in a while.

So, after a bit of confusion about whether the beer was available (it was on the chalkboard, but crossed out), and whether or not we could buy a pitcher of it (we could), we got to enjoy the beer.

Here's Beau and James unsuccessfully trying to look sophisticated while drinking Hop Junkie.

And we did enjoy it. Evidenced by the fact that Beau, James and I, and a friend of James, polished off the pitcher in about no time. We all agreed that the beer was tremendous. The smell of it alone was great...smelled like a fresh hop beer, really. And despite a high ABV (8.5) and pretty strong IBUs (90) it was surprisingly easy to drink.

We also had the stout later in our session, and we all thought that was really good, as well.

Bottom line? After not always being super excited about 10 Barrel's beer in the past, we're all on board now. And with the new brewers set to really make their mark, 10 Barrel might be poised to explode. As if they weren't doing well already.

Another nice note...Jon from the bar came over and just chatted us up, apparently since I asked about the stats on the Hop Junkie. After hearing from our waitress that we were interested in beer, he came over unprompted and answered questions. Not sure if everything he told me was for mass publicity, so I won't repeat it all here. Suffice it to say even more cool stuff coming down the road for 10 Barrel.

Zwickelmania is back at Central Oregon breweries

Zwickelmania is returning to Oregon, and Bend, next month. The statewide event where Oregon breweries conduct open houses will take place on Saturday, Feb. 19th.

According to the site for Zwickelmania, five Bend breweries are taking part, Cascade Lakes in Redmond and Three Creeks in Sisters.

You can get the full list, including hours for the tours, here.

So far, Deschutes, Bend Brewing Company, 10 Barrel,  McMenamins, and Silver Moon are in. Boneyard is not currently on the list.

More on the Deschutes event here. Of particular interest to homebrewers is a recipe book for cloning Deschutes beers, and some hops for your next batch. Count me in.