Ladies of Craft Beer

Posted By: Sara Bryce

Featured image courtesy of Blue Point Brewing.

Are you new to craft beer, or just want to get more involved in the craft beer community?  There’s a lot you can do to raise your Brew I.Q. Here are five craft beer activities you can resolve to imbibe this year:

1)      Follow the #craftbeer hashtag on Twitter: Download Tweetdeck, click the Add Column icon, and type in #craftbeer. Cry tears of hop-infused, malty joy. Watch the minutes hours weeks fly by as you saturate yourself in unadulterated craft beer talk. You’ll find news, petitions, reviews, and more! You’re welcome.

2)      Join Untappd: I know a woman in Tallahassee who has a large notebook filled with handwritten comments of every beer she’s ever tried. Each entry is dated. Feeling envy, but deep down inside know you’d never have the patience or the pen? Me too. That’s why I was entirely too excited to find the brilliant website and mobile app, Untappd. Sign up for an account and you’ll find a large database of craft beer. “Check in” to a beer, and you can leave comments for prosperity. “Toast” other users, and leave comments for them about their selections.  Every so often, you earn a badge just for drinking beer! Cheers!

3)      Buy your macro-drinking friend a craft beer. Once.: No matter what one’s opinions are, it’s hard to turn down free beer.  And craft beer has quite a few options the big guys don’t, like fruit ales and sour ales. As long as your approach is, “You love [insert food that might taste like it here]; I thought you might like this” instead of “Your constant imbibing of swill makes me sick; you need to drink this 12% ABV bourbon cask ale immediately to redeem our friendship” it probably will be well-received.

4)      Attend a beer festival: There are the big ones, like the Great American Beer Festival; but there are also smaller ones that are cheaper and closer to home. The chances of a beer festival happening any given weekend within 5 hours of your residence are remarkably high. The Beer Festival Calendar is a great resource for your festival-going pleasure. You get to try lots of different regional brews, and some surprises!

5)      Contribute to the State of Women & Beer report survey: Why do you like beer? How do you choose beer? What are your thoughts on beer marketing for women? These are just a few of the questions Ginger Johnson, founder of Women Enjoying Beer, wants you to answer. Email your responses to her by February 29^th, and pick up some awesome Women Enjoying Beer Swag!

Congratulations, you’ve achieved your 2012 Beer Resolutions! You look gorgeous.

These are only five of many things we can do to engage in the craft beer community.  What are some your craft beer resolutions?

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Posted By: Theresa Carpine

Fresh hop season is here! During this brief period in late August and September, hop growers harvest their crops for the eager and grateful craft beer community. While most of the hops are dried for year-round use, a portion of a newly picked crop is sent to nearby breweries and added directly into the beer kettle; this process is also known as wet hopping.

Horse Heaven Hills Kaliptonite Fresh Hop IPA

Fresh hop beers are noteworthy for their earthy and herbal aroma and taste. Verging on (and sometimes bounding over) the edge of grassy characteristics, even the most diehard IPA drinker can be turned off by the “lawn clipping” quality of some fresh hop beers; others wait with bated breath for a fresh batch of this seasonal style each fall.

I see a lot of fresh hop beers coming from breweries in Washington, Oregon, and California, probably due to the abundance of hop farms in these Western states. A few Colorado breweries, like New Belgium and Great Divide, have also gotten into the fresh hop game, as have some East Coast favorites, like Flying Dog and Harpoon Brewery.

On August 27, 2011, BeerNews.org reported that labels for three fresh hop beers were recently approved; hopefully we’ll see updates about more of these seasonal beers in the coming weeks.

One place where you’ll find lots of freshly-hopped ales is the Fresh Hop Ale Festival in Yakima, Washington on Saturday, October 1, 2011. The annual event is a fundraiser for the Allied Arts of Yakima Valley and the lineup this year includes 21 fresh hop beers; in order to be eligible in the festival competition, the beer must be produced with hops that were picked no more than 24 hours prior to brewing. The festival includes a Homebrew Competition as well! Other craft beers, wines, and ciders will also be served during the festival.

If you’re visiting Yakima for the festival, the American Hop Museum in Toppenish is just 30 minutes away. I’ve never been, but it might be an interesting destination if you’d like to learn more about the growing process and the history of hop production in America.

Which fresh hop beer has you excited for fall? Leave a comment to let us know!

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Posted By: Theresa Carpine

Bigger and better than ever, the Great Pumpkin Beer Festival returns this year to celebrate one of the most popular beers of the autumn season. The annual festival will last two days—Saturday, October 8, and Sunday, October 9, 2011—at Elysian Brewing‘s new facility on Airport Way in Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood.

Over 40 pumpkin beers will be featured this year, including Russian River Sour Pumpkin, Allagash Ghouleschip, and Silver City Punk Rauchen. For the first time, an international pumpkin beer from Nøgne Øl of Norway is in the lineup!

Known for its seasonal pumpkin favorites like Night Owl and Great Pumpkin Ale, Elysian is presenting two new pumpkin beers at this year’s festival. The first is Coche de Medianoche, a Mexican-themed pumpkin ale with cumin, cinnamon, black pepper, chilies, and roasted pumpkin seeds. The other debut beer is Ursa Orange, Elysian’s Berliner Weiss sour ale Ursa Minor served with pumpkin syrup.

A highlight of the festival is always the tapping of the Great Pumpkin itself, an enormous 200-pound pumpkin which has been scorched on the inside and filled with still-fermenting beer, sealed with wax and allowed to condition until tapping at four o’ clock on each day of the festival.

Tickets are $20 (per day) and include a souvenir glass and six drink tickets.

Advance tickets are available online at Brown Paper Tickets or at any Elysian Pubs and Full Throttle Bottles. Visit Great Pumpkin Beer Festival for more information.

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Posted By: Theresa Carpine

• Hydrate early and often.

OBF Thursday Afternoon Crowd

• True beer nerds take Thursday and Friday off from work to attend the festival. Saturday is reserved for those with a high tolerance of crowds and strollers. Live in fear on Sunday that the kegs will run out before you’ve spent all your tokens.

• Pretzels. Some folks make their own necklaces to wear, but carrying a Ziploc bag full of ‘em like a soccer mom makes for easy sharing with your group.

• Hang out with a winery rep. She will give you tokens for tastes and say you are “a focus group.”

• If you volunteer, arrive early so you can select a beer that you’ve already tried and want to promote. Your “customers” will ask your opinion, or even assume that you work for the brewery, so it’s nice to speak knowledgeably about the beer that you’re pouring.

• Depart from the festival early on Friday night so you can get a table at Saraveza for pasties and a beer sampler.

Saraveza Sampler Tray

• Do not attempt to create a drinking game involving ironic beer t-shirts (or Oregon universities and sport teams). There is not even enough beer in the world for this game, even at a beer festival.

• Blame your morning headache on lack of coffee, not the beer. Never blame the beer.

Here are a few more fun facts about this year’s festival:

• For the fourth consecutive year, attendance at the Oregon Brewers Festival broke previous records with a total of 80,000 people at the four-day event.

• The Buzz Tent, serving rare, specialty beers from the participating brewers, ran out late Friday night.

• Oregon Brewers Festival donated $10,000 to Pints for Prostates, an organization that uses the universal language of beer to reach men with an important health message about the need for regular prostate health screenings and PSA testing.

• Nearly 1,200 bikes were parked in the complimentary and secure bicycle parking area, manned by volunteers with the Washington County Bicycle Transportation Coalition.

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Posted By: Theresa Carpine

In one week, I will be on my way to Portland, Oregon to attend my first Oregon Brewers Festival. Sounds like it will be an understated affair…just me, 84 breweries, over 2,000 volunteers, and 78,000 thirsty women and men hanging out in Tom McCall Waterfront Park from July 28 to 31, 2011.

Oregon Brewers Festival - Photo by HMS Photographic

Celebrating its 24th year, OBF is one of the nation’s longest running craft beer festivals. In 1988, Art Larrance of Portland Brewing Company, Kurt Widmer of Widmer Brothers Brewing, and Nancy Ponzi of BridgePort Brewing founded the festival, hoping to capture the atmosphere that Art had encountered at Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany.

From the beginning, OBF has been a celebration of solidarity among craft brewers as festival attendees sample a variety of beers. While many participating breweries this year can be found in states that touch the Pacific Ocean, several breweries are making the trek across the country to share their beer with the discriminating tastes of Portlanders and beer travelers.

Eighty-six beers are available for tasting this year, along with 50 specialty beers in the Buzz Tent (follow @OBFBuzzTent for festival updates of what’s on tap). Along with one brew from each participating brewery, Deschutes Brewery is serving a gluten-free version of their NWPA and a joint project of Widmer Brothers and homebrew club Oregon Brew Crew, Collaborator, is also on the docket.

Oregon Brewers Festival - Photo by Timothy Horn

Oregon Brewers Festival - Photo by Timothy Horn

Festival goers will also enjoy live music, beer-related vendors, beer memorabilia displays, homebrewing demonstrations, and an assortment of foods, as well as chance to meet beer writers and publishers. Crater Lake Soda Root Beer Garden offers complimentary handcrafted root beer for minors (accompanied by a parent) and designated drivers.

Admission into the festival grounds is free. Purchase of a 2011 souvenir mug ($6) is required in order to consume beer. Mugs from previous years will not be filled. Beer is purchased with wooden tokens ($1 each). A full mug of beer costs four tokens; a taste costs one token.

Visit Oregon Brewers Festival for details and follow @oregonbrewfest for updates.

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Posted By: Theresa Carpine

If you love sours, dubbels, and Trappists, Get Real Belgian Festival is the place to be on July 8 and 9, 2011 at The Altman Building in New York City.

Over 100 unique and hard-to-find Belgian and Belgian-inspired brews around from craft breweries will be available to sample at this year’s festival. Seminars about Belgian beer will also be held throughout the festival, including Homebrewing Belgian-Style, Belgian Beer 101, Beer & Food Pairing, and Belgian vs. American-made Belgian-style.

Check out Beer List and Schedule for more details. Tickets will sell out for this event, so Purchase Tickets today! If you’re getting tickets to the Friday 3-6 PM session, use the code TRUANT at checkout for a $40 discount!

Visit Get Real Belgian Festival and follow @GetRealNY for details and updates about this event!

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Posted By: Theresa Carpine

Beer just tastes better when it is support a good cause, and 11th Annual Breastfest Beer Festival promises to be “a good time for a good cause” on Saturday, July 2, 2011 from 5-9 PM at the Fort Mason Center Festival Pavilion in San Francisco, California.

The Breastfest is the largest annual fundraiser for Charlotte Maxwell Complementary Clinic (CMCC), a landmark public health clinic that provides free complementary alternative medicine, supportive services, and social services to women battling cancer and poverty. Over the past ten years, the Breastfest has donated over $225,000 to the clinic, enabling patients to receive treatment that they might not receive otherwise.

This year’s festival is bigger than ever with over 60 breweries in attendance, along with several wineries and cideries. Among the many California breweries featured this year are host breweries Marin Brewing and Moylan’s Brewing, as well as Lagunitas Brewing, Russian River Brewing, and Stone Brewing. Locals will also have a chance to try beers from breweries scattered around the country, like Big Sky Brewing and Allagash Brewing.

General admission tickets are $45 in advance and $50 at the door, which includes unlimited tasting, a commemorative glass, food, non-alcoholic beverages, and live music. VIP Hour (4-5 PM) is an additional $10. Advance tickets available at event website, or in person at Marin Brewing Company or Moylan’s Brewery.

Visit The Breastfest for more information.

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Posted By: Theresa Carpine

Did you know that you can save the earth and enjoy finely crafted beer? It’s true! And this fact is nowhere more evident than at the 7th Annual North American Organic Brewers Festival on June 24-26, 2011 in Portland, Oregon’s Overlook Park.

The NAOBF was established in 2005 by Craig Nicholls to raise awareness about organic beer and sustainable living. Nicholls also founded Oregon’s first certified all organic brewery, Roots Organic Brewing. Some of the beers featured at the festival are produced year-round; others have made a one-off just for this event. All festival beers are either 100% organic, organic (95-99%) or made with organic ingredients (70 – 95%).

More than thirty breweries are bringing examples of organic craft beer to the festival, including Ambacht Brewing Golden Rye Farmhouse Ale, Laht Neppur Brewing Peach Hefeweizen, and Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing People’s Porter.

You also might like to try the kombucha offerings from Captured by Porches Brewing. Kombucha is a low-alcohol fermented tea beverage. Captured by Porches kombuchas, brewed under the Invisible Alchemy label, have been flavored with ginger, raspberry and quince, apricot, and lemon.

Along with great organic beverages, food will be available from on-site vendors and live music will be enjoyed throughout the event. Every effort has been made to ensure that byproducts of the festival are recyclable or compostable, and event electricity will be created with biodiesel and solar generators.

The festival is a benefit to support The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and Oregon Food Bank. Admission is free. The purchase of a $6 reusable, compostable cornstarch glass is required for tasting beer, as are tokens ($1 each). A full glass of beer costs four tokens (more for select beers), and a four-ounce taste costs one token. Patrons receive a $1 discount toward the tasting glass with a validated MAX ticket, a ticket from the onsite bike corral, or three cans of food.

Festival Hours:
- Friday, June 24, 2011: Noon to 9 PM
- Saturday, June 25, 2011: Noon to 9 PM
- Sunday, June 26, 2011: Noon to 5 PM

Please visit NAOBF FAQ for more festival information.

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Posted By: Theresa Carpine

What better way to show Dad how much you care than by taking him to Washington Brewers Festival on Father’s Day?

The biggest and longest-running annual event presented by the Washington Beer Commission, the 2011 Washington Brewers Festival will take place on June 17th-19th at Saint Edward State Park in Kenmore, WA. More than 60 breweries are scheduled to attend, pouring more than 200 types of finely crafted beer.

Kenmore-based 192 Brewing is bringing five delicious ales, including their Apple Ale. Other intriguing selections this year include Big Time Brewery Cherry Trombipulator (Belgian Style Triple), Skookum Brewery Murder of Crows (Bourbon Stout), and Two Beers Brewing Trailhead ISA (Session India Pale Ale). Check out the Beer List to see what else you can try at the festival this year.

As a major event during Father’s Day weekend, Washington Brewers Festival offers all ages admission on Saturday and Sunday and provides plenty of family-friendly activities. A Rootbeer Garden, featuring craft root beer and soda made by Washington brewers, is a popular attraction for the whole family.

Along with plenty of libations, festival attendees will enjoy live entertainment and food for purchase from a variety of vendors.

Festivities kick off on Friday night from 4 to 9 PM for the 21+ crowd, and continue with All Ages admitted on Saturday from 11 AM to 9 PM and Sunday from 11 AM to 6 PM. Persons under 21 accompanied by a parent are admitted free of charge, and admission for designated drivers is $8. Tickets ($15-20) are available online and include a tasting cup and tasting tokens. Onsite parking is limited, so plan to take the free shuttle or purchase a parking pass.

Check out the WA Brewers Festival FAQ for more details.

Posted By: Theresa Carpine

Portland, Oregon always seems to be celebrating beer in some form or another. This weekend, the berries and hesperidia will have their day…s.

The first annual Portland Fruit Beer Festival kicks off outside Burnside Brewing on 7th and East Burnside on Saturday, June 11th at 11 AM (closing at 9 PM) and continues on Sunday, June 12th from 11 AM to 6 PM. According to the festival’s webpage:

Fruit beers are the red-headed stepchild of craft beer, often overlooked by beer lovers because of preconceptions that they are sweet, boring, or artificially flavored. The first annual Portland Fruit Beer Festival aims to change all that and open minds to the strange and exotic possibilities that fruit beers can offer.

Participating breweries are offering barrel-aged versions of classic craft beers, like a Ninkasi Pinot Barrel-Aged Oatis with Cherries, and beers with fruit added directly into the brewing process, like a Breakside Mango IPA. The Rare Fruit Taplist includes a chili-infused stout by Hopworks and an imperial amber ale brewed with the pomegranate juice by He’Brew.

A Portland-based women’s group, Ladies of Lagers and Ales (LOLA), is also serving their Cherry LOLA, a side project of their first brewing project at the Lucky Labrador Beer Hall with Lab Brewdog Ben Flerchinger. They took five gallons of their LOLA Kolsch and keg-conditioned it with black cherry juice for the festival.

The festival is an all-ages, free admission event, so along with beer, fruit juice will be available for the under 21 crowd and designated drivers. Tastebud will also attend to sell wood-fired pizza and sandwiches, and Fifty Licks is bringing a great selection of their handmade ice cream, from Caramelized Apple to Slabtown Whiskey.

There will also be live music spinning from local DJs and festival transportation available with Brewvana Portland Brewery Tours. For only $30, you get a ride to and from the festival, plus a glass and ticket package. Contact Ashley at Brewvana@gmail.com for availability and booking.

For festival tastes, you must purchase a Tasting Glass ($6). Tasting tickets are $1 each; one ticket equals one four oz. pour for most beers and a full glass is four tickets. Buzz Tent beers are two to three tickets for four oz. pours, and you can also get a Special Package of one Tasting Glass and 10 tickets for $15.

For updates about the festival, follow Twitter and Facebook.

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