Brewfest

Naked. As in butt naked and in a public place; a soaking pool at the Crystal Hotel, the newest McMennains in the heart of the Pearl District of Downtown Portland. And he was drunk with a case of beers surrounding him. In addition, it was the Brew Festival weekend a mere eight blocks away.

I misspoke; actually it’s called the Oregon Brewer Festival, celebrating its 24th year of craft beer for which Oregon is known. This year, the fact sheet stated there was over 85 craft brewers present. All I know many of the beers on Saturday had already stopped pouring due to overwhelming demand. I previewed the list of craft brewers and was all excited to taste beers only available at the brew festival and I wanted to taste solely based on name alone. I don’t know if I wanted “Wu Cream” (Oregonians would chuck at this) but I did want to try Donner Party Porter by FiftyFifty Brewing company or “ Idiot Sauvin” by Elysian Brewing or simply “Kick Axe” however what I found is that I didn’t get to be that particular. Or care what style of beer and it’s IBU rating. Oh no.

In the beer line

"Taster Mug" next to a pint.

First, we stood in line about 30 minutes to get into the free event. Then we were sheep roped into the next line for almost 30 minutes to spend six bucks for a taster’s mug and one dollar sipping tokens. Now, beer for a buck would be an awesome price to which I would skip and hop for joy however, dully note the words “taster mug.” After spend another 30 minutes in a massive crowd that slowly lurched forward to the beer pouring you could spend one token (a buck) and get a sip of beer (not how I wanted to spend my 30 minutes in line) or you could fill your “taster mug” for four tokens (that’s four bucks folks.) I know you must be thinking, four bucks for a craft beer is a reason price. Indeed. Let’s go back and review the words again, “taster mug.” The taster mug is a mere 10 ounce mug. That’s far less than a pint in which is the quantity in which I prefer to drink my beer. And have you ever had a glass poured to the brim? So the 10 ounces of beer is merely 8 or so. Four bucks, 90 minutes wait time. Eight ounces.

The next adventure was finding a place to sit. Again, me being a wee bit picky here actually wanted to sit and enjoy my craft beer (which was quite tasty, chocolate beer without any offending bitter after taste) I scoured the grounds for a chair. I foraged a couple of stray ones in the sun and dragged them to the coolness of tall oak tree. After tasting my beer, I went back to the cattle call of a tent, stood around with the masses slowly moved forward to buy my next 8 ounces of beer with my chair in hand. Oh yeah, I wasn’t going to give that up. One of my 90,000 thousand new friends may have fought me for that chair.

Prost!

After a couple of beers and without moxie or zest nor the desire to fight the crowds to stand in yet another line for yet another beer that would be sold out three people in front of us (yes, so much trying Wu Cream) my friends and I headed back to our hotel for dinner and soaking. This leads us back to the soaking pool at midnight.

The brew fest stopped pouring at 9 pm so I can understand why he has surrounded himself among the company of cheap beer, but naked? Maybe beer taste better without clothes?   And then I wondered if he simply lost his shorts buying beer at the brew festival.

Prost.