Radio station KLCC’s annual Microbrew Festival is bringing some of Oregon’s best brewers to town.
The two-day festival kicks off Friday and will showcase 50 small breweries from as near as the Pacific Northwest and from as far away as Belgium, and many of the brews were made exclusively for the festival.
KLCC, Lane Community College’s licensed National Public Radio broadcaster, has been hosting the event for nearly two decades as the station’s primary fundraiser. “Our motto is ‘Keeping the fun in fundraiser,’” organizer Gayle Chisholm said.
The event is more than just a beer-tasting extravaganza. The festival has more than 100
different small-batch beers, but also has opportunities for people to collect old vinyl records.
“Our first year, we were clearing out the records at KLCC and decided that we would sell some of them at the festival,” co-organizer Kris Fox said.
Now the station has people donate albums for them to sell at the festival to supplement what they pick from their archives.
“It’s kind of a fun activity when you’re holding a beer and flipping through vinyls,” Chisholm said.
The range of brews showcased at the festival is extensive.
“A lot of the breweries are little, one-shop operations,” Chisholm said, referring to smaller entrants like Pelican Brewery in Pacific City or Mad River Brewery in Blue Lake, Calif., which tend to focus more on producing smaller, experimental batches.
Nearly 130 homebrewers have entered the homebrewing side of the festival. Though those brews are not available for the public to partake in, they will be judged and ranked
by officials.
Even though the festival is focusing on smaller breweries and homebrewers, the bigger
breweries like Belgian super-brewery Stella Artois, Samuel Adams and Blue Moon still take advantage of what the festival can offer them.
“The distributors want to kind of showcase some of their newer beers,” Fox said.
The festival is important to them because distributors carry both small and large breweries. They serve as an intermediaries between brewers and retailers, and the distributors do a lot of their promotional work for them.
The festival features a collaboration ale that 11 Oregon brewers have worked together to create. They categorize the beer as a “Belgian-style Cascadian dark rye ale.”
Many of the brewers are also presenting some seasonal and limited edition styles at the festival. Northwest giants Pyramid and Redhook are both dropping their spring seasonals at the festival.
Meanwhile, Eugene’s own beer goddess, Ninkasi, will be imparting a dry-hopped Tricerahops, Renewale ESB, and the never-before-released Unconventionale, alongside
her standard Oatis and the Collaboration Brew.
The hop-crazed fellows from Stone Brewing Co. in Escondido, Calif., will be making the trek north for the weekend and will be presenting their bourbon barrel-aged Arrogant Bastard Ale along with their famous double-IPA Ruination Ale.
The festival will feature live music performances on Friday and Saturday by Seattle-based roots singer LeRoy Bell and His Only Friends and Salem blues act the Ty Curtis
Band, respectively.
Video game retailer GameCrazy will also be in attendance at the festival with their own booth where festival participants can play a Wii system if they feel the need for more stimulation. Fox calls the weekend “a great, big winter-spring event for Eugene.”
Designated drivers can get into the event for half price, and free soda and coffee will be made available.
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Local brewfest combines beer and vinyl
Daily Emerald
February 10, 2010
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