The holiday season has officially arrived. It’s that time of year when friends and family gather over shared meals and toast to the changing seasons. There are so many wonderful fall flavors to be found during the holidays, especially when it comes to beers and ciders. Put on a chunky sweater, grab your friends and family, and sip your way into the holiday season with Alesong Brewery.
Alesong Brewery is the ideal destination for fall whether you’re looking for a scenic ride through the countryside or a trip downtown. Alesong has two locations, one at 5th Street Market in downtown Eugene as well as their artisan countryside brewery. The award-winning main brewery and tasting room are located about 30 minutes from the center of Eugene in the foothills of the Coastal Range Mountains. We promise you it’s worth the drive to reach such a peaceful escape. The views from the outdoor seating capture the idyllic beauty of Oregon, you can spot horses, goats, and cows grazing in the distance on the pristine rolling hills.
Since brothers Brian and Doug Coombs founded Alesong in 2015 alongside Matt Van Wyk, they’ve been using their chemistry and beer-making backgrounds to craft their artisan barrel-aged beers. They pride themselves on their production process where patience and creativity are the key ingredients. Each year since their foundation, they’ve taken home medals from the Great American Beer Festival, the largest beer festival in the country.
There are two options for beer tastings, the standard tasting or the upgraded Blender’s Experience package. Both options include tours of the brewing facilities and tasting a curated selection of their hand-crafted ales. Since all of their beers are brewed in small batches, they are constantly creating innovative new beer techniques and flavors which change with the seasons. In the past seven years, they’ve made over 100 distinct blends. Each takes anywhere from three months to several years to age. For our tasting, we were given a curated selection of gives ales, each with a unique character.
Our first “welcome beer” was a light, refreshing, sour ale called Gose Añejo. The flavor was inspired by margaritas, aged in a tequila barrel with sea salt, agave, lime, and orange zest. Next was Silver Lining, an oak barrel-aged ale with fruit and a more complex hop profile. The third, Raindrops on Roses, was a rich wine-beer hybrid made with whole pinot-noir grapes from the neighboring King’s Estate Winery.
Things got darker soon after with the intense Double Barrel Maple “Rhino Suit” bourbon-aged stout. We then finished with a vanilla-scented imperial stout called Showstopper which was paired with a decadent orange ganache chocolate truffle.
These beers were accompanied by two delicious snack boards which included artisan cheeses, meats, dried fruit, nuts, and crackers. These varied flavors were interesting and unusual combinations you might not expect, but should absolutely try. They also plan to host multi-course dinners in the upcoming months featuring a local chef. Based on the wow factor of the charcuterie boards, we can only imagine how stunning these meals will be.
The whole tasting experience was guided by Mellisa Penny, director of hospitality. She introduced each new beer with information explaining the flavor profile and the intensive brewing process for each blend. “It’s riskier, it’s more elements to try and keep control of, but you get so much complexity and such a unique final product,” said Penny, “Most of these beers don’t really compare to anything you see in town.”
They release new beers on a quarterly basis, making it worthwhile to keep up with whatever interesting flavor combinations they invent next. This also means that when a beer is gone, it’s gone! So make sure you check back in each season to try their latest concoction. They also offer club memberships where you gain access to exclusive new beers not usually included on the standard menu.
“Our goal is to highlight the abundance within our region, there’s no shortage of grapes and other excellent fruit. Anything in Oregon we can get our hands on to incorporate,” said Penny.
Spending a day at Alesong is the perfect way to get into the holiday spirit by enjoying some of the fall flavors that come straight from Oregon.
