Portland Fruit Beer Festival – Homebrewing Contest
Portland, OR – A new kind of beer festival kicks off this June outside of one of Portland’s newest breweries, Burnside Brewing. 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.
Featuring more than 20 different beers from over 15 breweries from the Northwest and beyond, the Portland Fruit Beer Festival is a celebration of the wonderful variety that fruits offer and the incredible and unique beers brewers can make with them. The PFBF will take place June 11th and 12th (Friday and Saturday) in the parking lot of Burnside Brewing. The festival welcomes all ages with free entry, and the Burnside Brewing pub will also be open for regular business, offering dinner and overflow seating from the fest. 15 beers will pour outdoors in the partially covered parking lot. A special few taps will be offered next door in the brewery’s production space, featuring extremely rare rotating beers that have very limited availability. Tasting glasses are available for $6 and are required to sample beers at the festival. Tickets are $1 each. A 4oz pour requires 1 ticket, with pints available for 4 tickets on the primary 14-15 beers. The rare rotating taps will range from 1-3 tickets a 4 oz pour. Food options include Tastebud’s mobile wood-fired oven and Burnside’s own outdoor BBQ, and there will be juice and soda for those not partaking in beer and live entertainment.
Beers and Breweries
Festival organizers approached brewers with the challenge of making original beers using real whole, pureed, or juiced fruits without using any of the extracts or flavorings that have contributed to giving fruit beers a bad name. Brewers stepped up to the plate with beers ranging from Hopworks Belgian Red Delicious Apple Biere to Laurelwood’s Asian fruit and Spice beer. Of course Oregon beer drinkers love the hops and fruit beers are notoriously absent of them, but not this time. Hopheads will likely enjoy Breakside Brewery’s Mango IPA and Alameda’s Yellow Wolf Imperial IPA infused with huckleberries, among others. In all, more than 15 breweries will be participating with over 20 beers to choose from: Burnside Brewing, Hopworks Urban Brewing, Ninkasi, Dogfish Head, Widmer Brothers, New Belgium, Upright, Cascade, Oakshire, Block 15, Laurelwood, Fort George, Breakside, Lompoc, Alameda, Double Mountain and Beetje Brewing.
