From the good folks at Fort George Brewing: Summer may be ending, but things are just heating up on the coast! Youll have a chance to taste some of the best craft beers the region has to offer in Astoria at the 7th annual Pacific Northwest Brewcup this September. Festival organizers aim to have a variety of beers, which are new and diverse to the coastal beer drinking community. The focus of this years festival is to promote handcrafted artisan brews. An estimated three-dozen northwest microbreweries will have beers available for sampling. Root beers and ginger ales will also be available, making this a family-friendly event. There will be food vendors, three days of live music, and an opportunity to vote for your favorite beer. This year, organizers from the Baked Alaska Restaurant are joining forces with Astorias newest brewery, the Fort George Brewery + Public House. The Fort George hopes to make this an especially brewer-friendly event, and is inviting other regional brewers to participate and attend. Proceeds from the festival will go to the Clatsop County Food Bank. Nearly one third of the countys residents tapped into the food bank last year to help their families. A new food pantry is in the works to meet the growing need and volunteers are gearing up for a long winter, providing to families in especially tough economic times. The Pacific Northwest Brewcup takes place in downtown Astoria September 26th, 27th and 28th at the Astoria Public Plaza on Duane between 11th and 12th streets. For more information log onto www.fortgeorgebrewery.com or call (503) 325-PINT and ask for Jack or Chris.  read more »

Could this be the stumper?

This photo was snapped during our current adventure. That narrows it down to 24 states, eight provinces and one territory. I’ll rule out Alaska and the Yukon for you.

Anway, this isn’t really a hit-the-buzzer-first-Jeopardy-type contest (Daria would kick your butt), so feel free to comment even if you don’t know where this barn resides.

Heck, I bet we’d all like to know if you can tell us what Koehler beer used to taste like.  read more »

A bill that has been pending for more than a year in the Massachusetts state legislature would allow city and town officials to license the sale of beer and wine on golf courses in the state.

Currently only Massachusetts and Alaska ban the sale of alcohol from beverage carts on golf courses.

The bill, already approved once by the House and Senate, must be considered one more time before being sent to Gov. Deval Patrick. Some courses reportedly already flaunt the law. Country clubs near borders with other states say they lose business to courses that offer drink carts to players.

Nick Spies, Todd Wyatt, and Stephanie Ahlschwede, fixtures at the Huber Haus, are here at Gottberg today. We're brewing a Vienna Lager that we'll serve up at the Sunfest in a few weeks.

The gang's all here

Here's what they had to say about their brew day:

Todd: I'm very excited to be experiencing my first taste of commercial brewing after 18 years of homebrewing! Yippee!  read more »

Beers from Alaskan Brewing taste like this:

And like this:

They taste like they are from Alaska, and once you’ve traveled the Alaskan Marine Highway from one port to another you’ll realize that more specifically Alaskan Brewing beers taste of Southeast Alaska.

Quite honestly I paused for a moment last week when Alaskan co-founder Geoff Larson said that the brewery sells more than 70 percent of its beers beyond Alaska’s borders. After all, we’re at the beginning of our Year of Drinking Local, and know full well that many beers suffer the farther they travel from home.  read more »

Our next local beer will be from Alaska. Good deal.

We’ve been seeing beer from Alaskan Brewing since we hit Idaho, but it wasn’t the local beer then. Instead we bought an Idaho Riesling (instead of Alaskan Amber) in a gas station — an idea that turned out to be about as good as we expected when we did it. We saw lots of Alaskan in Washington . . . but still not the local beer.

Tonight we drank wine, Piety Flats Mercantile Red that we picked up in Yakima Valley. Fruit forward and pretty oaky, so very new American, but enjoyable. The winery is located across the road from an abandoned hop kiln (here’s a picture), and the plan was to call it the Hop Kiln winery until the owners discovered there was already a Sonoma County winery (situated in old hop kilns) using that name. We think the “hop kiln” wine in Yakima is better.  read more »