You may recall Washington’s win over Oregon in last year’s Beer Brawl at the Concordia Ale House in Porltand. If not, you can read about the results here. Essentially, bar patrons get to do a blind tasting of a flight of beers and vote for their favorites. Washington took down Oregon 825 to 590 on their own turf, to the dismay of the home drinkers. While I’d love to see this year’s rematch held on WA turf, the Concordia Ale House is the brains behind the operation and will be hosting again this year. CA will also enter the brawl.

Just saw this over at John Foyston’s blog on the Oregonian website:

The Beer Brawl is a titanic battle royale of beer, a toe-to-toe interstate tussle between three craft-brewing titans this year: Oregon, Washington and California, who’ll settle whose beer is the best in a people’s-choice blind tasting that’s so big, it fills most of a week. And it’ll be sweet revenge for us, because last year, we got whupped by our neighbors to the north, 890-560…

11 a.m. Wednesday Feb. 25th – Midnight Sunday Mar. 1st, Concordia Ale House,
3276 NE Killingsworth St.; $12 per taster tray, $25 with a cool commemorative t-shirt; $35 with Beer Brawl cap, t-shirt and taster tray. 503-287-3929.

 

Concordia co-owner Jerry Olson named each state’s captain — Shawn Loring of Lazy Boy Brewing for Washington and Deschutes Portland pubs Cam O’connor for the home team, plus Bear Repblic’s Richard Norgrove for California’s team. This year, each state will enter beers in four styles:
Pale Ale;
Imperial IPA;
Stout;
Brewers’ Choice.

That means your taster tray will include a dozen samples this year, identified only as 1A/1B/1C, 2A/2B/2C format. You’ll be asked to put a checkmark next to your favorite in each category, and the results will be tallied on a big scoreboard near the bar and results updated hourly. The final tally will settle once and forever which state rawks the hardest…There will also be an award for “M.O.B.” (Most Outstanding Beer), i.e. the beer that wins by the biggest head-to-head margin.

Good luck to OR and CA, and let’s hope that WA can represent as well as they did last year!