Portland International Beer Fest 2010

This past weekend, my husband and I went to the Portland International Beerfest 2010. Admittedly, this is more of my husband’s kind of thing this time around, but I had fun. It was held in the North Park Blocks of Portland near Powell’s Technical Books. The weather was pretty near perfect.

As with any beer tasting festival, we got a glass for tasting. My husband and I were expecting a larger plastic mug like we had been acquiring from so many other festivals, but this time it was a small stemmed beer glass that only really held 4 oz. I really liked it, and will probably use it as my tasting glass when I am tinkering with my own products at home.

I started off my tasting with local Wandering Aengus Ciderwork’s Cherry Anthem Cider. I like cherry, but I found this to be a tad bit on the cough syrup side taste wise.

I tried out Unibroue Éphémère Apple beer, which I really liked. It smelled like an apple crisp, where you had the apple and the oatmeal smell together.

Next, I had Mountain Meadows Agave Mead, which was kind of like drinking undistilled tequila, but it was much more complex. I think the next time I see it in a store, I’ll buy some, and I’ve been eying agave syrup maybe to try making my own.

From there, I tried out Samuel Smith Organic Raspberry Ale, which my initial reaction was that it was very much like a raspberry Framboise, that is to say, a very syrupy fruity beer. However, when I came back the next day, one of the few drinks I consumed was a Lindemans Raspberry Framboise and then the Samuel Smith Organic Raspberry Ale, and the Lindemans Framboise was very sweet and not a whole lot of beer flavor, and the Samuel Smith Organic Raspberry Ale was milder in sweetness with a little bit more beer coming though. Both were very good, but I think the Lindemans Framboise is more of a special occasion and drink it with cake, where as the Samuel Smith Organic Raspberry Ale is a little more every day. However, one should not confuse this with a normal fruit berry, as it is definitely fruiter and sweeter than most fruit beers.

After having that much, I decided that my taste buds were probably numb enough to try a beer without fruit, so I went with a wheat wine at 10% alcohol called Trois Mousquetaires Imperial Weizen, imported by Shelton Brothers. It had a wheat smell to it, and my husband said he was getting a lot of esters (fruit smells) from it. However, I didn’t drink it very fast, so as it warmed up, it got worse in my opinion, and there was some banana notes coming though, indicating a warmer fermentation.

I followed that up with Franziskaner Dunkel-Weisse beer, which is a Bavarian Dark Wheat. By that point, my note writing kind of trailed off, and I began conducting an experiment in which I will write about in a few days.

As I have mentioned, we did return the next day, but I had pretty much tried what I wanted to, so I just had the Framboise and Raspberry Ale back to back so that I could be sober a few hours later for driving, as we took the bus on Friday.