Concordia Cup 2011

The ongoing competitions at Concordia Ale House are always amusing. Concordia is an interesting place. They have 20+ rotating taps and usually a pretty good list of draft beers. Then there's the bottle selection. They don't have a huge amount of cooler space, but the bottles they have are well-chosen. It must be tough being virtually next door to New Seasons, which carries a pretty good selection of bottles at what I consider to be decent prices. Oh well, Concordia has been around since 2004 and seems to be getting by.

The Imperial IPA taster tray.

The just-completed Concordia Cup 2011 competition was between 12 Oregon Imperial IPAs. They don't reveal the beers on the tray. Instead, you taste them all and vote for your favorite. The results (and beers) are revealed by email on Monday morning. Some of these beers are not readily available around town, so good luck guessing the names while you taste. Some weren't even very good. But never mind.

The winner, occupying the 12th slot in the tray, was Hopworks' Ace of Spades. Second place went to Oakshire's Perfect Storm. Third went to Bitter Bitch, from Astoria Brewing. I have to admit I didn't vote for any of them. Ace of Spades is good, but had heavy alcohol overtones. Perfect Storm was closer to the mark and got  my buddy's vote. I voted for #10, which was Mega Monster from Gilgamesh Brewing. Mega Monster is slightly dark for the style, but really well balanced, in my opinion. My choice for second would have been the Oakshire. Honorable mention goes to the #3 beer, which turned out to be Boneyard's Hop Venom. This beer exhibited hints of banana and cloves along with the heavy hops. I recently had a pint of Hop Venom over at the Hawthorne Hophouse and didn't notice those flavors. Further research may be needed. Comments welcome.

The next Concordia competition is Beerknowledgy, in which you taste 10 beers and try to identify them from a list. That's happening Aug. 17-21. Always interesting.