Breakside, Younger Steal OBA Show

Breakside Brewing and Don Younger dominated Tuesday evening's Oregon Beer Awards, presented in front of a packed house at Revolution Hall. The industry-centric affair, sponsored by Willamette Week, coincided with the release of the 2017 Beer Guide.

Breakside walked away with 10 medals, including four golds. It won two medals, a bronze and a gold, in the hotly contested IPA category. It's not all that surprising to see Breakside do well.Their beers are well-made and have won medals in a lot of places. But seeing them win 15 percent of the total medals awarded in 22 categories was somewhat shocking.

Jeff Alworth, who is few years younger than me and slightly less of a curmudgeon, speculates in his event recap that Breakside winning so many medals is a little awkward. It's awkward because Breakside's head brewer, Ben Edmunds, organizes the OBA judging. Yup.

In fact, it would be pretty impossible to mess with the tasting results. Beers are numbered and tasted blind. Numbers become names when the winners are chosen. Ben would have to be pretty shifty to alter the outcomes. Also pretty dishonest. I can't see it. Claims of impropriety remind me of an NFL pool I ran for many years with a friend. Whenever we won money, people complained that we were fixing the results. That was quite impossible. I had no power to modify picks or results. Such is the case with Ben Edmunds and Breakside. It just looks awkward.

Don Younger, who passed away in 2011, was honored for Lifetime Achievement. Younger, you will recall, was owner of the Horse Brass. Very early on, the Old Tavern Rat became a passionate advocate for Oregon craft beer. His energy and promotional ideas helped make Portland what it is. He is one of a handful of local icons who essentially launched the craft beer industry here.

Organizers showed a wonderful video, created by Lucas Chemotti and Ezra Johnson-Greenough. It featured comments from folks who knew Younger well...Jerry Fechter (Lompoc Brewing), Karl Ockert (founding brewer at Bridgeport Brewing), John Foyston (Oregonian for many years), Carl Singmaster (Belmont Station), Fred Bowman (co-founder of Portland Brewing) and others. It was a fabulous tribute. Follow the link above if you haven't seen the video.

With respect to the results, I'm not going to pile on and post them here. No point. You can chase them down in a variety of places, including here. There are always surprises. That's what happens when beers are judged anonymously. Some beers that are well-regarded don't do well. Some that aren't regarded at all do. That was definitely the case this year, as it was last year, the first time blind judging was used.

The event itself has grown in popularity, complete with red carpet interviews. This was the second year at Revolution Hall and it sold out for the first time. That led to some issues with folks entering the venue. I arrived fairly early and waited only a few minutes to get in. Folks who showed up later, like Jeff, got stuck in long lines and were not happy.

Organizers actually anticipated problems herding people through the door, having experienced it last year, They made a concerted effort to shepherd people into the venue via multiple lines. Somehow, it didn't work out. For some reason, Portlanders accustomed to waiting in single file lines (possibly for rare specialty beer) wanted to enter the venue that way. Doh!

Once inside, there seemed to be ample seating in the theater. I sat in the balcony area and enjoyed panoramic views. There were the usual lines for beer. Hey, these are pro drinkers. What did you expect? They didn't mess with food this year, avoiding last year's free-for-all fiasco. If you wanted or needed to eat, there was a food truck parked outside. Problem solved.

After last year's event, which packed the venue about as tight as it was Tuesday night, I wondered if organizers might consider moving to a larger venue. They're kinda stuck. They need something larger than Revolution Hall, but smaller than the Schnitz. There isn't much in-between that would work for them, I'm told. That will force them to figure out how to make Revolution Hall work.

Speaking of Revolution Hall, everyone knows the building originally housed Washington High School, right? Sitting upstairs gave me the opportunity to snoop around while sipping a beer. There's some amazing history on display in the trophy/memento cases. That part of Revolution Hall is worth a look if you're into that sort of thing. Very cool surprise.

My thanks once again to Martin Cizmar and Willamette Week, for asking me to be part of OBA judging and the 2017 Beer Guide. Special thanks to Steph Barnhart, Ezra Johnson-Greenough, Ben Edmunds and the countless volunteers (you know who you are) without whom this event would not happen. I hope to see you next year.

Oregon Beer Awards Judging, 2017

Fresh from nine days in Hawaii (yes, I missed the snow), I found myself sampling beer at the Oregon Beer Awards judging on Saturday and Sunday. Though the Awards have been around for a few years, this is just the second year in which blind judging was used.

Stuff you may already know if you watch these things: There were 974 beers entered by 112 Oregon breweries this year. That's up from 525 beers and 78 breweries last year. It's the only double-blind tasting competition in Oregon.

Although the event is sponsored by Willamette Week, the competition is run by Breakside's Ben Edmunds. Judges are mostly brewers, publicans and others who work in or around the industry. They invite a few local writers just for kicks, I suppose.

One of the wise things they did this year, having learned something last year, is reduce panel size to three or four in the prelim rounds. They also kept panels mostly together. The panels were larger last year and judges switched panels a lot. The result was that things bogged down and we got way behind schedule. Much, much better this time around.

Medal round panels, at least the ones I was part of or witnessed, were larger. That also makes sense because you want more palates to draw from when you're trying to pick the top three beers from a flight of 10 or so beers that are all really good. It was very tough to pick winners in the medal flight I participated in.

A few people have asked me how drunk judges get. Not very, I'd say. The beer is served in small plastic cups and judges rarely consume all of the beer in any of the cups. Most who judged full days this year reviewed six flights of roughly 10 beers each per day. The ounces add up fast, but food and water was provided and there were breaks. I saw no stumbling.

After judging a full day last year, I opted to change things up this year. I judged beer Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon (allowing me to fully miss the dreadful NFL conference championship beatdowns). I did the split because I felt like my palate got pretty fatigued in the afternoon session last year. Avoiding that prospect seemed like a wise move and it was.

The first thing you realize in these tasting excursions is how much differently brewers evaluate beers than most of us who write or watch the industry. Jeff Alworth has a lengthy and informative post about this. In a nutshell, brewers often taste and identify imperfections in brewing processes and ingredients. They do the same thing with good beers. Their comments tend to be fairly objective.

Meanwhile, I can identify good and flawed beers. During each flight, I'd take notes on each beer and identify the ones I thought  flawed or not quite right. I'd also choose my top three or four in the flight. My choices generally jived with the brewers on the panel. But my opinions tended to be subjective, not objective. Which means I usually couldn't objectively describe why a beer was flawed or near perfect.

Thanks to the folks at Willamette Week for sponsoring the competition. Special thanks to Steph Barnhart of WW and to Ben Edmunds, both of whom worked tirelessly to make this event work. Thanks are also due the countless volunteers who helped in a variety of ways. Finally, Widmer Brewing generously hosted the judging and provided lunch both days. Thanks, folks.

Medal winners in 22 categories, as well as a host of other awards, will be announced during the Oregon Beer Awards ceremony at Revolution Hall on Feb. 28. Tickets are available here. There will undoubtedly be some surprises. Why? Because the beers were evaluated blindly and honestly. Brewery stature meant nothing. Only the beer mattered.

See you at Revolution Hall.