I couldn’t resist looking at the Deschutes Brewing Fresh Hop Mirror Pond Pale Ale that I received in the fridge for too long; so of course it didn’t take me long to crack it open to drink and write about it.
Aside from the high praise that this beer has been universally getting, one big reason I was excited for this beer was the sheer beer (and hops) geek factor involved in the use of heirloom Cascade hops—from the original cuttings from 1972. In fact I just received another press release today that talks about this:
But this creation went far beyond just ordering some Cascade hops from the rich farmlands of Oregon – instead, Brewmaster Larry Sidor revived the original 1972 rhizome for the plant from the archives at Oregon State University.
“We are in the craft beer industry and we care about quality, which is why we asked the hop farmer to keep a field idle for two years – we actually paid them to not grow anything,” said Sidor. “This gave us a ‘pure’ field to start with, using cuttings from the original Cascade hop plant and we grew them up for more than two years.”
Goschie Farms of the Willamette Valley agreed to dedicate four acres of pristine land for heirloom Cascade hop cultivation. The 2011 harvest season bears the fruits of those labors begun many years ago, and so does Fresh Hop Mirror Pond.
Yes there’s a (big) element of PR to this story but frankly I think this is the most interesting hop-related story this year (and ranks pretty high for beer geek stories too).
Fresh Hop Mirror Pond is 5% alcohol by volume and has 40 IBUs.
Appearance: Bright, clear copper in color, with big, luscious (3 fingers) of off-white head. Nice lacing.
Smell: Bright, green, and citrus—kind of a sweet orange aroma. Floral and a touch grassy. A sweet toasted biscuit note in there too.
Taste: Toasty, rich layers of malts—very much an ESB in profile to my taste—with a nice mellow background bitterness that leads up to a fruity, citrus-peel-pith bite, settling into wild mustard greens on the back of the tongue. Another sip is spicy and vegetal yet a bit mellow; tastes very fresh and while not as intense as eating/chewing up a fresh hop flower (yes, I have done this), it’s basically the same.
Mouthfeel: Clean, medium-bodied, a nice lingering vegetal bitterness in the aftertaste.
Overall: All around this is a really great beer, from the rich, biscuity malts to the hop character which is balanced really well, bright and big and bold with a subtle, deft hand applied. I get so much “green” with every sip, it’s luscious.
On BeerAdvocate, it already has 11 reviews and scores an overall grade of A. RateBeer has a page for it but instead redirects you to their regular Mirror Pond page, which isn’t quite the same, but ranks it at their 91st percentile.
When it comes to pumpkin beers (one of my favorite “styles” as you all well know) it’s always seemed to me that they are more an East Coast regional specialty* (much the same way that fresh hop beers are a West Coast—and more specifically Pacific Northwest—regional specialty). Hence I am always excited when I find pumpkin beers being brewed by Oregon breweries.
Last year I had posted a (short) list of Oregon breweries that I found were brewing pumpkin beers; this year I thought I’d do the same, keep (another) tally of what’s out there.
- Beer Valley (Ontario): Jackalope Imperial Pumpkin Porter: I tasted this at the Oregon Brewers Festival and it was available from the brewery back in July.
- Laurelwood (Portland): Stingy Jack Pumpkin Ale: I shared a bottle of this with friends this weekend, and plan to get more to review.
- Fort George (Astoria): Drunkin Pumpkin: They had a series of posts on their Facebook page about this beer, which they were serving at the brewery earlier this month out of a pumpkin. (I don’t know for sure what type of beer this was, but a commenter mentioned “Pumpkin Stout”.)
- Rogue (Newport): They posted an album to Facebook titled “The Great Pumpkin Roast” which I imagine will be for their Pumpkin Patch Ale. (Part of their Chatoe Rogue “First Growth” line.)
- Breakside (Portland): I just took a look (today) at their current beer list and see a Pumpkin Bière de Garde on tap!
- Silver Moon (Bend): Twisted Gourd is brewed and bottled annually—it hasn’t made an appearance (yet) but hopefully it will soon.
- Deschutes (Bend): Last year they brewed a pumpkin ale (for the first time ever!) dubbed Pompion, and I’m hoping they decide to do another this year.
I’ll update this list as I hunt out more Oregon pumpkin beers; if you know of any, leave a note in the comments!
* Although Elysian Brewing seems to be the exception to that rule—indeed, I tend to think of Elysian as the pumpkin beer brewer, what with their Great Pumpkin Beer Festival and all the specialty pumpkin beers they brew. And they are solidly West Coast, which is awesome.
Beer foam and head retention are the topics for this week’s podcast with Dr Charles Bamforth, the Anheuser-Busch endowed Professor of Brewing Science at the University of California, Davis. Known as “the Pope of Foam”, Charlie has been studying beer foam since 1979. He provides a complete overview of carbonation, how foam forms in a beer, how you can enhance the head retention in a beer, and much more.
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Topics in This Week’s Episode (37:40)
- This week’s guest is Dr Charles Bamforth, Professor of Brewing Science at the University of California at Davis. Charlie teaches sold-out classes on brewing at the University. His facebook page is here at UC Davis Brewing.
- This week’s sponsor is MoreBeer - you can express your support for the BeerSmith sites by placing your next order with MoreBeer using the order page here.
- Charlie introduces carbonation and talks a bit about the history of carbonation and how it is measured.
- We talk about why some styles are highly carbonated while others are not.
- Charlie talks about why foam is an important part of most modern beers.
- We walk through how foam and carbonation affects the percepion, body and flavor of the beer.
- Charlie talks about the most popular methods for carbonating beer.
- We dive into the science of bubbles and head retention
- Charlie provides a few methods for enhancing and managing head retention in a beer
- We discuss the role of glasses and how glass shapes affect beer
- Charlie explains how some beers like Guiness Stout are served with a nitrogen-carbon-dioxide mix
Thanks again to Dr Charles Bamforth who was kind enough to take time from his very busy schedule to appear on the show!
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There’s an article on OPB News today (that’s Oregon Public Broadcasting for those of you out-of-state) titled “Is There a Beer Bubble Bursting in Bend?” which covers some of the various Bend beer issues I’ve been following lately and (perhaps more importantly?) features a brief quote from me as well.
And so far Good Life’s beer has been selling well. It has received positive reviews from beer reviewers such as Jon Abernathy. He writes a blog called the brew site dot com which he started back in 2004. He says back then there were just 5 breweries in town. Today there are 9.
“You know, a year ago I would have said whatever we had a year ago was too much. But since then Good Life has opened, Below Grade has opened we’ve got the ones that are in development being announced. I don’t know if there’s any end to it. Sky’s the limit,” he said.
But in a town that proved to be the regional epicenter in the run up of the housing boom, talk like that reminds people of 2005-2006.
I met with reporter David Nogueras last week and chatted with him for about half an hour on the Bend beer issues (and indeed made a bit more of the audio cut also linked on the story).
It’s a good overview piece, and for what it’s worth I really don’t know if (and when) there will be a bursting of any beer bubbles… which incidentally is fine with me!
On Saturday we headed over to Sisters to check out the Sisters Fresh Hop Festival, the first of the Fresh Hop Tastivals that are taking place around the state. I’m calling this a “mini-review” because as festivals go, it was fairly low-key with relatively few beers (which is actually rather nice) so we were only there a few hours plus I only took two actual photos.
Overall it was a really nice event, though the town of Sisters itself presented a snag: apparently in the wee hours of the morning a truck hit a power pole outside of Sisters which forced crews to shut of electricity to the entire town for most of the morning—power didn’t come back on until about 11:30. As a result, only two food vendors were able to show up and even then due to the power outage they had a very limited menu. Fortunately the rest of the Festival itself didn’t require much power.
They had a single tent erected to hold the 11 breweries pouring beers. It was a hot day and we actually enjoyed it more outside of the tent (in the Park) in the shade, as the tent got progressively warmer and stuffier as the afternoon wore on, with more people inside and not much cross-breeze.
The rest of the Festival was about the fresh hop beers, of course. They had a handy flyer with the participating breweries listed (minus Silver Moon Brewing who was also there) with space for notes. Here are the beers I had, from those notes (in order that I had them):
- Three Creeks Cone Lick’r: Not terribly fragrant, but has a nice green flavor, somewhat spicy, and seems pretty fresh.
- Full Sail Lupulin: Got a bit of an off-note, almost paint thinner-ish. Bitter like maybe nettles or dandelion sap, but harsh. [I don't know exactly what was going on with this, but it was off and really the only one I didn't care for.]
- Lucky Lab The Mutt: Sour nose, almost funky; but flavor isn’t sour at all, it’s full of woody, strong hops, resin, not super “green” but potent. Really cloudy as well (the others were fairly clear).
- McMenamins Old St. Francis School Thundercone: Aroma full of grass, wildflowers and sage. Amber (flavor) with an herbal note, and more fresh-cut grass.
- Fort George Co-Hoperative Ale: Super mellow nose, with some “green” deep in there; got some dandelion bitterness and earthiness.
- Cascade Lakes Harvest Ale: Dandelion deep in the nose, that’s almost all that it is, aroma-wise. Lots of caramel with a green presence behind, but this really highlights the malt it seem.
- BridgePort Hop Harvest: (This was being served from bottles, the only beer not on tap.) Floral nose, kind of Hop Trip-y, fruity and green. Not as fresh as the draft beers.
- Deschutes Fresh Hop Chainbreaker White: Basically the same as “regular” Chainbreaker—fresh hops don’t have a prominent presence here—it’s a bit bright but more of the “white IPA” (think Conflux #2) character comes through.
- Ninkasi Tricerarillo: (The hoppiest and strongest beer at the Fest, at 8.8% abv.) My friend’s Paul’s pour was super minty on the nose, mine was fruity, it’s very odd how that changed. Big and sweet flavor, with a fruity green hop punch. Pretty sweet.
- Silver Moon Hoppapotamus: Sweet, graham cracker aroma, and floral. Viney, cleanly bitter, a bit of resin, and the biscuit/cracker notes come through in the malts.
Another nice aspect of this Fest is that, with the exception of Ninkasi’s beer at 8.8%, all these beers were fairly easy drinking and sessionable at 6.7% abv or less (I’m pulling that 6.7% number from Silver Moon’s Hoppapotamus strength—at least, last year’s version, I haven’t seen the numbers for this year’s yet) and many were in the 5% range. So you don’t walk away feeling like you’ve had too much to drink.
All in all I thought this was a good Fest, a nice “harvest” type of event showcasing the fresh hop offerings out there right now. If you get a chance to attend any of the other Fresh Hop Tastivals coming up in Hood River, Portland, and Eugene, I highly recommend it.
While the basic steps that go into brewing haven’t changed much over the 6,000+ year history of the beverage, the ingredients and equipment certainly have. As a result, the beverage we call beer today doesn’t share much in common with what was being brewed and drank 1,000 years ago. The most significant change to the ingredients over that time has been the dominance of hops over all other brewing herbs. Hops are the perfect spice for beer, they add bitterness, aromatics, boost head retention, inhibit Lactobacillus, and grow like weeds in northern climes (the same places where barley thrives and grapes do not). Even so, it is nice to try the alternatives sometimes to see what the other options are (even if just to affirm your choice).
Over Labor Day weekend I drove from DC out close to the border between Virginia and West Virginia to brew with one of the homebrewers who attended Brewing Locally. When Marty mentioned that he and his friend Martin brew gruit over an open fire, it sounded like an event that I couldn’t pass up witnessing for myself. The combination of an arcane beer style, and an crazy brewing technique was something that seemed right up my alley.
Traditionally blends of herbs called gruit were used to balance the sweetness of the malt as well as their supposed medicinal benefits. I have brewed a couple non-hopped beers (Heather Ale, and the Winter Kvass), but I have yet to brew one with the classic combination of herbs that make up gruit. Martin and Marty both seem confident that these herbs (yarrow, sweet gale, wormwood, marsh rosemary etc…) have a stimulative effect compared to drinking a couple hopped beers (hops being a sedative). I haven’t noticed much difference, but for more information of these herbs and their supposed effects you can read Stephen Harrod Buhner’s Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers.
Martin and Marty buy their herbs in bulk from an online spice/herb shop for the most part. The only one of the mainstay herbs that is hard to come by is marsh rosemary, which they buy for $10 a jar from a Canadian who forages for it (Labrador tea was suggested as the best easily accessible alternative). They have also started to grow some of their own and forage for local equivalents. The most important aspect of brewing a good gruit is avoiding over-spicing (as most of the handful of commercial examples I’ve tried have been), which is something that the various gruits they served (classic, sage, burdock root etc…) avoided. They are still tinkering with the timing, sometimes adding all of the herbs near the start of the boil, others saving the more aromatics herbs for a later addition.
Propane is so popular with brewers because it is clean, easy to control, and compact, but it also adds ~$4 a batch onto my cost. Brewing over a fire has a romantic appeal, it makes brewing seem more like an event and less like a chore. If you want to brew over a fire you’ll need something to suspend the kettle over the fire and a way to adjust the heat. A more complex rig could have a winch to raise and lower the fire, but in Marty’s case he simply pulls the kettles partway off the fire when they threaten to boil-over. Another advantage of brewing over a fire is that it is easy to brew a couple batches at once over a single fire (we brewed three 10 gallon batches). Building guitars for a living and having a house out in the woods Marty has a lot of extra scrap wood to burn, but if you didn’t you’d probably lose most of your savings from not buying propane by buying wood. Martin has a web page with details of his slightly more elaborate fire-brewing rig.
They do not get a smoky flavor from boiling over the fire, or any additional caramelization (or melanodins) from the intense heat as far as I tasted. The soot from the fire does blacken the kettles, but this isn’t a big deal. The biggest disadvantage is that tending the fire to ensure that it is hot enough to boil the wort is one more thing to worry about.
To cool the beers they simply leave the kettles covered overnight before transferring the cool wort to carboys and pitching yeast the next morning. The wooden lids are not tight fitting, which allows ambient air to be sucked in as the wort cools and contracts. As a result of this (and the lack of preservative hops) all of the beers I tried had a wonderful refreshing tartness that mingled surprisingly well with the herbal bitterness. Sour and bitter and not normally flavors that combine pleasantly, but it this case the bitterness comes through in the front with the sourness holding off until the finish.
It was a terrific way to spend a day, capped off with a delicious dinner of venison (which Marty had hunted) roasted in a pot over the same fire we were using to brew. Not sure that I’ll be building a fire in my small backyard to brew anytime soon, but it certainly inspired me to try my hand at a traditional gruit.
Martin’s Classic Gruit
10 gallons:
Mash 1/2 a bag (25 lbs) of American pale malt in the low 150s F (strike water ~165 F).
After 60 minutes of conversion, run-off, batch sparge, then bring wort to a boil. They do not recirculate which leaves the beer hazy, and looking like a medieval beverage.
3 oz yarrow and 1 oz wormwood for bittering near the start of the boil.
1/2 oz each of myrica gale (sweet gale) and marsh rosemary (or Labrador tea) as finishing in the last 10 minutes of the boil.
Allow to cool naturally overnight. In the morning rack to fermenters, pitch US-05, and allow to ferment. When fermentation is complete prime and bottle.
Despite the fact that I have lived in Minnesota for the past 15 years, I have held strong to my love of my home state of Iowa, and the team I grew up following with a fervor, the Iowa Hawkeyes. This past weekend I had an opportunity to travel down to Iowa City with my family to watch the Hawks
come back from a large deficit to beat Pitt. It was fun game and a great experience to be in Kinnick Stadium.
I had been wanting to brew up an IPA for the fall, using the Centennial hops my friend Jesse grew for me this year. I went down to his house to help harvest them, and have been excited to brew with them. Inspired by my trip to Hawkeye nation, I settled on the name and label for the IPA recipe I’ve had in my head for a couple weeks now.
I wanted to keep the grain bill relatively simple, I like IPAs that tend to be on the lighter side of the malt spectrum, focusing more on the hops than the malt. I wanted use pilsner malt in the partial mash, and also wanted to use some organic victory malt to add some complexity and body. I wanted to use some Chinhook hops to add a little bit of piney flavor to play off of the citrusy Centennial hops. I plan on dry hopping with an ounce or two of Centennial as well.
Here’s the recipe:
Partial Mash: Mash 1 hour @ 152
3.5 lbs Organic Pilsner
.5 lbs Organic Victory Malt
.5 lbs Organic Crystal 40
.5 lbs Organic Carapils
Malt Extract: 6 lbs Organic Light LME @ 20
Hops: 1 oz Summit (17% AAU) @ 60
.5 oz Chinhook @ 30
.5 oz Chinhook @ 20
1 oz whole leaf Organic Centennial @ 5
1 oz whole leaf Organic Centennial @ 1
Yeast: 1272 American Ale II
Salud and Go Hawks!
Bearded Brewer
After two years of kegging, the biggest complaint I have about having beers on tap is that I tend to drink them rather than opening up bottles. This is a result of how easy it is to pour a glass of beer, and that I am often waiting for a tap to open up for a beer that is ready to force carbonate. Having more taps might help the situation, but that will have to wait.
Audrey and I bottled our most recent collaboration (a golden American wheat) six weeks ago and this is only the second bottle I’ve opened. It may simply need more time, but the flavors still haven’t come together for me. It has some earthy/spicy components that I’m struggling to identify; at first I worried that some Brett snuck into the beer, but it isn’t developing that way.
I think everyone has some ingredients that always work and others that just never seem to taste right to them. For example, The Henley of Thames strain (WLP023/WY1275) has always given too much mineral from my tastes in an English ale. With this as my first try at a 100% Willamette beer, I’m suspecting that it may be a hop that doesn’t mesh well with my taste buds solo.
Audrey’s Golden American Wheat
Appearance – Pours slightly hazy, not surprising for a beer with 50% wheat malt. The color is about what we were aiming for, deep gold headed towards light amber. The head is thin, but dense and long lasting.
Smell – The aroma is odd at first with some assertive yeastiness. That quickly evaporates leaving a slightly spicy, bready aroma. The aromatics continue to change as the beer warms, gaining subtle floral and citrus notes.
Taste – It is confusing where the clove/pepper character came from considering we fermented with US-05 in the mid-high 60s F. The malt character is nice, crackery, doughy, with some light caramel. More bitterness than most American wheat beers, but that is the balance we were looking for.
Mouthfeel – Medium body, somewhat thicker than most moderate gravity wheat beers. Middle-of-the-road carbonation, especially compared to the many gassy wheat beers.
Drinkability & Notes – An interesting beer, not as clean as I was expecting, but more layers to the flavor and aroma than I anticipated. I think the spice character can be attributed to the “spicy woody” Willamette hops, although I’m reluctant to say for sure as this was the first beer I brewed with them and nothing else. Not one of my favorite batches, but there really isn’t anything really wrong with it.
Oatmeal stout is a popular variant of Stout introduced in the late 19th century and famous for its smooth, creamy, silky texture. This week we’ll talk a bit about the history of oatmeal stouts, the beer style, how to design a recipe for one and how to brew it.
The History of Oatmeal Stout
As mentioned in my earlier article on Dry Irish Stout, as well as my podcast on Irish Stout with John Palmer, all modern stouts trace their heritage back to Porter, which was an immensely popular drink in the 17th century. As far back as 1677, the term “stout” was used to describe “strong” beers, and most beers in that time period were dark ales (what we would call Porters) because malt at the time was kilned over fires – true Pale malt did not arrive until the early industrial revolution brought coal fired malting.
The term “Stout ” was used to describe strong beers of various kinds well into the 1800′s, and evolved over the century to refer to strong very dark “Stout Porters”, or simply “Stouts”. Oatmeal Stout was first widely marketed in the late 1800′s as a nutritional drink. The marketing worked well as oats were though to have a restorative, nourishing and healthy effect in Victorian England.
The use of oats in beer was not a modern innovation, however, as oats were widely used for ales in medieval Europe. The use of oats in beer had largely died out by the 16th century, with the exception of Norway where it was still used.
Oatmeal stout sales flourished in the late 19th and early 20th century, and continued to be brewed until shortly after World War II. However, in the 1950′s most breweries stopped producing oatmeal stout, and by the early 1970′s no commercial examples remained. However, brewer Samuel Smith revived the style in the late 1970′s and since then hundreds of small and micro-breweries have produced Oatmeal Stouts.
The Oatmeal Stout Style
Many beer fans are surprised to find that oatmeal stout has very little oatmeal flavor. Instead the oatmeal adds a rich, creamy, silky character to the beer due to the high protein, lipid and gum content. Several early commercial examples included very little oatmeal (less than 1%), though most were made with between 5% and 30% oatmeal by weight. Using more than 30% oatmeal will lead to an astringent flavor and bitterness.
The BJCP style guide describes Oatmeal Stout as a variant of sweet stout that is less sweet, and relies on oatmeal for body and complexity rather than lactose. It may have a roasted grain aroma mixed with a light sweetness, with little fruitiness or diacetyl. Hop aroma and flavor are low, and it may have a slight oatmeal aroma.
Color is medium brown to black (22-40 SRM), with an original gravity of 1.048-1.065 which results in an alcohol content of 4.2-5.9%. Bitterness is in the 25-40 IBU range, with a bitterness ratio in the 0.5 IBU/GU range.
Brewing an Oatmeal Stout
The grain bill for an oatmeal stout typically starts with UK or American pale malt, which generally comprises about 60-80% of the grain bill. Oats are the next major component, making up 5%-25% of the bill in most recipes, though some extreme examples use as much as 30% oats. I personally recommend targeting the 10% oats to start with.
A variety of grains are often added to enhance body and complexity including Caramel/Crystal malts, Cara-Pils, Cara-Foram malt, flaked barley, and occasionally even wheat or flaked wheat. These typically are included in the 5-10% (each) weight range. When using Caramel/Crystal malts, the darker versions are often favored to add color and caramel sweetness to the beer.
The stout character and color is usually achieved by using Chocolate malt and Black Patent malt (along with the Caramel mentioned earlier). These are typically constrained to 4-10% (each) of the grain bill to achieve a stout character without creating an overwhelming roasted coffee flavor, as oatmeal stout should be in the “sweet stout” family, and not dry like Irish stout. Stout roast and roasted barley is generally not used in oatmeal stout as it adds too much “coffee” or “burnt” flavor to the mix.
Traditional English or American bittering hops are used such as East Kent Goldings, Fuggles, Centennial, Willamette, Northdown, etc… to balance the strong dark malts. As hop aroma and flavor is not a significant characteristic of oatmeal stout, it is rare to add finishing or dry hops. Instead, enough boil hops should be used to properly balance the beer (about 0.5 IBU/GU).
Some all-grain brewers prefer to use a full bodied mash profile (around 156 F for conversion) to further enhance the body of the beer, while others have advocated lower temperatures (148 F) to achieve a cleaner fermentation of barley malt and enhance the oatmeal character. I tend to prefer a medium to full body mash profile to preserve the sweet character of the beer as the finish should be sweet and not overly dry.
English ale yeasts are traditionally used with oatmeal stouts. I try to select a strain without excessive ester (fruit) or diacytl (butterscotch) production that will still leave residual sweetness in the beer such as White Labs WLP002. You don’t want a yeast that ferments too cleanly, as complexity is part of the flavor, but you also don’t want an English yeast that is too fruity.
Fermentation is done at normal ale temperatures and the beer may be bottled or kegged. Traditional stouts are served with fairly low carbonation and warm, but many American drinkers prefer a moderate carbonation and chilled beer.
Oatmeal Stout Recipes
Here are a few oatmeal stout recipes from the BeerSmith Recipe Archive:
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Herewith some additional details on this Saturday’s Sisters Fresh Hop Festival: the breweries, with some notes about the beers they’re bringing.
This is the list the organizers provided:
- 10 Barrel
- BridePort
- Cascade Lakes
- Deschutes
- Fort George
- Full Sail
- Laurelwood
- Lucky Lab
- MacTarnahan’s
- McMenamin’s
- Ninkasi
- Three Creeks
Even though specific beers weren’t listed here, Spence over on Bend Oregon Beer has the scoop on some of them:
- BridgePort Brewing Company – Hop Harvest
- Full Sail – Lupulin & Session Black Ale
- McMenamin’s – Thunder Cone Fresh Hop & Father D’s Kölsch
- Ninkasi – Tricerarillo
- Three Creeks Brewing Company – Cone Lick’r
And for the rest, we can extrapolate/speculate about what they might bring. Deschutes, for instance, has some three fresh hop ales on tap at their Pub now (Twilight Ale, Oktoberfest, and Chainbreaker White) so it wouldn’t be surprising to see one of those at the Fest. 10 Barrel recently released their Crosby Fresh Hop Ale, and Cascade Lakes has an annual Harvest Ale that seems likely to make an appearance.
Fort George, out of Astoria, has posted recently on Facebook about a Fresh Hop Vortex IPA. And the only one that comes to mind (the timing would be right) for Lucky Lab would be The Mutt which they just brewed late last month using “community” hops (i.e., whatever variety people donated).
The Fresh Hop Festival takes place from noon until 9pm under the tent at Village Green Park in Sisters, and all aged are welcome. Admission is free, but the souvenir taster glass is $5 and tasters are $1 each. Incidentally, dogs are welcome in the Park but not allowed under the tent, but you will be able to take beer out of the tent and into the Park generally.
