Mashing In: This Beer Week To Be 'Epic-urean'

Portland, Oregon’s craft breweries and restaurants have created not only a beer for its upcoming craft beer week (June 11 to 21), but also a beer week sandwich, doughnut, and ice cream flavor. I’d expect nothing less from a city so delightfully quirky and ornately epicurean.

The Beer— This year’s Portland Beer Week beer is a cross-border collaboration between Portland’s Breakside Brewery and Seattle’s Fremont Brewing, an IPA brewed to be served at each city’s beer week. “When we set out to make the Back to the Future IPA with Fremont, we knew that we wanted to make a big IPA and showcase some fun hop varietals that don’t get much attention…yet,” said Breakside’s website. The breweries chose “futuristic hops” for each brew, using Jarrylo and Equinox hops in the Fremont batch and Azacca and Ella hops in Breakside’s. “These beers very might well introduce you to new hop varietals that will be front and center in many IPAs to come.”

The Back To The Future IPA will be released in bottles on Friday, June 12 at the Whole Foods Market in the Pearl District.

The Sandwich— Portland’s legendary sandwich shop Bunk Sandwiches has created Portland Beer Week’s official sandwich that will be available at its Water location from June 11 to June 21. It’s a GoodLife Brewing Pass Stout-braised brisket and gravy po’ boy with bitter green slaw and herb salad.

The Doughnut— Blue Star Donuts baked up a cake donut covered in a Hopworks Urban Brewery IPA glaze and crumbled salty pretzels. You might not be able to wear them around your neck, but these sweet treats put even the best of pretzel necklaces to shame. They’re available at all Blue Star locations during beer week, as well as the Portland Beer Week kickoff party at The EastBurn on Thursday, June 11.

The Ice Cream— Salt & Straw and Breakside have joined forces to create a new scoop that uses both the components of the beer and the beer itself. Portland Beer Week’s official ice cream flavor was created with an all-Citra hopped IPA from Breakside and specked with Citra hop flakes.

“We started Portland Beer Week to celebrate the city’s craft beer culture,” said Ezra Johnson-Greenough, who founded PDX beer week alongside Lisa Morrison and Brady Walen in 2010. “We wanted to create more unique and creative events that expanded the way people thought about beer. So you can see many of our marquee events are not common ones...”

Can’t Miss Portland Beer Week Events

June 12-15: Portland Fruit Beer Festival

This year marks the 5th annual and largest ever Portland beer festival dedicated entirely to fruit beers. Enjoy the fruits of Portland brewers’ labor by clicking here.

Thursday, June 12: Rye Beer Fest

This celebration of rye beers, live music included, is a fundraiser for the Dawn to Dusk paddle fund for the Children’s Cancer Association. More details here.

Tuesday, June 16: Sour & Wild Beer Seminar

Beyond festivals, tap takeovers, and beer dinners, Portland Beer Week offers beer lovers an education, too. Attendees of this seminar will taste 12 rare sour and wild beers while they hear from a panel of experts on the topic. Click here for tickets.

Thursday, June 18: Food Carts and Beer at Pod 28

Nothing says Portlandia like food trucks. Add beer and a food writer (Steven Shomier) and you’ve got yourself a PDX-style party. Details here.

Plan Your Portland Beer Week

The complete Portland Beer Week calendar can be found at pdxbeerweek.com.