30 Word Thursday: The Crux

The Crux:

Rays of Summer light dapple the shaded bartop,

Concentric bands of sparkling gold mimic the ring of union,

Deep copper warms eye and belly with its mellow glow.



This is my weekly entry into 30 Word Thursdays, a challenge started at the Treasures Found blog.  This week I used a pic taken with my iPhone this summer at Crux Brewing in Bend, Oregon during a visit for my cousin's wonderful wedding.



Bend Over: The Final Day In Oregon

Our final day in Bend, Oregon was a great one, filled with adventure and beer!  Ok, mostly just beer, but still awesome!  After having our freshly ground coffee in the room, and discussing the merits of removing fluoride from the water supply in Bend with the odd lady at the front desk, we headed out to see the sights of town.  I would have been happy heading right to a brewery, but strangely they don't really open until 11 AM, forcing us to find other entertainment before returning to the Ale Trail.  We discovered a couple of cool galleries and an art show just across the street from the hotel and spent some time perusing the local art scene. 

Parking lot hop yard!

By 11 we were just outside of town to visit Worthy Brewing, a fairly new and large brewery.  They are growing rows of hops outside the enormous pub and brewery, with its own little green-house.  The dining and bar area is large and wide open, with a modern feel to it.  Some of the wood used to decorate the place was reclaimed from the Oregon asylum where they filmed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which explains the multiple pics of Jack Nicholson on the walls!  The food here was fantastic, elevating pub food to a new level: we had coconut milk clam chowder and prosciutto fig flatbread.  The brewery is well named, and the beers were indeed worthy.  They had a great Farm-Out Saison, a helles bock, Imperial IPA and a stout with vanilla that were all tasty and well balanced.  Between great beers, better food, cool vibe and good service, I highly recommend the place.

Keep driving

Our next trip was to Cascade Lakes, clear across town (OK a five minute drive).  Walking in this brewpub has an older feel, like a slightly shabby local drinkin' man's bar with sports on the TV.  We settled into the bar and got the sampler, as per our usual MO.  I was very disappointed in the beers here.  Out of the 6 or 7 beers we tried, only the IPA was drinkable, but still not good.  Most of the beers had off flavors hinting at either dirty tap lines or poor fermentation.  Feeling guilty, we left all of the samples unfinished, throwing cash on the bar on our hasty way out.  Blech.  How can a place like this stay in business in a city a made famous by breweries???  This was by far the worst brewery I visited in Oregon.

To clear the palate after our ill-fated visit to Cascade Lakes, we headed to Old Mill Brew Werks.  Apparently this is a new location for the place, in a nicer strip mall near the Deschutes River (and brewery,) with a nice view from the deck.  This place looked and felt more like a wine bar than a brewery, with no visible brewing equipment present.  Most of the folks here were drinking coctails and wine, furthering that impression.  They had about 6 good commercial beers on tap and 6 of their own.  I give the house beers a 50/50 good to meh ratio.  The best was actually a blonde ale (which I don't normally love) and the worst was a dry hopped version of the same beer.  Overall not bad, but not in my top Bend breweries.  Certainly better than the previous stop!

This is the Good Life!

Our next stop was one of the high points in my Bend beer adventures, probably my second favorite in town.  Good Life brewery occupies part of a warehouse, sharing a courtyard with a winery.  The actual tasting room is quite small decorated with some long knotty pine picnic tables and a bar with room for 5.  They do have a larger fenced-in outdoor area that they were prepping for their anniversary party when we arrived.  While here the bartenders and locals told us a bunch of the local dirt/history of the other breweries in Bend, and we had a great time socializing at the tiny bar.  The beers were all very good...probably the best hoppy ones we had in town.  My favorite was the Sweet As Pacific: a light IPA made with all New Zealand hops.  I even bought one of the aluminum carabiner tap handles for that particular beer.  This brewery completed our Bend Ale Trail experience--making 10 breweries in 2 days.  We stopped into the City Tourism building and received our commemorative mini silicone pint glasses for getting to all the breweries!  What other city has their own branded insulated growlers and tons of other beer-related swag?

Sj proudly showing off her hipster side on the Cycle Pub

After stashing our spoils we briskly walked to our 4 PM meet-up place for the Cycle Pub.  Since I know one of the founders of the original Pedal Pub in Minneapolis, I felt a little guilty about riding this rival pub, but this is what my cousins arranged so I went with it.  Sorry Al!  This is actually the first time I have been on one of these slow-moving contraptions and it was an experience.  We had enough folks signed up to have two of them filled to the brim with friends and family.  We had arrived early and this was the hottest day so far on our trip, so Sj and I were incredibly thirsty to start off.  We were forced to drink PBR from a can to survive.  I know.  I'm going to need to grow out ironic facial hair and wear a flat cap and skinny jeans now!  We headed off on the first leg of the trip, working up a sweat pedaling uphill.  Cars behind us either waved and called out to us or honked and gave us the finger.  We arrived en mass at 10 Barrel, which was already filled to capacity including their large patio area.  It took a while but I got a glass of Swill to quench the thirst and regain my energy before our exodus back to the cycle.  Our previous trip here was much more mellow!

Our next stop was nearby, back at Good Life!  The anniversary party action was all out back, so we were able to all fill the small tasting room and sit down in the shade.  One of my cousins had planned ahead here and called for pitchers, so we were quickly served up more wonderful hoppy ales to share.  I was happy to get to try another taste of Sweet As Pacific. 

Having completed our visit to Good Life, we headed back out on the trail for one more brewery: Crux.  This leg of the journey was nearly all up hill, and significantly farther away from our previous stop.  I lucked out by getting to sit in a spot with no pedals!  This time Crux was very busy, but we managed to find outdoor seating around a big wooden cable spool table in the shade.  I was able to try the one beer not featured on the sampler from the previous day: Tough Love.  This was one of the best beers I had on the trip--a bourbon barrel aged Imperial stout--and made me more than happy we had returned here.  After a while there was a fire started in the giant iron Fire Ball and dusk began to fall over the high desert and train tracks.  It was incredibly nice to hang out with my cousins and their friends in this setting, and bittersweet to say farewell at the end. 

On our way home, we went though Drake's park and caught the tail end of Deschutes' 25th anniversary bash there.  Most of the best beers were gone and the music was iffy at the time, but cool to stumble upon such a free event.  Realizing that we hadn't had dinner and it was going on 9 PM, we ended up at Brother John's for a late dinner.  All the heat, lack of food, and many breweries in a row had gotten to me and for the first time this trip was feeling a bit out of it.  The food helped immensely.  I would recommend the pub, as they have a great tap list and good food.  One more short stagger to get back to the hotel and our trip to Oregon was nearly complete. 

Overall, an amazing trip filled with wonderful scenery, satisfying beers and a truly great wedding.  Considering the short time period I think we managed to fit a lot into an extended weekend and would love to go back some time.  Thanks for reading along with my blatherings, and hopefully this will push you over the edge to visit some of these places for yourself! 

The Bends! Hitting The Bend Ale Trail

Our first full day in Bend awoke with a whimper, having slept in after a long and arduous previous day.  Or perhaps that was just me.  At the McMenamins St. Francis School they freshly grind their house roasted coffee and place it in a packet outside your door for use in the room coffee maker.  I could get used to that kind of treatment!  I could also have used about three more packets this particular morning.  Feeling as if I should remove my six-guns, boots and Stetson hat, I took advantage of one of the two large claw-foot tubs in our enormous bathroom, feeling slightly sorry for the folks occupying the rooms with shared bathrooms.  But not that sorry. 

After we had again donned our human skins, Sj and I went for a walk through the quiet Drake Park and beyond on our quest to find good beer in Bend.  The city really knows what it is doing when fostering beer tourism: they have a Bend Ale Trail map and smart phone app for finding and logging in your visits to the 10 different breweries in the city.  When you hit all 10 you can stop by the visitor center and get a free mini silicone pint glass.  I'm totally handing mine out to the next person to break a glass at one of our brewclub meetings...so be warned those with clumsy sausage fingers!  Our first stop that morning was 10 Barrel Brewing, known for attractive waitresses (per the Ale Trail quiz results on my app) and good food based on the Internet.  Both sources were correct.  The tasting room seems industrial and modern at the same time, using heavy woods and stainless steel with abandon.  The chairs were so heavy that even my massive physique could barely move them.  The beer sampler came in a very unique stainless steel tray that was a work of art in itself.  This place reminded me a lot of Dangerous Man Brewing back home in Minneapolis.  All the beers were good; focus on the hoppy.  Apparently the brewers made a cross between a grapefruit soda and a Berliner Weisse and called it Swill.  Hearing a waitress walk by a table in a craft brewery and ask someone, "How's that Swill treating you?" was unexpected.  I really liked that beer, but my family later tried it and thought I was insane.  They also had a great schwarzbier.  The fish and chips were nice and Sj's smoked BBQ sandwich (sauce made with the schwarzbier) was also worth a visit for lunch.  They have a big smoker out on the patio that was gearing up for the day's work.

After our very nice early lunch and beer sampler we walked across the Deschutes River, a neighborhood, and a large parking lot in the middle of desert scrubland, to find the Deschutes Brewery.  I had been meaning to just get there to take some pictures and see the swag shop, but we hit it at just the right time to sign up for the 1 PM tour.  The tasting room, and swag shop is too small for these guys!  You get 4 samples with your tour (or just if you stop by) and we were lucky enough that one of the employees cracked a bottle of the special smoked porter for us to try.  The staff here were crazy nice and helpful, I can't say enough about it!  This place has a ton of logo'd items: golf balls, hats, canoe paddles, longboards, etc.  I'm surprised I didn't see a Deschutes kayak.  I picked up a mini tap handle for my nitro tap at home and a cool hoody because I'm a sucker for merch. 

The tour itself was about 45 minutes, and very nice, but a bit long.  I've just been on too many of these I think.  We did get to hear the cool story of how the massive brew kettles required that the state police block off the entire highway through the mountains to get them up to Bend...for several nights in a row!  In the staff break room, they have taps and everyone gets a free pint after their shift is done.  Nice perk!  In the offices, they have the framed artwork from each year's Jubelale Christmas beer lined up.  One in particular had actually taken about a hundred of the previous labels and made an insanely complicated collage...I've seen that label on the bottle but never realized how much work went into the design!  By the time we were finished with the tour, we were behind on our schedule, so let go of the last few samples coming to us in the tasting room and got on our merry way.

Taking another walk across town we ended up in a shabby warehouse district near the train tracks, down a long driveway marked as "Private Road Do NOT Enter!"  Past some razor wire flapping with shredded plastic bags, chain-link fence, abandoned warehouses and a storage facility, we came upon our goal: Crux Fermentation Project.  This is the brewery where former Deschutes brewer, Larry Sidor, went after leaving.  All the beer geeks in Portland and Bend we talked to pointed us this way as the "happening" or next big thing in local brewing.  The brewery is set up to allow for decoction mashing, open fermentation, wild yeasts and barrel aging, so they are really trying a lot of techniques here.  I can see why Sidor wanted to get away from the massive batch mechanical brewing of Deschutes for a more hands-on approach.  They had 15 different beers on tap, and our sampler was served in a cool tray made of a branded barrel stave.

I love the branding (both the design of the logo and the actual hot poker branding of the wood in this place.)  All of the beers here were good, but not quite as impressive as I'd been expecting.  A mosaic hop DIPA was really interesting, but I think I just don't like that hop based on the few beers I've had that are made with it.  They had a Flanders Red, but it wasn't really sour...apparently this is the base beer that is going to go in barrels for a year.  I guess I need to go back!  Beer geeks love this place, and as a whole they do a great job. 

Our next walking stop was Boneyard Brewing.  Located in an older neighborhood at the end of a street near the highway, this brewery is located in what looks like a 1960's house with attached garage.  The brewery is in the garage and the fermentation is inside the main building.  The garage door was open and I could see the cobbled together ghetto system inside.  The tasting room is the size of a household guest bedroom, walls coated in nick-nacks as well as the black, red and white tattoo style artwork for the beer labels. There is a tiny bar where you are served samples and pay by Square on an iPad.  The two folks working the counter were a bit goth/hipster and really nice.  When we first arrived, there was a beer-bus full of college guys taking up the entire tasting room but luckily they were on the way out.  The beers here were of amazing quality despite the ramshackle appearance of the brewery, including one of the best IPAs I had in Oregon.  Proof that all you need is a good brewer who knows his system to make amazing beer.  One of the best beers I had on this trip was the Diablo Rojo, a habanero infused version of their hoppy red ale--so hot but so flavorful.  I had also had their incredible triple IPA at Apex in Portland, so I think these guys are the ones to watch.  They seem to strike the same hard-nosed metal pose that Surly has done so well with, and also put out a suitably impressive line up of beers.  I'll be shocked if they haven't expanded into a larger brewery within a year or two. 

Now we were in a time crunch, could we hit one more brewery before my cousin tied the knot?  Of course!  We walked to Silver Moon, a brewery located not far from Boneyard along a highway.  Walking in, the place feels like an old sports bar (TV's on the walls, pool table, truck-stop style counter) but with some hop and brewery murals on the walls.  I like the reflective tap handles a lot.  The beers here were all decent, but not stellar.  The best ones they had on this visit were the extremes:  the kolsch was spot on; and the bourbon barrel aged strong ale Demolition Man was one of the only barrel aged beers I had in Bend.  Most of the hoppy beers in between just didn't stand out enough for me after being to so many breweries on the trip so far.  Not a bad place, and probably overlooked by the serious beer traveler. 

After our lightning trip to Silver Moon, we walked briskly back toward our hotel, but discovered a very cool bead shop on the way back.  Since Sj had been so patient with all my beer travel, we made sure to stop here for a bit and stocked up on some local artisan glass for future earring projects.  We made it to the site of Ladd and Jennie's wedding, at a small park alongside a pretty pond.  The weather was getting a bit chilly and overcast and poor Jennie was shivering during the ceremony, but at the exact second that they were pronounced married a warm ray of sun broke out and highlighted the two of them.  Very cool special effect Ladd, how did you do that????    In proper homebrewer fashion, Ladd had three of his own beers on tap, and the session Wedding Ale wonderful.  I enjoyed it more than many of the other "session IPA" beers I had all over Oregon, and probably need to steal the recipe from him.  We appreciate being invited to this special day and getting such a good excuse to finally travel out to Oregon again.

Arty shot of the wedding location!

After the fairly short wedding and dinner at the park, we dragged my cousin Brian to Bend Brewing with us.  This brewery has won several awards at GABF in the past, so I was excited to try it out.  The place certainly had a late 80's or early 90's brewpub feel to it.  The brewery itself is visible through some smudged windows on the second floor and is quite small.  We shared the sampler of 10 beers between the three of us.  All the beers were good, with no stinkers, but none of them really stood out to me.  The favorite of the group was the red ale.  Overall I was a little disappointed, but this was far from the worst brewery we were to visit in Bend.  I can't speak to the food here since we were still full from our free dinner.

Finishing up at Bend brewing, we walked back toward our hotel and stopped in for a drink at the Deschutes Bond Street Brewpub since Brian hadn't been there yet.  I ordered a pint of the Fresh Squeezed since I had already tried all the beers there yesterday and that one was my favorite.  I really like this pub and would spend a lot of time here if I had the chance!  After our brief stop here, we headed to our home base and settled into their bar.  Once more we split a beer sampler to finish up the night.  The McMenamins sites are a bit of a joke around the brewing and beer geek community as having poor service and mediocre to lousy beer, but this sampler was good!  The IPA and porter especially stood out to me, and both were better than all the beers we had at Bend Brewing.  Whoever is brewing for this particular McMenamins knows what he is doing.  Our server also knew a lot about the beers and was able to give good descriptions of them.  The next day we took a trip into the basement and took a look at the tiny ghetto brew system there.  Rather than the usual boring stainless steel, the kettle and fermenters are all painted and trippy looking, but I couldn't get a great picture through the window down there. 

And that is one day in Bend.  I'm sure there is other stuff to do in or around town...but why bother when there are so many great breweries to visit?  Stay tuned for my final day in Bend and details on even more breweries!