What’s on tap for Bend Ale Trail Month
October 9, 2024
7 minute readSome people thoroughly enjoy the local craft beer scene. Guest blogger Brian Yaeger, a Certified Cicerone, has 20 years of experience covering the Oregon brewing industry and producing beer fests, which would indicate he lives for it.
Find Oregon’s best beers at Bend Brews & Beyond Memorial Day weekend
Before it went away in 2023, Bend Brewfest held a special place in the beer geek’s heart, but beyond that, it was also an awesome event for thousands of other people who wanted to soak up the sun in a friendly community and sample new beers. When it didn’t return in 2024, so many people were bummed.
I took it particularly hard. I’ve dedicated a good part of my life to beer and have helped put on beer fests before, like Diff’rent Smokes, a festival dedicated to smoked beers that benefited volunteer firefighters. My events were always half-pint affairs compared to the growler-size Brewfest, which the Old Mill District fostered so well for decades. When it became clear Brewfest wouldn’t be back for a third year, in 2025, I could take no more. Bend has one of the highest breweries per capita of any city in America. No beer festival? Unacceptable.
Those days are done. Introducing the 2025 Bend Brews & Beyond, a new flagship beer event that builds off of everything that was great about Brewfest, coming to you live this Memorial Day weekend in Drake Park.
Get tickets to Bend’s flagship beer festival
I hardly have a monopoly on loving and supporting local craft breweries—we have more than 30 in Deschutes County alone!—but my devotion to the beer scene is rather “outsized.” I wrote a guidebook about beer. I have interviewed countless brewers about beer. I once visited every last brewhouse in Oregon, aka “Beervana,” and sampled a beer. My book may be wildly out of date now but my passion is as current as ever. Our beerscape remains an infinite font of delicious and creative wonders.
That’s why I’ve launched Bend Brews & Beyond. I’m using the inaugural event to do a complete refresh with a whole tent dedicated to non-alcoholic beverages with everything from hop waters to cold brew—and beyond. The festivities are still reserved for anyone 21 or over but there are some added perks. Buy a ticket with tokens to taste beers with alcohol and you’ll still get to sample the N/A drinks, too. Want to sample from the N/A line-up alone? You’ll get $10 off. (Fun fact: N/A beers cost about the same as the full octane ones to make.)
But here’s my advice: Get your tickets in advance. You’ll pay $40 instead of $55 at the gate and waiting is risky. Being in beautiful Drake Park means tickets are limited. We’re going to sell out.
Oregon craft beers at Bend Brews & Beyond
Which breweries will be there? All of them. Well, sort of. I started by inviting every locally owned brewery, cidery, and the lone meadery (Lazy Z Ranch with its incredible honey wine), and all of them said yes. From the elder statesmen, like Deschutes Brewery and Cascade Lakes Brewing, to the younger and potentially off-the-radar gems, like Terranaut Beer and Funky Fauna Artisan Ales, Bend Brews & Beyond will mark the first time every locally owned brewery’s beers will be available side-by-side-by-side.
I didn’t stop there. In all, there will be more than 50 breweries and cideries on hand, every one of them from Oregon. That includes breweries from Portland, Eugene, and Corvallis, as well as Astoria, McMinnville, Hood River and even Mitchell (population 137). The total count of different beverages on hand now stretches into the triple digits, so expect to make some very hard choices. You can still responsibly sample a lot of them, though, thanks to 3- and 6-ounce pours. Each costs the exact same number of drink tokens: one.
There are some exceptions. Bend’s own Central Oregon Homebrewers Organization (COHO) will help run the Next Taps, a biergarten within a beerfest offering rare, small-batch treats crafted with more expensive ingredients. Those samples will cost more than a single token but they’re worth it. I’m also ordering twice as many of those hard-to-find kegs so more people can taste those Next Tap beers for longer. I’ll swap them out every hour, too, or whenever a keg is kicked.
Beer, fun, and food in Bend
Beyond the beverages, you’ll find more than a dozen food trucks and some zany events as well. Sure, you’ll get to vote on your favorite beer for the People’s Choice award, but don’t miss the Brewers Decathlon. That’s when a roster of accomplished “mashletes” will compete in high-drama events like a “spent yeast balloon toss.” You can meet the who’s who of the craft beverage world during Meet the Makers sessions daily from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. This is also the time to put on your most festive pants, because you, the attendees, will get to compete in Bend’s inaugural Drinking Pants Pageant, which comes exactly as billed as “the most fun you can have with your pants on,” as they say. Add in some great tunes, impromptu dance parties, and some fun surprises, and this could very well be the highlight of your summer.
So Bend’s newest, coolest, zaniest, good-vibes beer festival is now an anything-fermented-or-not-fermented drinks festival, and it’s back where it belongs, right here in the sudsy heart of Beervana. I hope you’ll be a part of it. (We need volunteers, too!) Tell your friends, make some new ones, and please drink responsibly. As always, thanks for supporting us. Cheers!
Visiting for the festival? Extend the fun with a self-guided Bend Ale Trail adventure. Track your tastings, earn prizes, and uncover the craft behind the craft.
