American Adventures 2013 (2)

From http://iansaleadventures.blogspot.com/

The latter part of our USA holiday this year was in mostly familiar territory in Southern Oregon, returning to some of our favourite brewpubs like Wild River (http://www.wildriverbrewing.com/), Standing Stones (http://www.standingstonebrewing.com/index.html), Southern Oregon Brewery (http://www.sobrewing.com/), but we also made a trip a bit further north to the College/University town of Eugene, where Rogue Valley have an outlet - the Eugene City Brewery (http://rogue.com/locations/rogue-breweries.php).

Breweries and brewpubs are big business in Oregon - so much so, that the State Governor passed the first ever legislation to nominate an ale yeast as Oregon's Microbe:

This article came from one of the many beer publications to be found in most of the brewpubs - some of them are pretty upmarket and glossy - and expensive. One of these even featured cask ale:

(click on to enlarge)

Cask is still very much a niche market, however. You'll find it in the big city brewpubs - especially round Portland - but seldom in more rural locations - although I managed to get some at our local Wild River outlet in Grants Pass.

Nothing else new to report - other than the fact that there still appears to be growth in the "Craft Ale" market - the big supermarket chains often feature displays like this: