Central Oregon’s largest beer festival, the Bend Brewfest, returns this week for three full days: Thursday through Saturday, the 14th through 16th. It runs from noon to 11pm each day (the first year it does that—previous years the first day started at 3pm or so), and takes place as always at the Les Schwab Amphitheater.

Admission is free, though to drink beer you’ll need to buy the (one-time) mug and five tokens for $15 (which can be reused each day). Tasting tokens are worth $1 apiece and you can more in blocks of 5. They follow standard brewfest pricing: 1 token gets you 1 four-ounce sample, and you can fill your mug for 4 tokens.

Kids are welcome until 7pm each night (from 7 to 11 the fest is 21-and-over only), though parents will need to sign a waiver for them to get in. Dogs are welcome as well, and owners will need to sign a similar waiver for them.

The beer list looks pretty fantastic this year, with 63 breweries and cideries pouring at least two beers each—and some have additional beer pouring on the X-Tap. The X-Tap is located in the Brewtality Tent this year, and in addition to the specialty pours they will also have breweries (or reps) on hand to talk about the particular beer being served.

I’m going to write up a post of must-try beers, both my own personal list and more general recommendations, and if you’re interested in more of a “how-to” with some general brewfest tips, I wrote up a blog post for the Old Mill website on just that subject. Hopefully it’ll help save any beerfest-related headaches—real or otherwise! (Disclosure: I received two mug packages for the Brewfest for writing the guest post for the Old Mill blog.)