Big news for Central Oregon next month as we roll out the inaugural Central Oregon Beer Week, taking place the last full week in May from the 21st through the 27th! This is a project I’ve been working on for a little while now and we recently made it official, and decided to go for it. Here’s the official press release that’s out:

CELEBRATE CENTRAL OREGON BEER WEEK MAY 21-27

Bend and Central Oregon has one of the largest per-capita number of breweries of any region around, and on top of that a thriving, exploding beer scene—so it’s only natural that we also have a Central Oregon Beer Week (COBW), a week-long celebration of Central Oregon’s amazing beer culture!

Central Oregon’s very first Beer Week takes place the last full week in May, leading up to Memorial Day weekend with Mt. Bachelor holding their two-day Brewski festival featuring great beer from Central Oregon’s fantastic breweries.

Other events are in the works, including tastings, meet the brewers, beer dinners, some special tours, and much more, all in conjunction with the newly-formed Central Oregon Brewers Guild—check out and bookmark the Events page to keep abreast of all the Week’s happenings!

If you would like to participate in Central Oregon Beer Week, we would welcome your event! You can fill out our event submission form on the COBW website to tell us all about it.

And, a bit of backstory: This has been an idea I’ve been bouncing around for awhile now, talking with folks about it and early on I was thinking a spring event would work well, trying not to schedule around times when other Oregon beer weeks were taking place but still something that would be good for Central Oregon. As the time ran short, however, there was also talk about the possibility of August (coinciding with the Bend Brewfest), but everybody liked the idea of a May event so we decided to go for it anyway.

Everyone I’ve talked to about it (the breweries, bottle shops, businesses, restaurants, and so on) has been incredibly receptive and enthusiastic, so my hope is to put on a Week full of smaller, inclusive events (necessary really given the very short lead time) that will generate buzz and highlight and raise awareness of the amazing beer culture Central Oregon has to offer.

To that end, if you’re in Central Oregon and you’d like to participate by holding an event or have ideas you’d like to share, by all means please fill out the event submission form and let us know—we would love to include you and get you listed on the Central Oregon Beer Week site and events!

Watch that site and the blog here for a lot more to come about this in the next few weeks!