Happy first Friday of 2013! Here’s the Oregon beer news for today and the weekend, culled from around the web. As usual, I’ll be periodically updating this post throughout the day with the latest news as I find it, so check back often for updates. If you have news to share, please contact me and I can get that posted as well.

Breakside Brewery (Portland) is doing a tap takeover today at the newly-opened BEER in Portland (New School has a first look at that), starting at 5pm: “Help us welcome John Stewart and his new beer bar, BEER to the Portland scene! We’ll be pouring Breakside beers, including our IPA, Pilsner, Cascadian Dark Ale and a special keg TBD. Plus, we’ll be cracking open some bottles from our library, including a few rare 750s of our Postmodern Lambic. Ben, Jacob, Sam and Andrew will all be on hand to celebrate the opening of this new haven for great brews!”

Broken Top Bottle Shop (Bend) has their “First Firkin Friday” going on all day today, and also has a tasting with Portland’s BridgePort Brewing starting at 5:30pm. There will be several BridgePort beers on tap, particularly Ebenezer; I don’t know what else will be on hand, but BridgePort has good beers so you won’t go wrong.

McMenamins: Today is the official release date for their new winter seasonal, Red Riser IPA, which is on tap at all of the McMenamins locations now. This is a tasty 7.1% abv India Red Ale which makes for a nice cold-weather seasonal; I got a hold of some and reviewed it yesterday, and I rather enjoyed it. Definitely worth a tipple or two, at least through February, when you find yourself at your neighborhood McMenamins.

Southern Oregon Brewing (Medford): Their Black Heart Imperial Stout is out now, and tomorrow (Saturday the 5th) they are holding the Portland release at the Hawthorne Hophouse at their 15th and Brazee location. “Come out and celebrate the release of Black Heart Imperial Stout. We will be at the Hawthorne Hophouse from 3:30 to 5:30 and the 15th avenue hophouse from 6:00 to 8:00.”

Stickmen Brewery & Skewery (Lake Oswego): I’ve been posting the last couple days about their small-batch brews from this fledgling brewery and this weekend they’re moving on up: “You’ve been enjoying our small batch beers for a few months now and this weekend we’ll brew our first large batch recipes in the main brewery. -Watch for these pours in a few weeks!” The photo they’ve posted with that Facebook update looks like they’ve got the equipment for these larger batches, so hopefully they’ll get to fully expand their lineup soon—worth checking out!