Happy Monday! Spring has sprung over the weekend with absolutely beautiful weather and a nice Easter holiday—hope your weekend was just as nice! Here’s the news in Oregon beer for Monday, the first of April. As usual, I’ll be periodically updating this post throughout the day with the latest news as I find it, so check back often. And if you have news to share, please contact me and I can get that updated as well.

Widmer Brothers (Portland) announced today plans to expand with a full production facility in southeastern Oregon’s Lakeview: a 50-bbl brewhouse and bottling line, with a small tasting room. “We feel that southeast Oregon and the surrounding region has been hugely under-represented in the craft beer boom and having Widmer’s presence in Lakeview is a great opportunity to get the freshest possible Hefeweizen into the hands of fans in the area,” according to Rob Widmer. Along with the planned facility they will launch a special new beer to commemorate the expansion, Desert Lake Dunkelweizen.

Brian Yaeger reports today on a new brewery launched by the Portlandia TV show folks: “Andrew Singer and Jonathan Krisel, producers of IFC’s hit TV show, Portlandia, announced that series stars Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein are launching a brewpub on NE Killingsworth adjacent to In Other Words feminist bookstore frequently spoofed on the program in the “Women and Women First” sketches. The space, vacated by The Record Room, formerly served as a cherished vinyl lounge offering craft beer until Portlanders eschewed vintage LPs and shifted en masse to digitally formatted recorded music mirroring the trend away from bikes toward mopeds and motor-assisted bicycles.” Go read the full article for the scoop.

Cascade Brewing (Portland) is opening up a new Beaverton Blending House according to the New School today: “They are going to debut with an exclusive blend just for the Blenders House called the “Suicide Blend” made of the collected runnings from the dump buckets at the end of the taps collected at the end of each day for a month… Because the rarity of this Blenders Tap beer and because the blend refermented in the barrel it therefore warrants an increased price of $10 a 10oz glass.” Mm-hmm, sounds… lovely.

Burnside Brewing and Breakside Brewing (both Portland) are merging to form “B-Side Brewers Alliance” after an initial spat, according to Brewpublic today. “Moments after all of this news came down, Brewpublic discovered that B-Side Brewers Alliance was incorporated into Craft Brewers Allliance (CBA) which includes the brands Widmer, Redhook, and Kona. And not long after that it was learned from Not So Professional Beer Blog’s Sanjay Reddy that CBA is slated to soon be engulfed by A-B/InBev.” Good things brewing for the 2 Bs!

Falling Sky Brewing (Eugene): They have a killer tap takeover and deals going on today only! “Bud, Bud Light, Bud Platinum, Bud Lime, Coors, Coors Light, Coors Banquet, Miller Genuine Draft, Miller High Life, Miller Light, Miller NRA Special, Keystone, Keystone Light, Busch Camo, Michelob Ultra, Michelob Amber Bock, Sharps and Olde English (40oz only). Come on down and get a free pint of ranch dressing with our all-you-can-eat HFCS chicken nugget special!”

The Oregon Brewers Festival is adding a new beer to this year’s lineup: Coors Light India Pale Ale! It’s the 85th beer added to this year’s fest and it may well turn out to be the sleeper hit of the summer. Look for it in July! You know you’ll try some.