Welcome back to Monday and the start of the final week of August! Here’s the news in Oregon beer for August 26 and this week. As usual, I’ll be periodically updating this post throughout the day, so check back often. If you have news to share, please contact me and I can get that posted as well.

Tomorrow is the Lucky Lab‘s annual hop harvest event, where the Portland brewpub invites the general public to bring in their hop vines for the annual brewing of their fresh hop beer, The Mutt: “Join us August 27th for our annual Hop Harvest Party on the patio at the Hawthorne Pub. The picking starts at 4 p.m. We will have the usual BBQ fired up for those that help us pick hops for our fresh hop beer, “The Mutt”. Call Ben at the Quimby Brewery (503-517-4352) if you need to make hop drop-off arrangements.”

The Little Woody Barrel-Aged Brew & Whiskey Festival takes over Bend at the end of this week, offering one of Bend’s premiere beer events, focused almost exclusively on barrel- and wood-aged beers (especially the bourbon and whiskey kind!). It takes place at the Des Chutes Historical Museum in downtown Bend, and will be featuring 19 (mostly local) breweries pouring their specialties on Friday from 5 until 10pm and on Saturday from noon to 10pm. Basic entry costs is $7 with tokens costing $1 (beers will be 2-5 tokens each), and there is a $15 tasting package which gets you the glass and 10 tokens. You can pre-purchase online here, something I’d recommend—and I’d also recommend not missing this event! It’s going to be a great one!

Gigantic Brewing and soon-to-be-open Ecliptic Brewing (both in Portland) collaborated on a Belgian sour wit beer named “TicWitTic” and the release party is tonight—at two locations: Bailey’s Taproom downtown and at The Beermongers across the river. “First John, Van and Ben will be at Baileys from 4:30pm – 6:30pm, and then they will ride our bikes over to The BeerMongers for stop 2 from 7:00pm – 9:00pm.” It’s a 2.4 mile bike ride and if you’re feeling up to it you can join them tonight on your bike as well.

Fresh Hop Watch:

• Deschutes Brewery (Bend) has a Fresh Hop version of their Cinder Cone Red brewing, and have documented some of the process in photos on Facebook. Lots of fresh, green Tettnag hops going into that beer!
• The Green Dragon (Portland): Their resident Green Dragon Brew Crew is working on a fresh hop beer, which ideally will be ready to drink in a few weeks.