Happy Friday! I don’t know about you, but it’s been a long week. Here’s the news in beer from around Oregon for today, December 9th, and going into the weekend. I’ll be curating and updating throughout the day, so if you have some news you’d like to share, contact me and I can get it posted.

Several Central Oregon breweries are getting together and presenting a Holiday Seasonal Beer Showcase and Tasting in Bend on Saturday the 10th (tomorrow). GoodLife, 10 Barrel, Phat Matt’s, and Silver Moon have all brewed up small batch seasonal beers and from 8 to 10pm at Tart Bistro restaurant in downtown Bend, and for $25 you can partake in the festivities. The fee earns you a beer mug, paired appetizers, and 10 tasting tokens, and there will be raffles and brewery giveaways as well.

Bull Ridge Brewpub (Baker City) is getting close to opening their brewery portion: “Also to let you in on another little secret…….our fermenters will be complete mid January!! Our brewkettle is in the design stages. Walter is ready to go once our equipment is in place! We have samples of his own beer that you can try….. stop in and let us know what you think!”

10 Barrel Brewing (Bend) is releasing Precursor finally (considering I blogged about it last month and it was imminent), their small-batch, bourbon barrel-aged Imperial Red Ale, next week: “We want to announce that we will be relasing our first Small Batch Series beer, PRECURSOR early next week. We are shipping off a portion of the bottles early tomorrow morning to PDX and will be placing it into select local accounts early next week. Cheers, hope you enjoy it!” I opened a bottle of this on Thanksgiving (and had a sample direct from the Brewery) and enjoyed it quite a bit—it’s very strong on the bourbon and if you can get an extra bottle, lay one down for a year.

Upcoming tastings, releases, and “Meet the Brewer” events:

• Laurelwood Brewing (Portland) is releasing their Framboise today at their Portland and Battle Ground locations, and apparently there are only 20 cases available—get some while you can!
• Hop Valley Brewing (Springfield) is releasing their 420th batch of beer (brewed with hemp seeds, natch) to be tapped exclusively at the Bier Stein in Eugene today at 4:20pm.
• Pelican Pub & Brewery (Pacific City) has their “Salmon Chanted Evening” beer dinner tonight, and they posted yesterday that “Last minute tickets still available for “Salmon Chanted Evening”. Call Courtney at 503-965-3674 for this reservations-only dinner tomorrow night.” I don’t know if they’re still available, but it’s $50 for the dinner and $62 to include beer pairings if you’re interested.
• Widmer (Portland) is having a Brewers Dinner tomorrow, Saturday the 10th, at The HighCliffe in Oregon City, starting at 6pm for $30 per person. Tickets are only available at The Highcliffe, and the dinner is four courses with talk of a surprise fifth course.
• Natian Brewery (Portland) will be on-hand at the grand opening of the new Uptown Market tomorrow, pouring tasters of their beer (their “Autumn” Chocolate Amber). (No hours posted that I saw.)
• Roscoe’s (Portland): Today from 5 to 8pm they are holding a ”Collaboration a Trois” tasting event featuring La Citrueille Celeste
  de Citracado, the collaboration pumpkin ale from Stone, Elysian, and The Bruery—not Oregon breweries, but still good beer and one you should check out.
• Coalition Brewing (Portland) has their beer dinner with 23 Hoyt Restaurant tomorrow night (the 10th), a five-course beer pairing for $55 (all-inclusive). Call 503-445-7400 for more info.

Amnesia Brewing (Portland) has their Winter Ale Fest kicking off tomorrow, Saturday the 10th. It’ll cost you $20 to get in (pricing is “$20= Winter Fest glass mug and 10 tickets, $1= ticket, 2 tickets= 1/2 mug, 4 tickets= full mug.”) but that looks like a great deal for the tap list they’ve got lined up, and you can get down there anytime between noon and 10pm to enjoy the beers.

Silver Moon Brewing (Bend) is updating their Growler Power Hour deal: “This is the last week of the all week Growler Power Hour. Next week GPH will be on Tuesday @ Wednesday only. Today we’ll be holding a raffle to celebrate the last GPH Friday. @ 5 pm we’ll raffle off a Cobalt Blue Brewery Glass, a Hop Fury IPA T-shirt, and a hoodie! Get yer $5 growler fill up and a chance to win some goodies! Cheers!” They also now have a “Dark IPA” on tap called Asmodeus that is worth checking out.