Here’s the Oregon beer news for Friday, December 23rd, and going into the Christmas weekend! I hope everyone is looking forward to a merry and beery holiday, and stays safe as well! Remember than many breweries are closed on Christmas day and are either closed or are closing early tomorrow (Christmas Eve)—so stock up on your holiday libations now! I’ll be updating this post periodically throughout the day, so if you have some news to share contact me and I’ll post it here when I get the chance.

Double Mountain Brewery (Hood River) has a special Christmas treat for you: a vertical tasting of their Fa La La La La holiday ale tomorrow, Christmas Eve, starting when they open at 11:30am. Four years of vintages will be available: 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011, and it will cost $2 for a five-ounce “mini” snifter or $7 for the flight of the four. It’s limited and first-come, first-served, so don’t waste any time getting there! As a bonus, Brewmaster Matt Swihart will be “lurking” as well so you might get to pick his brain about the beers.

Have you been checking out my daily Beer Advent Calendar here on the Brew Site this month? If not, why not? Each day in December up through Christmas Eve I pick a different holiday beer, just like a real Advent calendar—only online and beer-themed. There’s one day left!

Don’t forget Belmont Station (Portland) is raffling off a bottle each of Westvleteren 8 and 12 (a couple of the most coveted beers in the world) for the low-low price of $2 per raffle ticket, with the drawing taking place Monday, December 26th, at 6pm. All of the proceeds from the raffle will be donated to the Oregon Food Bank, so be sure to buy a bunch of tickets!

Widmer Brother (Portland): They posted on Facebook that Prickly Pear Mead is on tap at their Gasthaus—notable as it’s the same type of wildflower honey (I think) that was used in their Brothers Reserve Prickly Pear Braggot (that was released over a year ago), and it sounds yummy: “Prickly Pear Mead is a rustic style honey mead with a noticable honey flavor and aroma. The honey used for the fermentation was naturally made by honeybees with the nectar gathered from the blossoms of Wild Mountain flower, giving the final product a subtle fruitiness with a hint of spiciness as well. Prickly Pear juice was added to provide an earthy-like quality to round out the sweetness. It also has contributed to the pulpy mater furthering giving this mead complexity.”

Cascade Brewing (Portland): They are previewing the next Bourbonic Plague today: “Today we’ll put on a keg of Pre-Bourbonic, a preview of the next version of Bourbonic Plague that we hope to release in the first half of 2012. The Pre-Bonic will be $7.50 a glass or $2 a taster.”

Burnside Brewing and the New School Beer Blog (Portland) are teaming up this December 31st to hold the New School 2nd Anniversary/Burnside 1st Anniversary New Year’s Eve Bash: a party featuring special beers, raffled schwag (including rare bottles of beer), and overall the party will “benefit the Pink Boots Society and feature special beers by guest breweries with a portion of sales going to the non-profit PBS organization and even a brand new one-off beer brewed by it’s members at Coalition Brewing.” The party starts at 8pm and each hour more schwag and beer will be raffled off. “Starting at 8pm Burnside Brewing will be pouring 6 out of the 8 special beers donated to The New School’s 2 Year Anniversary, the beers will be specially priced at $4 for a pint or glass with $2 of each sold going to PBS. The Pink Boots Society and Coalition Brewing’s collaboration beer of which yielded only a single 1/2 barrel will be on tap from 8pm until the keg kicks with other specialty beers rotated in as kegs blow. Almost all of the donated beers are in very short supply and should turn over quickly. At Midnight Burnside Brewing has graciously offered to tap the last only half full keg of their Gooseberry Berliner-Weisse that was barrel-aged and brewed specifically for a small release at the Portland Fruit Beer Festival early this year. The last remaining gallons of this beer will be poured free as a midnight toast for those who stick around.”