The Oregon Brewers Festival kicks off at noon tomorrow and if when you’re planning to attend (which I would encourage you to do early), you should have a plan of attack and part of that includes a list of must-try beers to seek out. Each year I write up my picks for those beers, and even though I’m not able to attend this year I will humbly present my list anyway.

First, however, Jeff over at Beervana has put together The Ultimate Beer Geek’s Guide to the OBF and you must go read this; my lists really pale in comparison to the work Jeff has put into this, and I suspect many of my picks have made his list as well. Definitely worth a read and making notes.

Without further ado, here are my picks:

• 13 Virtues Brewing, Traverse Cherry Wheat, 6% abv. Philadelphia’s new brewery.
• Boulder Beer, Pump Up the Jam, Fruit Beer, 5.2% abv. Brewed exclusively for the OBF!
• Breakside Brewery, Float, Summer Lager, 5.3% abv
• Burnside Brewing, Marionberry Berliner Weisse, 3.5% abv. Lowest alcohol at the fest.
• Collaborator, Smoked Helles, 5.9% abv. The annual collaboration between the Oregon Brew Crew homebrewers and Widmer.
• Dick’s Brewing, Dick’s Pulp Friction, Orange Infused Pale Ale, 5% abv
• Dunedin Brewery, Chronicle 11: Subtropical IPA, “American Fruited Farmhouse IPA”, 7% abv. Trucked in from Florida, with grapefruit peel, pink peppercorn and toasted coconut.
• Elysian Brewing, Oddland Spiced Pear Ale, 6.5% abv. Pear plus cardamom and cumin.
• Gigantic Brewing, Gigantic & Juice, “Beermosa – IPA with citrus juices added”, 6% abv
• Hopworks Urban Brewery, Two Tickets to Pearadise, Organic Belgian Pear Ale, 6.5% abv. Yes another pear ale!
• McMenamins Cornelius Pass Roadhouse, Silvercone IPL, India Pale Lager, 6.5% abv
• Mt. Shasta Brewing, Skip and Go Naked, Strawberry & Ginger Hefeweizen, 4.8% abv. “Dry-hopped” with 20 pounds of sundried strawberries and eight pounds of fresh ginger.
• Oakshire Brewing, 26, Imperial Oregon Ale, 7% abv. Brewed with—you guessed it—26 ingredients.
• Occidental Brewing, Occidental Dortmunder, 4.8% abv.
• Ohio Brewing, O’Hoppy Ale IPA, 6.8% abv. I don’t believe I’ve seen an Ohioan beer in the years I’ve visited OBF! Worth trying for the provenance alone.
• Old Market Pub & Brewery, Dilution of Grandeur, Mixed Berry Belgian Lambic, 8.1% abv. Spontaneously fermented in the lambic style, with raspberries, blackberries, black currants and boysenberries, definitely worth a look.
• Prodigal Son Brewery, Jackson Sundown, Saison, 6.9% abv
• Terminal Gravity Brewing, Tap Out, Craft Malt Liquor, 10% abv. Highest alcohol at the OBF this year and how could you pass up Craft Malt Liquor?
• Widmer, Eye of the Thaiger, Thai Lager, 5.2% abv. Kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass and ginger.
• Yakima Craft Brewing, Heather, Scottish Heather Ale, 5.7% abv. Heather tips and honey! Seems legit.

There you go, 20 must-try beers for this year’s OBF. You can see I tend to go for the more unusual choices, but there are of course still plenty of old standbys and IPAs if you’re looking for more mainstream: 21st Amendment Watermelon Wheat, Anderson Valley Summer Solstice, Ballast Point Sculpin IPA, Bayern Brewing Pilsner, Boundary Bay Double Dry-Hopped Bravo Pale Ale, Cascade Brewing Raspberry Wheat, Dogfish Head Namaste, Double Mountain Cluster F#ck, Firestone Walker Wookey Jack, Lost Coast Tangerine Wheat, North Coast PranQster, Stone Brewing Delicious IPA, and so on.

And, Rogue is pouring the infamous Beard Beer… if you’re so inclined.

Have a great Fest!