Once again this year, Bend-based Deschutes Brewery is celebrating National Burger Month all through the month of May by offering a special burger menu featuring a new and unique hamburger special each day. Here’s their event details:

Join us for beers & burgers through the month of May! We will feature one unique burger on our daily specials menu every day throughout the month. Stop by & enjoy a juicy burger made with Borlen Beef & locally sourced carefully prepared ingredients. Below are a few highlights of what we have planned. Cheers to yummy cheese burgers & beers!

MAY BURGER NEWS

Daily UNIQUE burger special everyday in May!

Featured FAN Burger on Locals Night

5/2 Meet & Greet Matt Borlen from Borlen Beef Company 5-7pm

5/28 National Burger Day! We’re going big on this day so stay tuned.

Get Your Burger Punch Card!
Get a stamp for every Special Burger.
5 Stamps = Free Prize & Entrance For Grand Prizes!

Weekly Burger Updates @
https://www.facebook.com/DeschutesBreweryBendPub/

Have a favorite burger recipe? Enter on our Facebook page and get your burger featured!

Last night (Monday, May 2nd) we were invited to a  media event for dinner to preview the upcoming burger menu as well as meet Matt Borlen and Chef Brian Kerr. On the menu (as with each Monday this month) was the “fan” burger, in this case one dubbed The Ludwicki:

All natural Borlen Beef patty, Face Rock Creamery aged cheddar, apple wood bacon, mayonnaise, & stoned ground mustard on a house baked brioche bun.

It was suggested by James Ludwicki, who used to work for Deschutes and who is now the head chef at 10 Barrel Brewing’s pub. Most of us at the table ordered it, and everyone thoroughly enjoyed it.

All of the ground beef at the Bend Pub is supplied by Borlen Beef, a cattle ranch located in Alfalfa (about 15 miles east of Bend). Borlen has been supplying the beef to Deschutes since 1995, and in turn the spent grain generated from the downtown Pub brewing system is provided to Borlen for cattle feed. Borlen in fact has a similar partnership in place with Silver Moon Brewing, Bend Brewing Company, McMenamins, Boneyard Beer, and Cascade Lakes Brewing all here in Central Oregon. They in fact take in about 70,000 to 80,000 pounds of spent grain per week.

And in fact, Matt Borlen’s father originally got involved with the Brewery under a different business, Agri-Cycle, which treats and manages waste water for soil preparation and fertilizer, back in 1993. Breweries of course produce a prodigious amount of waste water, and Agri-Cycle helps manage the excess output, turning into fertilizer for their own ranch pastures which in turn feeds the cattle. So there are multiple avenues to sustainability at play here.

Back to the food and Burger Month. Mondays will feature the “fan burger” to allow fans on social media to participate in selecting the burger special, but for the rest of the month, the menu is locked in. Chef Brian Kerr developed the menu by going through last year’s menu to determine what had already been done, and what was the most popular, to be able to recreate some of the popular recipes and come up with all new ones. This year in particular they have a bigger selection of vegan and vegetarian burger options, which will include a Curry and Lentil Burger, Falafel Burger, and Portobello Burger.

Deschutes is in fact getting ready to roll out an all-new menu for the Pub, Kerr told us, which will also include an expanded vegetarian focus. And in fact to highlight some of their options besides the burgers, we were provided with two appetizers, a calamari platter and a sausage board, and a vegetarian pizza (the crust recipe in particular has been tweaked).

All were really good-to-excellent, and I was impressed by the calamari and the pizza in particular. I would highly recommend both to anyone who’s mouth is watering from these pictures. And the burgers, of course, which will be the highlight of the entire month. Here is the calendar:

Myself, I’m most intrigued by the Benedict Burger, the Poutine Burger, the Biscuits and Gravy Burger, the Bahn Mi Burger, and the Parisian Burger (mostly because I don’t know if they are going French with it or the one made popular at Linda’s in Mountain View, California back in the day).

Finally, because this is a beer blog, here’s a gratuitous picture of the first of my beers, Hop Slice Session IPA that was on cask: