This past weekend, Crux Fermentation Project hosted its first Saisons on the Lawn, a mini-festival featuring a lineup of nine saisons from Oregon breweries, taking advantage of a warm spring day (maybe the first we’ve had!) to kick off this inaugural event. As part of the day’s festivities, Crux also quietly reintroduced its weekend brunch for the first time since the pandemic.

I was invited to attend, with Crux comping me a taster package and brunch. The brewery has a terrific outdoor space conducive to an event of this type, so with similar thoughts and caveats to how we attended the Suttle Lodge Winter Beer Fest in February, my wife and I checked it out for the first part of the afternoon.

Here’s the wrap-up, largely in photos with additional notes.

We arrived early to preview the weekend brunch offering, and both of us were happy with the food and drinks. It’s a straightforward menu, and Crux recently starting offering pre-mixed cocktails that are a good accompaniment to brunch. I opted for El Crucero Mexican Lager while my wife got the Industrial Punch.

Brunch will be taking place from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on weekends, along with some appetizers, salads, and kids items. Call ahead if you have any questions.

Overall it was a good event, with some of the brewers in attendance talking beer, and nine saisons pouring. (The list was posted here.) I tried five of them before we left, all good but different and played to different strengths:

• Crux Saison de Coupage – nice complexity with some rustic character and smooth yet funky-tart notes
• Wolf Tree Brewery Saison Stays On – more malt-forward with a wild funk to it
• Alesong Brewing & Blending Silver Lining – fruity, wine-like, plenty of character from the dry hopping that bolstered the fruitiness
• Wolves & People Farmhouse Brewery Traveling Companions – another wild, fruity saison albeit with a phenolic note
• Deschutes Brewery Mountains of the Moon – fairly “classic” version of the style, crisp, dry, spicy, reminiscent of Saison Dupont

The weather was terrific for the day, warm (finally!) and not too hot, a light breeze, with some clouds. As the afternoon progressed, people were out taking advantage of the weather, and the lawn was filling up by the time we left.

Crux has a big space, essentially a field, with picnic tables around the periphery and ample space for families and dogs (leashed, of course). There’s enough room to set out blankets on the ground, picnic-style, if you can’t get a table. It’s a great space, but it also gets really, really busy in the summer months; the weekend was a good preview of that.

The calm before the storm:

And then it picked up:

I hope to see Saisons on the Lawn return next year, with a similarly exciting lineup of (hopefully more) saisons on tap. It’s a great showcase for the style and the various interpretations each brewery brings to it. Until then—