Oregon has lots of places to find craft brews. So many, there is often little difference between one or the other. Faced with way too many Indian Pale Ale and seasonal brews …sorry but pumpkin spice is really only palatable in scone form… we are always looking for something different coming out of the tap. This can be a brew style or even how the beer is being delivered to the glass.
The pints poured in your local establishment are likely moved by carbon dioxide, a practice that adds to the effervescence of the pint and sometimes, can be a bit too much. If you’re lucky your local watering spot offers nitro or nitrogen gas-powered lines. Nitro is less bitter and adds smaller bubbles to the drink.
A better way to have your pint without all the bubbles is to use a British style hand pump or beer engine. A traditional British public house tap uses a lever’s energy to move beer from the keg to the glass. This style of beer delivery usually means the final fermentation was in the cask.
Hand pump pours are, in my mind, superior pints leaving just the cast conditioned character of the beer in the glass and a creamy froth on top.
We were really pleased to find Porter Brewing in Redmond, where they only serve cast conditioned beer hand pulled.
The Porter is pleasantly smoky, the stout chocolatey, and my favorite the Extra Special Bitter which was better than the nitro ESB at Red Hook.
In addition to the tap offerings, there is a BBQ food truck adjacent that offers great pub food. We’ll be passing Bend more often to hit this great little english pub on the north end of Redmond.
In Central Oregon you are at the mercy of winter’s weather whims.
The state park at it’s northwestern edge is the starting point for a series of trails that take you into the ring of volcanic ash and around it’s outer perimeter.
With an outlook for sun and no snow storms, we headed northeast to take a couple of days and do some birding along the Columbia River flyway. There have been a lot of day trips to nearby hiking sites, but a bit of cabin fever and the prospect of seeing a wide variety of migratory birds drew us to Boardman and the Umatilla National Wildlife Refuge. Fifteen hundred of the 23 thousand acre reserve is irrigated crop lands providing cover and food for the waterfowl and raptors.
Highway 97, north of Grass Valley and almost to Biggs, was covered in freezing fog that left a beautiful covering of rime frost on everything. The ODOT trucks had been through with de-icer so roads were drivable and we enjoyed the photo ops the eerie scenery offered.
