Hood River Hops festival – Suds in the sun

This past weekend I was invited to attend the Hood River Hops festival. It took place in the heart of the town and the weather forecast was iffy. Showers in the afternoon followed by more persistent rain in the evening. We arrived a little after 1pm having first stopped off at Doppio’s for some lunch. That really is a great place for coffee and a lite bite.

As you first enter the event there were a number of vendors selling their wares. It looked as if most of them were local merchants and on my way out I bought a wonderful hand crafted garlic mincer from KV Pottery. Really love it. It is painted like a sunflower – so thanks Ken and Verna Lolley!

Then we got into the drinking area. Lots of people checking the arm bands and there were plenty of people being very visible looking for anyone that had imbibed a few too many. I saw no signs of any form of trouble so looks like they were doing their job.

The event organizers expected to see somewhere around 7500 people attend during the 9 hours that the event was open. The beer vendors were in two large tented areas and it looks as if there were more than 2 dozen companies present, most of which seemed to have 2 beers available. The Hops festival clearly coincides with the hop harvest and so there were plenty of fresh hop brews on offer. Now shamefully, I have to tell you I don’t drink beer so all of that was wasted on me. Glenda was my taster and she quickly decided that she liked the darker brews including a pumpkin ale and a chocolaty brew that I even liked the flavor of.

Luckily for me there was one lonely wine merchant at the event – Naked winery that had a terrific tasting deal. $9 got you one of their Naked Wineglasses and 10 tastes – which were generous pours. If you are not familiar with Naked winery, many of their wines have very interesting names that creates some fruity conversations that you are not likely to hear anywhere else in public. “Are you ready for penetration”, “that really is quite orgasmic” and many more. It does bring a smile to everyone’s faces to be able to say such things out loud.

The weather held and the people poured in. I am guessing that attendance was more than the organizers and vendors expected because many of them ran dry long before the event was over.

With our tasting over we went to the 6^th Grill for dinner. Fabulous as always and Glenda thinks their fish special may have been the best fish dish she had ever tasted!

Brought to you by Brian Bailey

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