Snackdown 2017 for PDX Beer Week

Once again, Portland Beer Week closed down with the official closing event where Portland Beer Week and Gigantic Brewing present SNACKDOWN!, a food and beer pairing event where 10 of Portland’s best Chefs and 10 Oregon Brewers are paired into 10 Brewer/Chef teams to make their greatest snack and beer pairing. Guests will choose their favorite pairing and the winners will be awarded the SNACKDOWN Belt.
 

The event is designed to be more fun and loose than you’re standard beer dinner because for the $49 cost (which I think is a great cost considering you are getting 10 dishes and 10 5 ounce tasters of beers), you go to individual stations for each Brewer/Chef team to get your pairing to personally judge. Taking place at the The Evergreen event space above Loyal Legion, for the second year there were barely any lines except because of execution time (a team making food in batches, or having to plate it individually scoop by scoop…) and plenty of space at high tops or at benches on the sides or a few tables by the bar or upstairs to nosh.

The non-need to try to balance eating and your glass is one of the things that makes Snackdown for me one of the best organized food and drink events of the year in terms of experience for the attendees.

And then there’s the theme – a WWF style Smackdown. Herb of Loyal Legion served as MC and got all the brewer/chef teams to take turns doing a little smack talking throughout the event – possibly while all participants were sporting wrestling themed costumes. DJ Rev Shines also kept the music going throughout while in the back a large projecter screen played old school late 80s/early 90s Wrestling footage.

Brewery/Chef Pairings:

• BUNK Sandwiches/Pfreim Family Brewers were strong contenders with the Cincinnati Chili Dogs w/cheddar, mustard and onions and cleaned up with the Helles Lager
   
• Mi Mero Mole/Gigantic Brewing presented a snack of Barbecue Brisket Tostada with smoked Tillamook cheese sauce with the beer Salted Hibiscus Wit with Lime. I really loved this pairing because the lime in the beer really brought in another level to the tostada’s Mexican flavors, and the extra work that they took to cut up all those little limes and squeeze in fresh lime juice I thought made a big edge to the pairing that made me reminiscence of tequila and lime after bites in Mexico while appreciating the American addition of that cheese sauce.
  
• Loyal Legion/Ecliptic Brewing presented a Kalua Pork with stone fruit slaw on Hawaiian sweet roll paired with a refreshing Carina Peach Sour. I loved the idea of the sweet with the sour, but there was so much bread in the roll (though I love Hawaiian sweet roll) that I think overwhelmed the pork and slaw ratio of the mini sandwich, though I wonder if it’s because it was later and I got these as among my last couple snacks of the ten. Even if not completely balanced it was still pretty delicious.
  
• HOTLIPS Pizza/Culmination Brewing named their combo the Fun Guys with Whips – porchini mushrooms, garlic whip pesto on a Hotlips crostini with a Hop Berry IPA, the official Portland Beer Week beer this year and is also a collaboration between Culmination Brewing, Hotlips Pizza, and Oregon Fruit Products to highlight Oregon’s famous India Pale Ale hoppiness and Oregon’s signature fruit, marionberries, via the Oregon Fruit Products marionberry puree, the same fruit that Hotlips uses in its Hotlips sodas.
  
  
• Lardo/The Commons Brewery impressed me with their pairing of a Soft Shell Crab with caviar cream cheese on buttered brioche and Gose with coriander and red sea salt which were getting rave reviews from many other attendees that I shared the high table with.
  
  
• Toro Bravo/Hopworks Urban Brewery presented Baller “Fish & Chips” (I like how the parenthesis is over the fish and chips portion here…) with a fancy almost cocktail style presentation Berliner Weisse with cherry syrup + lemon foam to try to defend the title, which they won last year in the inaugural event
  

  A post shared by Pechluck Laskey (@pechluck) on Jun 18, 2017 at 1:05pm PDT

  
  

• Old Salt Marketplace/Heater Allen Brewing brought a Warm Potato Salad with Old Salt weisswurst, spring peas, house mustard and Ben’s bacon matched with Lenzbock – Helles Bock. I liked the theed pairing of the German style food and beer, though German style beers are not my favorite it was ok for the style.
  
  
• Biwa Izakaya/Baerlic Brewing probably had one of the hardest entries of the night for the crowd with their Dried Beef with rayu and pickled daikon and Eastside Pilsner, though I appreciated their positive attitude
  
  
• Salt n Straw/Breakside Brewery brought the dessert of the event, and longest line that caused the judging to be delayed by 20 minutes so that everyone could get this snack, the Breakside Spent Grain and Bacon S’more Ice Cream with the Breakside Smoked Porter. The ice cream is great, full of chunks of chocolate and surprise bacon, but then seemed to be stronger then the beer in flavors.
  
  
• Danwei Canting/Buoy Beer were the ultimate winners for 2017 with their Pork and Dungeness crab wonton with chilies, black vinegar and crispy garlic and Citrus Wit. The flavors of these dumplings were bold with the chilies and vinegar but the citrus flavors of the Buoy Beer still cut through that made them a clear crowd favorite with 65 some tokens I think I heard in their people’s voting jar.
  

A post shared by PDXbeerweek (@portlandbeerweek) on Jun 18, 2017 at 4:35pm PDT

This year the event took place on the same day as the Pride Parade and Father’s Day, which made me think that is the only reason this excellent event did not sell out. I wonder if they might explore making it similar to a couple other drink/food pairing events where the beer pairing card part optional, that might make it also family friendly, especially if they keep falling on Father’s Day.

What do you think of the entries, what would you have voted for?