Most of you know I enjoy beer – I’ve covered other beer events like festivals and beer pairing dinners in the past. Usually this world is completely separate from spirits – it’s like Mars and Venus with F having a beer while I have a cocktail at a happy hour. We might sip a taste of each other’s drink, but they never go together or are related in any way. The closest you might get would be a beer back after a whiskey or boilermaker or shots in beer, but whatever way it isn’t usually something where you savor the beer and liquor together.

Yet, brewers love acquiring the barrels from distillers to make barrel-aged beer. It seems like there could be more to the relationship than beer only absorbing flavors from the containers that used to hold the spirit,  but having nothing to do with the spirit itself.

Well, the great divide is closing, and to help promote and celebrate that is the upcoming Brewstillery Festival, a new festival coming to us on Saturday February 28th. The goal of the festival is for breweries and distilleries to team up to create perfect pairings, which means beers paired with a whiskey, scotch, or rum, etc. that are intended to be enjoyed together.

Advance tickets are now on sale for $20 (the cost of admission is $25 day of event), which includes tasting glass and 10 tickets. Each ticket gets approximately either a 4 ounce taster of beer or 1/4 ounce taster sample of a spirit.

This new festival is being hosted by StormBreaker Brewing which purchased the Amnesia Brewing space on North Mississippi last year at 832 N Beech. They plan to be using their inside and outside space as home base for this festival. This is pretty exciting as it is the first big beer fest event StormBreaker has held since taking the reigns. You can see StormBreaker Brewer/Owner Rob Lutz is pretty excited about the festival too, modeling a festival shirt that showcases anthropomorphic kettles from a brewery and a distillery that to me look like they have faces like something out of a steampunk robot graphic novel. Or maybe that’s just me.

I was fortunate enough to attend a media preview of the event and sample a few of the pairings. A few pairings really stood out to me.

A pairing called “The Devil’s Coat” was the pairing in mind by StormBreaker in founding the Brewstillery Festival, and paired their limited edition Bourbon Barrel Aged Winter Coat with Bull Run Distilling’s Temperance Trader bourbon whiskey. Winter Coat is their Winter Ale which has already spent 2 months aging in Bull Run Distilling Temperance Trader Bourbon Barrels, and bringing the barrel aged beer back with its original barrel inspiration spirit brought out new flavors in each of them. The beer started to have more pronounced spicyness and vanilla and chocolate flavors, while the bourbon seemed to have stronger caramel tones.

Another pairing called “Gin & Juice Gose” brought together Breakside Brewery‘s collaboration beer with Fat Head’s, a Juggling Salted Plums Gose using Umeboshi (a fermented Japanese Salt Plum) with House Spirits’ Aviation gin. They together made a savory flavor combination that highlighted coriander notes and seriously was as good as a craft cocktail. I love both Breakside and Aviation so I was super pleased as I saw fellow attendees gush over how delicious Aviation gin is and how they would even just drink the gin straight – even from one guest who doesn’t usually do spirits at all. To me, that’s part of what Brewstillery is about, the great potential for delicious discovery.
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Ex Novo Brewing Company demonstrated that a beer and spirit together can go further than complimenting each other. Thheir At Her Majesty’s Pleasure Brown Ale with Oregon Spirits Distillery’s Otis Webber Wheat Whiskey joined powers and combined to bring out more toast then either had and further upgrade it to that perfect golden crispy toast at breakfast that makes a scratchy sound but doesn’t break or smush as you butter it but isn’t hard like a crouton either. Oh, but that Whiskey makes sure it isn’t just plain butter on that perfect toast- it’s a hint of honey butter.

At the preview event, I further had the pleasure of meeting Stuart MacLean Ramsay, a whisky and craft beer expert who also happens to be the founder of the idea of WhiskyBack Beer. This family of beers currently consists of three beers which are brewed at Coalition Brewing’s location but take Stuart’s recipes.

All the beers are inspired by the flavors and ingredients of whiskies.  Although they  are designed to compliment whisky, of course you can also drink this beer alone or pair it with food. As he explained, he “want to make a very complex beer for a very complex whisky.”

The WhiskeyBack Red I sampled had a lot of malty, herbal and grassy not bitter hop with a hint of spice in the flavor profiles. This is intended to highlight barley based whiskies’ own grain and malt characteristics (which it did with Monkey Shoulder).

Meanwhile, the WhiskeyBack Gold paired with a Jim Beam Black was smooth and brought out more sweetness together than either of them had alone. The third beer, a WhiskeyBack Black is not ready yet but that’s the one I’m excited about, since I prefer smokey whiskeys and dark beers and that’s what WhiskeyBack Black promises.

There are more pairings on the list they are putting together, and flavors vary from Baerlic Brewing‘s Noble Stout working to be a dessert like treat with EastSide Distillery’s Cherry Bomb Whisky to Cascade Brewing 2013 Apricot with Indio Spirits‘ Hopka to Deschutes Brewery Dissociator Doppelbock pairing with the elusive (usually sold out in 20 minutes) Clear Creek Distillery McCarthy Oregon Single Malt Whiskey (I was swooning over the peat flavors – they import peat from Scotland to make them in copper stills and everything is on site in Oregon) and more!

For a list of all the pairings, check out the blog Portland Craft Beer’s post “Stormbreaker Brewstillery Preview”.

The 18 Participating Breweries of Brewstillery:

• Amnesia Brewing
• Baerlic Brewing Co.
• Base Camp Brewing Company
• Breakside Brewery
• Cascade Brewing
• Coalition Brewing
• The Commons Brewery
• Deschutes Brewery Portland Public House
• Ecliptic Brewing
• Ex Novo
• Hair of the Dog
• Hopworks Urban Brewery
• Humble Brewing
• Laurelwood Public House & Brewery
• Migration Brewing Company
• Stormbreaker Brewing
• Upright Brewing
• Widmer Brothers Brewing

The 12 Participating Distilleries of Brewstillery:

• 4 Spirits
• Bull Run Distillery
• Big Bottom Whiskey
• Clear Creak Distillery
• Eastside Distilling
• Indio Spirits Distillery & Tasting Room
• Stein
• Parliament
• House Spirits Distillery
• Dry Fly
• Oregon Spirits Distillery
• Stone Barn Brandy Works

Don’t worry, there’s food available as well from the StormBreaker kitchen, with goodies such as their Pickle Jar of spiced pickled beets, sweet pickle chips, moroccan cauliflower and more; Warm Kale salad with bacon, aged gouda, almond and seed brittle, soft egg, all in a balsamic brown butter dressing; spiced peanuts; almond and seed brittle; house potato chips; and the $14 StormBreaker Smorgasboard, which is a Cheese Plate combined with their Meat Plate that includes selections of Cheeses with Olympic Provisions meats and mousse and sliced bread that adds a soft boiled egg and simple salad

What do you think of the idea of pairing spirits and beer, have you ever had both together? What style of beer and what kind of spirit do you think you might try together?