Part 1 - Zwickelmania & KLCC Festival in Eugene, OR
For President's weekend this year we decided to make the trip to Eugene for the second annual Zwickelmania. This is a statewide open house and beer tasting event for more than 40 breweries in Oregon. The event began in 2009 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Oregon statehood. In Portland, Eugene, and Bend, the Rogue Brewery sponsored a shuttle bus to make the rounds between venues.
In Eugene, this also happened to be the weekend of the KLCC Microbrew Festival, the largest beer festival in Southern Oregon. This two day event event benefits the local NPR station, and has more than 100 beers from 50 breweries mostly from Oregon and Northern California. These two events nicely dovetailed with each other on Saturday, and the folks at Rogue included the festival in the schedule for their shuttle bus, too.
Theoretically, one could tour breweries on Saturday from 11:00 to 4:00 and then get in line for the opening of the festival at 5:00. However, that is potentially a lot of beer for one day, so we cheated and went to the festival on Friday evening. On Saturday we walked over to the Ninkaski Brewery and afterwards hopped on the shuttle to visit the other four breweries before walking back to the hotel in the evening. The bus really makes a difference as both Oakshire and Hop Valley are several miles away from downtown Eugene and the roads leading to them are not pedestrian friendly.
We will follow this post with a brief review of the festival and each of the stops on the Eugene shuttle. (Shown on the map below.)
Continue reading Part 2…
