Wine Wednesday: Hop in the Dark
Wednesday, October 6, 2010 at 7:36AM | Leah Greenstein 
Cascade hops at Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon. Photo by Leah Greenstein.
Sure it's "Wine" Wednesday, but it's raining and I spent most of the night dreaming about beer. Beer from the Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon, to be specific. Deschutes has been brewing craft beers since 1988, back when Bend was just a small Central Oregon town in the high desert foothills of Mount Bachelor and the term "craft beer" hadn't been invented yet. They started out with three beers: Black Butte Porter, Bachelor Bitter and Cascade Golden Ale. It's that first beer, the Black Butte Porter, that got me interested in beer, with its incredibly balanced but rich profile full of espresso, cocoa and a hint of hoppy bitterness. It quickly replaced Guinness as my beer of choice.
