adidas Originals is toasting Oktoberfest with the adidas Munchen. It comes in Festbier colors, with Prost labeled on them and, most importantly, they are water resistant. No Kolsch will ruin your kicks.
They ain’t cheap though, so save your Euros.
Beer Search Party at GABF – Part 2
Started the day on a bus filled with New Belgium beer headed towards Fort Collins. BrewDad Mike secured us passes for a brewery visit and this is a tour like no other.
New Belgium is a huge campus. Really huge. Pipes everywhere. All labeled and all monitored by a computer straight out of Minority Report. And the place goes on and on. Our tour took us past three bars! And so much equipment. To wrap the kegs in plastic for shipping they used a big piece of metal that quickly encircled kegs in layers of plastic. There were labs and two story fermenters and foeders everywhere you looked.
And the lunch was awesome. Great classy food with no pretension. Grilled cheese wedges with tomato soup. Peruvian chicken wings and other little nibbles like Belgian waffles to go with the beer. I went back for seconds and thirds.
We headed home after another beer and on to Freshcraft a new (to me) gastropub on Blake street for the Taplister relaunch. Great beer and a contingent of Portland folk (bloggers and beermongers) plus Joe from Ratebeer. As we were departing, Jeremy and Ting from Eagle Rock strolled in. That is one of the great things about Denver during the fest. Everywhere you stop, there is usually someone you know.
After Freshcraft were stops at Falling Rock (short due to it being it’s usual packed to the rafters self), Breckenridge (for food and a place to rest weary legs) and to cap the night a taxi ride out to Prost Brewing to try their German styled beer. The Pils being my favorite of the taster tray.
The beers are starting to blur together but onward I march to Saturday.
Prost!
When I think of beer afficionados, I think innovation (or collaboration, depending on the day) so when I saw this article in the online edition of the Oregonian, it came as no surprise.
“After months of construction, Prost! opens today as the anchor tenant to the new Mississippi Marketplace, at the corner of North Mississippi and Skidmore. In one of the most interesting experiments in Portland’s dining scene, the new German pub is the first restaurant to open its doors to food-cart customers looking for shelter — and a beer.
Business man Roger Goldingay spent months (not to mention $900,000 in real-estate costs) to shape a new vision for North Portland: converting a dilapidated building and an abandoned lot into a food-cart center, a community gathering place and an incubator for small artisan businesses focused on food or crafts. The cornerstone of Goldingay’s project was finding a restaurant that could work synergistically with its adjacent neighbors: a little village of spiffy food carts and market stalls.
Prost! (pronounced “proast”) was in line with that vision. Cart hoppers can sit outdoors in Mississippi Marketplace’s large tented eating area. But they now also have the option to eat — day or night — inside Prost’s handsome new Greek Revival space, as long as they buy a drink. Surviving Portland’s monsoon season is a major challenge for Portland’s cart owners, and many die with chillier weather. The option to hunker down in a homey space could make is possible for Mississippi Marketplace cart owners to survive — and pave the way for other food cart and restaurant collaborations.
That shouldn’t be too painful, especially is you like German beer (prost means “cheers” in German). On tap: 11 German beers on draft and around 8 to 10 bottled options, plus with a hard liquor license.
Owner Dan Hart will also serve a modest menu of German-style snacks: sausages (sourced locally from The Original Bavarian Sausage), fresh-baked pretzels and sandwiches, with most things under $10.
Mississippi Marketplace is possibly a model for the future, as other developers are already looking to bring similar food-cart projects to other parts of the city. Goldingay says he has been contacted by several developers in recent weeks.
“Most restaurants consider the food carts to be competition,” says Goldingay, whose “Prost! was the first who came on and said we welcome the idea and support it. We’re praying we get through the winter!”
Prost! is located at the corner of North Mississippi and Skidmore, 3 p.m.-2:30 a.m., Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-2:30 a.m. Saturday-Sunday”
The mantra of creative / out of the box thinking is overused especially in the media this last year but I applaud everyone who actually takes it heart and acts on it.