Taste the Five Best IPAs in Portland at Our 2016 Beer Guide Release Party

Pick up Portland's only comprehensive annual brewery guide—and drink some fine, fine beer at N.W.I.P.A.

This is a huge week for beer in Portland.

Tonight at 5:30 pm at Revolution Hall, there's the Oregon Beer Awards—the only statewide awards honoring Oregon brewers and beers. (There are still a few tickets available here or maybe at the door.)

At the OBAs, we will hand out the very first copies of Willamette Week's 2016 Beer Guide—the only annual comprehensive guide to all the breweries in Portland. We just got the copies in the office.They're very pretty.

Can't make it? No worries. We're throwing a party for the guide tomorrow, February 24 at 3 pm, at N.W.I.P.A. on Foster Road (6350 SE Foster Rd, 805-7342. nwipa.beer).

The Beer Guide will also be free to pick up at select beer bars, bookstores and distribution boxes throughout the city starting tomorrow.

But N.W.I.P.A. is by far the best place to get your copy of the guide. Because at the Beer Guide release party, N.W.I.P.A. will have the best five IPAs in Portland on tap.

And no, they aren't the ones you expect. You probably haven't even had half of them.

How did we decide? Back in January, we had a cockamamie idea.

Alongside Jackson Wyatt at N.W.I.P.A., we decided to ruin our own lives. We thought: What if we got together every single IPA made in the city of Portland and had a blind tasting? What if we drank all the IPAs?

As far as we know, we are the first ever to do so in a single day.

All beers were procured within 24 hours of the tasting—and if possible, only from their source. After many, many phone calls, we spent a day driving all over the city to pick up growlers—and with our sincere thanks, many brewers were nice enough to drop by growlers at our offices.

On January 28, a knowledgeable panel of beer industry insiders and beer bar owners and beer writers drank all 73 IPAs made within Portland city limits—without knowing who made them—and narrowed the field down to 10.

On February 6, Portland had its say. We threw open the panel's top 10 to the entire city in a blind tasting at N.W.I.P.A.

Hundreds voted, and it turned out you all picked the same favorite IPA the experts did. And you also picked the same top five, only in a slightly different order.

Tomorrow's issue of Willamette Week will include a full accounting of every single IPA we tasted, from the best to the worst.

But at N.W.I.P.A. Wednesday, February 24, you don't have to judge. You just get to enjoy the finest IPAs made in Portland in 2016 so far, and get a free copy of the most comprehensive and knowledgeable and up-to-date beer guide in the Portland.

Willamette Week

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