One of the reasons I like Oregon beers is that they are so Un-German...there are many ways to reach perfection, and limiting your ingredients is not always one of them.
We have a great deal of what we call Micro-brews, in other words beers that are produced in small quantities, by pubs, etc. It allows for much greater variety, and I feel much higher quality, since the really good brewers are able to devote such painstaking attention to detail.
Hefeweizens, Bocks, Ales, Porters, Stouts and more are very common. Alas, few truly Belgian recipes are used, so we have no trippels, etc.
For me, the darker and less filtered the better, and for this we have several fantastic porters and stouts from Bridgeport (Jorge has taken some DMR pic's of the Bridgeport brewery) and Deschutes.
Almost anywhere you go in this state, there is a fantastic beer waiting for you, and when you go skiing on Mt. Hood, on the way back there is nothing better than warming up with a cask stout from Mt. Hood Brewery.
Beer drinking and brewing is not particularly new in Oregon, but there has been a renaissance in the last 20 years...I can effervescently spew out more about Oregon beer, but the long and short of it is that we have many many breweries making fantastic beer, some of the best in the world. As soon as I buy myself a rangefinder, I'll organize a little RFF beer night here in Portland, and maybe all the RFF members can hoist a beer simultaneously in their worldwide pubs.
