This week, seasonal beer season kicks off with the one-two punch of Oktoberfest and fresh hop beer releases. In today’s bifurcated craft beer market, in which IPAs and lagers share top billing on our collective palate, these beers ought to bring out the dilettantes, racking up Untappd points like Pokemon hunters and commenting on the grassiness levels of fresh Strata. (Why, oh why did I have to bring up Pokemon?!) They ought to bring you out, too, dear reader.

Here in the Willamette Valley, there are a number of events in the coming weeks that focus on one or the other. Do your forearm stretches and hit up these Oktoberfest events:

This Friday, 9/15, Hop Valley hosts Hoptoberfest at its Eugene location from 4-close. They’ll release two beers, have Bavarian food, a hop spelling bee, and music by the Klezmonauts.

Also on Friday, Springfield Mayor Sean VanGordon will tap the first keg of Oktoberfest at 4:30 at PublicHouse. The folks there have collaborated with The Wheel on Fest Coast Festbier. Entertainment includes a stein hoisting competition and a German band from Roseburg.

Beergarden’s Oktoberfest begins Saturday 9/16, with Eugene Mayor Lucy Vinis pouring the first boot of Festbier at 4:45, and runs all the way through ’til October 2. New festy beers will be tapped each day, and the food carts will run German-style specials to pair.

Up in Corvallis, Block 15 Brewing is once again putting up the big top over the streets around its downtown pub for Bloktoberfest on Friday & Saturday, October 6-7. This family friendly event will feature live music, face painting, a German spelling bee, and the classic stein holding competition. The main attraction, beer-wise, is the amber-hued Marzen lager. Of course, there’ll be an IPA on tap (because America or something) AND a collaboration schwarzbier from the minds of OSU fermentation science students.

In Eugene, Oakshire and Falling Sky have already released their Oktoberfest beers, while The Wheel and Plank Town will be releasing theirs on Friday.

Fresh hop beers are trickling in now, but the floodgates are about to open wide. Each year, brewers drive out to hop farms and load up with huge mesh sacks of sticky green ticking time bombs. Quickly, and battling the sleepy fog that accompanies these passengers, they race back to an awaiting kettle of boiling wort.

Fresh hops, unless flash frozen, must be used within hours of picking. The warm, wet cones quickly succumb to rot if held too long. There are some breweries who use a fun technique of bathing fresh hops in liquid nitrogen to freeze them, and then bash the frozen mass of hops apart to allow the beer more access to the aroma saturated lupulin glands inside the flowers. Breakside Brewery in Portland pioneered the process – see this video – and other breweries, like ColdFire, have caught on in recent years.

Getting an early start, Oakshire has already released a version of its classic Watershed IPA brewed with fresh Strata hops, and has another one on the way.

Rumor has it that ColdFire will release fresh hop Cumulus Tropicalus and West Coast IPA next week.

Fresh hop beer season lasts quite a while; the earliest hop varieties are harvested in late July. With the harvest season wrapping up and different styles of fresh hop beer being brewed, we should see releases well into October. Do your best to drink ’em fresh (i.e. not in January!).

From Sept. 25-Oct. 1, PublicHouse in Springfield will host a Fresh Hop Festival. You might notice that the current list features all Portland breweries. I do hope some local names are added to the list, but will point out that PDX seems to go absolutely nuts for fresh hop beers.

If you do head north in the latter half of the month, check out the Fresh Hop Pop-Up Brewfest at the Prost! Marketplace.