Sasquatch Brewfest is this Saturday, August 10, from noon-5pm in the parking lot of Ninkasi’s admin building, the same place it’s been for several years now. You should come! I’ll be there, along with most of the local brewing community and extended family (of which you’re a part, if you come to the fest :))

Whenever Sasquatch rolls around, it behooves Beerstone to remind Eugene’s beloved and evolving community of brewers and beer lovers what it’s all about. Thankfully, I don’t have to do all the heavy lifting this year.

Tripp Sommer, former radio host and program director at KLCC, plus friend of Glen and Eugene beer at large, recently poked his head out of radio journalism retirement to interview The Wheel Apizza brewer Tobias Schock. The interview was broken into three segments about his artistic connection to beer, pairing pizza and beer, and, most relevant here, his connection to Glen Hay Falconer, to whom the Brewfest is dedicated. The segments were recorded and produced by Tammy Rae Scott, a friend of Sommer’s. Have a listen.

Toby mentions reading Glen’s philosophy of brewing. This refers to an actual document, a page from a notebook of Glen’s, photocopies of which have circulated among local breweries. It expresses in totemic voice a brewer’s reverence for the process and product, the desire to share and be shared with, and a grand view of the goodness that beer can bring to civilization.

Would that it were always so.

The reason I’m here writing this, and maybe part of the reason you’re reading it, is this spirit, the one that welcomed me into the local beer community in 2010. There used to be a “new member night” in the homebrew club, and at my inaugural, someone handed me a glass of a 12-year-old Belgian quad brewed by Glen. “Glen who?” I asked, and was regaled with stories whose specifics are lost in that glass of well-loved beer.

The mission of Glen’s legacy, the Glen Hay Falconer Foundation, gives people the opportunity to study beer academically, to turn the rudiments of the trade into an intentionally crafted “liquid art form.” If you drink local beer, you have most likely unwittingly consumed beer brewed by someone who won a scholarship from the foundation.

Historically, beer connects people. Whether it’s farmers to brewers, brewers to their customers, or customers to their friends, family, and strangers passing through. For some brewers, Glen, Toby, and myself included, being a point of connection is essential, and is part of a loop that informs not just the brewing process, but the way we relate to beer as a whole.

Talk to any brewer and you get a different answer, of course. At least nowadays, when we’re forced to brew for actual money, not in the form of “free beer,” which should be a given. Brewing is a trade; we brewers are tradespeople, and come in all forms and with all manner of hows and whys, levels of skill and involvement.

The crux here is in translation, and is subjectively derived, contextually dependent: can you taste it? Put down your phone and try. Look up; is the brewer right there, sweating through their Carhartts? Can you taste it? Ha!