A friendly reminder to our Overlook neighbors the NAOBF will be setting up in Overlook Park on Thursday in preparation for the Festival’s opening on Friday June 26 at noon.

North American Organic Brewers Festival organizers joined forces with Hopworks Urban Brewery to brew a revolutionary Cascadian Dark Ale, dubbed Secession, which will debut at the NAOBF June 26-28th in Portland’s Overlook Park.

Secession is characterized by an alliance of Northwest hop flavors as powerful as Cascadia’s coniferous forests, and roasty malts as black as the rubber boots Cascadians don from September to June, (and brewers wear year round).

Secession is brewed in the emerging Cascadian Dark Ale style, often mistakenly called Black IPA. Pioneered by brewers in Newport, Oregon and Victoria, BC the style has been gaining traction across Cascadia and further afield. NAOBF organizers Abram Goldman-Armstrong, a homebrewer since 1995, and Izaak Butler who has helped him brew many 10-gallon batches of CDA, teamed up with Hopworks  Brewmaster Christian Ettinger and Assistant Brewmaster Ben Love to brew 20 barrels of Secession on Hopworks’ biodiesel-fueled brewkettle. Secession is a classic example of this truly indigenous Cascadian beer style, bountifully hopped with Nugget, Magnum, Centennial, Atahnum, Simcoe, and Amarillo hops from first wort to the fermentor. Its 70 units of bitterness, are offset by a roasty character from organic chocolate and Carafa malts, with a hint of caramel lurking in the forest of hop flavors.