Outlaws Photography / Submitted file photoPatrons sample beers at the Sisters Fresh Hop Festival last year. This year’s event takes place at noon today.

Centennial. Meridian. Simcoe. Cascade.

These names are all anybody in the local brewing industry have talked about in the last month. And this weekend, the rest of us will get a chance to see why.

“You can really only make these beers one day a year,” said Wade Underwood, co-owner of Sisters-based Three Creeks Brewing. “It’s only about three to four hours from harvest to making the beer, and then the hops that aren’t used are processed. And they’ll never again be the same untouched, unprocessed ingredient.”

Saturday marks the fifth annual Sisters Fresh Hop Festival, an event that brings the best local fresh-hop beers, which incorporate hops like Centennial and Meridian strains among many, many others, together in one small corner of Sisters. The number of participating breweries has more than doubled in the past five years, and this year, 23 breweries and one cider-maker will showcase their specialty fresh-hops projects.

Nearly 50 beers will be on tap from Oregon breweries such as GoodLife, 10 Barrel, Three Creeks, Gilgamesh and Full Sail. The majority of the brews at the festival were created using hundreds upon hundreds of pounds of fresh hops straight off the vine (or bine, for all you serious students of the Humulus lupulus out there) at Oregon and Washington hops farms. Some breweries even used hops picked from their backyards to make the brews. These beers showcase the best that fresh hops have to contribute to beer: bright, spicy flavors and a clean, straight-from-the-field freshness that dances on the palate long after your pint glass is empty.

“It’s the difference between using fresh herbs while cooking versus using dried herbs,” Underwood said. “You get a lot more of the essence of the hop plant itself. It gives you a sense of what the plant is capable of.”

Underwood co-founded the Sisters Fresh Hop Festival , and has worked with the Sisters Area Chamber of Commerce to build it to the event it is today. He said he was inspired initially to help start a fresh-hops festival to create more awareness of the beer style in Central Oregon.

“The awareness and support and the number of patrons has dramatically increased over the years,” Underwood said. “I think fresh-hop beer awareness has grown in general, and we’ve certainly tried to play a part in that.”

Erin Borla, marketing and public relations coordinator for the Sisters Area Chamber of Commerce, said the festival generally sees about 1,500 to 1,800 attendees each year, and it is currently Sisters’ only beer festival. Some of the proceeds from the event go toward the Sisters Kiwanis Food Bank, the local Family Access Network, and the Sisters Chamber of Commerce scholarship fund.

Organizers of the event like to think of it more as a “taste-ivel” rather than a run-of-the-mill beer festival. Food and live music will be on hand, and the beer pours are designed to encourage lots of small tastes.

“We only give out 4-ounce pours at a time,” said Borla, “Even if they bring three tokens, there aren’t any 12-ounce pours of the same beer. We’re trying to encourage people to try all sorts of different products and not just keep going back to the same beer. We want them to really take the opportunity to try different things.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0354mkehoe@bendbulletin.com