Central Oregon, home to 26 breweries and counting, proudly calls itself the beer capital of the country.

It’s a contested claim, though, as cities around the U.S. such as Portland, San Diego, Denver and Asheville, North Carolina, all boast cutting-edge breweries, extravagant beer festivals and home bases with sophisticated and complex palates.

So consider Central Oregon Beer Week, a 10-day affair that kicked off Friday and runs through Sunday, Bend’s latest shot in the never-ending battle to claim beer superiority.

“Bend’s on the map for our beer,” Broken Top Bottle Shop co-owner Andy Polanchek said Monday. His tap house offers different tastings each night of Central Oregon Beer Week. “This is us keeping up with par.”

A Memorial Day weekend staple now for the fourth year, Beer Week helps new and lesser-known local breweries expand their customer base while older, more established operations often showcase smaller batch, more experimental ales.

Bend Brewing Company, the third-oldest brewery in Central Oregon, is hosting what it calls a “Brewers’ Choice Tap Takeover” through Sunday. The BBC’s special tap list includes old favorites such as its Elk Lake IPA and Hophead Imperial IPA but also limited-edition beers such as the Raven, a big bourbon barrel-aged Baltic porter, and the Plum Provisional Ale, a tart sour beer made with Oregon plums.

“It marks the start of the summer for us,” said BBC brewer and bartender Josh Harned.

At Broken Top Bottle Shop, three different regional breweries and/or cider companies and distilleries are featured from 5 to 7 p.m. each day of Beer Week, with local bands then playing from 7 to 9 p.m. after the tastings.

Most evenings during Beer Week pair one or two Central Oregon breweries with a beer maker from outside the area, a nod to local brew connoisseurs who like to sample beers from beyond in the confines of their home pub.

“We might put together a big-name brewery with a lesser-known one so that (the small brewery) gets some of that exposure,” said Jennifer Powell, another Broken Top Bottle Shop co-owner.

Different breweries and tap houses are approaching Beer Week in different ways. Bend’s Goodlife Brewing is offering its popular Locals Night prices — $3 on select in-house beers — for the entire week. Deschutes Brewing released The Stoic, one of its special Reserve Series barrel-aged beers, over the weekend in conjunction with Beer Week. And Three Creeks Brewing in Sisters is hosting a grand opening party for its new production facility Friday. For the more active beer drinker, Smith Rock Hop Farm and Central Oregon Hop Growers are hiking portions of the Bend Ale Trail on Sunday.

“It just gets bigger every year,” says Polanchek, who in 2016, for the festival’s fifth anniversary, is toying with the idea of having five different brewery tastings each night. “We’ll see if we can pull it off.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7829,

beastes@bendbulletin.com