Beer and mountain bikes seem to go hand in hand.

The twosome is as natural as peanut butter and jelly, Bert and Ernie or Hawaii and a grass hula skirt.

“There’s definitely a connection between the two,” said James Gritters, owner of southwest Bend’s Sagebrush Cycles bicycle shop.

And this weekend, Mt. Bachelor will show just how good these two things go together with its Volcanic Bike and Brew Festival — a three-day event with a combination of smaller mountain races and skills demonstrations that will run throughout Friday and Saturday, and will be capped off with a race on Sunday that’s part of the 2015 Oregon Enduro Series.

The action will be accompanied by live music, tent camping and a chance to sample drinks from 18 local breweries, cideries and wineries.

“We just want to make this a big community event and get as many people out here as possible,” said Stirling Cobb, Mt. Bachelor’s events manager.

Riding a bicycle makes people thirsty. Thirsty people like beer.

Having a cold one after a hard ride is almost a given, said Gritters, whose bike shop is sponsoring the event along with Bend Cyclery, Pine Mountain Sports, Hutch’s Bicycles and about a dozen other businesses in town.

German innkeeper Franz Kugler learned this lesson the hard way when some 13,000 thirsty cyclists showed up at his bar in downtown Munich on a hot Sunday in June 1922.

Kugler didn’t have enough brew to meet his newfound clients’ needs, according to the German Beer Institute. He could have faced a riot if he hadn’t thought of mixing his remaining beer with some lemon soda he kept in a stockroom.

Kugler’s low-alcohol Radlermass (Radler means cyclist in German, Mass means a liter of beer), or Radler for short, was a hit with the crowd. Because it had such a low-alcohol content they could drink their fill and still bike safely home. It has since been copied by Bend’s 10 Barrel, Portland’s Hopworks Urban Brewery, Salem’s Gilgamesh Brewing, and other craft breweries across the West Coast for these very reasons.

Dan McGarigle, the owner of Pine Mountain Sports, said beer’s calorie content is another reason road cyclists and mountain bikers like to drink it at the end of the race. Mountain bikers probably drink more beer than road bikers, he said, because they’re less concerned about getting too many calories, and how that extra weight might impact their ability to compete in a multi-day stage race.

There’s also a very strong commercial link between mountain biking and beer — particularly in a place like Bend, which time after time ranks among the best cities for both — that Gritters has seen grow over time.

Deschutes Brewery patches showed up on riders’ jerseys when Gritters was racing mountain bikes in the late 1990s. The brewery now has its own Oregon Bicycle Racers Association cycling team, as does 10 Barrel, Boneyard Brewing, Hop Valley Brewing, HUB, Laurelwood Brewing, Ninkasi Brewing, Oakshire Brewing, Rogue Ales & Spirits and Widmer Brothers Brewing.

Deschutes is also a lead sponsor for several events like the Cascade Cycling Classic’s Awbrey Butte Circuit Race and the Tour des Chutes.

“There’s almost always a beer component at mountain biking events,” Cobb said.

He added, 10 Barrel has its own mountain bike event, The Blitz; the Oregon Enduro Series’ top sponsors include Ninkasi and Atlas Cider.

Mt. Bachelor will wrap up its Gravity Series at 6 p.m. Friday with a 2½-mile race that runs down its Rattlesnake and Blade Runner bike paths. The action resumes on Saturday with a 3.2-mile short-track cross-country mountain bike race starting at 11 a.m. A King and Queen of the Bike Park competition, in which men and women will race on three separate courses for the fastest time, will run from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.

Cobb said he expects anywhere between 100 and 150 people will show up to compete in the Enduro Series when that event kicks off at 9 a.m. on Sunday.

The festival’s guests and participants will have plenty of chances to work up a thirst before its beer garden opens Friday and Saturday afternoons.

“It’s a part of the culture,” Cobb said. “A lot of enduro racers tend to show up for an event, camp out for the weekend and drink beer.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7816, mmclean@bendbulletin.com