Centralia redux: new stuff at both breweries

   Headed down to Centralia on a recent Friday afternoon.  This is the only time of the week that Dick's Brewing opens the brewery for tours, tastings and sales, although the store a couple of miles away is open most days.  They brew in a good-sized building in a business park.  They have so much room that they put an insulated brite tanks room in the middle.

There is room for two separate bottling lines.  On the left, the 12-oz. bottler can crank out about a case a minute.  On the right, they fill 22-oz. bottles with the four imperial ales that make up their new Dedication series.

The dedication is to the founding brewer, Dick Young, who passed away in 2009. The four hi-test concoctions are Dick's Double Danger and Imperial IPA, each at 8.5% abv, and Imperial Red and Dick's Scottish, each at 8% even. 






  Continuing down the road into town, I returned to the Olympic Club, where McMenamins had booked the Portland Opera Co. to put on a touring version of Donizetti's The Elixir of Love. Last year I had not been able to view the hotel accommodations upstairs; this time I booked a room for fifty dollars.  I had wondered what the McMs could offer at that price; it was something like a hostel, with bathrooms down the hall, no phone or television in the spartan rooms. But their indefatigable artists had scripted and illustrated the history of various people who had passed through in the lively era of the Club's first incarnation.

The opera, enjoyed with a pizza and a pint of Ruby in the theater section, was great fun, sung in English and very accessible.
(Visited 3/18/11)