Among Portland’s culinary achievements, the excellence of its beer, coffee and doughnuts rank high. They’re all cozy items, meant to combat the winter’s constant chill and damp. But opportunities to enjoy all three at the same time are slim. Doughnut shops don’t usually have draft lists, and breweries employ their deep fryers for tater tots instead.
That’s a shame, because coffee, breakfast stouts and doughnuts are a natural combination. Like a Belgian ale paired with mussel frites, a beer’s crisp carbonation can cleanse the palate in between bites of fried goodness. And both beer and doughnuts are infinitely customizable, with plenty of room for experimentation.
We had the opportunity to try plenty of those combinations at the Baker’s Dozen, a coffee, beer and doughnut festival that is remarkable mostly, but not only, for the fact that it hasn’t existed before. Now in its second year, it took place on a rainy Sunday earlier this March at Culmination Brewing in southeast Portland.
Festival-goers shrugged off their coats and wound through the halls of Southeast Portland’s Culmination Brewing to sample thirteen coffee-flavored beers brewed by thirteen different breweries, drunk together with thirteen different doughnuts from doughnut shops around the city. Coffee roasters also gave away samples and sold bags of coffee next to the doughnut decoration station hosted by Delicious Donuts. In addition to other attractions that were unique among beer festivals, at Baker’s Dozen children were welcome. Their ages ranged from too-young-to-stay awake, snoozing in Baby Bjorns as their parents brushed crumbs off their heads, to older kids decorating doughnuts or dancing to the band.
Our personal favorite was the Napoleonic, an imperial brown ale with coffee, chicory and curry, brewed specially for the festival by Portland’s Labrewatory in collaboration with Coava Coffee. The curry spice brightened the rich, dark, toffee-flavored beer with tropical notes that smelled almost of oranges, and the chicory cut the sweetness.
We assumed that the lighter beers, like Coalition Brewing’s Morning Sesh—a session ale with orange and lemon peel—would pair with the doughnuts best, but in fact the stronger, darker beers held their own more effectively against offerings like Blue Star Donuts’ raspberry rosemary doughnut, or the famous cronuts—deep-fried doughnuts made from croissant dough—delivered all the way from Sandy, Oregon from Joe’s Donut Shop. By far the most popular beer was the Double Stack, brewed by Great Notion Brewing in collaboration with Clutch Coffee and aged on Vermont maple syrup.
The festival started and ended early in order to give everyone the chance to work off four or five plates full of beer, coffee and doughnuts. We departed with plenty of time left in our day to sleep off the early morning buzz, with smiles, full bellies and sticky fingers.
