The Winter Olympics have come and gone, and the Trail Blazers aren’t burning up the league like they were, so maybe it’s time for another type of competition.

How about beer?

Pouring at the Coast, the annual Seaside event that celebrates beer, will be held for the fifth time this Friday and Saturday, March 14 and 15. This beer fest, presented by the Seaside Chamber of Commerce and the Oregon Brewers Guild, gets bigger every year, just like the craft brewing segment of Oregon’s economy. This year, 27 breweries will pour more than 60 beers, which means lots of beer to taste and lots of good food that goes with good beer. The competition part is that you get to vote for you favorite brewery. What’s at stake? Major bragging rights.

Pouring at the Coast begins with the Brewer’s Dinner, a five-course meal limited to 80 diners, held at McKeown’s Restaurant in Seaside Friday. This will be a sumptuous repast, and reservations are required. If you are one of the lucky ones, you’ll savor courses like corned beef croquettes with horseradish mustard sauce, fire-grilled chicken breast with Jameson barbecue glaze, seasoned crispy onion strings and cheesy roasted sweet potatoes, and finish the meal with a triple chocolate torte with marionberry sauce. These will be served with beers such as Bill’s Tavern‘s Imperial Oatmeal Red, Seaside Brewing Co.’s Honey Badger Blonde and Astoria Brewing Co.‘s Volksweissn Ale.

Saturday the beer tasting – and the competition – happens at the Seaside Convention Center. In 2012, Good Life Brewing, Richard Amacher and Rusty Truck took home the medals. Last year, Good Life took the bronze, routed by second-place Fort George Brewery and first-place Seaside Brewing.

Seaside Brewing went into the competition as the underdog, being a new nanobrewery, but with its bigger tanks and a win, it can no longer be considered a dark horse. Seaside Brewing has the home field advantage, of course, but can it hold out against a determined effort by Portland’s Sasquatch Brewing, or Salem’s intimidating (at least in name) Gilgamesh Brewing? Can merely human brewers hold out against a semi-mythical king from Mesopotamia (where 6,000 years ago women did the brewing, and no less than three goddesses were devoted to beer)?

Or could a newcomer once again be the crowd favorite? That would be Astoria’s Buoy Beer, which will have two excellent brews at the event.

As an aside, does anyone else think that cute or clever beer names are getting a little out of hand? Weren’t doppelbock, Hefeweizen, Porter, IPA and Kolsch enough? Buoy Beer has refreshingly traditional names for the authentic beers it will be pouring: German Pils at the dinner and Czech Pils at the tasting. Both are excellent.

Dave Kroening of Buoy Beer isn’t concerned about the competitive aspect of Pouring at the Coast. “It’s a public opening for us, getting our beer out into the community for the first time. It’s nice to be recognized, but that’s not what we’re in it for,” he said.

Still, Buoy brewer Dan Hamilton says he has no worries: “Our beer will stand up to anybody’s.”

Fort George has become the area’s predominant brewery, and partner Jack Harris is also completely unconcerned about the outcome of the voting: “Those popularity contests are fun, but I don’t really care. We’ll have a fabulous beer there, and what matters to me is that people get to taste it.” Fort George has a new seasonal beer paired with the first course on the dinner. It’s collaboration with Suicide Squeeze Records called, you guessed it, Suicide Squeeze. Harris calls it, “a springtime beer, a lawnmower beer,” with “all the flavor and body” of other IPAs without as much alcohol.

In addition to the competition among breweries, there is another for amateur brewers. The judges include amateur and professional brewers plus people who have no training (other than a brief orientation) and simply like beer. (Note to self: Apply for this panel next year.)

It seems, though, that brewers are not an especially competitive lot. They got into brewing because they like beer, and they’re going to Pouring at the Coast for the same reason. Which is the same reason you should go: You’ll find outstanding beers of almost every variety. In fact, there are more than 60 good reasons to attend, and they’re all worth a taste. Or two.

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