Beervana Buzz

Social Media and Beer Event Craziness

2012-02-26T23:43:00.004-08:00

As alluded to previously in these pages (is that what they are?), I have been perplexed for quite some time about the speed at which the craft beer culture is moving. Last summer, there was some talk here and there about "event fatigue," a reference to the fact that it was difficult to keep up with the blitz of events.

I still think the pace of beer events peaks in the summer. But it's starting to stay crazy all the time. For instance, there were a bunch of events this past weekend: The Winter Nano Festival in Tigard, the Hillsdale Brewfest, Lompoc's Shrimp Boil and Chowder Challenge, Double Mountain Tap Takeover (NW Bottles) and the Beer Mixology Hat Trick at Guild Public House. It's quite possible I've missed an event or 10.

Related to this is the pace of new beer releases. It's quite insane. Virtually every brewery is pushing out new, experimental beers on regular basis. There was a time not so long ago when you walked into a brewpub and knew their standards and typical seasonals. That's less possible today, as the list of standards is often pared down, and the list of seasonal offerings has grown.

Why has this happened? Why do breweries, pubs and promoters feel the need to stuff the calendar with special events and new beer releases? The momentum of this trend has gone completely off the hook over the last couple of years. What's the deal?

The Shift to Digital Marketing
The answer has something to do with a monumental shift in the way marketing and advertising is done today. The trend toward more digital marketing was already underway when the economy crashed in late 2008. When the crash came, expenditures on all kinds of marketing tanked. It's not so surprising. People weren't buying anything. Why advertise?

When advertising/marketing budgets began to recover in 2010, the ground had shifted. The old way of doing things was changing. Look at the above graphic, which I did not create. A couple things to note:

TV advertising has been pretty stable and will evidently stay that way.
Newspapers and magazines never recovered from the recession and are being displaced by digital.
Internet (digital) advertising is growing steadily and will continue to do so.

This chart shows why newspapers are getting smaller, cutting staff and covering less. Some papers have decent websites and do a good job selling display ads on those pages. However, 40 percent of their revenue was coming from classified advertising as recently as 2000. The growing power of Craigslist and eBay means those dollars aren't coming back. Print, as we've known it, is in big trouble. (More on the demise of print here.)

TV has done well because Americans love it. Despite the challenges of time shifted (DVR and online) viewing, television continues to draw advertisers who can afford to pay for it (lots of national brands). Why? Because TV audiences are huge and represent the demographics advertisers want to reach.

It's important to note that some of the lines between television, digital and even print are becoming blurred. If you watch a YouTube video on your TV, how should that be counted? If you go to a newspaper website to read a story or watch a video, what's that? My guess is that newspapers will get better at selling web-based ads, which will help them survive in digital form. But traditional newspapers are going the way of the dinosaurs.

Connecting the Dots
Back to the original question: How does the shift toward digital media marketing relate to the craziness in the craft beer scene? That's where this was leading, right? Yup.

Look, social media marketing is a perfect fit for the craft beer industry. It enables breweries and pubs to establish connections with customers that would be impossible and prohibitively expensive with "blast" mediums like TV or print. Facebook, Twitter are highly effective, targeted marketing mediums.

Here's the catch: In order to stay engaged with fans, you've got to constantly provide fresh content. That objective takes on the form of special events, beer release parties, small festivals, chowder challenges and a whole lot more. Craft brewers use these activities to revitalize their relationship with beer fans.

I still contend the beer community could do a better job coordinating the event calendar. How? I'm not really sure. Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe having a ready supply of possible destinations at any given time is a good thing. Time reveals all.

Boatswain Double IPA Misses its Mark

2012-02-21T13:08:00.000-08:00

I steer away from posting beer reviews here. Why? Because tastes differ. If you want to know what people who care about beer think, click over to Beeradvocate, find your beer and read on. It's free and easy.

Still, every once in while I run across a beer that is so dreadfully bad and off-style that it must be reported. Such is the case with Boatswain Double IPA: Twin Screw Steamer. It's available now at Trader Joe's and you will certainly want to avoid this beer if you value your pallet

Remember this label...and run

Look, I don't often stalk the beer isle at TJs. No offense to them because they occasionally have decent prices on great beer. For example, they were selling blue and red label Chimay for less than I commonly see it for at Freddy Meyer the other day. That was sweet.

However, TJ's sells a lot of generic beers that are not up to the standards of respected brands. You can find Ninkasi and Deschutes, sure, but it's the no-name beers that crowd the shelves. Most of these are evidently contract-brewed by Gordon Biersch. Supposition is that some of the Mission St. label beers are produced by Firestone Walker, which certainly thickens the plot somewhat.

The beer in question, Boatswain Double IPA is not a generic TJ's beer. The label says it is brewed by Rhinelander Brewing in Rhinelander, Wisc. The beer isn't on Rhinelander's website. Sometimes you have to peel away a few layers of onion to get the full picture.

Looks can sometimes be deceiving

It turns out Rhinelander was purchased by Joseph Huber Brewing Company of Monroe, Wisc., in 1967. Huber, which has roots dating back to1845, became known as Minhas Craft Brewery in 2006. It brews all of the Rhinelander brands in Monroe, although it no longer owns the lighter Rhinelander segments. Every brewery has a story and that's certainly the case with Minhas. Check out their history here. Fascinating.

Back to Boatswain Double IPA. This beer also doesn't appear on the Minhas website. "What's up with that?", you might say. Well, it seems likely that Minhas contract brews Boatswain under the Rhinelander name and distributes it through TJ's. Supposition, ya know.

Why should you avoid this beer? Boatswain has none of the hop character you associate with a double IPA. It has almost no hop-fueled aroma or flavor. It lacks body and malt flavor. What it does possess is a subtle sweetness that is blown away by a metallic bitterness and an overwhelming (8.4% ABV) alcohol presence. If you strip away the alcohol, this beer is an empty suit.

Boatswain is bargain-priced at $1.99 for a 22 bomber. I know, I know...what do you expect for $2? Well, I expect a beer that is at least on-style. And Boatswain doesn't come close. If you decide to take the plunge, keep something nearby to cleanse your pallet. A glass of gasoline might work.

The Power or Zwickelmania

2012-02-20T11:02:00.000-08:00

Oregon's 4th annual Zwickelmania is in the books and I think it's safe to say the event's appeal was unsurpassed. Beer fans flocked to breweries around the state to celebrate the good health of the craft beer scene. I made four stops on my Saturday travels and each destination was buzzing.

The growing success of this event brings up a couple of questions. First, who came up with the idea in the first place and what's it all about? Second, and perhaps more importantly, what's a zwickel?

As the above poster indicates, Zwickelmania is the invention of the Oregon Brewers Guild. The mission of the Guild is to promote craft beer throughout the state. Zwickelmania does that by opening breweries statewide for tours and tastings. Did I mention this is a free event? Alrighty then.

Mike Wright manned the bar at The Commons

Moving on the the question of the zwickel. We owe a lot to the Germans when it comes to brewing and bier. The term Zwickelbier once described unfinished beer taken from a barrel via a special siphon called a Zwickelhahn. So there's your zwickel reference. Today, Zwickelbier is commercially available in Germany. There's further explanation here.

And so, Zwickelmania features breweries showing people around and often providing beer samples directly out of fermentation tanks or barrels.Along the way, beer fans have the chance to rub elbows with brewers and other beer industry folks. Win vs win! There's a lengthy list of breweries and what they were doing here.

They were tasting 3-day-old Flemish Kiss from the tank

I want to mention the tour aspect. There was a line out the door at Widmer, so I didn't stop there. It's on my list of places to tour and I'll get to it. But let's face it, the vast majority of Oregon breweries are small enough that a tour basically amounts to entering the brewhouse. A few descriptive words later and you get it.

Such is certainly the case at The Commons Brewery. It was my main stop on Saturday. This place is quite small. The brewery and tasting room are mashed together. An official tour isn't really needed. Anyway, Mike Wright was toiling away at the bar while the other guys poured fresh beer tasters. The space was crowded, but the ambiance was buzzing and pleasant. I suspect that was a common theme.

Hats off to the Oregon Brewers Guild and all the breweries who participate in Zwickelmania. What a great promotional gig! I suppose the biggest downside to this event is there will surely be calls to expand it. I'm not sure that can or will happen, but it's a nice example of what success can do. I suspect all states where craft beer is flowing have or soon will have a version of Zwickelmania.

Beer Geeks Further the Love of Craft Beer

2012-02-17T11:18:00.000-08:00

Before I get around to writing (again) about the ADHD aspect of the local craft beer scene, I feel the need to give a shout out to some folks who are doing an increasingly great job of promoting craft brands around Portland and beyond. I'm talking about the pdxbeergeeks.

This logo is all about promoting craft beer

The group is the brainchild of Michael Umphress and Emily Engdahl, a couple of beer fans who concluded that hosting regular gatherings of local beer geeks and promoting the craft beer cause in other ways is a worthy cause. I probably don't need to mention that they were tipping a pint or two at the time. This was July 2011.

The logo started showing up on shirts and stickers last summer. They are slowly building up a presence in the real and digital worlds, hosting events here and there and generally promoting the cause via Twitter, Facebook, their blog and more. Check the site out for interviews of brewers, bloggers and beer geeks.

Several weeks ago they hosted an event at Bridgetown Beer House. I didn't make it to that gig, but I understand the place (admittedly small) was packed. As pdxbeergeeks expand their reach into the nooks and crannies of the Portland beer scene, I expect the number of events will grow. And get better.

Michael shows off a can of Natian's Undun Blonde Ale

Last night they hosted a well-attended event at The Guild Public House on NE Couch. This event highlighted Natian Brewery, a small nano setup just up the street from The Guild Public House. Natian is preparing to release Undun Blonde Ale in 16 oz cans and this was a sort of sneak peek. Of course, the taps were pouring five Natian beers. I am particularly partial to Vertical Horizon Red, but these guys make great beers.

Michael was without his compatriot last night, handing out pdxbeergeeks stickers, mingling with the crowd and handling a couple of raffles. It seems Emily was indisposed, having just returned from a trip to NoLa and apparently a zombie due to a lack of sleep.

Natian tap list from last night

Most bloggers and serious beer fans know about the pdxbeergeeks. Readers of this blog may not. If you want to know more about what's happening in the Portland craft beer scene, I suggest you connect with these guys via one or all of their channels...meaning the blog, Twitter or Facebook.

The next event on the pdxbeergeeks calendar happens at The Commons Brewery on Friday, March 9. Anyone who hasn't been to The Commons and tasted their beers needs to get over there. The upcoming event is a great opportunity to do just that.

Keep up the fantastic work, kids!

Collaboration Brewer's Dinner Serves Up Hits and Misses

2012-02-12T23:04:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of breweries and brewers in Portland. Not such a big secret, eh? What some people may not know is that the brewing community is relatively tight knit. Most of these folks know each other, which presents the opportunity for friendships and rivalries at the same time.

Last week's Collaboration Brewers Dinner at Laurelwood on NE Sandy was an opportunity for several brewers who know each other well to show off what they can do. The collaborators, Vasili Gletsos (Laurelwood), Van Havig (Gigantic) Alex Ganum (Upright) and Tom Bleigh (Hopworks), know each other from past brewing gigs.

The basic specs flyer

For the record, this isn't the first Brewer's Dinner they've held at Laurelwood. It is, however, the first one I've been to. The idea behind these events is to pair beers with appropriate foods, similar what you see at a vintner dinner with different wines served with different courses. Beer can work very well this way, contrary to what some people think.Yeah, I've heard the snickers.

Before I get to the menu, I should mention that this event was well-attended. I didn't ask how many tickets were sold. My understanding is there were still some tickets left on game day, but there couldn't have been that many because the place was pretty packed. (The pub was closed to the public during the dinner.)

I want to note that Laurelwood's physical space does not set up perfectly for an event like this. If you've been there, you know why. Instead of a large room where there's a shared ambiance, diners sat in three separate areas: bar section, main section, west section. This isn't ideal, though it also isn't a deal killer.

The menu specs

The menu for the five-course dinner was put together by Laurelwood Chef, Aaron Nichols. There was certainly significant coordination between Nichols and the brewers to see that the planned beers and planned foods matched up. Great line-up.

Firsts
The first course was chicken coronets served with preserved lemon. Very tasty, slightly spicy. The beer pairing, a bold Cascadian Pilsner brewed by Gletsos and Havig, was excellent. This beer, born from German base malts and neutral lager yeast, leaned heavily on several hops to create a firm, but not overly aggressive Northwest hop character. I'd like to see this beer on tap somewhere...anywhere.

Round 1

Seconds
The second item was a shrimp and mussel soup with lemon grass, kafir lime leaf, fish stock, chilies, garlic, shallot and Thai spices. It was tough to get a bead on the soup because it was lukewarm when it arrived. Everyone at my table agreed. The mussels were terrific. The shrimp were okay. Otherwise, nothing stellar.

The beer pairing was a Thai Wit brewed by Bleigh and Gletsos. This is a delicate beer and it went well with the soup. However, it seemed out of place behind the very bold Pilsner served in round one. Food for thought.

Round 2

Thirds
This was the best pairing of the evening, I thought. A salad combining blood orange and arugula with red onions, Castelvetrano olives and parsley was delightful. The beer, a Sour Red ale, was terrific. It was based on a Flemish style red and was several years in the making as the four brewers mixed and matched their barrel aging projects. The result was a pleasantly tart beer that matched the salad perfectly. Well done!

Fourths
This was the main course, a smoked pork belly and pomegranate barbecued brisket with potato-chard gratin and pomegranate glaze. The paired beer was a Scottish Ale brewed by Gletsos and Ganum. The plate could have been warmer, but the pork and other items were quite tasty. The beer was overtly smokey, possibly related to the sour served in round 3. Still, quite good.

Fifths
The initial menu for this event listed grapefruit tart and pecan brittle as the dessert. Several people at my table noted the change, for which there was no explanation. Anyway, the replacement was a chocolate chiffon cake paired with a Milk Stout. The cake went well with what I would call a mild stout. It was a decent pairing, but it lost some mojo compared to what came before it.

Scorecard
For my money, they served up three solid hits on the food menu: the chicken coronets, the arugula salad and the smoked pork belly. The soup was a near miss. The cake, not so much. On the beer side, the Cascadian Pilsner and the Sour Red were direct hits. I put the Thai Wit and the Scottish Ale in the near miss category. Opinions will certainly differ...these are mine.

One area where they can do better is the interaction between the brewers and the paying customers. Vasili stopped by our table and talked for a minute. None of the other brewers did. This was possibly related to the way Laurelwood's space is split up, I admit. Still, people who pay good money to attend these dinners like to mingle with the guys who made the beer. Pretty simple, eh?

I know what all you kids at home want to know: Was the dinner worth the $50 cost? It definitely depends on your perspective. If you like unique beers paired with inventive, tasty food items, then you're going to see the value. If that isn't your thing, this isn't your gig. Take your $50 and spend it somewhere else.

Gustav's Dials in German Connection

2012-02-09T12:22:00.000-08:00

I spend a lot of time babbling about craft beer here. There's a lot to talk about between opportunities to kick Budweiser to the curb when they launch a new bad beer. Once in while I see something on my travels that makes me realize my search for the holy ale sometimes has blind spots.

On my way to last night's Collaboration Brewers dinner at Laurelwood, I stopped in down the street at Gustav's. There are reasons for everything and the reason I went into Gustav's is that I arrived at Laurelwood too early and they weren't yet open for the dinner. Gustav's is a few short steps away. Viola!

The German taster tray

You need to know I have a reference point with respect to Gustav's and its affiliated restaurant, the Rheinlander. I once lived a block away. This was in the mid-nineties. There were no brewpubs nearby, as there is now. We would often walk down to Gustav's for a beer and sometimes a snack.

The beers there have always had a German flavor. Go figure. Spaten is practically a house brand and has always occupied at least several taps there. Back in the day, Gustav's also had a selection of Northwest craft brews on draft. Beers like Widmer Hefeweizen, Deschutes Mirror Pond...you get the idea. This was true as recently as a couple of years ago.

I wasn't really shocked to see that they no longer have any craft beers on tap (there are a few available by the bottle). Instead, they have dialed their selection more deeply into German beers. There were no fewer than 17 tap handles, all of them occupied by German beers: Helles, Pilsner, Kellerbier, Ocktoberfest, Dunkel, Wiessbier and so on.

A few of the beer menu choices

Make no mistake. These are amazing beers. I ordered a taster tray of four beers: Kellerbier, Munich Helles, Hofbrau Original (another Helles style) and Spaten Optimator, which I've always liked. Every one of these beers was excellent...and refined. I particularly liked the Kellerbier.

Why am I bringing this up? Because I think our rabid pursuit of unique craft beers in and around Portland sometimes obscures the fact that there are other terrific beers out there, beers that have often been brewed and refined over centuries. I know, I know...these beers aren't local, and local is definitely important. But still.

I salute what Gustav's is doing. Why should they compete with the brewpubs and pubs? They're smart to offer an alternative. Oregon's craft beer industry is still in its youth and it has borrowed extensively from what brewers in Europe have been doing for centuries. The German connection, a piece of it, anyway, is on display at Gustav's. Good for them.

Don Younger's Lingering Influence on Display

2012-02-07T09:14:00.000-08:00

Beer geeks and industry folks gathered at the Horse Brass last night to give another sendoff to legendary publican Don Younger, who passed away a year ago last week. The event was well-attended, as beer people packed the area around the back bar at the HB...and parking was scarce.

Two vices

The main event was the unveiling of a new John Foyston painting of Younger. Prior to the unveiling, Foyston tapped a Firkin of Firestone Walker Union Jack IPA for all to enjoy. Lots of mingling. Good times.

For the unknowing, another Foyston painting of Younger hangs over the mantle at Lompoc's Sidebar on North Williams. Younger was a partner in the Lompoc operation and the Sidebar painting was mounted just months before his death. When Don first saw that painting, he was shocked, but loved it, according to Foyston and Lompoc owner Jerry Fechter.

Foyston lifts a glass moments before the unveiling

The newly unveiled portrait is a painted version of a picture taken by Lisa Morrison, aka the Beer Goddess. It appropriately shows Younger drinking a beer from a glass (he's drinking from a plastic mug in the picture at Lompoc) and smoking a cigarette. His favorite vices. Morrison took the photo at Amnesia Brewing.

While we surely crossed paths many times over the years, I never formally met Don Younger. So my points of reference with him revolve around the legendary stories, which are many. I've always been drawn to the one about how he wound up owning the Horse Brass.

Fred Eckhardt and Rob Widmer enjoyed some chat time

The story is well-known. He evidently bought the place during the course of a day and night of drinking, and wasn't sure what he'd done when he discovered the bill of sale the next morning. He may have been a little groggy at the time.

After he took over, the Horse Brass would eventually become a place where players in the fledgling craft industry met to share ideas over a few beers. Some of those same folks, people like Fred Eckhardt and Rob Widmer, were on hand last night, honoring their departed friend.

This event and the people who attended it are proof of Younger's lingering and extensive influence. Without him, the Portland beer landscape would not be what it is today. Foyston's latest portrait will hang as a testament to that notion.

Giants vs Pats: Who will buy the Beer?

2012-02-02T13:41:00.000-08:00

Like a lot of people, I tend to think political figures wagering on the outcomes of games is silly. We see it all the time. Mayors vs. mayors. Governors vs. governors. Gov. Kitzhaber recently picked up on some Wisconsin goodies courtesy of Oregon's win in the Rose Bowl.

There's beer on the line...

They're at it again for the Super Bowl. Sen. Charles Schumer of New York is putting beer from six New York breweries (Brown's, Brooklyn, Blue Point, Saranac, Captain Lawrence and Ithaca) on the Giants. His opponent, New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, is putting up Smuttynose beer from her state on the Patriots.

If the Giants win the game, the entire Senate will be treated to beers from the New York breweries, paid for by Shaheen. Should the Pats win, the Senate will get New Hampshire beer paid for by Schumer. Where are the Massachusetts senators in this mix? It's a mystery. And what about New Jersey senators? The Giants do play in New Jersey. I digress.

The Winner is...
The last time these teams played in the Super Bowl, New England was heavily favored and trying to complete a perfect season. New York pulled off a huge upset, thanks to tough defense and some freakish plays down the stretch.

The crazy helmet catch put the Pats in a bind

This time around, the Patriots are again favored. We're talking small numbers this time...a field goal. It almost makes sense. The Patriots earned the top seed in the AFC, but they were not nearly as dominant as they were in 2007. To get to the Super Bowl, New England demolished Denver and squeaked by Baltimore, both home games.

The Giants weren't dominant, either. They got hot late in the year and earned a spot in the playoffs by beating Dallas in the final regular season game. They opened the playoffs by soundly beating Atlanta at home. They then beat the NFC's two top seeds, Green Bay and San Francisco, on the road.

If you're trying to figure out who will buy the beer (Schumer or Shaheen), I suspect you need merely review what these teams have done in the playoffs and the relative strength of their respective conferences. Their prior Super Bowl result means next to nothing.

Look, I'll be rooting for the Patriots. I actually enjoy the way Belichick hoodwinks other teams, coaches and the gullible media. Tom Brady isn't my favorite quarterback, but I like him a whole lot more than the dork, Eli. Did I mention I don't care for Tom Coughlin, the man with the perpetual scowl?

If New England is going to win this game, they are going to have to overcome the following:

The AFC as a whole was far weaker than the NFC this year. The three best teams in the NFL during the regular season were Green Bay, San Francisco and New Orleans. The AFC didn't have any teams as good as these three, in my view, including New England.
New England got to the Super Bowl the easy way, winning two games at home against flawed teams. Denver is a team with a poor offense and decent defense. They were shredded by the Pats. Baltimore has a great defense and not much offense, yet the Pats barely won.
New York got there the hard way, beating the top two teams in the NFC on the road. I don't put too much weight on the Green Bay result. The Packers didn't show up for that game. But beating a rugged San Francisco team on the road was a tall order.

Much as I hate to admit, the Giants are a well-balanced team on a roll. I don't see them having too much trouble moving the ball against New England's soft defense. Meanwhile, the Giants defense is going to harass Brady and make it tough for New England to score at will. The game may be close, and it may well be decided by turnovers...these games often are.

In the end, I think Shaheen is going to be buying New York beers for the Senate. Hopefully I'm wrong.

Bud Light Platinum: Where Taste and Common Sense Don't Meet

2012-01-31T15:52:00.000-08:00

Budweiser has contributed a lot to the marketing extravaganza that is the Super Bowl. Let's face it. The folks at Anheuser-Busch/InBev have a lot of cash to throw at advertising messages and campaigns. Advertising is their lifeblood, and an example of how spending a lot of money can keep consumers buying a flawed product.

Who can forget the marketing genius of the infamous Bud Bowl promotion? It had an eight-year run, 1989-1997. Bottles of beer with football helmets butting heads. Very popular. I always thought the Bud Bowls were first rate idiocy, an affront to the intelligence of football fans.

In spite of their ad budgets and ingenious campaigns, Bud and the other big boy macros have been losing market share. The downturn has been well-documented on this blog and elsewhere. Some big boy brand segments are in free fall, seeing 30-72 percent sales declines between 2006 and 2010. Ye gods!

The one brand segment that keeps them afloat is light beer. Bud Light, Coors Light and Miller Lite don't show up on the list of declining brand segments. Americans continue to suck up light beers, while steering away from old standards like original Budweiser, Miller and Coors.

Of course, some of the loss of big boy market share can be attributed to craft beer. The craft segment is small, but growing, and has essentially chipped away at the middle and top of the macro brands. Budweiser can no longer position Bud and Michelob as premium beers. Consumers are looking elsewhere.

Available now, just in time for the big game!

Anheuser-Busch's response to this reality is to expand their light beer segment, which they have done with Bud Light with Lime, Bud Select and others. These forays have seen limited success. Bud Select was a monumental flop. But onward they come, chasing the days when they dominated the beer market.

And so it is that they have released a new 'light" beer to coincide with the Super Bowl. We will almost certainly see this product advertised during the game. The beer is Bud Light Platinum. It comes is a flashy blue bottle and is nominally a light beer. But at 6% ABV, you wonder how it fits into the "light" category. Hmmmm.

If the marketing gurus at AB think increasing the alcohol content of Bud Light will help them steal back consumers who have switched to craft beer, I think they're chasing their tails. But maybe they are on to something. Perhaps they have additional exciting ideas up their sleeves:

Bourbon Barrel-aged Bud Light Platinum
Bud Light Platinum in a 750 ml bottle with a wax dipped cap
Imperial Bud Light Platinum
Cask-conditioned Bud Light Platinum
Special release Bud Light Platinum for the Oregon Brewers Festival

Anyway, be sure to watch for the BL Platinum ads during the game. But make sure your Super Bowl party cooler is well-stocked with craft beer.
_____________________________________

Update: Stltoday.com has a nice review of what AB/InBev has in mind with Bud Light Platinum. They essentially say they're going after a "higher end, more sophisticated" consumer. Too bad the packaging and ad campaign are where the money is being spent. Maybe one of these days AB/InBev will invest in making quality beer. Oh, in case you were wondering, we'll be seeing two (apparently) 30-second ads for Bud Light Platinum during the Super Bowl. The cost: $3.5 million each.

Widmer Keeps Things Interesting

2012-01-27T15:20:00.000-08:00

The other day I mentioned in the comments of another blog that I did not attend a recent media tasting at Widmer. Not invited. The fact is, this blog hasn't been around that long and I'm not as well connected as I would like to be. I'm working on fixing that, but it takes time.

There was a fair amount of commentary around the blogs about Widmer's new beers...Dark Saison and Spiced IPA. I made a trip down to the Gasthaus last night to check out the new beers. The Dark Saison has been on tap at my athletic club for several weeks so I'd already tasted it. The IPA just became available.

Spiced IPA

As noted, the Dark Saison is on tap at my club. Yep. We drink a bit of beer after racquetball and have been doing so for years. This is at Lloyd Athletic Club next to Lloyd Center. It's a sort of private tavern for some members. And the club has a longstanding connection to Widmer, so I guess we get some beers before they are in common release.

Anyway, Dark Saison is brewed in the classic French farmhouse style, with about 10 percent wheat and some dark malts that provide color, but not much backbone. They use Wyeast Saison yeast. The beer has a citrus character on the pallet, thanks to the Saaz hops. I liked this beer when I first tried it several weeks ago and I had the same reaction last night. Good stuff.

Spiced IPA is the fourth entry in Widmer's Rotator IPA series. Just to jog everyone's memory, the order goes like this: X-114 IPA, Falconer IPA, O'Ryely IPA (made with rye) and now Spiced IPA.The Rotator IPA series is intended to give Widmer brewers a chance to experiment within the style. It's a great idea.

Spiced IPA is made by blending in black tea and unspecified spices after fermentation. It comes across as a bright and marginally spicy beer. The specs say 70 IBUs, but hop aroma, flavor and bitterness seem slightly subdued.

Frankly speaking, I have liked the odd-numbered Rotator releases...X-114 and O'Ryely. I did not like Falconer and I do not particularly care for Spiced IPA. I'll taste it again when it appears on tap at the club and see if my reaction is the same. I suspect a lot of people will like this beer. Give Widmer credit. The approach is definitely inventive and unique. It just isn't my cup of tea. (Insert laugh)

Widmer Impresses
When I was putting together the entry on Widmer Brothers Brewing for my eBook last summer, I concluded they were producing a lot of good beers, but perhaps falling behind some of the smaller breweries in terms of experimentation. That section will now need to be rewritten.

The tap list when I visited the Gasthaus back in July was comprised of eight beers, plus a couple of seasonal selections. Last night's list had 14 beers, including some you won't see around town. The beer list and the newly released beers suggest that Widmer is back in the groove, continuing to produce the great beers they're known for while pursuing experimental projects that will lead to bigger and better things.

Another Look at Brewery Growth

2012-01-23T13:09:00.000-08:00

Some new numbers from the Brewers Association (BA) got me thinking again about brewery growth. I have a couple of earlier posts that investigate these trends. You can read them here and here if you haven't already. Or you can just read on.

One of the things all of us have to keep in mind when looking at these numbers is they are quite fluid. The BA tracks the number of existing and planned breweries every month. As they themselves admit, brewers are far more reliable about reporting when they've opened than when they've closed. Thus, the numbers for 2011 won't be official for several weeks.

The graph below is a visual version of numbers that appeared on the BA website last week (link). It shows the number of existing breweries and the number of planned breweries as of the end of each year. In creating a visual version of the stats, I hoped it would clarify the growth relationship between existing and planned breweries.

First, note that the existing brewery count is approaching 2000 (1,949). Notice, however, that growth is not off the hook. From the end of 2008 to the end of 2011, we added about 450 breweries to the existing column. That's an average of just over 100 a year. Please remember, this is a net number. The BA gets the end-of-year number by subtracting closures from openings.

Now look at how the number of planned breweries keeps creeping up on the number of existing ones. There's a clear trend here. In 2008, planned breweries (207) represented a small fraction of the existing count (1,496). By the end of 2011, the planned number (915) approached half the number of existing breweries (1,949). Wow!

Below is another way of looking at what's going on. It shows the number of planned breweries at the end of each year against the actual increase in total breweries at the end of the following year. For example, there were 207 new breweries in planning at the end of 2008. A year later, we saw a net increase of just 50. And so on.

So even though the number of planned new breweries rises fairly dramatically each year, the actual net increase in existing breweries shows reasonably consistent growth. I'll be interested to see what this graph looks like in a year given the fact that the number of planned breweries continues to nearly double.

What's missing here? Well, it would be nice to know how many places are closing each year. Having that number would help determine the true new brewery count vs. the number planned. Planned brewery numbers fluctuate wildly. It sometimes takes a while for planned breweries to open...and some never open. Do planned breweries ever go from start-up to open in a calendar year? Inquiring minds.

Time to see if the folks at the Brewers Association can help. Until I have more information, I'm going to conclude that planned brewery numbers have only a passing relationship with actual yearly growth.

Help! Canned Beer Prices Make No Sense

2012-01-19T11:54:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned the canning of craft beer before, but I feel the need to bring it up again because I'm perplexed. I fail to understand the pricing strategy with canned beer. I'm not alone.

Just to review, it seems completely reasonable to me that more good beer should come in cans. The myth of canned beer tasting bad has been widely debunked. Modern cans use a liner that keeps the aluminum and the beer separate. In fact, cans completely protect beer from light, the most significant cause of beer degradation in shipping and shelving.

As I noted in my earlier post, cans are convenient. They're less prone to breakage when dropped or jostled around. They are light and compact. You can take canned beer places you would never take bottles. They are also easier to display on store shelves because they can be easily stacked.

Beyond convenience, cans offer are environmental benefits. Aluminum is the most recycled form of packaging worldwide. About 44 percent of an average aluminum can comes from recycled material. Obviously, cans are lighter and less costly to ship. Less energy is used in the aluminum can loop than with glass.

Given the various positive factors, I keep wondering why canned beer seems to cost more than bottles. I consistently see six-packs of cans priced between $9 and $12. Nearby, six-packs of similar bottled beer are selling for $8 to $10. What's up with that?

I've asked around. Nobody has a reasonable answer.

Does canned craft beer cost more because it's relatively new and the start-up costs are high? Well, this movement has been underway for several years. There's mobile canning out there now, so investment in an expensive canning line shouldn't be an issue. If it was an issue for places that jumped in early on, you'd think the start-up costs would be paid down by now.

Does it cost more because it's a novelty that can be priced higher with no effect on sales? If that's that case, craft beer in a can may stay a novelty. The current pricing structure offers little incentive to consumers who are open to switching to cans.

What about buying discounts? Are higher prices the result of retailers buying less craft beer in a can? It's easy understand why retailers might be reluctant to move away from bottles. Beer consumers have been conditioned to believe any beer in a bottle is better than the same thing in a can.

My thoughts? Even though canned craft beer makes good sense to me, the only solid selling point it has at the moment is convenience. For the movement to really take off, prices of cans will need to align fairly closely with prices on bottled beer.

Comments and explanations welcome.

Pop Go(s)es the Apuckerlips

2012-01-17T15:19:00.000-08:00

It's always a treat to stop by Cascade Brewing Barrel House. You never know what special treats they may have lurking in the barrels behind the bar...unless, of course, you get regular emails telling which special beers are being poured. And when.

(L-R) Autumn, Summer, Spring, Winter

Last Thursday marked the annual Four Goses of the Apuckerlips event. Gose (pronounced gose-uh) is an historic, sour wheat beer. Each of Cascade's four Goses is designed for a season. They are light and just slightly sour. Each one is brewed with sea salt and various spices and they all come in around 5.5% ABV.

They were pouring Spring Gose 2011, spiced with wild chamomile, lemon peel and culinary lavender; Autumn Gose 2010, spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg and orange peel; Summer Gose 2011, spiced with coriander; and Winter Gose 2011, spiced with rose hips, orange peel and cinnamon.

These were all good beers. I am a big fan of the Cascade beers, especially the ones that don't exert ultra-tart flavors. The Gose beers are all pleasantly sour, light and crisp. It makes sense. These are wheat beers and the ABV is near session level. Each of them is tasty and highly refreshing.

My favorite, for what its worth because opinions are going to vary, was the Summer 2011 Gose. It's creamy smooth body and mellow spices are followed up by lingering and dusty lemon finish. "Hey," I thought. "I could drink a lot of this stuff on a hot summer day." Wait, I could drink a lot of it almost any day.

I continue to be impressed with the blending and aging program they have going on at the Barrel House. Lots of other breweries are playing around with barrel-aging and blending. But no one, to my knowledge, is doing it on the scale that it is being done here. Not in Portland.

Black Friday Follow-up and Notes

2012-01-13T21:00:00.000-08:00

One of the things I strive for with this blog and anything else I write for public consumption is journalistic integrity. With respect to beer, I refuse to simply parrot what the various breweries, pubs and retailers. I collect information from the appropriate sources and interject my own thoughts as I write.

I followed that course when I put together the post on the Return of Workhorse at Laurelwood. I first reported the official reason why Workhorse was taken out of production: a shortage of hops. That's the information they gave me. I then provided a personal interpretation of why Workhorse was taken out of production: to make way for Gearhead as their standard IPA, with an imperial version of Workhorse to be released soon thereafter.

Workhorse is back on Laurelwood's big board

My interpretation was not well-received by Laurelwood brass. It's not hard to understand why. A lot of people were unhappy about the demise of Workhorse and many of them didn't believe the official explanation. I was tossing gasoline on the fire. You get the drift.

In the spirit of fair play and good beer, I spent some time talking to Laurelwood brewmaster, Vasili Gletsos, yesterday. I had not met him before. We spent an hour or so bouncing all kinds of beer thoughts around. Vasili is a great guy. They're lucky to have him at Laurelwood and I suspect he will do great things there.

Below are a few updates to my prior post, based on my conversation with Vasili:

Although Laurelwood considered tweaking the Workhorse recipe and releasing it as an imperial IPA, they eventually decided against the idea. Plans change all the time, Vasili said.
There are no plans to release an imperial version of Workhorse this year. An imperial version may happen at some point, but the timeline is uncertain.When it happens, Imperial Workhorse will likely be part of their specialty series, with availability limited to select bottleshops.
Gearhead is Laurelwood's standard IPA going forward, widely available on draft and in bottles at grocery stores, bottleshops, etc.
The A-Z IPA program was never intended to be lengthy. As Workhorse was running out last summer/fall, Vasili launched the A-Z program and named the first few beers after racehorses...Aftershock, Best Bet and C-Biscuit. The "D"-beer wound up being Gearhead, which they decided to launch to replace of Workhorse, and the A-Z program was tabled.
A little off the beaten path, Vasili said making less Workhorse has freed up brewing capacity and given them more room to experiment with new ideas. He hopes to use some of that production capacity to produce a lager, with a probable summer release.

So there you have it. My supposition that Workhorse was taken out of production so they could easily release Gearhead and later launch Imperial Workhorse over the top appears to have been mistaken. Their plans for Imperial Workhorse are too uncertain to suggest that strategic course.

As for the A-Z program, the information I was given by a Laurelwood employee last summer was incorrect. Vasili had only recently joined the brewery at that time. He says they are working to improve communication between the brewhouse and the pub.

Deschutes Outing

While I'm (sorta) on the subject of Workhorse, there are a growing number of beers out there that offer similar hops character. This surely has something to do with the fact that the hophead pallet increasingly seeks IPAs that feature piney, citrus, grapefruit notes in flavor and aroma.

Hop City 2 is front left

On a quick lunch outing today, I tasted an IPA that reminded me a lot of Workhorse The beer is Deschutes Hop City 2. It's one of their special selections at the Portland pub and they're calling it an experimental IPA. It has 95 IBUs and 9% ABV. Excellent lunch numbers, eh?

More importantly for hopheads, Hop City 2 uses nine hop varieties. It features the same kinds of citrus, pine and grapefruit notes that in my mind make Workhorse so popular. Hop City 2 also reminds me Boneyard RPM. Workhorse, RPM and Hop City 2 make a nice trio, despite Hop City 2's higher ABV. Round 'em up!

There was another beer on the taster tray that deserves mention. In the photo above, it's the beer to the right of Hop City 2. This is a blended beer from their Reserve stock. They evidently blended two parts Black Butte XXII with one part of what he referred to as a "house sour." No matter. This beer has a solid backbone, rich chocolate notes, and is wrapped in a mildly sour presentation. Really terrific job, Deschutes!

The Return of Workhorse

2012-01-09T09:48:00.000-08:00

A lot of local hopheads will surely be happy to learn that Workhorse has returned. The popular IPA is now available on draft at Laurelwood's pubs, and draft is the only way you'll find it. More on that in a minute.

Workhorse had been out of production for several months. The official reason for the hiatus was a shortage of the hops required to make the beer, particularly Simcoe. My previous post on what happened with Workhorse is here. The story, as well as my view of what they're doing, has changed somewhat.

Yep, Workhorse is back in the pubs

As Laurelwood eased Workhorse out of the daily mix in late September, they launched Gearhead, a lighter IPA at 6.5% ABV (vs 7.5% for Workhorse). Gearhead has effectively replaced Workhorse as the brewery's flagship IPA. You can find it on draft and in 22 oz. bottles around town.

Coinciding with the release of Gearhead, Laurelwood also launched an A-Z IPA program. They were supposedly going to produce a series of IPAs with names A-Z in the absence of Workhorse. The first three entries were Aftershock, Best Best and C-Biscuit. That program was soon abandoned.

A picture began to emerge as I bounced emails back and forth with Laurelwood owner, Mike De Kalb. He told me they intended to bring Workhorse back as soon as the necessary hops were available in a few months. He said they might reposition the beer as an imperial IPA due to the relatively high ABV. Later, he told me Workhorse would only be available on draft in his pubs.

When I heard it was back on draft, I stopped by the Sandy Blvd. location (a hop and a skip from home) to check it out. Sure enough, this was the beer many of us had been missing for several months. The specs and taste are the same. Hmmm, I thought. I wonder what happened to the idea of repositioning Workhorse as an imperial IPA?

Gearhead: the only readily available Laurelwood IPA for now

Well, De Kalb now tells me they decided not to tweak the recipe and reposition Workhorse. For now, at least. However, they will introduce an imperial version that will be available on draft and in bottles later in the year. No word on whether Imperial Workhorse will be a seasonal or standard beer. My guess is the latter.

I have long-believed the strategy behind taking Workhorse out of production was to expand Laurelwood's IPA line. Workhorse had to be removed from the picture to open the door for Gearhead, a beer that doesn't turn heads in the same way. Now that Gearhead is established, they'll bring in Imperial Workhorse over the top.

As I said in my earlier post, I think it's smart marketing for Laurelwood to have two IPAs out there. It's the most popular style around here, for better or worse, and having two versions available in pubs and bottles is good business...regardless of the zigzags in the official version of how they arrived here.

Unfortunately, they have succeeded in pissing a lot of people off in the process of doing what they're doing. Many people I've talked to have expressed frustration with the changes surrounding Workhorse and say they can no longer support Laurelwood. I suspect those feelings will pass, but negative PR is never a good thing, even when it's related to a change that seems to make good business sense. We'll see what the long-term fallout is.

Getting back to the tease at the top, Workhorse is only available at Laurelwood pubs at the moment. Officially. I believe it has been spotted at other places around town, but it's possible those pubs are finally tapping stashed kegs. You can't get it in a bottle anywhere, but growler fills are available.

Big Trend for 2011? Event Craziness

2012-01-06T09:55:00.000-08:00

I've been reading a lot of year-in-review posts on various blogs. We all feel the need to share what we think were the most significant developments of 2011. Ezra posted a review in photos over on The New School blog and Jeff shared his view of the trends on the Beervana blog. All well and good.

While I'd love to talk about the growing popularity of barrel-aged beers or the changing pallet of Oregon beer drinkers, it seems to me the runaway trend for 2011 was the frenetic number of special events that graced the calendar all year long. Seriously off the hook.

One of many

I've mentioned this before. The pace of events and special beer releases got to the point last year that most of us couldn't keep up. There was talk of event fatigue as summer waned and the beer scene became a blur. Things didn't slow much into the fall.

I leave it to readers to decide if the virtual tsunami of special events, brewer's tastings, mini-festivals, etc., is good for the craft industry. I realize the power of social media is growing and that breweries and beer fans feel the need to use it. Everyone wants to promote their brand. However, I think there's a bit of ADHD involved.

One more...

One of the offshoots of the special event craze is that everyone feels the need to brew special beers for these things. This has gone far beyond the seasonal concept. Breweries are producing special beers often with eclectic ingredients and unrefined recipes to support special events.

All these special beers, whether they are summer beers, fresh hop beers or strong winter beers, typically share the fact that they are produced for events. It is no longer cool to pour one of your house beers at a special event. Nope. You've got to create excitement and buzz by creating something truly unique and possibly reckless. Toss in some pumpkin rind, cloves, vanilla beans, coffee beans, peppermint, bacon, wet hops, cranberries, chilies, dandelions, etc. Whatever it takes.

And one more

Let me digress for a moment. On a recent road trip, I visited several breweries. These are all well-known establishments with great beer lists. My conclusion was that the standard house beers were far more refined than the seasonal offerings.

I started thinking about it. Why wouldn't that be the case? Brewers spend a lot of time and effort refining their house beers...often over many years or decades. Seasonal beers don't generally get the same sort of attention. Gee, I wonder where special event beers appear on the priority list?

So our ADHD-inspired special event calendar may well be creating a playground for experimental brewing, but the beers produced are not always particularly good. In fact, my experience is that the beers are often half-baked and not ready for prime time. I'll let you decide the meaning of this.

Boneyard Builds Unique Brand

2012-01-03T14:06:00.000-08:00

Bend's Boneyard Brewing has turned a lot of heads among Portland's craft beer fans since it opened in April 2010. The brand that built a reputation primarily on a couple of excellent IPAs is moving onward and upward.

The quasi-elegance of the Boneyard brand

There's no pretentiousness here. When you pull up in front of Boneyard, located in a mixed residential/industrial neighborhood in Northwest Bend, you are greeted by a rustic, ornamental motorcycle. Brewdog, X, is casually vigilant near the warehouse door. This is old school.

Walking up to the door, I was greeted by co-owner and head brewer Tony Lawrence. This was strictly by chance. I didn't call in advance to arrange a tour or interview. I was pleased to meet Lawrence, then amazed when he spent more than an hour showing me the place and telling me about Boneyard.

Beerlogist checks his production notebook

Lawrence, who formerly worked at Deschutes Brewing and Firestone Walker, announces himself as a beerologist, saying it more accurately describes his role. There are several brewers on the payroll at Boneyard and they were hard at work as I walked around with the boss. The 20 bbl brewhouse and collection of fermenters are packed into the available space.

The Boneyard tag itself is interesting. Bend beer fans will probably recall that this place was originally to be called Brewtal Brewing (according to the initial story in The Bulletin). The name morphed into Boneyard Brewing prior to the opening in April 2010. There are reasons for everything.

An example of Boneyard's make-it-here approach

"Boneyard is a name that makes sense for us," Lawrence said, "because beer isn't the only thing we make here. We make a lot of the stuff used in the operation. We can weld and we make our own tap handles, among other things. Recycling discarded stuff from the proverbial boneyard for use in and around the brewery is something we strive for."

As for the beer, Boneyard has a serious problem: They simply cannot make enough beer in the current facility to keep up with demand. They have risen quickly on the OLCC's sales list, coming in at #20 on the Year-to-Date Taxable Barrels sales report for October 2011 (the reports are always two months behind, Lawrence said).

They will soon add three additional fermenters to the mix. That will increase output somewhat, perhaps to the point where Boneyard can begin to seriously think about actively pursuing distribution by 16 oz. can. That plan has been on the drawing board from early on. They even own a $35,000 canning machine...which sits idle.

Canned RPM IPA will eventually happen

"I had hoped to be doing some distribution by can by now," Lawrence said. "But we're barely able to keep up with draft distribution (just the Northwest for now) and there's no way I want to alienate our distributors by launching the canning project and shorting our draft supply. We'll get to canning when we're ready."

It seems likely they won't be ready until next summer at the soonest. Lawrence said Boneyard recently signed a lease on a new building which will house a 50 bbl brewhouse, with plenty of space for fermenters and growth.

"The reality is we just don't have enough room in the present building to house the kind of brewing facility we need to be able to build out the brand," Lawrence said. "The new space, once we get it up to speed, will allow us to supply the draft and retail distribution channels...I hope."

The current brewing operation...too small

When retail distribution comes, RPM IPA in 4-packs of 16 oz. cans will be the first beer to appear on shelves. It will be available primarily at bottle shops and perhaps at grocery stores like Whole Foods and New Seasons. Lawrence isn't ruling out distribution by bottle and says a 750 ml bottle is possible.

"Canning is the road we plan to go down, and we're set up for it," he said. "But never say never with respect to bottles. I see successful breweries doing draft, cans and bottles. You never know. We don't want to rule anything out."

The Boneyard tasting room, located at the brewery, is small and friendly. Beer fans headed to or through Bend absolutely must stop by. The motif fits in well with the uniqueness of the Boneyard brand. Generous tastes will cost you $1 a piece, well worth it.

On my visit, they were pouring RPM IPA, Skunk Ape IRA, Femme Fatale, Backbone and Diablo Rojo Red in the tasting room. All were quite good. I also tasted Hop Venom from a fermenter, which was a little green, as well and several other beers in the backroom. Fun times.

The Boneyard tasting board

Lawrence, the perfectionist, claimed the RPM was a little off. He said a new batch of hops was somewhat green and had shifted the taste in an unfavorable way. Honestly, I thought it tasted fine. RPM has a great aroma and some of the citrus and pine notes that make it a viable competitor for Pliny the Elder.

One final note on Hop Venom and RPM: Lawrence said he is in the process of dialing both of these beers down a bit in terms of ABV. RPM, currently 7.5%, is being dialed down to about 7%. Hop Venom will go from 10% to 8.8%. This is part of an effort to improve the drinkability of both beers.

New Year's Eve 2012

2011-12-31T18:26:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, everyone. Have a safe evening.

Flying the Unfriendly Beer Skies

2011-12-26T11:09:00.000-08:00

Despite the growing popularity of craft beers, you don't have to look far to see how the macros continue their efforts to program people into accepting lousy beer. The evidence is everywhere...on TV, on store shelves, on billboards.

The principle is pretty simple. If you bombard people with enough messages associating your beer with good times, you won't have to worry about making decent beer. Anheuser-Busch (InBev) and MillerCoors have been taking this philosophy to the bank for years, and are official proof that this strategy is alive and well.

So it really shouldn't surprise anyone that the reach of the beer conglomerates extends to the airlines. If you want to drink a decent beer while you're in the air, you'll probably have to smuggle it aboard. Terrorist.

Elevating my spirits with this beer list is problematic

First, let me say that I've warmed up to Southwest Airlines. I've gotten used to the cattle call otherwise known as boarding. I actually like the no frills aspects of the airline. They are obviously one of the more efficient air carriers out there. I have nothing against them...well, almost nothing.

A flight to the Bay Area for Thanksgiving gave me a chance to see the current drink offerings on Southwest. That's the booze portion of the in-flight menu you see above. Not a pretty sight. Five bucks for a Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Lite, Michelob Ultra, Corona or Heineken! Yikes! Standards are obviously pretty low here.

To me this is just another barrier that needs to be broken down. There's no excuse for any airline to be offering such a shameful list of beers. I'm not suggesting that Southwest should be pouring Pliny the Elder, but it seems to me they could offer a decent pale ale and maybe even something a little darker. A couple of craft choices would be cool.

You hate to assume anything, but my guess is Southwest and other airlines offer what they do because that's what big beer wants them to offer as part of programming. I mean, how can you possibly fly anywhere without the chance to bolster your experience by consuming a tasty Bud Light? Mission impossible.

Fire on the Mountain Beers by Design

2011-12-20T12:08:00.000-08:00

I want to follow-up on my earlier post about the new Fire on the Mountain location on NE 57th and Freemont. The place has been open for about a month and they are now pouring several beers produced in-house. You can jet back to my earlier piece here if you wish.

A quick review: the FOTM brewing facility was put together with assistance from Craig Nicholls, well-known in the local beer community via his time at Alameda, Roots and as organizer of the North American Organic Beer Festival. Ben Nehrling was hired to run the brewing operation. Nehrling previously worked at McMenamin's Kennedy School. Enough said.

I tripped on up the FOTM the other day, eager to check out the brews. The place has been packed to the gills for much of its first month. Knowing that, I got there in the late afternoon just in time to find a spot in the bar area. Tasters up!

The FOTM lineup: NW Pale, Wheat, IPA, Amber

Another quick preface: FOTM previously announced they would be offering 4-5 house beers to go with what has historically been a strong guest selection. Besides the four beers I tasted, they expect to release Wonderin' Rye this week. I'm told they also have a stout and a lager waiting in the wings.

Moving right along, there is nothing earth shattering here. The four taster beers are all very clean and pleasantly unoffensive. They have very little bold character. The Eleven (brewed on 11/11/11) is a very drinkable pale. X-tinguisher Wheat has a nice citrus character courtesy of the Sorachi Ace hops. Shocks of Sheba IPA (inspired by KBOO's reggae program) is an organic IPA with middling character. Hoosier Amber has nice layers of malt and a smooth finish.

It would be easy to pan these beers as completely inadequate. But hold on. Step back and consider the big picture here. Fire on the Mountain is mostly about food. And they serve up a lot of spicy food. They are best known for their wings, which are served with a variety of mostly hot sauces. Spicy is the name of the game here.

After I tasted of the four beers and made brief notes, I suggested to myself that the beers were perhaps designed to go with the food. Luckily, I had some hot wings on the way to verify that thought. Sure enough, the beers, particularly the pale and the wheat, went well with the spicy wings.

Plenty of high octane beer choices

I wanted to get closer to the bottom of this, so I sent FOTM an email asking for some explanation. I made no reference at all to the opinion I had formed regarding the beer and the food. Ben Nehrling responded in kind:

We serve a lot of spicy food so I am trying to brew some ales and lagers that help cut the heat and refresh your palate. In terms of viewing the recipes as starting points, we have only brewed ten batches of beer so we had to start somewhere.

There you have it. If you're headed out to any of the FOTM locations for a beer, the IPA and the amber offer the most character. Or you can choose from one of the many guest beers. On my trip the guest taps were staffed by Oakshire, Double Mountain, Amnesia, Sierra Nevada and Mt. Hood Brewing. Plenty of high octane beer power if that's what you're after. Did I mention they also have Rainier?

My final thoughts are these: I suspect the FOTM beers will evolve with time and eventually have more character than these opening salvos. But I don't expect these beers to compete with the big players in the styles. If they're going make an award winning beer, it will probably be a pale or wheat beer. That could happen. When you drink these beers, keep in mind what they're all about.

Beer in Wine Country: Russian River Brewing

2011-12-16T18:14:00.000-08:00

Getting back to my post-Thanksgiving Day tour of California, the second stop was Russian River Brewing in Santa Rosa. As noted in the previous installment, Bear Republic was the first stop. Russian River was the inevitable second stop, since it is located between Bear and Lagunitas.

I had high expectations for Russian River. As most beer fans know, they produce some excellent beers, including Pliny the Elder, Blind Pig IPA, Damnation and others. There was probably no way my expectations for this place could have been met.

Line out the door sends ominous signals

First, Santa Rosa. The city was bustling, with lots of traffics and people everywhere. If you're fixing on visiting Russian River, it's pretty easy to find. But the availability of parking is not good and the street parking is not cheap. We were lucky to get a place not far from the pub. That's where our luck ran out.

The place was packed to the gills. It isn't a huge space to begin with, and the hype surrounding this place is evidently bringing in the masses. After waiting in line for a few minutes, a snarky little "greeter" told us it would be about 40 minutes for a table. Terrific.

The beer board was packed with options...like the bar

While my travel companions waited in the outdoor seating area, I looked over the beer menu on the board above the bar. All the usual stuff was there and more. The folks at Russian River, like brewers in Oregon and elsewhere, are engaged in barrel aging and sour beer production. This was news to me. But I digress.

I hung out in the four-deep mosh pit by the bar hoping to get the attention of a bartender. Finally, one asked me what he could do for me. Since I knew there was no seating and this was going to wind up being a quick stop, I ordered the base taster tray...Aud Blonde, O.V.L. Stout, Porter, Russian River IPA, Blind Pig IPA and Pliny. The mistake soon became apparent.

The standard beers were all pretty good. Russian River hasn't made a name for itself with its porter or stout, but those beers were fine. It's the IPA swell that RR has been riding to fame and (I guess) fortune. All the IPAs in the taster tray were good. Pliny has been a favorite of mine, although I'm starting to think it's a bit over-hyped.

The basic taster tray...snarky comments included

The thing is, I should have ordered some of the specialty beers they were featuring. The list was tantalizing. Had things been a little less frenetic around the bar, I likely would have tried to order some combination of barrel-aged and standard beers. Oh well...life goes on.

Russian River makes some fantastic beers. No doubt about it. But my sense is they've had a little too much success and received a little too much hype for their own good. That might help explain the snotty, snarky comments and slow service.

As far as I'm concerned, if I'm looking for condescending attitudes and snarky commentary, I'll go wine tasting. If you're planning a trip to Russian River Brewing, my advice is to visit when the place isn't teeming with yuppies. Good luck with that.

The Digital Stocking Stuffer

2011-12-14T22:25:00.000-08:00

This blog has only been around for about six months. I should have been writing it a long time ago, but somehow never did. The blog was born in connection with what I then assumed to be a larger project: a book focused on Portland's craft beer culture.

The concept behind the book was to provide a reference for casual beer fans. My rationale was simple: A lot of people who go out beer tasting in Portland, whether they come from far away or live in the city, need a guide that provides more than just a list of breweries and where they are. I ran into lots of people who needed something like this while I was working on the book.

For sale on Amazon, iBooks and other sites

My little book is not War and Peace. It would come in at somewhere around 100 pages in print. It features a brief history of the Oregon beer industry and how craft brewing started here. It then explores most of the brewpubs and pubs in the city, broken down by quadrant. Maps and photos are included. There are no formal beer reviews, beyond a general mention of what the destinations typically have on tap.

Beervana Rising can be purchased through the various online vendors, including Amazon and Apple iBooks. The price is right: $4.99. The eBook concept fits in with the idea that people who buy the book can take it with them on their phone, eReader, laptop or tablet computer while pub hopping. Pretty cool!

They say ePublishing is the wave of the present and future. I suspect it is. But I also recognize the importance of getting a get a print version of Beervana Rising out there. That may coincide with a second edition or I may get it done sooner. We'll see.

For now, the digital version is out there. It's a great value. If you have an iPad or iPhone, I recommend making the most of your reading experience by buying the book through iBooks. You can certainly read it using the Kindle app, but the experience is richer from the iBooks app. The price is the same.

Cheers

Nothing Common About The Commons

2011-12-11T23:51:00.000-08:00

We keep seeing new breweries pop up around Portland. I sometimes wonder how all these places are going to fare, but you can't dwell on it. It seems the common dream of most brewers is to at some point open a brewery or pub. And so it is.

The Commons Brewery is conveniently located in what beer geeks refer to as the Beermuda Triangle. The Triangle comprises much of Southeast Portland, and includes Hair of the Dog, Cascade Brewing Barrel House, The Green Dragon, Lucky Labrador, Hopworks, Coalition and several others. If you're keeping track at home, you can safely add The Commons to that list.

Double taster tray treat (artistic element added)

This place is the brainchild of Mike Wright, who initially launched the brewery in the comfort of his Southeast Portland garage. Soon thereafter, he decided to shoot the moon and expand his nano brewing setup to a 7 bbl operation in a space large enough to brew and conduct barrel fermentation.

The new facility has been operational for a few months, and only recently opened its doors for tastings. A tasting room and brewery is what you'll find here. Wright says he has no designs on turning this location into a brewpub. He hopes to see his beers distributed in draft and bottled form. Some Commons beers have already been poured at pubs around town. The bottling effort will take some time.

Mike Wright handles the colorful tasters with ease

In contrast to most breweries and pubs, the Commons does not feature what I would describe as typical Portland beer fare. There's no IPA on the beer menu. No imperial IPA, either. They also don't offer a stout or a porter. What they produce is a line of Belgian-influenced beers that are designed to, as they put it, "enhance social interaction."

The board shows two standard, year-round beers, along with a couple of seasonal offerings. Then there's the Beetje (pronounced bee-cha) Series. Beetje is a Flemish word, meaning little or little bit. The term refers to small batch beers that are produced at the Commons using predominantly organic ingredients. Four Beetje beers graced the board when I stopped by.

The beer board with plywood motif

Tasting Spree
I opted for the double-fisted tasting experience: Eight wildly colorful beers in exquisite glass ware...and every one of them pretty good. I had several favorites, although opinions will certainly differ.

Urban Farmhouse Ale (5.3% | 27 IBU) This is the lightest of the beers on the board, brilliant gold in color. I am not a huge fan of this style, which is often over-carbonated and too yeasty/fruity for my taste. But this is a great beer. I would love to have one of these in the heat of the summer, though it tasted pretty good on a freezin' Friday evening. Light and refreshing with a subtle floral nose. When bottling eventually gets underway, this will be evidently the first beer to go that route.

Little Brother (8.7% | 21 IBU) One of two seasonal offerings, Little Brother is a strong Belgian ale aged in bourbon barrels. The barrel aging adds some nice character to this beer...not over-the-top like you find with some bourbon barrel-aged beers. Little Brother is reminiscent of a light barley wine, with lots of chocolate and caramel notes. This is the biggest beer made here, although not that big compared to some of the monsters you find around town.

Barrel treatment in progress

Barrel 1 (6.8% | 21 IBU) This is a tart pale ale aged in pinot barrels. I'm a big fan of the sour beers available at the nearby Cascade Barrel House. Those beers only lose me when they get too sour. Barrel 1 is conservatively sour. It's a lovely beer, pleasantly tart and full of flavor. I look forward to seeing this beer available in a bottle.

Some notes
If you're heading over to check out The Commons, please note that tasting days and hours are limited. They are currently open Friday and Saturday evenings. That may change as things ramp up, so check their website, Facebook page or give them a call to verify.

Unlike some of the smaller tasting spots, The Commons DOES take credit and debit cards...in case you're strapped for cash and need a great beer. Indeed, the checkout system is pretty cool.

It probably goes with saying, but these beers are going to respond well to a bit of secondary fermentation in a bottle. It's a style thing. When the bottling part of the operation gets going and Commons beers are available that way, they will be prized purchases. In my opinion.

Finally, there is very limited bar space here, along with a few barrels. You will very likely find yourself walking around exploring the brewery while sipping the beer. No worries. Mike was mingling with the tasters while I was there and he's happy to share what's happening with the beers.

Beer in Wine Country: Bear Republic

2011-12-08T13:09:00.000-08:00

As I may have alluded to earlier, I spent the day after Thanksgiving touring California wine country. Not for the wine, though. Part of the plan in spending T-Day down there was to soak up some of the local suds.

Vineyards everywhere. Good beer must be close

My top targets were Bear Republic, Russian River and Lagunitas. This was determined to some extent by the map. From where we were staying in Winters (not far from Davis), the map seemed to suggest my primary targets were not all that far apart. The trip in from Winters took longer than I thought it would.

Bear Republic Brewing, the northern-most of the target breweries in Healdsburg, wound up being the first stop on account of when they opened. Lagunitas was the more logical first stop, but they wouldn't be open when we got to Petaluma, according to their website. It turned out they opened earlier than advertised that day. Silly me for believing what I saw on the web.

Lovely fall colors on display at Healdsburg's city park

Healdsburg is a very cool place. Lots of shops up and down the main street area. We arrived 15 minutes or so before Bear Republic opened. I loitered in front of the pub for a few minutes and took some pictures, then stalked across the street to a park where leaves were falling in the face of Christmas decorations.

The Bear Republic pub is a nice space, with high ceilings, a long bar and plenty of table seating. They have a patio area that undoubtedly fills up nicely in the warmer weather. It was enclosed with the kind of clear vinyl you see around Portland during the cooler months...which is to say most of the year.

The front of the Bear

By the way, they appear to have a substantial production facility just north of the pub. There's no way they could support the demands of the pub and their distribution with the brewery in the pub building. There's a brew kettle and mash tun near the bar. They are mostly for show, I'd say, though it looks like they are being used, probably for small batches.

We sat down at a table and ordered a taster tray that included pretty much everything they had available...the standard house ales and the seasonals. It was lunchtime and food was in order. The menu choices are typical of what you find in most pubs, though there are some higher end items.

Formal labels keep confusion to a minimum

Most of the standard Bear Republic beers are well known to me. Red Rocket and Hop Rod Rye are old favs and I've brewed clones of each more than once. XP Pale Ale is a nice light ale, prefect for warm weather. Racer 5 is a serviceable IPA, although it has become somewhat pedestrian due to the hops arms race we've seen over the last few years.

All of the beers from the standard list were excellent. Peter Brown, a brown ale I was not familiar with, was quite nice. I'm not a stout fan, but Big Bear Black was excellent. The rest were true to form. In short, the house beers, which also enjoy pretty wide distribution, seem to be pretty refined. No surprise there. They've had plenty of time to tweak and refine these recipes through the years.

The Bear's old-style bar was bustling

The seasonal beers were disappointing by comparison. I liked Tartare, a low alcohol, vaguely sour beer based on the Berliner Weisse style. Cher Ami, a fruity, spicy Belgian-style ale wasn't bad. Mach 10, a double IPA (100+ IBUs and 9.2% ABV) I've had on draft in Portland, features a megaton blast of hops. Indeed, none of these beers were bad. They just seemed unfinished next to the standards. It makes sense, somehow.

The food was just okay. Soggy fish in the fish and chips. Fries that weren't especially hot when they arrived. A bland burger. I don't like to form an opinion about a pub's food based on a single visit. These guys had just opened and were getting ready for a busy lunch. I'll cut them some slack for now.

When I look at Bear Republic, it's very similar in feel to some of my favorite places in Portland. It's probably a little larger, which makes some sense. The most important point is that the standard beers are really terrific. I'll have some thoughts on that in future posts.

Next up: Russian River Brewing

The Geeking Out of Beer Festivals

2011-12-07T11:57:00.000-08:00

On the heels of last week's Holiday Ale Festival, I started thinking about what beer festivals are all about these days. My thoughts on this issue are not solely focused on the HAF, although it may be one of the best examples of the "geeking out" approach.

I'm pretty sure my line of thinking will offend some of my friends and fellow bloggers...fellow beer geeks, if you will. Might as well jump right in with an unflattering photo.

First, the Holiday Ale Festival. A rudimentary look at the beer list reveals that very few of these beers are available to the general public. Not in a bottle, seldom in a pub. Why? Because many of these are limited release beers, some made specifically for this festival. Rare is what they want here.

The HAF has been going down this road for years. Preston Weesner has actively encouraged (pushed may be a better word) breweries to create special beers for this festival. Go back 10 years and you would certainly find more mainstream winter beers in the mix. You know. Beers you could actually buy somewhere.

Of course, we beer geeks love the idea of going to a festival and tasting something no one can get anywhere else. Even if it's just a tweaked version of something we can get in a bottle or on draft. We like the experience of seeing what brewers can do when they have a blank canvas. We actually encourage brewers to extend themselves in sometimes crazy directions. We are geeks, after all.

Back in the day, festivals tended to focus on "gateway" beers. Gateway beers are beers that can introduce non-geeks to a craft line or style. The definition of a gateway beer has certainly changed over the course of the last 10-15 years. But the festival culture, and I'm not just talking about the HAF, seems increasingly to be moving away from the gateway concept.

So where does this leave the casual beer fan? Does the casual beer fan come to a beer festival to experience rare and eclectic beers? Have the pallets of casual beer fans in Oregon advanced to the point where they like the the idea of attending festivals where mostly unworldly beers are served?

The question is, are we geeking out our beer festivals? If we are, is it a good thing? Comments welcome.

Under the Clear Tents: HAF 2011

2011-12-02T13:45:00.000-08:00

After a bit of travail, caused by a power outage that disabled MAX and forced me to ride a bus in the general direction of downtown, I enjoyed several hours at the Holiday Ale Festival Thursday afternoon and evening. Beer fests are always a good time. Why would this one be any different? Hint: It's not.

The Clear Tents
Let me first discuss the venue. Everyone knows Pioneer Courthouse Square is miniature compared to Waterfront Park, which plays host to the gigantic Oregon Brewers Festival. There isn't a lot of space here and organizers have to efficiently use every square inch. They do a good job.

The clear tents lend a spectacular ambiance

Clear vinyl tents are a terrific innovation for his festival. In the old days, it felt a bit claustrophobic under the tents. You couldn't see in or out. Now, we enjoy lots of ambient light (daylight hours) and you can admire the surrounding cityscape, not to mention the nicely lit holiday tree nearby.

The Cost
In my preview post, I discussed the cost of attendance. You pay $25 at the door for a tasting mug and tokens. You also get a program, which is good news. There are some good reasons why the cost is what it is. Winter festivals cost more than summer festivals, for one. Read my prior post here if you want more info.

I honestly believe one of the intended outcomes of charging higher admission is reduced attendance. This has everything to do with the available space. Nothing more. I've seen this place so crowded you couldn't move an inch, to get a beer or otherwise. They'd like to thin it down a bit, I think.

Non-existent lines for most of my stay = treat

The strategy seems to be working. I arrived down there much later than I hoped, around 3 p.m., thanks to the MAX snafu. There were no lines of any kind, for beers or to get in. Even at 5:00 o'clock you could still move around and get a beer with relative ease. When I left around 6:30, it was getting busy. But this was far later than I expected. I'll be interested to see what my fellow bloggers say about the weekend crowds.

The Brews
There are a lot of good beers here. If you're reading this, you'd probably like to know which ones are the best. First, I did not taste every beer. I know because I was able to walk out of the place and onto the MAX. Second, beer opinions are all over the map. I'm already seeing differing opinions on HAF beers from people who know what they're tasting. Opinions will differ. Period.

I tasted around 15 beers and most of them were pretty good...because I chose them from a list before I arrived. Some styles I'm not fond of, and I intentionally kept them off my tasting list. Something like Chocolate Mint Stout isn't going to make my tasting list, although I see it did make Ezra's list over on the New School blog.

The volunteer elves are doing their usual great job

If you're looking for a breakdown of HAF beer types by style, you won't find it here. I tend not be all that interested in stuff like that. However, you can find that list over on the Beervana blog. Jeff produces this list for the most significant Portland beer festivals and his stuff is always top notch. Go there if you want these details, I command you.

Don't Miss
There was a lot of pre-fest buzz over the Firestone Walker Barrel-Aged Velvet Merkin. This is a fantastic beer, loaded with character yet balanced to the hilt. This is a stout and I generally don't care for stouts. But I particularly enjoyed the chocolate and vanilla notes. This beer is just excellent and should not be missed.

I visited Bear Republic Brewing just last week, tasting almost everything they had. But they didn't have Old Saint Chongo, apparently made for this festival. This is described as winter chocolate wheat ale. Sounds funky, huh? I thought it was pretty good. Nicely balanced chocolate character throughout. And mellow.

Good times? You betcha!

Lagunitas Brewing was another target last week. I loved that place and will get around to writing about it in due time. I've always liked Old Gnarly Wine...the version you can get in a 22 oz. bomber. The HAF version is just what I expected...nicely hopped and full of flavor. At 10.6% ABV, you better be careful with this one.

Elysian's Bye Bye Frost is another great one. This is a strong pale ale and the hop character is pretty intense at 80 IBUs, but balanced out via lots malts. It's dry-hopped with Amarillos, which provide an excellent aroma. Oh, another huge beer at 10.6% ABV. Watch it.

Near Hits and Misses
There were several beers that came close to the mark. Deschutes Super Jubel was really good, smoother and better-balanced than the current bottled vintage. Coalition's Lost Glove was right there, very tasty with a nice hop punch. Lompoc's Cherry Christmas is good, but I thought it had a little less punch than when I tasted it several weeks ago at the Sidebar. Perhaps my pallet was overwhelmed by all the megatron beers.

The only beer I thought was seriously bad and poured out was Mjolnir Imperial IPA from Fearless. The program describes this beer as "a constant work in progress." Maybe they're between tweaks. I found it to be void of flavor or body and completely unable to disguise 100 IBUs. I like big IPAs, but not this one. As noted above, opinions may differ on this beer.

Thanks
As always, thanks to Chris Crabb for her efforts in making this event the success it is...and for helping out all the pretend media folks like me. Big kudos to Preston Weesner, who does such a great job of bringing in rare and unique beers.

Happy Holiday Ale Festival!

Retail Beer Marketing 102

2011-11-30T23:03:00.000-08:00

I apologize for interrupting everyone's chain of thought. This is, after all, Holiday Ale Festival week. This tiny post is sandwiched between my HAF preview and the upcoming post-tasting report. I want to get this out before too much time passes.

On a junket to California for Thanksgiving, I was fortunate to spend a day visiting some prize beer destinations. More on those visitations in coming days...the Holiday Ale Festival is the current priority and focus.

Retail Beer Marketing 102: Defining the product

First off, let me say I think many retailers in Portland and Oregon do a pretty good job of marketing bottled (and canned) craft beer. This includes some of the better bottle shops (Belmont Station, Saraveza and Beermongers come to mind and there are certainly others), as well as the big box guys like Freddy Meyer, Whole Foods and New Seasons.

However, whilst I was in California I observed something I have not seen here in Portland. Actually, that's not quite true. I see it in Portland all the time...in the wine section at some grocery stores and in wine shops. The wine stewards post ratings from industry publications near great wines. What a novel idea!

This should be happening with beer here. Posting beer ratings from a respected publication like Beeradvocate is a terrific educational piece and marketing tool. Some people are stuck in the macro habit because they don't know what craft beer to buy. Help them out! Post ratings and style information.

If I were a beer steward or ran a bottle shop, I would seriously start posting beer ratings. Because putting great beer on the shelves isn't enough. There's more to be done. You obviously can't post for every beer without creating a mess in the display case. But it can be done. Enough said.

Cheers!

On Tap: Holiday Ale Festival

2011-11-29T15:32:00.000-08:00

The holiday season is here, which means it's time to prepare for what is possibly the best winter beer festival in the West, if not the country. Yep, the Holiday Ale Festival returns to Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square on Wednesday and will run through Sunday. The event will attract more than 15,000 beer fans.

For the uninitiated, the Holiday Ale Festival is a yearly fixture. The festival is in its16th year and routinely features rare, sometimes one-off beers that you can't find anywhere. Organizer Preston Weesner, who you can sometimes find toiling away at Cascade Barrel House, often works directly with brewers to fashion interesting, often barrel-aged beers that have become increasingly popular in recent years.

It all happens under the clear tents in Pioneer Courthouse Square. Don't worry about the freezing weather. The tents are heated and quite comfortable. You can drop off your coat and hat at the door for a small fee, which winds up a donation to the Children's Cancer Association.

There will be 50 or so potent winter ales at the 2011 Holiday Ale Festival. It's hard to know where to start the tasting...and with a lot of these beers coming in at 8-10 percent ABV, tasting is the suggested best practice. If you overdo it with these beers, you won't be walking out of here.

Beer tasting mission
A few of the beers I plan to taste (descriptions from HAF program):

Deschutes Brewing Super Jubel 10% ABV • 65 IBU This winter ale was made with the same recipe as Jubelale, only with an increased amount of malt to create a stronger beer with even more hops for the most festive time of the year.
Firestone Walker Brewing Bourbon Barrel Aged Velvet Merkin
8.6% ABV • 33 IBU This small batch traditional oatmeal stout is brewed with 15 percent oats, 31 percent Maris Otter malt and a portion of roasted barley and hopped with US-grown Fuggles. The combination produces a smooth and creamy mouth-feel, accompanied by a mild bitterness and a roasted caramel fi nish. This batch was aged in 100 percent Bourbon barrels
Lompoc Brewing Cherry Christmas 5.6% ABV • 26 IBU Cherry Christmas is a blend of four di erent beers: Golden Ale fermented in stainless steel with sour cherries; Golden Ale fermented in Port barrels with sour cherries; Brown Ale inoculated with a lambic blend yeast ale aged in Merlot barrels for four years; and a two-year-old Gueze.
Stone Brewing Ruination IPA DDH w/Apollo Hops & American Oak Chips
7.7% ABV • 100 IBU This is an imperial IPA, double dry-hopped with Apollo hops, known for their citrus notes, with an emphasis on orange, resin and spice. This was followed by adding American oak chips for a creamy, vanilla finish.
Laurelwood Brewing Bonaparte's Retreat Corsican Christmas Ale
8.2% ABV • 48 IBU This Corsican Christmas Ale is a strong and malty winter beer featuring roasted chestnuts. The toasted nut character comes paired with a malt sweetness resulting in a strong, fortifying beer. Chestnuts are the national nut of Corsica, second only to Napoleon Bonaparte.

There's a list of standard festival beers here.

What is costs

I've heard rumblings about the cost of attending the Holiday Ale Festival. To get in you pay $25 for a mug and 8 tokens. This seemed a bit steep, so I asked festival organizers point blank to explain. Please remember, the Oregon Brewers Festival, the granddaddy of Oregon beer festivals, for years charged $5 for a mug and $1 per tasting token. The mug price has gone up slightly in recent years, but token prices remain the same.

These are the things to consider (per HAF organizers):

Many Holiday Ale Festival beers were made specially for this event, or are vintage or rare kegs you likely won’t find on tap anywhere else in town. They are extremely expensive to make: a keg of a barrel-aged winter beer made specifically for an event costs a great deal more than a mass produced product or a lighter, summer beer. Winter beers tend to use heaping helpings of specialty malts and spices for an extra richness in texture - leading to higher alcohol content and increased costs. We have purchased at a premium all the beers that you are tasting; they are not donated or discounted.

Aside from the beer, there are a lot of extra costs associated with a winter festival that don't exist in the summer, including heating, lighting, scaffolding & tenting.

I would add that increasing the price for this festival will have virtually no impact on attendance. This venue is uniquely small and a lot of us hope the new pricing cuts down the crowds a bit. I don't see it happening. People always seem able to find money for good beer. As a result, the tents are often packed all hours. Get there early if you want the best shot at tasting your beers of choice.

I'll post some tasting notes once I visit the festival. Cheers!

Canning Expands Reach of Craft

2011-11-21T13:34:00.000-08:00

Moving away from bottles and toward cans will open up new markets for craft beer. More on exactly how that will happen momentarily. First, the explanation.

I was over at Belmont Station one day a while ago. It's always fun listening to what shoppers are talking about. One guy was telling his buddy he wouldn't buy a particular beer because it came in a can. This wasn't Rainier or Pabst, by the way. This was a craft beer...Caldera or 21st Amendment, I think.

The anti-canned beer opinion is uninformed. We aren't living in the bad old days when people thought crap beer tasted the way it did because of the can. That beer tasted like crap because that's what it was. Budweiser may have tasted slightly better in a bottle, but it was still crap.

Crap is crap, no matter how you package it

The thing is, cans are convenient. They don't break when dropped or jostled around. Cans are light.You can take canned beer hiking, fishing, skiing or golfing. Convenience is a big consideration, sometimes the most important or only consideration.

Yet bottles maintained a clear edge in the craft market. Many brewers assumed bottled product was the only thing that would sell. For years, that's the only way you could find craft beer on retail shelves.

The bottle bias is starting to breakdown. Bottles are, quite frankly, inconvenient. They break, they're heavy and they cost a lot to ship. Bottled beer takes a long time to chill. Beer in a bottle is also susceptible to light damage.

Some craft brewers are turning the corner and moving away from the bottle bias and in the direction of cans. The This change is opening up new markets previously owned by the crap macros. You can get good beer in a can while you're golfing these days. You can get it and take it hiking or fishing. You can get a good canned beer at some sporting events, venues that can't sell bottles for safety reasons.

Just a few craft beers available by the can

Beyond the convenience offered by cans, there are environmental benefits to consider, as well. Aluminum is the most recycled form of packaging worldwide. About 44 percent of an average aluminum can comes from recycled material. Obviously, cans are lighter and less costly to ship. Breakage is a non-issue. Less energy is used in the aluminum can loop than with glass.

Besides the bottle bias, another reason cans have been somewhat slow to catch on is initial cost. A small brewery can fill and distribute 22 oz. bottles fairly cheaply. Cans are another story, involving a large upfront investment.

That's changing. We've all heard about mobile bottling. Now there's mobile canning. Instead of spending several hundred thousand bucks on a canning line, small breweries can now spend between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars to get started canning, depending on the amount of beer to can and other factors.

The future of canned craft beer is now. Contrary to what some may think, it's a good thing.

Lompoc Shows Off Holiday Beers

2011-11-17T09:55:00.000-08:00

The folks over at Lompoc Brewing have been toiling away preparing for the holiday season. Lucky for beer fans. Beer geek media types got a chance to sample this years holiday collection on Tuesday night at the Sidebar on North Williams. (If you haven't been to the Sidebar, plan to get over there!)

The tasting adventure begins!

Most of the beers we tasted will be featured at release party on Nov. 29 at the Sidebar. More about the beers shortly. First, a special thanks to owner Jerry Fechter and his crew for making the preview happen. The Lompoc brew crew is Dave Fleming, Bryan Keilty, Zach Beckwith and Irena Bierzynski (read my profile piece on Irena here). A great bunch of folks.

For the unknowing, it's important to note that Lompoc is not a large brewing operation. They actually have trouble supplying their regular beers to their five locations, and expanding bottle distribution. Yet they somehow found a way to produce the 10 holiday beers we previewed on Tuesday. Sometimes you wonder.

The first beer we tasted was Blitzen, a spiced golden ale originally brewed for the Holiday Ale Festival a few years back. Blitzen is a low alcohol beer (4.6% ABV), with a light malt character, a hefty cinnamon aroma and hints of lemon and ginger on the pallet. It offers are rare combination of character and drinkability. Blitzen will be Available at Lompoc pubs only, according to Fechter.

Filling tasters kept the Lompoc folks busy

Next up was Cherry Christmas, which is a blend of four different beers. The elves at Lompoc make great standard beers, but the experimental stuff is truly grand. This beer is slightly sour and reminded me of some of the beers they're producing at Cascade Brewing Barrel House. But it's fairly light at 5.6% ABV. Cherry Christmas may undergo some additional tweaks, they said, but I found it to be excellent, as is. This is Lompoc's offering at the 2011 Holiday Ale Festival, coming up in a couple of weeks.

Brewdolph is a Belgian-style red ale brewed with Ardennes yeast. It's mildly sour and fruity, with hints of clove on the pallet. This beer does of nice job of hiding its 7.7% punch. We quickly moved on to Holiday Cheer, almost certainly the darkest of the beers tasted on the evening. It's a full-bodied vanilla porter that combines a terrific chocolate bar flavor with robust vanilla notes. The elves at Lompoc tossed vanilla beans in the conditioning tank to fashion Holiday Cheer, with great success. Cheers!

The Lompoc elves, Bryan, Irena, Dave, Jerry and Zach

Jolly Bock is another of the beers that was originally made for the Holiday Ale Festival. This is a lager, deep amber in color with a rich malt flavor and spicy hop finish. Jolly Bock doesn't have the depth of character present in most of these beers, but it's a style thing.

One of Lompoc's most popular beers is C-Note Imperial Pale Ale made with the seven "C" hops (Crystal, Cluster, Cascade, Chinoook, Centennial, Columbus and Challenger). The holiday version of that beer, C-Sons Greetings, is tweaked with more malt and hops. All seven hop varieties are used in dry-hopping this beer, with magnificent results. Bourbon Barrel Aged C-Sons Greetings, aged for seven months and cellared for another month, is slightly over the top. A heavy bourbon character is present in the nose and taste. I preferred the standard C-Sons Greetings. Both of these beers come in at 8% ABV.

Old Tavern Rat is a dark barley wine, aged for nearly a year. It's named after late Don Younger, the legendary Portland publican who was a partner in the Lompoc operation for many years. Old Tavern Rat is a nicely balanced barley wine, featuring sweet caramel and hints toffee, along with a hop punch. Younger would hate this beer, Fechter admits. At 9.4%, you can't drink a lot of it and the Old Tavern Rat liked to have his paying customers drink several beers. Cheers to Don!

Foyston signs Old Tavern Rat labels

As good as the standard version is, Bourbon Barrel Aged Old Tavern Rat is another click up. Brewed nearly two years ago (December 2009), this beer was aged in barrels for 10 months and cellared for another 13 months. I wasn't sure about this beer at first, fearing bourbon overload. I turned the corner quickly. The barrel aging and cellaring has given this beer a full, yet mellow character. This stuff won't be available for long, and it will only be sold at Lompoc locations and a few bottle shops. Get some if you can. And when you do, let it quietly age for a year or two in your beer cellar. It's great now, but I think it will be even better down the road. Trust me.

A quick note on the Foyston photo above: If you go to the Sidebar, you will see a picture of Don Younger above the fireplace. John Foyston painted that picture, which was done secretly and first shown to Younger about a year ago. Younger was reportedly blown away. Sadly, he died a few months later. Anyway, the painting is the basis for the label on Old Tavern Rat in bottles. John signed labels and bottles during Tuesday night's event.

Holiday cheers!

Winter Beer Adventures: A Tasting Trio

2011-11-14T09:51:00.000-08:00

I don't have a lot of faith in beer reviews. Palates are all over the place when it comes to good beer. One man's trash is another man's treasure. The same goes for the many female beer fans out there. Indeed, there is a rumor in beer geek circles that women have more acute tasting skills than men. It's quite possibly true.

While my interest in reviews is slim, I am very interested in comparative tastings. Here's why: Back in my college days, stereo buffs would go to the stereo store and compare the sound of speakers. You could listen to several kinds of speakers and pick the ones that suited your personal tastes. You sometimes realized speakers you thought sounded great in an apartment or room, sounded quite bad next to others of the same price.

Likewise with beer. Most of us know what we like. We assume we have finely tuned pallets that allow us to intelligently pick what we like. That's a little like taking a set of speakers home and deciding they sound great. In my experience, comparative beer tasting has sometimes made me realize beers I thought were great aren't when compared with others in the same category.

The Trio: Brrr, Wassail and Jubelale

With those thoughts in mind, I thought it might be fun to taste several Oregon winter beers. I wanted to stick with beers that are well-known and readily available in stores. I chose Widmer Brrrr, Full Sail Wassail and Deschutes Jubelale. There are certainly bigger winter beers out there, but these met my specs. (Disclaimer: Some of my blogging friends receive beer samples from breweries. Not me...not yet. I paid for these beers.)

Widmer Brrr
ABV 7.2%; 50 IBU
The color is a dark copper. Of the three beers, Brrr has the lightest color. It has a limited aroma, with vague hints of chocolate mixed with hops. The aroma becomes more evident as it warms up. Like Wassail and Jubelale, Brrr contains none of the spices people generally associate with winter beers.

I was fairly impressed with Brrr. The color forecasts a lighter body than the other two beers and that's exactly what you get. This is not a bitter beer, although a decent hop character is present. Brrr has a slightly sweet finish, which I liked. I perceived the alcohol punch early on, and it became more pronounced as the beer warmed up. Still this is a well-balanced winter beer and very drinkable.

Full Sail Wassail
ABV 7.0%; 56 IBU
Deep amber, tied with Jubelale for the darkest of the three. The aroma is milder than I expected. There are chocolate and caramel malts in there, mixed with a strong hop character. I recall earlier vintages of Wassail being particularly hoppy. The 2011 vintage seems a bit less so. The beer has a more pronounced body than the others, which disguises the alcohol nicely.

Wassail is an intense beer, with strong chocolate overtones and bold hopping. Despite the intense flavors, I found it to be quite smooth and full of flavor. These flavors will likely get better with a bit of aging. Wassail does not have the sweet finish of the Brrr. Northwest beer fans will like the hoppy character, I think.

Deschutes Jubelale
ABV 6.7%; 60 IBU
Dark amber in color, arguably the darkest of the three beers. The aroma is not particularly intense. Hints of chocolate malt and brown sugar mixed with a blast of hops. Again, there are no seasonal spices in this beer. If you detect nutmeg or cinnamon, it's in your nose. Jubelale has a medium body, about on par with Wassail.

Jubelale has been one of my favorites for many years, but the 2011 vintage seems a little off. This is a bold beer with great body and character. But it possesses an astringent, tannic quality that overwhelms the pallet. There are various reasons this could have happened, intentional or not. I'm not going to speculate. Nonetheless, it creates a serious distraction.

There is a chance the tannic element may be reduced with time. That's the case with good red wine. We have a flight of big Cabs in the wine cellar simmering, some needing many years to finish. It's possible 2011 Jubelale will be better with a bit of aging. I plan to cellar a few bottles and find out. Check back in a year or two.

Order of finish
For those keeping track at home, these are my rankings. Opinions will differ.
Wassail
Brrrr
Jubelale

Cheers!

There they go Again

2011-11-10T13:22:00.000-08:00

As I've mentioned in previous posts here, the big boys in the brewing industry are desperately searching for ways to halt imploding sales of their goo. While craft beers sales are expanding at around 10-15 percent a year, the macro-brew chunk of the pie is tanking. See my earlier post on dwindling big boy segments here.

Please understand, the large brands (Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors) still own the bulk of the beer market in the US. But they are increasingly alarmed at their inability to sell anything but light beer. That's the only segment in their portfolios that isn't in free fall.

So it is that the brainiacs at InBev, the parent of Anheuser-Busch, has come up with a new marketing ploy. They will soon launch Bud Light Platinum, with hopes that it will somehow compete with craft brands by appealing to craft beer drinkers. This is truly comical.

Coming soon to a strip club near you

Bud Light Platinum weighs in at 6% ABV and 137 calories. That's almost 2% more alcohol than Bud Light (4.2%, 110 calories) and 1% more than regular Bud (5%, 145 calories). How they are squeezing only 137 calories out of a beer that delivers 6 percent alcohol is an interesting question, a taste test best left for after BLP hits the shelves.

You want to know what they're thinking, right? Sure you do. Well, here it is: The InBev marketing gurus are thinking craft beer enthusiasts are going to be attracted by more alcohol. Yep. With 137 calories, BLP is sure to have the same fizzy character as Bud and Bud Light. Just more alcohol! They think we drink craft beers because we like the higher alcohol content. Talk about delusional.

I hate to go out on a limb, but I suspect this isn't going to work out. In-Bev is going to pour millions into the ad campaign that promotes Bud Light Platinum. The result, in the short-run, will likely be more drunks at sporting events, bars and strip clubs. Which means more stupid behavior. And more accidents and traffic stops on the drive home. You get the idea.

What will these people think of next?

Fire on the Mountain Opens Third PDX Location

2011-11-08T14:45:00.000-08:00

Fire on the Mountain's newest location has opened on NE 57th Avenue and Fremont St. This is the company's third restaurant/pub, to go with locations on E. Burnside and N. Interstate. Significantly, the Fremont location is the first Fire on the Mountain location to include a brewery.

The brewing operation was put together with assistance from Craig Nicholls, who is providing consulting services to breweries in planning. Nicholls, beer fans will recall, once worked down the street at Alameda Brewing and also operated Roots Brewing in Southeast Portland for many years.

Amenities include a large patio adjacent the west entry

Ben Nehrling, previously an award-winning brewer at McMenamin's Kennedy School, will head the brewing program. In-house beers will reportedly be available by the end of November. Management expects to offer five in-house beers and the same number of rotating guest taps. The brewery will also supply other Fire on the Mountain restaurants.

On opening day (Monday, Nov. 7), the draft beer list included offerings from Fort George, Upright, Migration, Amnesia, Rogue, Double Mountain, Oakshire, Mt. Hood and Cascade Brewing. Good stuff.

The menu at the new location will be similar to the other restaurants, although owners Jordan Busch and Sara Sawicki will add New York-style pizza by the slice at the Fremont location. Typical Fire on the Mountain fare includes salads, sandwiches and hot wings served with custom sauces.

Fire on the Mountain III is located in the old R&R Market space on the corner of Fremont and 57th. The space was once occupied by a neighborhood Safeway store dating back to the 1950s. Extensive remodeling of the space and parking lot improvements pushed the opening date of FOTM III to November. Owners had hoped to open in September.

Craft Beer Pairings with Upside

2011-11-07T12:12:00.000-08:00

One of the really cool things happening in today's beer scene is the trend toward pairing beers with food. This is the sort of thing that was once confined to the wine community. But craft beer is the new wine, with tours, events and food pairings galore.

I regularly see social media posts for brewers dinners where beers are paired with multi-course meals. Laurelwood has one coming up soon and it will feature beers from several breweries. That's a terrific idea. Instead of being exposed to the wares of a single brewery, several breweries are on display.

Beer and cheese...a great combination.

In some respects, pairings aren't new. Fred Eckhardt, the dean of American beer writers and a local icon, has been doing beer and cheese tastings for 20 years. I believe he also has events that pair beers with chocolate, although that might just be something he does in the background so he can write-off chocolate purchases.

These are great ideas. They effectively encourage beer fans to think about what kinds of beer to serve with different dishes at home. Instead of blindly serving up a hoppy IPA with everything. we're learning that other styles may be more appropriate. That's terrific.

Thinking about the power of pairings, I conjured up images of macro-pairings I'd like to see. When we think about promoting craft beer, we often think about beer-driven events. I'm talking about events large and small, from the Oregon Brewers Festival to an Oktoberfest event held in pub parking lot of a nearby pub.

A macro-pairing I'd like to see

What about more complete pairings of craft beer with non-beer events? Look at the tailgating that goes on at large sporting events. People eat and drink outside stadiums at least partially because they don't want to pay exorbitant prices for low quality stuff inside.

I recently heard about a brewery that was doing a tasting before a college game. I believe it was in Seattle prior to the Oregon/Washington game. I don't know about the licensing and liquor control issues related to doing something like this, but it seems like a great way to expose the masses to craft beer.

Here's the thing: Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors spend millions every year to maintain their connection to big-time sports in this country. Their advertising is in your face when you enter any stadium. The beer choices inside these venues are, in most cases, controlled by the big guys. Care for a Bud Light? Outrageous.

How do you fight this? In my mind, craft breweries need to pair themselves with high profile sporting events. The way to do this in the short run is by having beer gardens where fans can experience quality beers prior to the games. I know a lot of places, including Moshofsky Center next to Autzen, already serve some craft beer alongside crappy macro-stuff. That's not enough.

This kind of thing is certainly happening on a small scale now. It would be great if it grew. That's not to say it would be easy. I can only imagine the red tape connected to setting up events like this. But the potential upside is huge.

Maximizing the Power of Social Media

2011-10-28T22:28:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure who reads this blog. Maybe no one outside immediate friends and family. But I suspect a few fellow bloggers, media types and brewery people click in here from time to time. My guess is there aren't a lot of casual beer fans reading this or any other blog.

Most of us who write about beer, paid or unpaid, have Google alerts that provide a constant flow of information related to craft beer...grist for the mill, as it were. It's easy to set one of these alerts up and an efficient way to get regular updates on what's happening in beer land. But I digress.

Yesterday, my Google alert delivered a link to a story confirming what I already knew or suspected about craft breweries and social media: craft breweries lean heavily on social media for promotion and advertising. There's a big reason for this, which I'll get to, but there's a general point I want to make first.

Almost all businesses are trying to figure out how to use social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Yelp, blogs like this, etc.) to build their brands and increase revenue. This is happening at a time when the power and reach of traditional media (TV, radio and print) appears to be diminishing in relation to its cost.

Of course, some businesses aren't great fits for social media promotion...likely because they have a product that has zero appeal on the open market. A company that makes smart bombs, for instance, may be a poor fit for social media. You get the idea.

Craft beer is on the flip side of the coin. It's a product that is sold to the public and, more importantly, there is a growing segment of the customer base that is quite rabid about the product. This is an ideal setup for social media because rabid customers can be used to draw in additional fans via word-of-mouth advertising. In a nutshell, this is the heart of social media advertising.

Which brings me back to craft breweries. And why they are leaning on social media. They're doing it partly because they see the value; more importantly, they're doing it because they can't afford to promote and advertise in traditional ways. Budweiser and MillerCoors spend close to $1 billion a year to promote beer that is essentially undrinkable. Craft brewers have a quality product, but shallow pockets.

Why am I bringing this up? Because many craft breweries do not do social media well. They aren't alone in doing social media poorly, admittedly. One of the mistaken assumptions with respect to the social media concept is that anyone can do it. Someone who works in a small brewery and knows something about the web and computers is likely involved in running the social media program.

What's wrong with that? The problem, contrary to prevailing opinion, is that running a successful social media program requires communications skills, knowledge of the medium and planning. Back when traditional media was king, advertising messages were filtered. There's no such thing with social media. Everyone is a prospective expert.

Some of the results: disjointed posts, spelling and grammatical errors, lousy (usually dark or blurry) photos, poor quality video, too many frivolous posts or too few posts to be relevant. In short, bad social media presence. I see it every day on Facebook and Twitter, arguably the most powerful sites.

Look, I know social media is evolving and businesses, including breweries and pubs, will adapt. One of the adjustments they need to make to maximize their social media presence is go pro. They need people who can write effectively, take decent photos and think strategically when it comes to creating a coherent, branded, social media presence.

Sure there's going to be a cost. But this work is too important to be farmed out to an employee, whether it's the owner or a dishwasher, just because that person thinks he or she is an expert. It just ain't so.

Beer Wars: Protect the Integrity of Independent Beer

2011-10-24T12:12:00.001-07:00

I'm a little late to the game here, I admit. The documentary film, Beer Wars, appeared more than two years ago. I just watched it on Netflix last week. I can't say why it took so long. Sometimes these things happen.

The point of the film is quite clear. Director Anat Baron, a former bigshot with Mike's Hard Lemonade, intends to reveal how the beer industry is structured to maintain the power of the large breweries, represented primarily by Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors (Miller and Coors in 2009), to the detriment of small breweries.

If you toss out a few ridiculously stupid and campy cartoon graphics, Baron does an admirable job. Some of the more important points:

Shows how the "three tier" beer laws (which make it illegal to brew and sell beer directly to consumers) make it difficult for craft brewers to enter the marketplace. These laws, established long ago to guard against monopolized beer markets, have been turned upside down by the large companies
Shows how the large companies use political influence to keep the laws as they are, very much to the benefit of the major brands.
Shows how the large companies have used advertising dollars (more than $800 million a year) to con consumers into thinking they are getting a well-made, tasty and refreshing product, despite the fact that macro-brews are made using inferior ingredients and automated processes. Image is everything.

Why bring this up now, two years after the fact? I mean, craft beer is continuing to gain a foothold in the marketplace, despite the stacked deck. Why should we be concerned about the message of the film?

Here's why. The continued growth of the craft industry means the big guys are increasingly trying to find ways to either squeeze or co-opt craft brands. Making distribution difficult is their first line of defense. They are also buying up small brands, closing down the breweries, firing employees and producing the beer at gigantic, automated factories. Another strategy is creating shill brands, like Green Valley Brewing of Fairfield, Calif., brewed at a huge Anheuser-Busch facility, but marketed as a small brand.

I need to digress for a moment. There's been some argument on various blogs about the meaning of craft. My opinion is the term has little meaning today. To me, craft suggests small and perhaps handmade. But great beers are being produced by breweries that are not small. Deschutes and Widmer come to mind. There are many others. What these large craft brewers share is independence and an attention to quality ingredients and processes.

Which brings me back to the call to action of Beer Wars? To me it's this: If we want to protect the integrity and longevity of true craft brands, we need to buy the products of typically small, always independent brewers whenever and wherever possible. That usually means buying locally-produced beer because most of these brands have regional distribution at best.

Secondly, it means staying away from beer produced by the major brands, even if they are decent (Blue Moon, a Coors brand, comes to mind). Why? Because the big guys use those dollars to undermine the integrity of the true craft industry. End of story.

Women in Oregon Beer Expanded: Irena Bierzynski

2011-10-17T11:37:00.000-07:00

Over the summer, a lot of us beer geek types saw For the Love of Beer, a movie highlighting some of Oregon's most awesome women in beer. Sarah Pederson (Saraveza) and Tonya Cornett (Bend Brewing) kind of dominated the film, although we heard from Lisa Morrison (author), Veronica Vega (Deschutes Brewing) and a few others along the way.

The field of beer and brewing, long dominated by men, is opening up to women. Nonetheless, women are still a vast minority in the industry. Of something like 50,000 craft beer employees in the United States, fewer than 600 currently belong to the Pink Boot Society, an organization of women in the industry. The fact that things are changing is good, however slow.

Another potential member of the Pink Boots Society is Irena Bierzynski, the latest addition to the group of brewers at Lompoc Brewing. Irena joined Lompoc after graduating from Lewis and Clark last spring and is immersed in learning the trade. She came to brewing in an roundabout way.

On the brewery floor...a great place to be.

"My interest in beer and brewing perked when I was 18 and on a vineyard tour," Irena said. "I had plans to become a chemist. Then and there I realized there was chemistry involved in wine making. That evolved to beer and brewing when I came to Portland to attend Lewis and Clark for obvious reasons."

Bierzynski (yeah, that's her real name) hails from Detroit. She spent her high school years in Shanghai. Her dad, an engineer who works for General Motors, was sent to China to help set up auto plants. The international school she attended had kids from around the world. It was a unique experience, she says.

Coming to Portland to attend Lewis and Clark, Irena became interested in the beer festival culture that has taken off in recent years. That led her to an increased interest in brewing. But not homebrewing.

"I had decided I wanted to brew professionally before I started homebrewing. I didn't have any formal brewing education, but I understood the chemistry of brewing thanks to my science background. It helps a lot."

Most of what Irena is doing at Lompoc is pretty basic. She's mastering the work of transferring and racking beer into kegs, cleaning tanks, working on the bottling line, taking gravities and keeping the Fifth Quadrant bar stocked. Her responsibilities will grow with time.

A batch of Bierz Brown in the tank.

"Irena volunteered to help on the bottling line last spring," said, Bryan Keilty, Lompoc Production Manager. "Based on that experience, we thought she would be an asset to the company and we asked her to join the group. She's smart, a hard worker and driven to succeed. She'll get more in-depth training on brewing as we move along."

Part of the brewing training involved coming up with a recipe for the recently released Bierz Brown. Irena developed the recipe with input from other brewers at Lompoc.

"Bierz Brown is my first," Irena said, "I think it's been fairly well-received. What's next? I'm not sure. I like the idea of making beers for particular times of year. The next beer could be a winter beer. I actually want to go light if I do a winter beer. Everybody makes dark beers in the winter. I wouldn't make a super light beer, just not a dark beer like everyone else."

Like all brewers, Irena has an ultimate goal that is similar to that of most brewers.

"I think most brewers ultimately want to run their own brewery or brewpub. That could happen someday. It's down the road. What I’m doing now is great and I'm enjoying it. Lompoc has a great team. If you ever need help with something, you get it.I'm learning so much."

Sometimes, you just need to kick back and have a beer.

What does the fledgling brewer do for fun? When she isn't enjoying one of the countless festivals around town, Irena is a hardcore hockey fan who loves the Red Wings and Winterhawks. She also enjoys live music in small venues.

"As a hockey fan, I'm a little nuts," she said. "I'm from Detroit. What do you expect? I also like concerts at the Aladdin and Roseland…small places, new music, electronic music. Arena shows don't excite me."

If you want to meet Irena, plan to attend a Lompoc release party at the Sidebar. They are always low key and friendly. Highly recommended.

Fresh Hop Shot in the Foot

2011-10-10T09:04:00.000-07:00

Back when I was a regular home brewer and also grew my own hops, I often used homegrown hops in my beers. I even used fresh hops a few times, typically in beers made in September or October. I don't remember the results being particularly spectacular, but it was a fun thing to do and I liked the creative concept.

While I was experimenting, so were the real brewers. I don't know which brewery produced the first fresh hop beer of note, but it seems like these beers started appearing about a decade ago. It was a trickle at first, but fresh hop beers are everywhere now.

Spendy $8 glassware

Fresh hop beers are a seasonal affair. It's not so hard to figure out why. The hops needed to make these beers are only available in the fall...and that's the way it will stay until we come up with a way to replicate hops (ala Star Trek). That makes fresh hop beers arguably special, and presents brewers with a marketing opportunity. Which they are running with.

Enter the plethora of fresh hop festivals popping up. There was one in Hood River on Oct. 1st and one in Portland this past Saturday. Those are not the only ones, I'm sure. Plus, numerous breweries are rolling out fresh hop brews with special release parties, events and fanfare. Fresh hop beers have become part of the festival scene. For better or worse.

The biggest problem with fresh hop beers: The vast majority of them aren't that great. I was beginning to form that opinion prior to visiting the Fresh Hop Festival at Oaks Park, based on prior tasting experiences around town. That opinion was confirmed at the festival, where I tasted a collection of beers I hadn't tasted before.

I'm not even going to get into the beers I tasted and thought less than stellar. They were made by breweries large and small. The common theme was a lack of depth and character. These beers had very little hop aroma or flavor. IBUs were all over the place, but most tasted obnoxiously bright...or perhaps some would say, green.

The line-up...character not included.

Look, I understand fresh hop beers are not going to taste like beers made with dried hops. The question is, can you make great beers with fresh hops? Based on recent experiences, I'm not convinced you can. I'm a fan of hoppy beers. But the fresh hop beers are mostly disappointing. Just my opinion, of course.

Festival Comments
To enter this festival, you had to buy a tasting package. They were charging $1 per ticket, with each ticket good for a 4 oz. taste. Oh, I should note that a few beers required more than one ticket. Still, that's good value, consistent with what other festivals do.

On the flip-side, you had to pay $8 for a shaker pint glass that cost them a fraction of that. Sure, I'll add the glass to my collection at home. But I didn't need to pay an exorbitant price for the privilege. It has become stylish to overcharge patrons for a tasting glass or mug as a way of making money. I wish this annoying practice would stop, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

I met Nutmeg, who was getting lots of attention

The overall setup at Oaks Park was pretty good, with plenty of room under the tent and lots of tables. It was not crowded during my mid-afternoon stint and most of the numerous tables were empty. Up front, there were lines for some beers, caused mostly by the fact that they seemed to have one person pouring 6-8 beers. It wasn't much of an issue, but that arrangement would not have worked very well with a large crowd.

Next up: the pumpkin beers

Planned Brewery Growth, Part 2

2011-10-03T22:32:00.000-07:00

Anyone who follows this blog will recall my Sept. 22nd post on planned new breweries. The premise of that post was that the bulk of craft beer brewery growth (craft is the only segment of beer that is growing) is occurring in areas that are currently and historically under-served. Here's a link back to that post, if you haven't read it.

I intended to get back to that topic sooner than this, but events intervened. The original post contained only a general accounting of where the new planned breweries are located. It's worth taking another look at the data, which reveals some interesting things.

First, take a look at map below. This is the baseline, showing areas with high and low concentrations of existing craft breweries. This map isn't the easiest to read, but my re-creation isn't any better. So this is it.

The main points are clear enough: All of the deep South is woefully under-served There is a lot of population there and not that many breweries. Then you've got the Midwest and Atlantic Coast, including New York and New Jersey. Again, lots of people and not all that many breweries, per million folks

Then you have the flip side of the coin, which is the concentration of craft breweries in the Northwest, Colorado, Wyoming, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire. Most of these states aren't very populated. Wyoming has less than 600,000 people; Vermont just over 600,000; Montana less than 1 million; Maine,1.3 million. These states look good on the baseline graph because they have a few breweries and not many people. Oregon and Colorado are off the hook because both have populations and many breweries.

Now dial in the map below, which shows where the high and low growth areas are for 2011. A few things jump out:

Texas and Florida, both in the lowest category on the first map, show dramatic growth. Texas is the second largest state by population, Florida is fourth. The high number of planned breweries is good news for deprived beer lovers in these states, although it likely won't change the states' positions much on the first map due to their huge populations.

California, the largest state in population, already has a fair number of breweries (282). The 97 planned breweries there may seem like a lot, but really isn't given the enormous population. I'm going to guess that even with 97 additional breweries, California still won't catch up with Oregon, Montana, Wyoming or Colorado in breweries per million people.

The same holds true for the relatively high growth in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Virginia and Illinois. All of these states have large populations and have been late to join the craft beer revolution. You have to believe demand will support continued growth in these areas for quite a few years.

Finally, you have Colorado, ranked 22nd in population and already possessing a fairly high concentration of breweries. They are set to add 51 more. What? That's right, 51 more. Which seems a little wacky to me. If all those breweries open, Colorado will have 181 according to the numbers. Oregon, with roughly a million fewer people than Colorado, has 112 breweries and with 16 planned. I'm not sure what to make of this. It seems crazy. Maybe it's just that Colorado is beer crazy.

Nonetheless, the areas of high growth seem well-positioned. Looking at the map, you would hope to see big growth in the South, the upper Midwest and the Northeast, particularly New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. For the most part, that's exactly what you see. The numbers for Texas and Florida are huge, obscuring to some extent the lack of progress in other southern states.

Clearly, there are some states where the revolution has not caught on. Mississippi, with 2 current breweries, has plans for 3 more; Arkansas, with 4 current breweries, has plans for 4 more; Oklahoma, with 11 current, has plans for 3 more. You can't help thinking some of these states are lagging behind due to wacky alcohol laws leftover from Prohibition and, perhaps, earlier.

Do the Monster Mash

2011-09-28T22:48:00.000-07:00

It may not pay very well, but writing about beer does have its occasional benefits. I'm talking about media-only previews that happen from time-to-time at some of the best places imaginable. You don't have to have no stinkin' badge to get in, but you do have to be invited. These outings, usually sponsored by a brewery, give folks on both sides of the beer community a chance to mingle, taste and talk beer.

Tuesday's event was held at Lompoc's Sidebar, located on North Williams next door to their Fifth Quadrant pub and brewery. The drink menu featured a list of beers that will be pouring at the Monster Mash Release Party on Friday. I'm quite sure we tasted some beers that won't be available Friday, but I digress. More on the beers shortly.

Fechter (right) shares the floor the Head Brewer, Dave Fleming

The Story

The Lompoc (officially, New Old Lompoc) story is rich. The place started out as a tavern in Northwest Portland in 1992. In 1996, the then-owners teamed up with homebrewer Jerry Fechter and started making beer. Fechter subsequently took over the business in 2000, teaming up with iconic Portland beer geek Don Younger.

Searching for a partner, Fechter reasoned that he needed someone who was established and well-known in the beer community, someone who could make Lompoc more reputable. He found exactly the right person in Don Younger, who made significant contributions to the business over the years. There's a void now that Younger is gone, but Fechter is carrying on and the business seems to be on pretty solid ground.

Lompoc has expanded rapidly and now has five locations: New Old Lompoc (the original) on NW 23rd; the Hedge House on SE Division; the Oaks Bottom House on SE Bybee: and the Fifth Quadrant and nearby Sidebar on North Williams. The main production brewery next to the Sidebar has been expanded several times, but they still have a hard time keeping up with demand. If you're going to have a problem in this economy, I guess that's a good one.

Brewer dude, Bryan Kielty, shows me some barrels

The ambiance at the Sidebar is terrific, super comfortable. Lompoc's barrel aging program is instantly evident, as barrels line several walls. These aren't just for show, kids. These are the real deal, each one containing some concoction that will eventually be released. Barrel-aged beers are gaining popularity because they tend to be richer and smoother than beers aged in steel tanks. It's wise to be doing this.

The Beers

Getting to the beers, the starter was Steaming California. I arrived a little early and had a chance to enjoy one of these with John Foyston, the longtime beer guru at The Oregonian. I can't speak for John, but Steaming California is a nicely balanced beer. It has a light body and is just slightly bitter. They use lager yeast to make this stuff, but they ferment it at ale temperatures. That's where "steaming" comes from.

We tasted a couple of complex beers next. Flamingo is a pale ale fermented in Cabernet Franc barrels with 35 pounds of sour cherries. This beer is a couple of years old. It's fairly light and slightly tart. Good stuff. Mon Cheri is a Belgian-style golden brewed in 2008. It's mildly fruity and spicy, but smooth as glass. Yummy.

Next was Bierz Brown, the first creation of Lompoc's newest brewer, Irena Bierzynski (yeah, that's her real name). The beer is a dark brown ale called Bierz Brown. Go figure. This beer has a strong chocolate flavor and a malty body. Great fall beer. What's next, Irena?

Irena lifts a glass to toast her first beer creation at Lompoc

The star of the show was Monster Mash, an imperial porter with exceptionally strong chocolate and roast flavors. They say it has a hint of red fruit flavor, and maybe it does. I carted two bottles of this stuff home and had a glass tonight. The bottled version was apparently aged in barrels, likely for a short period, which definitely adds to the character. I'm not a huge fan of this style, but this beer is excellent. My advice: get some! They'll have it on tap at the pubs for a while and it will be distributed in bombers.

We finished out the tasting flight with C-Note Imperial Pale Ale, which is Lompoc's flagship beer. This stuff is brewed with seven "C" hops (Crystal, Cluster, Cascade, Chinook, Centennial, Columbus and Challenger) and anyone who knows of such things knows that those are some of the best hops on the planet. This beer has 100 IBUs and packs a nice punch. But flavor and aroma are what makes the wheel go around with this fine beer.

Applause

Special thanks to Jerry for hosting this event and also to Chris Crabb, who organized things and made life easy for the beer geek media types. The official Monster Mash Release Party is this Friday at the Sidebar. Good times, for sure.

California Cup and a Saraveza Tasting

2011-09-26T15:34:00.000-07:00

As I've said in previous posts, the pace of beer-related happenings in Portland is crazy. We've just completed a summer in which invitations to special events flooded my inbox virtually every day. It was enough to make my head spin. Perhaps you've seen the Exorcist?

In principal, all special events represent an opportunity for beer enthusiasts of all persuasions to mingle and experience good beer. Some events are highly organized and worthwhile; others not so much. It seems to me the various breweries and pubs that hold these events get out of them what they put into them.

The taster plate gets Mark going

What's up with all this chatter? Clearly, the various beer-biz entities hope to promote their brand via special events. Which is fine.

Here's a thought: If you plan to use special events or beer releases in this way, make sure they are well-organized and don't have an event every day or every week. Otherwise, there is nothing special about what you're doing.

California Cup
I traveled over to Concordia Ale House the other night. My neighbor, Mark Hall, has been a regular supporter of the various beer brawls they hold over there and I got involved a while ago. It's always fun. The California Cup is a competition between California IPAs. These were all standard IPAs...not imperials.

They bring you a plate of 12 tasters. You have no idea what beers your are tasting. After you taste the beers, you vote for your favorite. They once had people voting for their top two or three, which must have created some tabulation issues...kinda like during a presidential election. Anyway, they now have you vote for only the beer you like the most.

These IPAs were initially a bit too cold to evaluate. But they started to open up like little bottles of fine wine as they warmed up.

It became apparent right away that one of the beers, #5, had something wrong with it. We all agreed it did not taste right. Because I have some expertise when it comes to making bad, infected beers, I concluded this was likely a bad keg. It turned out to be Bison Organic IPA. I've had this beer before from a bottle and it did not taste like this.

Little piggy #5 was not consumed

My top beers from the plate were #1 (Nectar IPA), #2 (Firestone Union Jack), #6 Green Flash West Coast IPA) and #8 (Mad River Jamaica Sunset IPA). I narrowed my choices down to a couple of finalists (#2 and #8), then selected #2. In fact, all of us at the table chose that beer. We also identified it as Firestone Union Jack. Go figure.

Here's a link to list of the competing beers on Concordia's site: California Cup I'm not sure how long those will be posted, so hop over there soon if you want to take a look.

Saraveza
One of the really cool places in Portland is Saraveza, which is a pub in North Portland. This place has a very heavy Midwestern theme, as internalized and visualized by owner Sarah Pederson.

Check out the walls. They are covered with memorabilia honoring the Green Bay Packers and Midwest macro-beer brands Schlitz, Blatz, Miller, Schmidt, Hamms, Pabst Blue Ribbon, etc. And there's more.

A piece of Americana

This place absolutely must be visited after dark. I'm serious. I showed up one sunny summer afternoon and didn't fully get what this place is all about. Stop by in the evening to fully appreciate the motif.

They were doing a special tasting of Epic beers the night I visited. Epic is a Salt Lake City brewery and they produce some pretty damn fine beers. The Epic dude was going around pouring tastes and they had a couple of Epic beers on tap.

Sarah is a trained brewer who decided to pursue the pub side of the business after stints at Hair of the Dog and Lompoc. She was featured in the recent film, The Love of Beer, along with several other important Oregon women in beer.

Cheesehead Sarah with the dude from Epic

Saraveza has a great selection of beers. They've got a nine rotating taps that routinely showcase some of the best beer around. Then you have the coolers, filled with beers from Oregon and the world. People who live up that way now have a perfect place to find excellent beer.

Talk to Sarah if you get a chance. She has a very levelheaded attitude about Saraveza's place in the beer community and where special events like the Epic tasting fit in.

"I hope we have a good reputation," she said. "Events like this [Epic] tasting are there to provide extra value for our customers. If we attract a few new people to the pub by doing something like this, that's great."

Where are the New Planned Breweries? Here's the Answer

2011-09-22T16:04:00.000-07:00

A little while ago I was talking about the growth of the craft beer industry and questioning its future health. My concern was based on the number of planned new breweries in mid-2011. The precise number was, at the time, 725. That number has since been revised to 756. That's up from 389 in 2010. Seriously shocking.

Recognizing there are currently 1,740 operating US breweries, the 756 would represent a 43 percent increase. Of course, these numbers are somewhat nebulous. Some of the planned breweries will never open; many won't open in 2011. A planned brewery is just that, until it opens for business.

Nonetheless, I think it is reasonable to be concerned that overly rapid growth could result in market saturation with respect to craft beer, or whatever you want to call quality beer these days. (There is an ongoing discussion about the meaning of "craft" on the Beervana blog. Join in if you dare.)

It occurred to me that the impact of the new planned breweries is really only an issue if they are in areas where there are already a lot of breweries. If there are 100 new breweries coming to Oregon, that probably isn't a good thing. If they are coming to the light blue areas on the chart below, states where there are few craft breweries per million people, that's good news. These areas are woefully under-served.

I couldn't find the data I needed on the web. So I asked the Brewers Association for a little assistance. Frankly speaking, those guys are amazing. It took a week or so, but they came through. The numbers are quite clear and show almost exactly what you would like them to show if you like the idea of growth in under-served areas (the light blue dudes on the chart).

In the chart below, the whole pie represents all 756 planned new breweries. Now look at the legend, which matches a color to areas based on per-capita breweries per million people. The slices show percentages of new planned breweries in each of those areas.

Of the 756 planned breweries, 55 percent (417) are located in the two areas with the lowest per-capita number of breweries. The percentage increases to 63 percent if we look at the three most under-served areas, states with fewer than 10 breweries per million people. I think that's good news.

On the other side of the coin, only 12 percent (92, to be exact) of the new planned breweries are located in the areas with the greatest concentration of existing breweries. Since these are the places where market saturation could be a concern, the concern seems misplaced for now.

I will be pulling some additional interesting, revealing factoids from the Brewers Association data in future posts. Meanwhile, a special thanks to Andy Sparhawk at the Brewers Association, who mined this data.

Laurelfest Overcomes Weather Snub

2011-09-19T11:02:00.000-07:00

Young fans enjoyed the band

The fresh hop beer season is on and many breweries held festivals this past weekend. Too bad the weather didn't cooperate. Temperatures in the 60s with rain and wind don't generally attract the masses this time of year. In December, sure.

Over at Laurelwood, they celebrated fresh hop season and 10 years in business with Laurelfest 2011. That's right, they opened at the old Hollywood location 10 years ago. Laurelfest was happening at the Sandy headquarters and at the new Battleground location Saturday afternoon and evening.

Laurelfest featured live music, special grilled foods and they were pouring beers in the outdoor area. When I arrived, there was a band playing and a decent number of bundled-up folks hanging out under a tent behind the pub. True to Laurelwood's demographics, there were several families under the tent. Those are future patrons, for sure.

They were pouring two beers outside: Gearhead IPA and a special Laurelfest beer.

Gearhead is a recent release and will soon replace Workhorse for a short while. Gearhead, which I'd already tasted, is a good standard IPA. It doesn't have the floral character of IBUs or Workhorse, but it's a good beer. When it comes back on, Workhorse will likely be re-positioned as an imperial IPA, giving Laurelwood two IPAs to choose from.

Fresh hopped Laurelfest Lager

I was surprised to discover the Laurelfest beer was a lager. Of course, you can add fresh hops to any beer and get good results. Over at Lompoc, they were recently pouring a fresh hop red made in 2007. You can't tell me fresh hop beers don't age well. Anyway, Laurelfest Lager didn't have quite the hop aroma I was hoping for, but it had a nice character. I'd like to see more of it.

Despite weather that put a damper on things, attendance at Laurelfest was decent. Still, let's hope the weather in coming weeks cooperates as the fall fests keep on rolling.

Fifteenth Ave Hophouse Looking Good

2011-09-15T12:46:00.000-07:00

Spacious outdoor seating adds to the experience

We've seen a lot of new breweries and pubs opening their doors in recent times. I particularly enjoy seeing the new pubs and tap houses that bring in quality beers from around the region and beyond. These places don't brew so their only loyalty is to great beer.

The Fifteenth Avenue Hophouse (cross street is NE Brazee) opened a few weeks ago and is just now gaining momentum. This place is connected to the Hawthorne Hophouse (41st and SE Hawthorne). I visited the Hawthorne location over the summer and was impressed by the beer selection and vibe.

The Fifteenth Avenue location is follows the same line of thought. They have more taps here, 33 in all. Most of these taps pour beer, but a few pour cider and wine. There are no bottles of any kind here, which swerves away from the recent trend of pubs doubling as bottle shops.

Like its brethren on Hawthorne, Fifteenth Avenue has a pleasant ambiance. There is a spacious, comfy outdoor seating area. The interior is quasi-plush, in keeping with the general theme of the surrounding Irvington neighborhood. They had a gent playing acoustic guitar and singing when I visited, adding to the vibe.

Expect great beers here. They were pouring beers from Ninkasi, Nectar, Oakshire, Boneyard and Natian, among others. I tried Red Nectar from Nectar brewing, on the barkeep's advice. Wow. This is a perfectly matched mix of malt and hop flavor, aroma and bitterness. I wasn't surprised to learn Firestone Walker makes this beer or that it won a Gold Medal at the 2010 Great American Beer Festival in the American Amber category. Great stuff.

They are still in the process of getting their menu completely up-to-speed. Fifteenth Avenue apparently has a larger kitchen than the Hawthorne location and they expect to serve some higher end fare to go with the standard pub menu we all know and love.

They had some issues getting this place open due to opposition in the neighborhood. But it isn't a strip club and it isn't a tavern, either. The low key ambiance goes perfectly with the surrounding area. I suspect the Fifteenth Avenue Hophouse will do well.

Here's to the Losers

2011-09-10T22:43:00.000-07:00

Reading the weekend Google craft beer alerts is sometimes a treat. You never know when something interesting or surprising is going to pop you straight between the eyes. Such was the case today.

If you spend any amount of time looking at or thinking about beer, you probably know craft beer market share is up and macro-brew market share is in decline. What you may not know is that some of America's most popular traditional beers are in virtual free fall. Of the 30 most popular brands, 8 saw their sales decline 30 percent or more between 2006 and 2010. That is staggering.

Read the list and weep:

#8 Budweiser -30 percent
The self-styled King of Beers...the beer with the red, white and blue labeling. Between 2006 and 2010, Bud sales dropped 30 percent. When you consider that Bud sold 18 million barrels of beer in 2010, the 30 percent represents something like 7 million barrels over five years. That's massive.

#7 Milwaukee's Best Light -34 percent
Never a very big selling beer, Milwaukee's Best Light has been squeezed out by the larger brand light beers like Bud Light and Miller Lite. Sales in 2010: 1.3 million barrels.

#6 Miller Genuine Draft -51 percent
Often referred to as MGD, this is Miller's unpasteurized, cold-filtered beer. It was introduced in 1985 and peaked at 7 million barrels sold in 1992. Sales last year: 1.8 million barrels. Astounding.

#5 Old Milwaukee -52 percent
Once a flagship of Pabst Brewing Company, Old Milwaukee has been squeezed out of the best store shelves by the power of Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors, and possibly also by growing craft inventories in some areas.

#4 Milwaukee's Best -53 percent

Once sold 7 millions barrels in a year. That was in 1990. Now down to 925,000. Yikes!

#3 Bud Select -60 percent

Anheuser-Busch's big product in the low calorie beer segment with 99 calories/can. Bud Select was introduced in 2005 and has lost sales ever since.

#2 Michelob Light -64 percent

Released in 1978 to compete with the success of Miller Lite, Michelob Light never made the grade. Sales peaked in 1994 at 2 million barrels. Now down to 525,000.

#1 Michelob -72 percent

Launched as a premium alternative to imports, Michelob never did all that well. Today it is being eaten alive by the craft segment and imports. Sales for 2010: 175,000 barrels.

What does it all mean? I'm sure there are many interpretations. I see two main threads here:

For probably a variety of reasons, light beer is taking over the macro segment. You don't see Bud Light, Miller Lite or Coors Light on this list. Those beers may not be in high growth mode, but they aren't big losers like the traditional, mainstream beers. Demographics are undoubtedly driving some of this, with aging baby boomers, as well as young party animals, looking for lighter alternatives.

The rapidly expanding craft segment (14 percent for the first half of 2011) is hitting macro market share from the high side, essentially wiping out the top and middle. People who want beer that tastes good aren't reaching for a Budweiser, Michelob or Killian's Red these days. They know better. Instead, they increasingly reach for a craft beer produced somewhere nearby.

Where will this lead? I'd say the big guys will continue to chase the light beer segment. There's a lot of money on the table. At the same time, they will be looking to expand their craft portfolios. Anheuser-Busch has a good thing going via its ownership share in the Craft Brewers Alliance (Widmer, Redhook and Kona) and ownership of Goose Island Brewing. Coors owns the Blue Moon brand. It seems likely this trend will gain momentum as the macro industry sees its market share slide.

Laurelwood Adds to IPA line

2011-09-06T23:48:00.000-07:00

I was surprised to find out a little while back that Laurelwood would soon be unable to keep its very popular Workhorse IPA flowing. The reason, I was told, is that they do not have enough hops to brew the beer until the new harvest comes in.

Workhorse, for the unaware, leans heavily on five hop varieties: Simcoe, Amarillo, Cascade, Nugget and Columbus. It's a borderline imperial IPA at 7.5 ABV, with a terrific balance of aroma, flavor and bitterness.

Logo for the new IPA

To fill the coming void, Laurelwood has launched a new IPA called Gearhead. (There are also messing around with an A-Z program, which I won't cover here.) Gearhead will evidently join the brewery's list of staple beers. It's on tap in the brewpubs and will soon be available by the bottle in area stores and bottle shops.

Gearhead is a decent beer, but it definitely lacks the floral and citrus essence of Workhorse. Although it is by no means a session beer, the ABV is lower at 6.5 percent. This is more along the lines of a standard IPA.

Laurelwood's owner, Mike De Kalb, told me via email that they intend to bring Workhorse back as soon as the appropriate hops are available. He also said he isn't quite sure how they will categorize it. Because Workhorse is "on the cusp" (DeKalb's words) of being an imperial IPA, there's a chance that's how they will position it in their line.

I wonder. Could a hops shortage really cause something so smart to happen? In my mind, positioning Workhorse as an imperial IPA is a no brainer. Laurelwood has a great stable of beers, of which Workhorse is one. But Workhorse is a wee bit heavy to be the only IPA on their board.

Adding Gearhead to the mix is a wise move because it will allow them to very soon market a near-light IPA (Gearhead) and a big IPA (Workhorse). Many brewpubs have more than one IPA...it makes sense in this market to have more than one.

Laurelwood has made a lot of smart business moves over the years. The apparent plan to re-position Workhorse is just one more.

Lemons Drops are Forever

2011-08-31T22:11:00.000-07:00

They tap a new barrel at Cascade Brewing Barrel House in Southeast Portland every Tuesday evening. People interested in great beer ought to put a reminder on their calendar. The blended, barrel aged beers they produce at Cascade are excellent. Sure, they're sour. Give 'em a try!

The beer they tapped this week is called Lemon Drop. It's a blend of triple and blond quad, flavored with lemon peel and honey. The blended beers were aged for many months, according to Preston Weesner, who supervises the Barrel House blending and aging program. The honey and lemon peel were added only recently, to great affect. For the unknowing, Weesner is well-known in the local beer community via his longtime involvement in the Holiday Ale Festival, Oregon Brewers Festival and other events.

Getting back to the beer, Lemon Drop packs a punch at 9.25 percent ABV. Like most if not all of the sour beers at Cascade, it is served in a snifter. The beer has a surprisingly subtle nose, with hints of honey and lemon. The flavor is mildly tart and the triple/quad blend seems to provide a perfect background for the lemon and honey. The lingering lemon finish is just right.

Lemon Drop is a terrific warm weather beer that must be tried, even given the alcohol content. Tonight, I found myself searching my beer cellar for something similar and it isn't there. The closest thing I have is some Hair of the Dog Doggie Claws, but that's not quite the same.

I intend to stop in for another snifter of Lemon Drop before it's gone. Weesner told me this is a one-off and when it's gone it's gone. Don't miss it!

When Small was King

2011-08-28T21:58:00.000-07:00

One of the things that's happened to craft beer in its zeal to be the polar opposite of macro lagers is it has gotten big. Check the beer list at your favorite watering hole. You'll likely discover that ABV levels are regularly north of 5 percent, often a lot higher. Is all that alcohol really necessary?

Serving up the little guys

Yesterday's Mighty Mites Session Beer Festival was designed to answer that question. The event, nudged into reality by esteemed Portland beer writer and blogger, Jeff Alworth, was held at Coalition Brewing as part of PDX Beer Week.

There were 18 beers on tap. The program listed 17 breweries, but one of those was pouring two beers. More importantly, these were small beers, most coming in at less than 5 percent ABV. In fact, at least eight beers came in at less than 4 percent.

Of course, reduced ABV means nothing at all if the beer has the taste and character of a Bud Light. Anyone who looked at the list of participating breweries prior to arriving at Coalition probably had reason to believe the beers weren't going to suck. The list included: Hair of the Dog, Breakside, Cascade, Coalition, Oakshire, Ninkasi and Burnside, among others.

Before I move on to the beers, I want to talk about the session concept for just a second. The term apparently refers to a time when factory workers in England were allowed to drink during licensed sessions that lasted several hours. The beers had to be low in alcohol because the workers often returned to factor floors after consuming numerous pints. Session beers, then, can be consumed in significant quantity without causing incoherence.

A good time was had by all!

I didn't taste every beer, but I tasted more than half of them. There wasn't a bad one in the bunch, although Little Sir John, a cask-conditioned bitter, was flat (as expected) and warm (not expected).

My highlight reel:

Ninkasi Helles Belles
I first met this beer, a German lager, at the Oregon Brewers Festival. As I said at the time, this beer is off-brand for Ninkasi, which is widely known for heavily hopped ales. Never mind the history. Helles Belles is well-balanced, crisp and has plenty of subtle flavor. At 5.1 ABV, Helles Belles barely passes muster as a small beer. Great stuff, anyway!

Hair of the Dog Little Dogs

Hair of the Dog has been producing top flight beers for years, most of them big ones like Fred and Adam. HOD had two beers at the Mighty Mites: Little Dog Fred and Little Dog Adam. Both are made by reusing the grains made to make their high gravity elders. I was pleasantly surprised to see HOD owner/brewer Alan Sprints pouring his beers. Alan is always happy to chat about his beers and yesterday was no exception. Both Little Dogs behaved nicely. Little Dog Fred was light and crisp, and my favorite of the two.

Alan Sprints (right) pouring his Little Dogs

Stone Brewing Levitation
I walked up to the Levitation tap without and real thought. In the glass, this beer smelled very similar to Laurelwood's Workhorse. For the unknowing, Workhorse is a fairly big IPA (7.5 percent ABV) that leans heavily on Amarillo and Simcoe hops for aroma and flavor. A quick taste. Levitation lacked the depth and punch of Workhorse, but the subtle flavors were terrific. I'd like to have a case of this stuff in the fridge for summer drinking. Great stuff.

In my estimation, this is an event whose time was right. I hope Jeff and some of the folks who helped organize the inaugural Mighty Mites will continue on next year. I think they should provide more shade next year, either in the form or umbrellas or trees (move it to a park). No one has been able to provide attendance figures, but it looked to me like the event was a success. On a perfect summer day in Portland, a celebration of small beers is just what we needed.

What is the Future of Craft Beer?

2011-08-26T22:42:00.000-07:00

One of the things people connected to the craft beer industry are reluctant to discuss is the bubble currently forming. By most accounts, the industry is going gang busters. Craft beer sales are up 14 percent for the first half of 2011. The number was 9 percent for the same period in 2010. This is happening in a flat economy at a time when overall beer sales are down slightly, something like 3 percent over the last year.

Now take a gander at the graph below. The year-to-year increase in the number of planned breweries was pretty well in-line with the slow but steady industry growth from 2008 to 2010. Not so much for 2011. As of the end of June, there were 1,740 operating breweries in the United States. So the 725 planned breweries represent a 41 percent increase in the number of breweries nationwide. Seriously? A 41 percent increase in breweries to support a 15 percent increase in sales volume? Wow.

These numbers admittedly don't tell the full story. All 725 planned breweries won't open this year. The process of opening a brewery and getting up to production speed can be arduous and time consuming. Some of the new breweries will open in 2012 or later. Of course, it's also true that there will be more breweries in planning prior to the end of 2011. So 725 isn't the final count.

Is there an elephant in the living room? Indeed there is. Are we looking at an industry that is expanding too fast for its own good? Don't forget that these new breweries are going to have to draw paying customers from somewhere. Some macro-beer drinkers will surely be converted. But not nearly enough to fill the growth hole. The apparent answer is new breweries will draw customers from existing craft brewers.

There's something that's been nagging at me for a while. It may be nothing. I keep remembering the story of Joe Kennedy and the 1929 stock market crash. Kennedy sold his holdings prior to the crash after he heard shoeshine boys and other novice business types speculating in stocks. He realized the market was saturated with risk and overvalued. He got out in the nick of time.

What does Kennedy's story have to do with craft beer? Maybe nothing. A few years ago, it was hard to find good craft beer at the grocery store. You could search specialty shops to find good beer or you could go to a brewery or pub. Not so today. Walk into almost any Fred Meyer or Safeway and odds are you'll find a decent selection of craft beers from top breweries. That's a great thing. But lately I notice convenience stores have jumped on the bandwagon. The above photo was shot at a convenience store in downtown Portland.

That fact that convenience stores are selling craft beer mostly means they are catering to the demands of their customers. However, thinking about the nearly two-fold increase in the number of operating breweries in the near future makes me wonder where those breweries are going to market their product. Is the market saturated? Will increased capacity overtake the size of the current craft market? Is the explosion in the number of breweries sustainable over the next few years. I suspect the answers to these questions will be apparent soon enough.

Next up
I'll take a look at where the bulk of the new breweries are opening. Parts of the country have been largely missed by the craft beer revolution. If a lot of the new breweries are opening in neglected areas, market saturation may not be an issue.

Lost Weekend at BBC11

2011-08-21T21:58:00.000-07:00

First off, the title is a little misleading. The just-completed Beer Bloggers Conference in Portland was definitely worthwhile and not a lost weekend. Well, a few people (no names) may have overindulged. What are you gonna do when you're in Beervana? So many beers to taste, so little time.

Kickoff
There was much to like about the Conference. For instance, one of the first things I saw when I arrived on Friday was a line of people who were, yeah-huh, tasting beers. What better way to kick off a beer conference than by getting people lubed up before they even walk into the room? Thanks to Widmer, Sierra Nevada and Pyramid for providing some nice brews.

Icebreakers

The opening segment by Julie Herz took us through some great information on the state of an industry that is growing at, frankly speaking, an alarming rate. The stats essentially suggest that craft beer is bursting at the seams all over the country. Portland may have the most breweries in the world and the most vibrant beer culture (apologies to Asheville and brewgasm), but the concept of craft beer is taking hold everywhere. It's quite a time to be writing about (and drinking) craft beer.

John and Fred Show
Possibly the highlight of the weekend was the Friday Keynote of Fred Eckhardt and John Foyston. If you don't know, Eckhardt is a onetime Marine and the dean of American beer writers. He has written several books and numerous articles on beer and has been an influential force on the Portland craft beer scene from day 1. Foyston has been writing about beer for The Oregonian since, well, forever.

Foyston served up the questions and Eckhardt provided the answers. It was like Ed McMahon and Johnny Carson, with a bit of audience participation. A couple of examples:

The John and Fred Show

Fred: “People ask me, Fred, what’s your favorite beer? And you know what I say? The beer in my hand.”
Audience member: “What’s your second favorite beer?”
Fred: “I think that’d be the next beer in my glass. Especially if it’s free beer.”

John: Do you have a blog?
Eckhardt: I probably should write a blog. But I'm just too lazy.

It just doesn't get much better. Two local legends on the stage clowning around while providing great insights into the state of craft beer today for writers from all over. Thanks to both of these great guys.

Brooklyn Brewing? Seriously?
The team of Erica Shea and Steven Valand gave an interesting presentation on what they are doing with their brewing supply business in New York. Yep, you heard that right. Even in New York, interest in craft beer and brewing is growing. I recently read that they are starting to grow hops again in rural New York. This was once a very productive hop growing region and they apparently hope it will be again.What's driving it? Demand for hops among craft brewers and homebrewers in the Northeast. Go figure.

Beer Making in New York

These guys talked about all kinds of things they are doing to increase interest in beer and homebrewing. They also mentioned using some strange ingredients (lobster?) to brew and, not so surprisingly, some odd results. But they have great passion for what they are doing and what they are doing is spreading the gospel of craft beer to an urban audience that hasn't always been in the loop. Big kudos!

Hops in the Field
Our Friday afternoon excursion took us to the Goschie farm near Silverton for a tour of their hop production facility, followed by dinner. This would normally be a fairly short trip, but all bets are off when you hit rush hour traffic out of Portland. On a Friday. The trip took well over two hours. Fortunately, folks from the Oregon Brewers Guild (Ninkasi, Widmer, Oakshire, etc.) were aboard the buses handing out tasty beers. Their coolers were well-stocked, thankfully.

Serious hop farming

I grew hops at home as part of my homebrewing phase a few years ago. Seeing hops on a production scale is a different story. These things are growing on trellises that must be 30 feet tall. They are in harvest mode for some of the varietals grown at Goschie. We got to see the entire process. It's fascinating to see hop vines brought in on one end, cones separated, piled up to dry (takes 8-12 hours, apparently) and then eventually baled. Pretty amazing to finally see how it's actually done.

Hop drying in motion

Oh, kudos to the Oregon Brewers Guild and Gayle Goschie for hosting the trip. Dinner was great, as were the beers they had available there for all of us to quaff. I think a good time was had by all...maybe too good. I know the brewdad (Mike Besser) and a few others were passed out on the ride back to Portland. Long day, but a fun one.

For the Love of Beer
We listened to several informative presentations on Saturday, but I want to move on to what was billed as the marque event of the weekend, For the Love of Beer. The movie was served up at the Bagdad, following a terrific dinner at Bridgeport (thanks again to the Oregon Brewers Guild and to the folks at Bridgeport).

I wrote about the movie in an earlier post, so I'll summarize here. Although brewing was for many centuries handled by women in the home, it became the domain of men with the coming of the industrial revolution. Today, women are slowly working their way into beer-related careers. The movie focused on the stories of several women, particularly Sarah Pederson (Saraveza) and Tonya Cornett of Bend Brewing.

It's a good movie. Hearing the stories of these women and seeing the passion they have for what they do was inspirational. They have made significant contributions to the craft beer movement in Oregon. Here's where I was disappointed: Although a number of women are featured in cameo roles, really only two of them get attention in the film. I wanted to hear more from Lisa Morrison, more from Chris Crabb, more from the others. Again, it's a totally worthwhile film. It just felt incomplete to me.

It's a Wrap
Sunday came and went like a flash. For better or worse, the good folks at Oakshire Brewing in Eugene provided some morning wake-up nectar in the form of Line Dry Rye. Thanks for that! We enjoyed some great presentations from eight bloggers and I'll have more to say about some of them in due time. It was fun meeting so many people who are enthusiastic about beer. A lot of ideas were shared around. I hope to do it again.

Beer Geeks and Pink Boots

2011-08-13T16:49:00.000-07:00

The rapid expansion of the craft beer industry --15 percent growth in national sales for the first half of 2011 --has been amazing to watch. There are new breweries popping up all over the country now, some in places where many thought it would ever happen.

As the times and fortunes of the industry have changed, so has the way it markets itself collectively and individually. The business was once driven by predominantly by handshakes, face-to-face conversations and traditional marketing. Today, it is increasingly driven by electronic media, particularly web blogs and social media chatter produced by forces outside the industry's control.

Perhaps because it attracts a younger crowd, the craft beer industry was quick to grasp the importance of new media. If you want to know what's happening around your local beer scene, the places to go are Facebook, Twitter or blogs. Here in Portland, and you suspect in many other places, the beer buzz is high pitched. There's almost always something worthy going on and the community is wired to share the information.

This coming weekend, some of geeks who write the blogs and social media posts will gather in Portland for the 2011 Beer Bloggers Conference. This event is a partner to one that already occurred in London several months ago. Highly successful, it was. We'll spend time meeting people we only know from online interactions, tasting beers, rubbing elbows with industry people and generally having a pretty good time.

Part of the program on Saturday evening is a party at the Baghdad theater during which we will see the world premiere of Alison Grayson's documentary on women in the craft beer industry, The Love of Beer. The film focuses on women who are leaders in the Pacific Northwest beer community.

It probably doesn't surprise anyone to hear that women are a vast minority in the expanding craft beer industry. Of some 50,000 craft beer workers nationwide, only 598 currently belong to the Pink Boots Society. The society is an organization for women in the industry.

Although it's a story too long to be told here, brewing has not always been a male-dominated profession. Women from ancient times through the middle ages performed brewing as part of their household chores. That changed with the coming of the industrial revolution, when brewing became more of a production job. The industry has remained heavily male-dominated, but things are at least beginning to change.

I'm looking forward to a fun-filled and highly educational weekend. I'll be posting thoughts from the conference and it's events. Your comments are welcome.

Get Ready for the Small Beers

2011-08-08T21:34:00.000-07:00

Just because most of the beers we love to drink are big beers doesn't mean the smaller, less heavy stuff is bad. I'm not talking about Budweiser or Coors or Miller or PBR. Those beers are best consumed ice cold on a hot summer day after mowing your own lawn and maybe also your neighbor's. But there are good beers that have plenty of flavor and don't hit you over the head with high alcohol and taste bud overload.

The fact is, small beers can reveal more flavors than heavier ones because, as Beervana's Jeff Alworth says, they have "more molecular space to unfold and blossom." Small beers often have subtle aromas and flavors that you would never taste in an imperial IPA or medium bodied ale. Those beers contain overbearing textures and flavors that dominate what you taste.

I am the first to admit that this small beer concept seemed a little sketchy to me. When I go to the pub, I tend to drink a pint or two and I always like a beer with plenty of flavor and IBUs. What Alworth is saying is you don't have to order a big IPA to enjoy a lot of flavor. If you don't believe it, come to the Mighty Mites Beer Festival on August 27. There's no admission charge and you can use a mug or glass from a past festival. I know I'll be there.

Details
Saturday, August 27, noon - late
Coalition Brewing, SE 28th and Ankeny (in the parking lot behind the pub with the Grilled Cheese Grill)
Bring a mug or glass from a past fest (or buy one at the door), tokens $1 a pour.
Cruise over to the Beervana blog for a partial list of participating breweries.

Bring an open mind about how tasty small beers might actually be.

The Future of the IPA Style

2011-08-04T09:04:00.000-07:00

The arrival of the inaugural International #IPA Day is being greeted with a yawn in Oregon. That's probably because every day is IPA Day in the Northwest. The brewers here have taken the IPA style and run with it over the past 15 or so years. As a result, quite a few variations of IPA have appeared and most are pretty good.

IPA is arguably the most popular craft beer style in the Northwest. It's hard to find a brewpub or pub that doesn't have several IPAs on tap. They might not have a porter or a stout, but they will have one or more IPAs. On a trip to Laurelwood the other day, they were serving two new IPAs, Aftershock and Best Bet, as well as the standard Workhorse and another high alcohol imperial IPA.

So why would there be any question about the future of the style? I suspect it has something to do with an industry that's constantly trying to reinvent itself. Brewers once regarded the production of heavily hopped ales as the new frontier. They met the challenge by adding more and more hops to their IPAs. They tweaked dry hopping formulas and turned to using fresh hops. The result was a sort of hops arms race, in which brewers routinely upped the hops ante.

Once heavily hopped beers became mainstream, brewers started looking for the next frontier. They began experimenting with unusual ingredients and building out their portfolios with different styles. We're now seeing sour beers, Belgians, tweaked lagers, mint beers...the list is endless. The average beer consumer has only a faint idea this is happening. He/she still orders an IPA and enjoys the burst of hops. But change is afoot.

This is likely part of the evolution of an industry. I suspect we would not have seen the exponential growth of the craft beer industry if early brewers had presented patrons with the variety of styles we are now seeing. Too much variety early on would have stalled growth. What they needed was a narrowly defined style to serve as a platform. The IPA style provided that stability for many years.

There's no chance of the IPA style going away anytime soon. Brewers will continue to brew it and people will continue to buy it. But new styles are coming in behind it. When you look at those evolving styles and at the healthy state of the craft beer industry, lift a pint of IPA in recognition.

OBF Thoughts

2011-07-31T21:58:00.000-07:00

The 2011 OBF is in the books and a fine festival it was. A few comments are definitely in order.

Attendance: As mentioned earlier, I'll be interested to see the final attendance numbers. I was there for three of the four days and the crowds were larger than any I can remember in 20+ years. The weather was perfect, obviously, and the festival seems to be attracting and increasing broad audience. I also think lousy economy played a part. The OBF isn't super cheap entertainment, but it is far cheaper than a trip to Sunriver or the coast. Anyway, it may be time for Art Larrance to again consider expanding the festival. And I'm not talking about the sour beer showcase planned for OBF Tuesday next year. I'm talking about possibly Wednesday. I can honestly see the OBF being a week long someday.

Hammerheads: A few people probably know McMenamin's was the host brewery this year. That meant, among other things, that the ceremonial kegs (barrels) were McMenamin's beer. I never heard an official announcement, but I assume the beer was Hammerhead. I assume this because 1) I know Hammerhead is one of their more popular beers, and 2) there were McMenamin's shills with foam hammerheads in the parade and in the gallery during the ceremonial tapping. Okay, the foam hammerheads were arguably a cute marketing touch. But they were obnoxiously blocking almost everyone's view of the stage. Not the best planning folks.

Errant Hammerhead marketing ploy.

Honest Tastes: We all know the volunteers who work the festival are largely responsible for its success over the years. I've poured beer and worked as a supervisor many times. I know the drill. So I was not surprised when several servers failed to fill my mug to the taste line. This happened early on. I know the people pouring the beer are told to limit the size of pours. That's cool. But I'm paying $1 for 4 ounces of beer and I expect to get 4 ounces of beer. After those initial issues, I checked pours every time and servers were always happy to fill my mug to the line if they had shorted me.

Short staffed: I know it's difficult to plan volunteer staffing for the OBF. You don't want people standing around with nothing to do and you don't want too few people. It seems to me they may have erred on the side of not enough staffing this year. I say this because there was really no excuse for some of the lines I saw on Friday and Saturday afternoons. We're talking very long lines. Several times I walked up to the front and found one person pouring and one filling pitchers for multiple beers. If you like long lines, that's a great strategy. It looked like they just didn't have enough people to keep up. Another thing I saw, even when it wasn't all that busy, was sloppy organization. In one case, there was a huge line for Firestone Walker and only two people manning that tap. On the same trailer, there were people standing around with no lines. Not great.

Led Zeppelin: The quality of the music acts at the OBF is typically not great. I suspect that's because the people that play are doing it mainly for fun or exposure...they aren't getting paid or they're getting paid very little. But Stairway Denied, the Led Zeppelin tribute band that played Saturday afternoon, was terrific. They worked their way through a hoard of Zep classics and attracted a good crowd. The lead singer did a pretty good Robert Plant and the rest of the band was solid. I talked to the singer after the show, asking him where they usually play and when. He said they seldom play in public...only every six months or so. That seems like a waste of talent to me, but maybe the OBF just happens to be a perfect venue for a band like this.

Hope everyone had a great festival. The countdown is on for next year!

OBF Day 1

2011-07-29T11:04:00.000-07:00

Day 1 of the Oregon Brewers Festival was near perfect. The weather cooperated perfectly and the crowds materialized. The sheer number of people involved in the breakfast and parade forced organizers to have two ceremonial kegs (actually barrels) this year, which says a lot about where this festival is headed. Art Larrance will apparently expand the festival to Tuesday next year. More details to come.

Over in the media tent, they took us through 15 "seminal" beers chosen mostly on a subjective basis. Some of these beers were really good. Others not so much. People coming to the festival over the weekend are looking for a cheat sheet of good beers. So I'll offer a few thoughts.

If you're looking for a great starter, one that's clean and refreshing, but not too high in alcohol, try Ninkasi's Helles Belles. This beer is a lager, which is off-brand for Ninkasi, mostly known for heavily hopped ales. Helles Belles is a light beer with depth and soul. It's highly drinkable in the warmer weather that is expected to last through the festival.

Art Larrance (right) gives Fred Eckhardt his due.

Next in line is Collaborator Hopfinium, a hoppy lager. You heard that right...lager. This is basically an IPA with a cleaner, dryer finish courtesy the German lager yeast. For the unknowing, Collaborator is a collaboration between Widmer and the Oregon Brew Crew. Some Collaborator beers show up on guest taps around town. This apparently won't be the case with Hopfinium, as they only brewed enough for the OBF. Come and get it!

Boundary Bay, from Bellingham, has always been a favorite of mine. This year's OBF submission is Double Dry Hopped Glacier Pale Ale. The name comes from the Glacier hops added four different times. This beer occupies an interested space. It's likely not hoppy enough for hopheads (45 IBU), but too hoppy for novice drinkers.

Fort George's Sunrise Oatmeal Pale Ale is a pleasing and well-balanced beer with a heavy citrus component, thanks to lots of Amarillo and Centennial hops added at the end of the boil. As the OBF program suggests, you could have some of this for breakfast in place of grapefruit and cereal.

For hopheads, a must try is Firestone Walker's Double Jack. What a fantastic beer! A fairly malty character does a great job of reducing the sonic blast of 100 IBUs and 9.5 percent alcohol. Lots of fruity aromas here. This beer is so tasty you'll be tempted to come back for seconds and thirds. Best enjoyed in moderation is my advice.

Another excellent choice is Amnesia's Dopacetic IPA. Locals will recognize Dopacetic as the imperial version of the Copacetic IPA they pour at the brewery. Dopacetic has a great balance of flavor, bitterness and aroma. Amarillo hops used in dry hopping add significant character.

If you like smokey porters, don't miss Donner Party Porter from FiftyFifty Brewing of Truckee, Calif. This is a complex and silky smooth beer that uses 11 different grains, toasted oats and a shot of Molasses. Hop character is in the background here, just enough to back things up.

Possibly the most loved beer in OBF history, 21st Amendment's Hell or High Watermelon Wheat, returns. It isn't that hard to find...just look for a long line. While Watermelon Wheat isn't my favorite beer or beer style, I understand why this beer is so popular. It's light, the fruit flavors and tartness are subtle and low hop levels make it highly drinkable. Don't feel guilty for loving this beer!

Cheers to festing!

Beers and Stereo Speakers

2011-07-27T20:56:00.000-07:00

On the heels of last weekend's Concordia Cup, there's more serious tasting tomorrow at the Oregon Brewers Festival. For the first time, I'll be participating in the media tasting, held Thursday afternoon. They will be tasting 15 beers in a range of styles and there will be some commentary by Noel Blake of the Oregon Brew Crew.

The idea of tasting beers got me thinking back to my college days, when I would go to the stereo shop to listen and compare speakers. That's how I bought my first pair of speakers. But I returned to the store often to compare what I had with the competition. I was sometimes shocked to find out how bad my speakers sounded when compared side-by-side with others. While they sounded fine in my apartment or dorm room, my speakers often sounded flat or bright next to others.

It seems the same thing is true with beer. You drink a beer at home or in a pub and it tastes pretty good. Only when you taste it alongside similar beers do you really get a bead on where that beer fits in. Sometimes you find out the beer you thought was pretty good when you drank it solo ain't so great compared to others of the same style.

I'll post tasting notes tomorrow. Looking forward to another great OBF!

Cheers!

Concordia Cup 2011

2011-07-25T10:44:00.000-07:00

The ongoing competitions at Concordia Ale House are always amusing. Concordia is an interesting place. They have 20+ rotating taps and usually a pretty good list of draft beers. Then there's the bottle selection. They don't have a huge amount of cooler space, but the bottles they have are well-chosen. It must be tough being virtually next door to New Seasons, which carries a pretty good selection of bottles at what I consider to be decent prices. Oh well, Concordia has been around since 2004 and seems to be getting by.

The Imperial IPA taster tray.

The just-completed Concordia Cup 2011 competition was between 12 Oregon Imperial IPAs. They don't reveal the beers on the tray. Instead, you taste them all and vote for your favorite. The results (and beers) are revealed by email on Monday morning. Some of these beers are not readily available around town, so good luck guessing the names while you taste. Some weren't even very good. But never mind.

The winner, occupying the 12th slot in the tray, was Hopworks' Ace of Spades. Second place went to Oakshire's Perfect Storm. Third went to Bitter Bitch, from Astoria Brewing. I have to admit I didn't vote for any of them. Ace of Spades is good, but had heavy alcohol overtones. Perfect Storm was closer to the mark and got my buddy's vote. I voted for #10, which was Mega Monster from Gilgamesh Brewing. Mega Monster is slightly dark for the style, but really well balanced, in my opinion. My choice for second would have been the Oakshire. Honorable mention goes to the #3 beer, which turned out to be Boneyard's Hop Venom. This beer exhibited hints of banana and cloves along with the heavy hops. I recently had a pint of Hop Venom over at the Hawthorne Hophouse and didn't notice those flavors. Further research may be needed. Comments welcome.

The next Concordia competition is Beerknowledgy, in which you taste 10 beers and try to identify them from a list. That's happening Aug. 17-21. Always interesting.

OBF Walkabout Destinations

2011-07-20T22:01:00.000-07:00

It's strangely inevitable. People attending the Oregon Brewer’s Festival will want to do a little tasting on the side. It’s tough to fathom, given the 86 beers available at the Festival, but it’s going to happen. So I’m making a few suggestions…places within walking distance of Waterfront Park that represent some of the best beer selections Portland has to offer. No need to explain the walking part, right?

Five walkabout destinations by the numbers.

1. Hair of the Dog After operating his brewery out of a Southeast Portland warehouse for many years, brewer Alan Sprints finally stepped to the plate and opened a first rate tasting room closer to the city on Yamhill and Water Ave. Hair of the Dog should be at the top of any serious beer fan’s list when visiting Portland. It’s where you can sample some of the finest beers on the planet. Adam, Fred, Ruth and the excellent barley wine, Doggie Claws, are all available to taste in exquisite glassware. These are high alcohol beers, so don’t overdue it. Hair of the Dog beers are available for sale in bottle-conditioned form at the pub and in select stores around town. These beers, like fine wine, are generally thought to improve with age. But they also taste great directly out of the tap.
2. Cascade Brewing Barrel House One of the founding fathers of the craft beer movement and the Oregon Brewers Festival, Art Larrance, opened the Barrel House in 2010. Larrance also operates the Raccoon Lodge in Raleigh Hills, but the Barrel House is truly unique thanks to the beers being produced there. Brewmaster Ron Gansberg, who came from the wine making industry, is dedicated to being different. He and Larrance wanted to offer an alternative to what they refer to as the “hops arms race” in the Northwest. They landed on the idea of creating a line of sour beers similar, but not quite identical to, Belgian-style ales. They use fruit grown in the Northwest and oak barrels from local wineries for aging. This effort started in 2005 and their sour beers have been recognized several times at the Great American Beer Festival. They offer more than their sour beers at the Cascade Barrel House. But sample the sour beers if you go there. They are pretty unique.
3. Bailey’s Taproom The growing popularity of craft beer has resulted in growing number of pubs that feature a huge number of guest taps and wide selection of beer. Bailey’s Taproom is one of the best. It offers 20 constantly rotating taps that emphasize Oregon and Northwest beers. Bailey’s hours are limited to late afternoons and evenings and they don’t have food. But the beer list is primo and the assistance provided by the servers is excellent. Also, Bailey’s is one of the few places that regularly updates the list of available beers on their website. Their stated goal is to constantly offer one of the most eclectic selections of beer around and provide an atmosphere that is comfortable, accommodating, and encourages enthusiasm for the unfamiliar. They succeed on all counts.

4. Tugboat Brewing Across the street from Bailey’s Taproom you’ll see the Tugboat Brewing fascia. Tugboat started operations in 1992. It’s a logical destination for OBF visitors because it represents the small ball approach that once characterized brewpubs in Portland. The brewhouse is small, producing the equivalent of eight kegs per brewing session. Owner/brewer Terry Nelson apparently brews what he feels like as his schedule permits. For 20 years, Nelson has maintained the values of small scale beer production and friendly, down to earth ambiance. While some of Oregon’s craft breweries have gone to mass production and distribution, Nelson likes to think Tugboat has taken a calculated step backwards by staying small, family-owned, and respectful of the beer and his customers. You never know what you’ll find on tap here. Don’t worry about it. Have a pint of house beer and take in the ambiance. It’s worth the trip!
5. Deschutes Brewing Based in Bend, Deschutes Brewing has enjoyed amazing success since opening in 1988. It is now the fifth largest craft brewery in the United States. Deschutes didn’t open a brewpub in Portland until 2008, possibly because they wanted to find the perfect space. They found it, then spent a fortune renovating the building to their specs. What they have is striking, with high ceilings, a sizeable bar area and plenty of table seating. The brewhouse is a custom-built 20 bbl system which is prominently on display for beer fans to absorb. Most of the beers served at the Portland brewpub are produced there. That list includes a number of specialty beers you won’t find in stores or pubs. Whether you like their mainstream beers or not, you have to face the fact that Deschutes produces a consistently excellent product. Mirror Pond Ale has won a number of awards and Black Butte Porter is the best selling craft brew porter in the land. There’s nothing at all wrong with their standard beers, but look to the list of specialty beers like Imperial Hop in the Dark, Streaking the Quad, Chainsaw White IPA or Fresh Squeezed IPA for a taste treat. Great stuff.

Oregon Brewers Festival On Deck

2011-07-19T12:20:00.000-07:00

The Oregon Brewers Festival, coming up next week, is a destination event. It has become so popular that it has spawned a collection of related beer events in the city. Held the last full weekend in July each year, the OBF is the crowning moment in Oregon Craft Beer Month. The event attracts 70,000-80,000 beer fans to Waterfront Park each year, showcasing what fun it is to sample great beer while enjoying views of the Willamette River and the surrounding city. Beer lovers travel from around the world to enjoy the festival. The OBF has been instrumental in lending credibility to the notion of craft beer.

Mayor Sam Adams taps the ceremonial first keg at the 2010 OBF.

The history of the OBF is rich. In the early days of the craft beer movement in Portland, the key players discussed the possibility of holding an event to promote their beers. The initial beachhead came in 1987, when Papa Aldos Pizza held a Blues Festival at Waterfront Park. Thinking they would need beer, they approached Portland Brewing about getting involved. Art Larrance, co-founder of Portland Brewing, anticipated a small crowd and planned accordingly. The taps ran continuously, once turn on. Larrance wound up making countless trips between the festival and the brewery to refill spent kegs. In the end, 76 kegs were consumed.

As 1988 dawned, Papa Aldos decided the blues festival wasn’t quite the right demographic fit for them. But they had a two-year permit to do an event in Waterfront Park. They turned the permit over to the Blues Association, which wanted to do its festival around the Fourth of July. That left an open, permitted date in late July. Portland Brewing bought the permit from the Blues Association for $500. Larrance then got Widmer and Bridgeport involved. The McMenamins were busy with their own projects and didn’t want to help organize, but said they would bring beers. The first official OBF happened in 1988. There were 13 breweries involved and 30 beers on tap. Logistical issues were rampant. The expected crowd of 5,000 tripled to 15,000.

Lucky fans enjoy the ceremonial keg of Deschutes Jubel.

Larrance eventually bought out Bridgeport and Widmer changed their involvement. The OBF continued to grow year by year. Larrance never expected the OBF to get as big as it has, although he thought the potential of a large event focused on beer was good. The 2011 Festival will serve up 86 beers and is expected to attract 80,000 beer fans to Portland. It is the quintessential event of the summer.