Henry's Private Reserve: The Final PDX Bottling at 22

When Miller closed the old Blitz-Weinhard brewery in 1999, many of the brands that had been brewed in Portland moved to the Miller-owned plant in Olympia. That included Henry's Private Reserve, which was launched in 1976 and was arguably Oregon's first craft or near-craft beer.

Private Reserve had become legendary long before production moved out of state. As I've said before, I don't think the quality of the beer suffered when it was brewed in Olympia starting in 1999 or when it moved to Hood River in 2003. Quality did go to hell when production moved to Colorado in 2013. It's a common theme with acquired brands.

Fans of the beer here in Portland were sad to see the old brewery close. Some of them stocked up on that last bottling of Private Reserve, brewed at the end of August 1999. One of the loons who collected some of that final bottling is a dog friend of mine. It turns out the pandemic and a puppy have shifted my friends list from beer bars and breweries to dog parks. That's where I met Brian. 

When the brewery closed in 1999, Brian bought a six pack of Private Reserve. He stashed the beer in his basement, where it sat on a shelf at cellar temperature for the last 22 years and change. When he mentioned that he had the beer, I asked if he'd be willing to share a bottle. He hedged. Then, on New Year's Eve, a small bag showed up at my door. Inside, a bottle of Private Reserve bottling #140. 

I knew the bottle came from the final run of Private Reserve because that information was published at the time in The Oregonian. My research for Portland Beer turned up that tidbit. Another not-so-well known fact is that Private Reserve was not the final beer packaged in Portland. It turns out 40-ounce bottles of Mickey's Malt Liquor made up the last production run here. 

As discussed earlier, Private Reserve vintages started with #1. The initial beer was packaged in longneck bottles and shipped in wooden crates. The crates were gone quickly, replaced with cardboard. The longneck bottles stuck around for a time, but were eventually replaced with a standard bottle such as we see with #140 and #13. Also, vintage #13 included only a few cases...for the same reason that many buildings don't have 13th floors, I suppose. 

It occurs to me that Blitz-Weinhard used the batch numbers for a time and then dropped them. They were making a lot of the stuff and constantly changing the label became a pain. That's intel I gathered during the book project, but I can't find a reference to back it up. It may have been something someone told me and I didn't record. 

I don't know what constituted a batch of Private Reserve. Could there have been 140 batches brewed during the 23 years the beer was produced at the Portland brewery? Maybe, probably. And even it they weren't using batch numbers on labels for a period of time, I suppose it's possible they were tracking batches and that the final batch was, in fact, #140. If there's another explanation, I don't know what it is. Please contact me if you do.

The bottle I was given had a twist-off cap. I recall that the Private Reserve I was drinking in the eighties and nineties came in bottles with twist caps. I know the early vintages had standard crown caps because I've seen and handed some of those bottles. There are also pictures on the internet showing bottles without the threads needed for a twist-off cap. 

I suspected the twist-off cap was a bad omen in terms of what I would find inside the bottle. I used twist-off caps a few times when I was a home brewer, with dreadful results. I also had the experience of tasting old vintages of Sierra Nevada Celebration several years ago. The beer in the twist-off bottles was invariably damaged. The beer housed under standard crown caps fared better.

There was no pressure released when I removed the cap. In fact, the cap was seemingly welded to the bottle and I had to grip it with a towel to get it off. The bottle had been refrigerated for a week or so before I opened it, so it poured cold and clear. But there was no carbonation. And the color was off, significantly darker than it should have been. I instantly knew the beer was gone.

Most who have homebrewed know the flavor of malt extract syrup. My bottle of Private Reserve tasted like watered down malt extract syrup. No hops character at all, which I anticipated. Oxidation had destroyed this beer, returning it to its base form. The twist-off cap was probably the main culprit, though maybe a standard crown cap wouldn't have made a difference. I don't know.

Tasting old beer vintages can be fun. But it's seldom rewarding in my experience. Nonetheless, thanks to Brian for sharing a bottle of Private Reserve from the final production run in Portland. I'll keep the bottle in my collection. I hope to disappear memories of the beer from my palate.

I 

The Widmer Way: Boys Make Good

In an annals of Oregon brewing history, there are a few names that come instantly to mind. Henry Weinhard is automatic. He wasn't the first to brew here, but he was so significant that his legacy endured for more than a century. Arnold Blitz is another icon and a part of the Weinhard story. Then there's Kurt and Rob Widmer.

The Widmers were members of the group that launched the craft beer revolution in Oregon. They might well be the most successful of the founding brewers. It's a tough call only because the McMenamin's collection of properties is sprawling. Kurt and Rob Widmer built a beer brand that captured the imagination of mainstream craft fans in Oregon and beyond. None of the others managed that.

Jeff Alworth's new book, The Widmer Way: How Two Brothers Led Portland's Craft Beer Revolution, charts the Widmers' course from their relative youth to the conception and realization of their brewery to the partnership with Anheuser-Busch, Redhook and the formation of the Craft Brew Alliance.

I might have chosen a different title. The Widmers no more led the craft revolution here than did Bridgeport or Portland Brewing or McMenamins. Each of the founding breweries played a unique role. Widmer's key contribution was Hefeweizen, which set a standard in bars and popular restaurants, lending the craft movement an aura of status and credibility at a crucial moment.

Much of the story reported here is not new to me; I knew some of it thanks to my work on Portland Beer. But Jeff's book goes into much greater detail, which figures since Kurt and Rob are the main subjects. Their story is intriguing and instructive. Nothing came particularly easy for these guys. They meticulously built their business on hard work and remained true to that value long after they had achieved great success.

Putting together a craft brewery in the early 1980s was no easy task. The challenges were significant and are fairly well appreciated today. Jeff outlines issues the Widmer's faced as they assembled their brewery and began brewing. The makeshift system was a menagerie of pieces that weren't designed to function together. That meant brewing was arduous, requiring extensive time and labor. It meant jumping through a lot of hoops to get the job done.

Kurt and Rob were young, hardworking and dedicated to quality. Having started out as homebrewers, they put up with crappy ingredients and somehow managed to make decent beer. The initial batches of beer produced in their brewery were much better than their homebrew. But they sewered the first 10 brews, anyway, considering the beer not good enough to sell.

It's a pretty good guess that the Widmer dream would have failed had it not been for their father, Ray. Ray grew up on a farm and knew how to fix things and solve quirky problems, the kinds of problems you're apt to find in a cobbled-together brewery. He was retired by the time Kurt and Rob began working on their brewery. But Ray joined the fun and provided crucial assistance as the boys navigated numerous challenges.

A prime feature of the story is the cautious approach the Widmers took to everyday business. Once they landed on Hefeweizen as their flagship beer, orders poured in so fast they couldn't keep up. A small brewery at B Moloch's in downtown Portland provided brief respite. When they finally moved to Russell Street, they installed a 30-barrel brewery. Incredible. That brewery should have been at least twice as large...just one case of the thriftiness wired into the Widmer DNA.

The most fascinating part of the book involves how the partnership with Anheuser-Busch was formed in 1997. At the time, the Widmers needed to expand again, but were also looking for a partner that could help them reach a wider audience. They discovered they had a lot in common with August Busch III, then the CEO of Anheuser-Busch. The AB partnership evolved largely out of a shared set of values. The Widmers were widely criticized within the growing craft community at the time, but the partnership with AB was one of the smartest decisions they ever made. More than cash to finance expansion, they got access to the nationwide AB distribution network.

Out of the arrangement with AB (which purchased 27 percent of Widmer) eventually came the partnership with Redhook and formation of what became the Craft Brew Alliance in 2004,  as well as the decisive purchase of Kona in 2010. Jeff covers these developments nicely, but wisely avoids investigation of the modern CBA, which is run by sociopaths and only indirectly germane to the Widmer story. Small favors.

If there's a weakness here, it involves the circumstances under which the book was written. Kurt and Rob trusted Jeff to accurately tell their story and paid him to do so. The problem is that paid-for biographies often tend to be too friendly to their subjects. While he was writing the manuscript, Jeff asked me to read several chapters and provide comment. Knowing me to be an honest asshole, he figured I'd provide an honest assessment. I did.

How much of my advice he took is unclear. The flaws in this book are largely related to words here and there that might have been chosen differently. What those occasional words do is create a more friendly, pandering picture than is needed. You'll see what I mean. That approach explodes Aliens-style in the final chapter, the Legacy of Beer, which is full of loving anecdotes from friends and family, and way too syrupy. I would have dispensed with that chapter or toned it down.

Another shortcoming involves the photos, which are small and murky. The Widmer archive contains a lot of photos and it's unfortunate that they aren't handled better here. It's not clear who made the decision to present the photos in this way. Jeff didn't have access to them, so this isn't his doing. Either the publisher, the Ooligan Press, or the Widmers, who negotiated to have the manuscript printed, made the call on the photos. This isn't a disaster, just an opportunity lost.

Even with the noted flaws, I give this book very high marks. The occasional bits of pandering are offset by a story that is expertly written, illuminating and essential reading for fans of craft beer and Portland history. Hiring Jeff to write their story, similar to their decision to partner with Anheuser-Busch, was a wise move on the part of the Widmers.

The book is available through area bookstores and on Amazon. There's an audio version in the works, but I don't know when it will drop. I urge interested readers to purchase a copy at a local bookstore. Doing so won't help Jeff, who got his money up front. But it will help those retailers and let the publisher know that books like this do have an audience. For those who want to read the book without owning it, the Multnomah County Library has 21 copies that can be checked out.

For hardcore fans, Jeff has set a local launch event for Tuesday evening, April 2, at the former Widmer pub on Russell Street. He'll do an introduction, possibly a short reading, and Kurt Widmer will be on hand to talk. Rob is unavailable, apparently hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, which is perfectly appropriate. A list of related events can be found here.

You can indirectly support your local beer writer/author and historical inquiry in general by buying a copy of this book. Just do it.

Portland's Original Craft Beer? Maybe

There's not been much happening on this blog, the consequence of a book project that is nearing completion, but still consuming most of my time of late. That project will soon be put to bed and I'll be providing additional details.

Bottling #13 was sold very briefly in 1978 

Meanwhile, a trip back to 1976 is in order. At the time, Blitz-Weinhard had been struggling to exist in a market increasingly dominated by big beer. Bill and Fred Wessinger, great grandsons of Henry Weinhard, were running the company and decided on a bold move.

They noticed that the big brands had largely ignored certain parts of the market. Instead of fighting a losing battle for a shrinking share of the industrial lager segment, the Wessingers opted to go after a different market. The result was Henry Weinhard's Private Reserve.

Private Reserve was marketed as a super premium beer based on a nineteenth century recipe and brewed with malted barley, hops and water. This was clearly a shot at the adjunct-heavy lagers of the day. Private Reserve was a huge success and revived Blitz-Weinhard.

Make no mistake. The original Private Reserve was a good beer, certainly a lot better than Bud, Coors, Miller and any of the other crap lagers. Some have even argued Private Reserve was Portland's original craft beer. And maybe it was. Each bottling was numbered and they blew well past 100 before they eventually stopped using numbers.

The concept of a premium product that would go after the big brands at their weakest point would be used by future craft brewers. When Kurt Widmer was researching the idea of starting a brewery, he saw the growing import segment as his niche. It made sense and it worked. But Blitz had already tested the formula.

For Blitz-Weinhard, Private Reserve turned out to be a shining moment in a sea of despair. The Wessingers saw an increasingly difficult financial road ahead and eventually sold the company, which they continued to manage, to Pabst in 1979. As most people around these parts know, the brewery went through several more buyouts before the lights went out for good in 1999.

After the old brewery was closed, the brands went their separate ways. Most of the middling brands were sold to Pabst. The premium brands, which by then included Private Reserve, Blue Boar Light Irish Style Ale and Private Reserve Dark, went to Miller. Stroh, which owned the property at the end, sold it to a developer for a king's ransom.

In my mind, Weinhard's premium beers were a shadow their former selves long before production moved, first to the old Olympia plant in Tumwater, then to Full Sail in Hood River and more recently to a plant in some unknown location. Miller is apparently intent on distributing the beers to a wider audience...what's left of them, anyway. Oh well.

Got a Mouse in Yer Beer, eh?

How many times have we heard about someone finding a mouse in a bottle of beer or soda? I always figured the mouse got there one of two ways: Either the victim stuffed the mouse in there in hopes of getting a nice fat settlement check or a disgruntled employee put it there hoping to derail the company.

What are you doing in there, eh?

It turns out the mouse-in-the-bottle trick isn't a recent angle. People have been putting (finding) meesketeers in bottles for a while now. At least as far back as the 1960s, for sure. I know because I recently came across an internal Blitz-Weinhard memo from 1963 that deals with a meesketeer in a bottle.

I discovered the memo as part of research I'm doing on Portland's beer history. It's either a gem or turd, depending on how you look at it. The document outlines a complaint from a woman in Salem who purchased a bottle of Blitz-Weinhard beer for on-premise consumption and, after taking a swig, realized the beer wasn't quite up to snuff. A closer look revealed why...there was a mouse in the bottle!

I have no way of knowing what the outcome of this situation was. The document trail ends. Fred Wessinger (then president) advises Bill Blitz to get the insurance people involved, so I assume some kind of settlement was arranged. Perfect.

Of course, there are those who see opportunity in this kind of thing. Bob and Doug McKenzie made an entire movie, Strange Brew, based on the premise of getting free beer via mouse-contaminated beer. I haven't seen the film, but there are plenty of shorts on YouTube.

The brothers have it all figured out. The trick to getting a mouse in a bottle is kind of like shipbuilding in a bottle. You get a baby mouse and put him in a bottle. Then you feed him in there for a few months and before you know it...ah, you can watch the video, eh?