In the Clouds: Portland Beer and the Road Ahead

Because I am not prone to follow Twitter, I missed a notification (in May!) from Oregon Hops and Brewing Archives relating to the materials I assembled as part of my work on Portland Beer. I donated those materials to the OHBA in 2014 and they finally have the materials catalogued for use. The work was finished up by a graduate student intern and took some time.

Why I wasn't notified directly about this I don't know. But never mind. The archived materials include transcribed interviews with founding craft brewers and other industry-connected veterans, as well as pertinent newspaper articles and documents. There are also a number of photos, all protected by some form of copyright.

I had intended to share the recorded interviews, which would provide interesting oral histories down the road. But I eventually realized doing so would require a lot of tedious editing due to the nature of those conversations. So the recordings will stay with me, probably for good.

These materials may be of interest to folks researching Portland's brewing history at some point in the future. I should note that all of this stuff is digital. Although I have physical artifacts that might be included in an archive like this, I don't believe OHBA has the space to warehouse these kinds of items at this point in time. Perhaps someday.

Portland Beer was, more than anything, a labor of love. While it may not be perfect, it is the only book to date that traces the development of the brewing industry here. Prior to writing the book, I spent a couple decades observing craft beer as a consumer, homebrewer, festival attendee and volunteer. I launched this blog in 2011 partly as a means of getting further immersed in the industry.

In fact, I doubt the publisher of my book would have enlisted me to write it without the blog, which (somehow) gave me credibility I would not have otherwise enjoyed. Whether I should have taken on the book project is another matter and one I will debate with myself in the years to come. Being a beer historian and writer is cool and all, but it doesn't pay many bills.

Regardless, the book is what it is. While I may question the decision to write it, the book is a decent contribution to Portland's story. It will likely remain a part of the historical record for as long as such records are kept. Perhaps one day someone will update the story. My book may be updated at some point, though only the final chapters would need significant changes.

The blog is another matter entirely. It is a living document, requiring constant attention and effort to stay relevant. The OHBA announcement regarding the book materials mentions the blog. They evidently did a web crawl of the content here and made the results part of the archive. That's fine, but the blog isn't very active at this point. Not compared to what it was a few years ago.

Why is it less active? You have to go back to the beginning to understand. I had been laid off in the Great Recession of 2008-09. I expected to return to the marketing communications work I had done for 20 years. When there was nothing happening by 2011, I started my beer journey. I probably should have pursued realistic work outside my career path instead of starting the blog or writing the book.

At the time, I thought the blog would help keep my writing, research and technical skills sharp and make me employable. Plus, I was interested in beer and knew I would be okay spending significant time around it. I was right about the latter, wrong about the former. It became evident soon enough that I wasn't employable, not doing the work I had done before, anyway.

Oh, the blog (and to some extent the book) did open up paid writing opportunities, another objective. I've been able to write about beer for a variety of outlets. That's fun work and it can be pretty interesting. But, as with the book, it doesn't provide much of an income stream for most who pursue it. Changes in the media landscape have made that path increasingly sketchy of late.

I actually kept rolling with the blog well beyond the point where I knew it had no upside. I enjoyed it. While a lot of the early posts were fluffy and promotional, the coverage improved as my perceptions and knowledge of the industry sharpened. Part of that evolution meant the approach became more analytical and critical. That became problematic down the road.

My vision for the blog was always that it would provide thoughtful, objective coverage. I didn't want to find myself regurgitating press releases or providing promotional coverage in exchange for beers or schwag. It became increasingly clear over the years that my vision was out of step with the industry, which mostly prefers promotion to objectivity.

While my output had declined over the last couple of years, it went off the deep end at the end of 2019. First Biscuit passed away in August. Then came knee replacement surgery in late October and the recovery. Then came the pandemic. Then we acquired Bunk, a dog who has required constant supervision and attention since we brought her home at the end of March.

There's no clear path back to what I was doing before. That work requires a lot of time and effort for not much return and no upside. I don't exactly know what the future holds. I'll probably write on topics that are of interest to me in and out of beer. I've actually done some of that already with posts that are wholly personal. How much of what I do going forward will focus on beer I can't say.

Of course, I will continue to observe the industry. I've contributed to Willamette Week's Beer Guide for five or six years and will continue to do that sort of work when possible. I wish there were more opportunities for paid beer writing, but the nature of the industry and state of the media landscape have made those prospects fleeting.

So there you have it. If you were wondering why things have slowed down here, now you know. As the puppy grows up and I have more time to focus on what's going on in beer and other things, I expect to spend more time thinking and writing. But there's no timetable and really no restrictions on content.

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Oregon Brewers Festival Rolls on at 29

It's a bit hard to fathom. The Oregon Brewers Festival is celebrating 29 years. Some 80,000 craft beer lovers will descend on Waterfront Park to enjoy five days of fancy suds and sun. For the unknowing, the festival runs Wednesday through Sunday, July 27-31.

The beer landscape has warped since that first OBF in 1988. Back then, there were seven craft breweries in Oregon. Today, Portland has 65 breweries and there are 30 more in the metro area. The state is home to nearly 250 breweries. The country will soon have 4,300. Shazam!

As the brewery count has climbed, so too has the festival count. Hundreds of "festivals" now dot the Portland calendar. I don't even want to consider how many events populate the state and national calendar. A calculator might be helpful, if you want to do that.

But the Oregon Brewers Festival is one of the oldest and largest in the country. It is, quite simply, the event that provided much of the form modern events have copied. Sure, there are differences in size and shape, but the basic form mostly starts and ends with the OBF.

For many years, the OBF was the only serious show in town. We didn't have umpteen beer festivals a week. We didn't have specialty beers coming out of our ears. We also didn't have social media, which has helped magnify the event crush. Craft beer was mostly a novelty in that bygone era. That's obviously changed.

The OBF has rolled with the punches to some extent. They've rearranged the grounds to allow for easier movement under the tents and (they hope) near the taps. The International Beer Garden is a recent addition, designed to showcase what's happening around the world. This year's IBG will feature 25 beers from Japan, Germany and The Netherlands.

Of course, significantly altering the culture of an event of this size is tough...like turning an aircraft carrier around. Some geek types see the OBF as less relevant these days. These are the folks who chase rare specialty beers and gum up social media with their commentaries. I prefer to see OBF as a constant, a place where you can enjoy good beer in a great venue. Also a salute to the past.

They'll pour 88 beers from independent craft breweries this year. Independent has become an increasingly important OBF theme in light of buyouts by Anheuser-Busch and others. When you look at the event program, you won't see beers from 10 Barrel or Elysian or Goose Island, all fully owned by AB. You also won't see beers from Ballast Point, fully owned by Constellation Brands, or Lagunitas, half owned by Heineken. Good philosophy, I think.

The glass/mug is changing again this year. For the first 25 years, the fest used murky, white plastic mugs. In 2013, they switched to a glass glass to avoid odors from off-gassing and to allow better views of the beer. The glass lasted just two years (although I do have a nice collection at home for tasting parties, thanks to Art Larrance).

Due to some "problems" downtown, Portland Police and Portland Parks banned glass from all parks. So the OBF switched to a clear plastic glass last year. Not bad. This year they're bringing back a mug, now in clear styrene plastic. If this mug is more substantial than last year's flimsy plastic glass, it will be a nice win for everyone.

I'm not going to comment on the beers. The list is plain enough to see on the website and what you drink will depend largely on what you like in a beer. There are plenty of styles to go around this year on a list that isn't dominated by IPAs. I expect to seek out darker, sour and barrel-aged beers, but that's subject to change.

You know the rest of the story. The festival features live music, food booths, craft vendors, a craft soda garden and homebrew demonstrations. It doesn't cost a penny to enter and roam the grounds, but you'll have to buy a mug ($7) and tokens ($1 each) if you want to sample beers. It remains one of the better festival values, I think.

In case I haven't provided enough info here. there's always the event website here, as well as the various social media feeds on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. I have not received word regarding the presence of Pokemon species in Waterfront Park, but I'm sure they're around.

Happy hunting!

Brewing Consistency and Plausible Deniability

One of the great challenges in brewing is batch quality and consistency. I know this from personal homebrewing experience...although I have to admit my most serious issue along these lines is and always has been sanitation. But never mind.

Talk to Kurt and Rob Widmer about consistency. In the days when their brewing operation was tiny, they worked overtime to attain consistency across multiple batches. It wasn't easy. Batches that didn't measure up were tossed...no questions asked. Because they refused to damage their fledgling brand with rotten beer.

One of my labels from back in the infected day

That wasn't quite the case with the ill-fated Cartwright, Portland's first craft brewery back in 1980. Founder Charles Coury came from the wine industry and used those sanitation values. Fermentation often occurred in open containers. Thus, Cartwright's beer was inconsistent and sometimes infected. That didn't go over very well and the brewery closed in 1982. Little did Coury know he was 30 years ahead of his time...sour beers being wildly popular today.

Consistency and quality are less of an issue today. Brewers have figured out how to make consistent, quality beers. Large regional breweries that have plants in several locations around the country manage to produce beers that are essentially the same.

If you ask the Widmer boys about that, they like to bring up the macro brewers. The big boys, they say, have quality control dialed in to the point where different batches of Bud, for example, look and taste the same regardless of where they are brewed. Don't laugh. Differences in very light beers are more easily detected than similar differences in darker, fuller craft beers.

Yeah, that's infected

With consistency issues largely a thing of the past in competent breweries, it makes me especially curious when a well-known, popular beer undergoes a drastic change. I'm not talking about a brand AB InBev has gobbled up and is systematically destroying by cheaping out ingredients and production values in a factory brewery. Nope. I'm talking about an independent craft brand with full control of its quality and consistency.

Look, I realize brewers sometimes get pushed into a corner due to changing market conditions or altered ingredients. Or maybe a brewer decides a beer needs to change...the way Boneyard decided to dial down the ABV in RPM and Hop Venom over the last year. That change was totally above board. Tony Lawrence outlined what he was going to do and did it.

But what are we supposed to make of a situation where a beer with a great reputation suddenly undergoes a fairly dramatic change (according to numerous fans) and the brewer denies using different ingredients or doing anything different in the brewing process?

Listen, I honestly don't think there's a good explanation. Because it doesn't make sense. I'm mostly at a loss. What the hell do you think is going on?