

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Beer Tax Discussion on Tap?




The Appeal of Fresh Hop Ales

I was speaking to a reporter for the Yakima Herald-Republic yesterday about fresh hops. Saturday, Yakima hosts its annual Fresh Hop Ale Festival--an occasion worthy of a little local press. (Saturday is also the Hood River Hops Fest, the South-of-the-Columbia cousin; kudos to anyone making the swing to compare Evergreen and Beaver State ales that day.) I was pleased to be consulted.

Thinking about it a bit more, I think there's more to the appeal than just the flavor fresh hops impart--even if that flavor is enough to drive certain people wild with joy. As everyone knows (and as some beer geeks now lament), the West Coast is hop mad. I sometimes think drinkers here find the soul of beer in the essence of distilled hops--not just the bitterness, but the kaleidoscope of flavors and aromas they offer. For hopheads, the fresh hop season is a kind of communion, when the ripened cones can be used to produce even more elemental flavors. That the season is fleeting--and the fresh beers, too--makes it all the more prized.

I'm not a huge fan of the grassy, sometimes vegetal qualities of fresh hops, and yet I love this season. The new hops are out, and with them, the fresh hop ales. It is a celebratory moment, and I get caught up in the excitement, too. The next few weeks ought to be a lot of fun.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

The Miracle Mile

Time for a little profit-taking. Although this blog is called "Beervana," I try to limit the amount of chest-thumping I do with regard to its objective superiority as a beer mecca. Such histrionics are bad form and not particularly edifying to those outside our cloud-soaked hop heaven. Nevertheless, objective superiority does call for certain admissions at times--journalistic, cold-eyed appraisals of just how superior this place really is.

Everyone knows Portland has a lot of breweries. More, apparently, than any city on earth. We drink more pints of craft beer than any city in America. We have 719 beer festivals a year (roughly). No data on such facts exist, but my bet is that more styles of beer were brewed in Portland in the past year than in any city in the world. Amid these Ripley-like Amazing Facts, let me add another: the Miracle Mile, a short jaunt (.9 miles, actually) that takes a person to the doorstep of four breweries. The route takes you from Hair of the Dog (recommended tipple: Adam) to Rogue's Green Dragon (try the rotating brewery special, but don't ignore the 50 import and craft taps) to the newly-opened Cascade Barrel House (Apricot Ale) and finally, if you're still upright, for a nightcap at the Lucky Lab (Super Dog). Can any other city match this speed--four breweries a mile? Can they match the quality of beer along our own Miracle Mile? No. I haven't done a study, but no.

That's why we call it Beervana. Unashamedly. If you haven't had the pleasure, please, come and check it out.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Cool Alan Sprints Vid

The Oregon Travel Network (Travel Oregon) has put together a very cool little video featuring Alan Sprints. It shows him indulging one of his less-famous passions, cooking. If you look carefully, you'll see that he's doing that cooking out at the new brewery, too. Have a look:

Honest Pints on Bainbridge and in Chattanooga, TN

I have gotten behind on my Honest Pint certifications, so without further ado, here are three places. The Terminal Brewhouse is our first in Tennessee. As you can see, they serve beer in imperial pints, and get this: the regular price for one of these is just four bucks. Maybe beer is just less expensive in the Volunteer State. Stop in for a dunkelweizen if you're in the area.

The Terminal Brewhouse
Certified Purveyors of an Honest Pint
6 East 14th Street
Chattanooga, TN

The next two places are owned by the same folks and are situated on beautiful Bainbridge Island and appear to be located just a block away from each other. Pick your pleasure:

Harbour Public House

Certified Purveyors of an Honest Pint
231 Parfitt Way SW
Bainbridge Island, WA 98110

Pegasus Coffee House
Certified Purveyors of an Honest Pint
131 Parfitt Way SW
Bainbridge Island, WA 98110

Monday, September 27, 2010

Cascade Barrel House First Look

In just a couple hours, Cascade Brewing will officially open the doors to the new Barrel House on Tenth and Belmont. They unofficially opened last week--and the difference between these two states appears to be a press release. Sally and I walked over (yes, walked!) on Saturday for a quick peek.

My analysis of the place follows two tracks. The first concerns beer; for the last couple years, trying to find Cascade's sour ales has been an Easter egg hunt of random opportunity. Even at the Raccoon Lodge, you couldn't reliably find certain beers. The Barrel House is the solution to this problem, and the menu contains ELEVEN sours (five other taps are given to regular beers--a nice idea, because not everyone is willing to take a walk on the sour side). I have managed to miss Ron's amazing meat-of-the-apricot-pit Noyeaux all these months--but finally had it on Saturday. Most of the beers come in 8-ounce goblets and set you back plus or minus six bucks, but given that many of the beers took more effort than a standard vintage of wine, I consider this a bargain. So, from a beer perspective, they could be serving these out of the back of an old mechanic's building and I'd be happy to visit.

That takes us to the second track--the Barrel House itself. If you took the Raccoon Lodge's general architectural vocabulary and transmuted it to Southeast Portland, you'd have the Barrel House. It's in an old industrial building, but the interior has tall ceilings with exposed rafters--an urban lodge. Barrels are used throughout, as table tops, table bodies, and bar decorations. Along one wall are comfy-looking booths (full when we arrived, as they probably always will be); the rest of the space has beer hall-style tables and benches. Lots of light streams in, both through large windows and the open garage door walls, de rigeuer for any inner-Southeast locale. It is half-way between wine bar and pub in feel, and I think this is a good target: I hope to see serious wine fans come in and see just how un-beery beer can be.

There's a small food menu, but it's not totally up and running and I only had hummus--we can look into that in later posts. I saw Preston Weesner, who's apparently been helping Ron with blending, behind the bar. Art Larrance, who deserves massive kudos for taking this expensive gamble, was also enjoying a tipple. Good people, good location, good space and amazing beer. Very auspicious.

The grand opening kicks off at 11 this morning. Go have a look.

Cascade Barrel House
939 SE Belmont

Here are a few iPhone pics to get you in the mood. For a better look, have a gander at Matt Wiater's predictably stellar photos.

The interior has a spacious layout with beer hall seating and lots of light.

Barrels are used as architectural elements and as decor throughout the building. These two tables are choice sipping stations.

Barrels again at the bar--and a hiding barkeep. (He likes to be in photos as much as I do.)

Red and black blood--Sang Rouge and Sang Noir.

The outdoor seating is a mite spartan--that's Morrison beyond, but webfeet will take their sun whenever it comes.

Barrel-top tables and a nice, long stretch for running (if you're two).

Peeking in from Tenth Avenue.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

We Drink Pabst to Stick It to the Man

Oh man, I feel a brand dissection coming on:




Friday, September 24, 2010

Sourheads Rejoice

Once was a time when I used to get emails from Ron Gansberg. He used to invite me out to Beaverton to roam the barrels in his ever-more-crowded brewery. That was when he was an obscure sour-beer brewer in a land that barely appreciated his regular beers. When I was roaring around with him, I'd say, "Man, you should really get a taproom over on the East Side where people will appreciate you."

Now he has. The Barrel House is unofficially open for business (939 SE Belmont). My email? It seems Herr Gansberg has gotten too big to mess with wee bloggers. I was pleased and mollified to see that in the description of beers, one of the laurels mentioned was the Satori for Apricot Ale.

Speaking of Cascade, Paul Kasten over at Wildwood plans to host a seven course (!) meal with a corresponding number of Gansberg's sour beers. More on that later, but save the date. I was blown away by his menu when he last did one of these, with Pelican.

The Adjunct That Dare Not Speak Its Name

On yesterday's post, Average Bill (aka Bill Schneller, famous local homebrewer) added an important caveat to my observation that adjuncts are back in vogue. They are, he agrees, except for a biggie:
One big adjunct is missing from your list: sugar. It's still underutilized and reviled as a "cheap" ingredient by too many brewers and craft beer drinkers. The biggest flaw in most US made "Belgian" beers is the lack of adequate enough amounts of sugar which is why the US ones tend to be sweeter and less attenuated than the real thing.

And even though the early models of most US craft beers were English beers, most US brewers have never bought into using sugar in English styles. But, according to Ron Pattinson's research, English beers between 1880 and 1960 averaged about 15% sugar. And it wasn't done as a cost cutting move (since during the Wolrd Wars that 15% sugar cost as much as the rest of the entire grain bill). It was used both for flavor and to ensure consistency since malt varied from year to year. Sugar manufacturers actually made specific products just for brewing. But ask most US brewers about sugar in a standard strength beer and they'll look at you like you're crazy.
This is totally true: sugar continues to carry the taint of an unwholesome ingredient. Looking at other beer drinkers, I think there's another element to it, though. Many American beer drinkers don't cotton to sugared beers. There's something about the lightness of body or the attenuation Bill mentions--it rubs them the wrong way. This is less the case with robust Belgian ales, though even there, the flavors sugar alcohol contribute seem to delight American palates less than the heavy, malt-sugar flavors from all-barley strong ales. Beer is local, of course, and it seems like sugar is a bridge too far. Habaneros, okay. Sugar? Nuh uh.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Adjunct Nation

Let us climb into the wayback machine and travel to that distant time of 1990. Many of you will have been too young to drink then (half the population was 17 or younger at the time), and probably the rest of you were drinking Hamm's. The Americans who had discovered craft beer resided in that fiery, fundamentalist stage of the just-converted. In their backlash against additive-laden tin can beers, they were Reinheitsgebot-curious, allowing exemptions for wheat, say, but little else. Breweries dabbling with fruit and honey were regarded with suspicion, if they were regarded at all. Other ingredients were dismissed with a sneer as "adjuncts." It was an article of morality.

Ah, how things have changed. I haven't run the numbers, but my guess is that something north of 75% of the brewpubs around town have a beer on tap with some formerly-suspicious contaminant. Last week, I stopped in to Laurelwood and discovered their Bay Laurel Pale. Last night, I moseyed over to Coalition for a pint of maple porter--one of my new fave beers. Ales adulterated with chocolate, coffee, pepper, herbs, and fruit are so common they don't even register as something to consider. The change has become so complete that even corn and rice make their way into beer--the two grains no brewer would ever have considered using twenty years ago.

Historically, of course, adjuncts were ubiquitous. Read through descriptions of some of the crazy English or German styles, and you realize that at one time, a barley-hops-water-yeast beer would have been an austere curiosity. The use of other ingredients seems more natural and obvious when you think about it; while malt and hops offer fair diversity, if a brewer wants to draw out certain notes, why limit himself to just these ingredients?

When brewers first used spices in their beer, they were considered gimmicks. Many times, that was the goal. But brewers have learned how to use a pinch of this and a dash of that the way a chef does, and the results are generally quite good; they add subtle notes that fill out the flavor profile.

Take Laurelwood's Bay Laurel Pale. I asked for a taster first, because I was worried the bay leaves would overwhelm the beer. Rich in essential oils--particularly eucalyptol--bay leaves have a dangerous menthol-like quality. But brewer Chad Kennedy essentially dry-hopped with them, and this quality is more suggestive than acute. I ordered Laurelwood's Space Stout chicken to comfort me during that false autumn we were having last week. The Bay Laurel Pale went brilliantly with it--an autumnal tour de force.

As for Coalition's Loving Cup Maple Porter--you can tell just from the idea that it's a winning combination. The darker amber grades of maple syrup are caramelized in a manner also directly on the continuum of malt flavors. Coalition's porter features that note along with the light aroma and flavor of maple. It's a dry porter--nothing oversweet about it--and the maple adds just depth and flavor. A perfect combination (and it will be a perfect winter beer).

My guess is that we're just seeing the latest stage in an evolution. In cooking, chefs are often reluctant to divulge their secret ingredients. Brewers are a bit more exhibitionist, and include all the salient details of recipe and craft. I could imagine a time, however, when breweries were less forthcoming. If I ask a brewer, "Is that cardamom I'm tasting?", they are happy to let me know. Perhaps in another twenty years (when I'm way, way past the median age), I'll just see a twinkle in her eye and get a shrug instead.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Beer Trend Boomlets: Actually, I'm Cool With Them






Beer Versus Ganja in California

Let's say you earned millions of dollars a year ferrying a mildly intoxicating malt beverage around the highways of California, keeping that state famously mellow. How would you feel if a bunch of hippies were trying to pass a law to make legal another less toxic and less addictive relaxant? "Welcome aboard, boys!", right? Not quite:
(Those who read beer blogs would have spotted a mistake in this paragraph: distributors are not exactly "beer sellers." They are the middlemen who take the beer from the brewers and give it to the retailers.) As it happens, Stone and Sierra Nevada were caught in the crossfire: as nonvoting affiliated members, they weren't aware and didn't endorse the CBBD's political contribution. (And are apparently trying to do serious damage control.)

I wouldn't make too much hay about this. The CBBD's donation of ten grand is merely symbolic in a state where a single candidate may spend $150 million dollars on a statewide race. But it will do nothing to endear the already-unpopular beer distributors with Golden State potheads.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

This Doesn't Sound Like Fun

See if you can identify the event:
That's the GABF, though Oregonians are forgiven for mistaking it for the OBF. That's Andy Crouch, who has a quite a long and interesting post on the fest.

Relatedly, Doc Wort suggests the GABF travel to different cities every year, a proposal I heartily endorse. That would really undermine the frat-party quality, because you'd have a new crowd every year--one comprised mainly of first-timers. It would also do a lot to advance the stated goal of the Brewers Association--to educate Americans about craft beer. It would be logistically more difficult, but it seems like an industry of this size could manage to pull it off.

Update: Brewpublic offers the local perspective.

Monday, September 20, 2010

The GABF and the Meaning of Medaling

Ah, the Great American Brewers Festival, whose medals always glow shiniest on brewery trophy walls. Our love, our bane. Does any fest fill beer geeks with more ambivalence? On the one hand, it has the most credibility of any awards-granting fest in the US--ensuring that any beer receiving an award is a good one. On the other hand, its very credibility conceals selection biases: the only beers that win are those entered--and of the 1,600 American breweries, fewer than a third enter beers. As a consequence, we have a hard time relating to the meaning of a winning beer,

Add to that the innate capriciousness of judged events. Enter a beer one year and it may win gold and then strike out thereafter. To take one example, did the quality of Mirror Pond really increase this year; or were the judges just off their collective rockers in past years when it didn't win? Of course, the truth is that, in a competition with dozens of beers, the palates and moods of the judges will select almost randomly among a smaller--but still substantial--group of potential medal winners. Excluding the pro-am competition, 3,448 beers were entered for judging. Coming up with medal winners from that vast group isn't totally random, but let's just say that among the 3,211 non-winners are a few decent beers (and future gold medalists).

Another issue: as a parochial blogger, I dislike how Colorado always takes home truckloads of medals, while Oregon (and particularly Washington) get a relative snub. True, we know from past years that Colorado breweries enter in far greater numbers--and therefore have lower winning percentages--than Oregon, but gaudy numbers impress more than statistical contextualizing. So this year, Colorado takes home 41 medals, more than doubling up Oregon (19) and clubbing Washington like a baby seal (7). (And I wonder, darkly, why the Colorado-based host organization gives no information this year on which breweries entered, preventing me from scoring win percentages for 2010.)

And what to make of style explosions? This year's competition features 79 categories, for a total haul of 237 medals. The chances of winning owe a lot to, well, chance, but that doesn't mean I won't get a flood of press releases trumpeting wins this week. Over two hundred medals a year, every year, thousands in total. After a certain point, what does it say that a beer has won a medal? What does it say that a beer never has? Does seeing a medal-draped trophy cabinet tell a visitor anything about a brewery?

So here we are on Ambivalent Monday, happy to celebrate the winners, but also wondering: yes, but what exactly should we make of all this?

Sunday, September 19, 2010

GABF Results: Oregon



Anyway, here are the winners. Full list is here.


Gluten Free, Deschutes - Gluten Free Beer (13 Entries)
Cherry Baltic, Bend Brewing - Aged Beer (30 Entries)

Hazelnut Brown Nectar, Rogue - Specialty Beer (23 Entries)
Deranger, Laurelwood - Imperial Red Ale (43 Entries)
McPelican Wee Heavy, Pelican - Scotch Ale (34 Entries)

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Overrated Breweries

Just in time for the GABF, Denver's Jonathan Shikes offers his take on the six most overrated breweries in the US:
  • Dogfish Head: "I have yet to find a Dogfish beer that didn't involve a grimace."
  • Russian River: "Pliny the Elder is a great beer, but it's not any better than half a dozen other IPAs in Colorado alone, let alone California."
  • Brooklyn Brewery: "They have a great reputation, but maybe that's because New York has so many people and is starved for in-state craft breweries."
  • Goose Island: "The beers ... remind me the selection in Colorado in 2000."
  • Bear Republic: "I can think of a dozen IPA that are more balanced and more flavorful than Racer 5."
  • New Belgium: "The world seems to crave Fat Tire, and that is fine. But I've never met a real craft-beer lover who drinks it."
Bold--and amusing--comments. (He's dead wrong on two of my favorite beers, Racer 5 and Pliny, and shows that the Colorado palate is just different than the West Coast palate.) Now, does any blogger have the courage to do the same for Oregon? Yes! Behold my own six-pack of overratedness:
  • Cascade Brewing. Another gose? Do we really need another gose?
  • Hopworks. Mostly attractive to cyclists because of the rich parking opportunities.
  • Upright. Make me a "Fourteen" and then we'll talk.
  • Full Sail. Come on, John Harris, what have you done for us lately?
  • Hair of the Dog. The world wants to know: when will you make a "Jeff?"
  • Brewers Union. Give this damned cask thing a rest, will you?
Someone had to do it.

Follow-Up: Why Drink Organic Beer?

On yesterday's post about the USDA's plan to allow beer called "organic" to be made with conventional hops, Nate MC made this comment:
I'm still trying to figure out why Organic seems to be equated with better, but I have seen no proof of this anywhere. Everything has been anecdotal evidence of a kind of halo effect that makes it seem like a premium product.

Can someone shed some light on why consumers should care about it?
This is an excellent question. The organics movement has long been animated by a group of people who invest in it values and ethics not everyone shares. For some people, industrial farming is in itself an evil and all its fruits tainted. It is therefore reasonable to wonder if the push toward organic beer is a manifestation of this larger agricultural critique.

In comments further down the thread, Matt Swihart from Double Mountain brewing noted that organic barley isn't a huge departure from conventional barley "in that conventional farming of barley requires very little pesticide and nitrogen use. Organic barley and conventional barley have very similar environmental footprints...." So organic malt doesn't advance the ball much.

Hops, on the other hand, are a heavy user of chemicals to treat both pests and disease. This varies by hop strain, and those without much US parentage are generally more vulnerable. Local hops are more resilient--which is why the organic farm in Ashland grows Cascade. But more importantly, crops grown in a monoculture attract the very blights and pests that make the pesticides necessary. Organic growers use strategies that break up monoculture. When I was on the hop tour in the Willamette Valley, Gayle Goschie pointed to a nearby field of flowers that provided predatory insects to combat aphids. The upshot is that organic hop farming eliminates the use of lots of chemical pesticides.

I can't speak to how much organics affect beer quality and taste (though proponents, like Alan Sprints at Hair of the Dog, say it makes better beer), but reducing the reliance on pesticides is reason enough for me. Because hops are such a big part of the equation, I hope the USDA reverses itself and considers "organic beer" to require the use of organic hops.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

USDA Deals Organic Hop-Growers a Blow

I received an email about a disturbing development for organic hop growers. Patrick Smith of Loftus Ranches in Yakima wrote a blog post detailing the situation:
On September 3, 2010 the Handling Committee of the USDA’s National Organic Standards Board (“NOSB”) dealt a massive blow to the fledgling United States organic hop industry and the American Organic Hop Grower Association ("AOHGA") in voting 6-0 to recommend that hops remain one of only 3 whole crops on the “National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances” entirely allowed in non-organic form to be used in the production of a product labeled "organic."
This needs a little unpacking. In order to be certified organic, food needs to include mostly organic materials, but may contain a tiny amount of conventionally-grown ingredients. This is the case with beer; to be certified organic, beer can be made with conventional hops. For beer geeks, this has always been puzzling, given that hops are such a critical element in beer and one of only two crop ingredients in the finished product. But so it is.

The decision isn't final yet; the "Handling Committee" mentioned above has made this recommendation to the full NOSB. If they accept it when they meet next month, it will effectively codify the rule allowing conventional hops in organic beer. The implications for the hop-grower are bleak. Patrick explains:
Like many organically grown agricultural products, organic hop production is considerably more expensive than non-organic hop production. Consequently, organically-produced hops are priced higher than non-organically produced hops of the same variety, giving brewers an immediate incentive to work around the system and use non-organic hops in their organic beers.... It’s not surprising then that the market for organic hops is mostly non-existent. Organic hop producers are currently growing organic hops because they believe in the principle of organic production, but because there is no significant market for their product, the growers have consistently lost money while hoping that someday there will be a market for organic hops.
In other words, if a beer can be certified organic with conventional hops, why would a brewer pay extra to buy organic hops? The implications for the organic hop-farmer are obvious. For those who want 100% organic beer--including organic hops--this is also a major blow. I encourage you to go read Patrick's full post, which has more information and a richer description of the plight of organic hop growers.

To add one editorial comment: this isn't necessarily the end of the story. Even if the NOSB decides to follow this course, consumers have the final word. My suspicion is that almost no one realizes that "organic beer" is made with conventional hops. To the extent organic beer has a market and a receptive audience, it almost surely has a market for fully-organic beer. It's my hope that brewers will continue to purchase organic hops and help publicize the the issue. The market will reward brewers that go above the standard, and advertising the fact that certain beer is 100% organic will raise awareness on this issue. I am a supporter of organics and hope that a market develops for beer made with organic hops. The craft beer community may have to make it happen on our own. So: hop growers, continue to grow organic; brewers, buy those hops; and consumers, join me in buying that beer.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Too Many Beers

Over the past week, I've been working my way through a review copy of Andy Crouch's new book, Great American Craft Beer. The goal of the book is to offer a survey of American craft beer and includes a long section of beer descriptions organized by categories--I'll explain it more when I do a review. As I always do with these things, I ran a quick reliability test: under Double IPAs, Pliny the Elder; Black Butte with the porters; Ommegang Hennepin among the saisons; and Cascade in the American Wild Ales (the Cuvee, though, as dark horse selection). It all checks out. I have no reason to doubt that Andy's done a fine job selecting these beers and that, among all the style categories, one couldn't quibble with more than a tiny fraction.

Then I checked the index to see which Oregon breweries made the list (10) and noticed that the beers of Andy's New England home region seem to be over-represented. Six Connecticut breweries get a mention, but just three from Washington state. In all, Crouch highlights thirty-four New England breweries. Is this a case of bias, or is there another explanation?

Let me make the case for "other explanation." Consider these numbers. As of the end of July, there were 1600 American craft breweries. If we do a back-of-the-envelope calculation, assuming an average of ten beers per brewery, that would mean these breweries produced 16,000 beers in the past year. (With seasonals, one-offs, and special releases, the average is probably substantially higher.) Even in a state like Massachusetts, with a modest number of breweries (38), that's hundreds of beers to keep track of. By these numbers, the West Coast alone produces 5000 different beers--half that in the Northwest.

When you begin sorting beers by style, you have a staggering list to wade through. Any writer limiting herself to six American beers per style is necessarily going to leave out--what, sixty?--good beers. Thanks to the internet, we share a psychic national space. Brewing, however, remains almost exclusively a local or, at best, regional phenomenon. I always have this wish that I could climb the craft brewing mountaintop and survey the entire landscape, comparing all the country's breweries. It's a fool's errand, though. Hell, until last week, I hadn't even tried the beers of our new crop of nanobreweries here in Portland. It's frustrating, but also true: no one person can ever fully wrap his head around the variety of beers brewed in the United States. There are just too many of them.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Organic Hop Farming in Ashland

Oregon Public Broadcasting had a nice piece on a new organic hop grower who's starting up in Southern Oregon:
Steve and Rebecca Pierce, along with their son, Spencer, are discovering the ins and outs of organic farming even as they resurrect a crop that until last year hadn't been commercially grown in Southern Oregon since the late 1980s....

Aphids attacked the first crop, so the Pierces countered with an army of 7,500 ladybugs, which quelled the aphids. Spider mites took their turn this year, sucking chlorophyll from the lower parts of the plants. "You just can't throw pesticides on them," Pierce said. Nonetheless, when chilly weather damaged other types of crops in the spring, the hardy hop variety didn't miss a beat, he said.

It's a pretty small operation--just a few acres--but enough that Ashland's Standing Stone and Caldera have picked up some hops. And old school, too:
Harvesting hops is fairly simple, but labor-intensive. Friends come in handy, and about 25 to 30 showed up, helping cut down the entwined vines, shake the cones loose and sort the flowers, which are dried on a metal screen, bagged in mylar and stored at 40 degrees.
I actually expect this to be the norm of the future--small farms that cater exclusively to micros. The guys behind Alpha Beta are homebrewers and so already oriented toward the zymurgical side of the equation. (Most hop farmers are not.) It should also be easier to produce organic hops this way, too--monoculture creates a lot of the problems that pesticides and fertilizers address; with just a few acres, the crops may be hardier and more robust. Alpha Beta planted Cascades, too, which are more disease and pest resistant.

Anyway, cool.

Surveying Portland's Nanobreweries







Sunday, September 12, 2010

And on the seventh day, he brewed

Everyone deserves a day off, and on mine, I will combine a recipe for imperial stout with the yeast strain Double Mountain uses. Since they tend to think of it as the yeast strain of the brothers at the Abbaye Notre-Dame de Saint Remy, I shall call it, perhaps not too originally, Black Monk. It's already a little late in the game for this bad boy to be ready by the time the cold rains fall, but then again, "ready" is such a bourgeois term, isn't it?

In any case, we finally have a bit of traditional September weather--sunny and mild--and I'm going to skip a day of painting. Yay!

On a related note, Golden Dragon was a mixed success. While I have enjoyed it greatly, both my lovely and talented wife and the beeronomist say those Sorachi Ace hops (used without aid from other strains) taste distinctly of dill. And they are therefore not so hot on the Dragon. To me, it's a pretty straightforward lemon note and I can find no dill. I long ago realized that human tongues are varied and able only to pick up a fraction of the flavor compounds present in hops, so this isn't surprising. But I'll through it out to you: Sorachi Ace--dill note? Perhaps they're in the minority.

Friday, September 10, 2010

More Houses-Are-Big Blogging

First: what the hell's up with this weather? After a protracted and icy spring that ended pretty much only with the arrival of July, then October roared in at the end of August. Yesterday was the NFL's season kickoff game, but weather in Portland has hit mid-season form.

All of which sucks if you happen to be trying to paint your 17-mile-long house. (A house that strangely looks like a modest 1500 square feet when you're inside.)

My days are thus spent with desultory morning posts like this one and then hours Sisyphean work on the house. I have actually been doing some nice beer-related things, and posts float inside my head like motes, waiting to make it to the page. But instead, it's off to my paintbrushes. So, another couple weeks and then my usual level of blogging will resume. I hope.

Hi ho ...

Thursday, September 09, 2010

How Accurate Are IBU Figures?

You're in a pub looking at a beer menu. The publican has very thoughtfully given you some data on the beers he serves, including bitterness units and alcohol percentage. If you are an average beer geek, that IBU number is going to attract your eye, and you may choose the beer with the highest number. But does it mean anything?

Let's start with the process of bittering a beer. Hops are used to balance the natural sweetness that comes from fermenting sweet wort. They add bitterness, flavor, and aroma. The bittering agents in hops are known collectively as alpha acids, but in order to make a beer taste bitter, they need to go through a chemical change known as isomerization, which happens during the boil. The amount of alpha acids a hop contains (1%-20%) and the length of time hops are exposed to boiling wort determine how many "bitterness units" a beer contains (IBU stands for "international bittering unit"). Other factors affect the perception of bitterness, like the strength of the beer and the level of carbonation; 50 IBUs will leave a barleywine tasting sweet but make a pale ale puckeringly sharp.

Okay, now back to the pub. Brewers almost always calculate their beers' bitterness. Larger breweries with labs just run a chemical test on their beer. The results they get are measures of actual acids dissolved in the beer. Small breweries, lacking a lab, have to do it mathematically. Computer programs take the several variables (alpha acid content, length of time in the boil, type of hop product) and calculate an expected IBU. In my experience, these nearly always overestimate the actual bitterness a beer will have. This is especially (but not always) true when a beer is listed at having extravagant bitterness. Many times I've tried a beer that is supposed to be in the 80s or 90s and found it light and approachable. My theory is that these programs tend to over-attribute alpha contributions by later additions, so if a brewery puts in loads of hops between 30 minutes and the end of the boil, it will inflate the IBU number, but add little bitterness. (Holler if you have a better theory.)

Given how many people base so much of their decision on the IBU figure, this is worse than a shame--it's a bit of a catastrophe. Hops are misunderstood enough already. Many people like "hoppy" beers, but are at a loss to distinguish between hop flavor and pure bitterness. IBUs only measure bitterness, and are no guide to flavor and aroma. I suspect the average drinker also doesn't know that IBUs are a chemical measure, not a guide to perceived bitterness. So I wonder--does the thoughtful impulse to include IBUs actually confuse people more than it helps?

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Microhopic 2 Tonight at Bailey's Tonight

Just in case you forgot, Brewpublic's nanobrewery minifest kicks off in a couple of hours downtown at Bailey's. Portlanders can try their first taste of beer from Beetje and Breakside--and maybe even from Natian, Vertigo and others. (As a program note, the now-defunct Rivergate won't be in attendance, nor, apparently, will Blue House.)

See you there--

Deep Bond between Idaho Mormons and the Beer Industry

Headline of the day:




Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Review: Prodigal Son Brewing

230 SE Court Avenue
Pendleton, OR 97801





The Pub

The Beer


The Food


Trouble in CDA-Ville

The thing about popularizing the name "Cascadian Dark Ale" is that you have to get people outside of Cascadia to use it. They're not.

(Though "Cascade Black" seems to meet with more favor.)

Monday, September 06, 2010

"Best" is Not an Objective Measurement

This is a little lazy Labor Day meditation for you. Over the weekend I discovered Stan Hieronymus' post wherein he notes that a future question he'll put to brewers is: "Do you brew beers that are as good at or better than the Europeans have for generations?"

This fascinating question led to 30+ comments and counting, but it also led down a bit of a rabbit hole. Let us unpack. The key phrase in Stan's question is "as good." Without even getting into the myriad implications with which such a question is freighted, we can see we're immediately that we've exited the world of fact and entered the realm of opinion. "Good" is, of course, not an intrinsic, measurable quality; it's subjective. According to Webster, it is related to the Sanskrit gadhya (aspirate that d, everyone), which means "to cling to"--most instructive. The thing we describe as good is that which we cling to. Hold this in your mind for a moment.

In all products, commercial and artistic, there is a very broad range of what we (might wisely hesitate to) call "quality." Velveeta to Oregonzola, paint-by-numbers to Picasso, Busch Light to Orval. But even this is far from objective. Velveeta and Busch Light FAR outsell Oregonzola (an award-winning cheese, by the way) and Orval. The paint-by-numbers people have placed art on more walls than Pablo. For every person you could find who would support a contention that product X is better than Y, you have others who disagree.

The only way to begin to win an argument about quality is to start eliminating judges for the team who disagree with you: only rednecks would choose a lunch of Velveeta, Wonder bread, and Bush Light to Oregonzola, Grand Central olive loaf, and Orval. And of course, those who prefer the former meal would scoff at those who prefer the latter as rubes who'd buy a bottle of dishwater if it was priced high enough.

Now, I know the answer to Stan's question. Many Oregon brewers could easily answer in the affirmative, while brewers in Colorado and Asheville could not. Our brewers easily match those Flemish-tounged devils, and all you have to do is try our beer to see. Only a fool--or a Coloradan--could disagree.

But you might be wiser than I and see that such games are great to play while you're sitting around a table with friends--so long as you don't actually believe you've gotten to some objective truth. The rest of us will cling to our small hopes that we know best.

Labor of Love

Let's imagine an alternative universe. In this universe, the craft beer movement never happened. Americans still drink beer--the rise of craft brewing didn't affect per capita consumption--but they only drink macro lagers. The big debate among beer drinkers is the modern version of tastes great/less filling: no one argues actual flavor.

A sad tale, but I tell it not because that bereft alternate universe is merely lacking in good beer. It is also a universe with fewer jobs--or anyway, fewer Oregon jobs. (I'll leave the economists to calculate how many more people are employed in our universe of craft brewing; it's more, because craft breweries are way more inefficient than macro plants and require more hands--but how much more I can't say.) Oregon breweries directly employ 4,700 people. These are good jobs, too--it's cool to work for a brewery! The industry also supports thousands of other jobs, too, in beer distributorships, hop-growing, pubs, beer magazines, and bottle shops. All of which adds up to a calculated $2.33 billion contribution to the state's economy.

(No doubt effects are substantial in other states, as well.)

So on this Labor Day, salute the Oregon beer industry for supporting so many good jobs. Cheers to you--

Friday, September 03, 2010

200-Year-Old Beer

Man, what I wouldn't give for a sip of one of these little darlins: 200-year-old beer found amid bottles of champagne in a shipwreck south of the autonomous Aland Islands in the Baltic Sea:
The newest find came as divers unearthed bottles separate from the earlier champagne find. While lifting a few to the surface, one exploded from pressure. A dark fluid seeped from the broken bottle, which they realized was beer.

All the cargo on the ship -- including the beer and champagne -- is believed to have been transported sometime between 1800 and 1830, according to Juslin. He said the wreck was about 50 meters deep (roughly 164 feet) in between the Aland island chain and Finland.

The cargo was aboard a ship believed to be heading from Copenhagen, Denmark, to St Petersburg, Russia.
Imperial stout? Baltic porter? What myths might it shatter, what posts my Martyn Cornell mine from this discovery? This is a story worth watching...

Is Nanobrewing a Viable Model?

Every year or two a new trend sweeps through craft brewing--some are larger, structural trends; others are small and aesthetic. Some last, some fade. One of the biggest trends of the moment is nano-brewing. For a longer primer on what "nano" means, have a look at Ezra's post at the New School; for our purposes, let's say that nano breweries are less than three barrel systems, usually (but not always!) disconnected from a pub. In Oregon, Heater Allen blazed the trail, and now there are a handful of others like Natian and the newly-minted Beetje. Although they're not much bigger than home-breweries, they compete against Widmer and Deschutes for tap handles.

The upside is pretty obvious: low start-up costs. Small commercial brewing systems can be had used for less than $100k, but can run a lot more than that if you sidle over to JV Northwest for a new brewhouse. One-barrel systems look expensive compared to homebreweries, but are cheap by comparison to 10-barrel systems. For the average person, a nano-brewery represents a conceivable initial investment. The big question I have is: is it a viable business model.

Brewing is hard work and the margins are pretty slim. If you don't own your own brewpub, the way to make brewing profitable seems to be selling a lot--which is why production breweries try to get bigger systems on line. The cost of a unit of beer drops when a brewery gets bigger and more efficient--which makes the profit margin larger. On a recent ProBrewer discussion thread, nano-hopefuls discussed whether the model penned out or not:
So, to calc the P&L stuff, I started off choosing three recipes to launch with. I calculated the ingredients needed to brew one batch of each, and got pricing from suppliers to give me a rough estimate of a cost per batch. I used (arbitrarily) a three month production cycle, and based on my brewing schedule came up with a) ingredients needed on hand per cycle, and b) amount of saleable beer produced per cycle. I then came up with sample sales percentages for new growlers, refilled growlers, and free samples given away at the brewery, as well as sample pricing for the growlers. This gives me a rough idea of income, assuming I sell all the beer produced. I would also be trying to land draft accounts, so I have to build that into my sheet.... My initial findings, after playing with all of this, is a nano is **at BEST** a breakeven operation.
So why on earth would you start a nano-brewery? To go big. Here's that same brewer describing his goal:
The only way this venture makes sense is if I can leverage my tiny production runs to build a brand, build a following, and then expand. It is a proof of concept - a pilot program, if you will, for a production brewery that does not exist yet. Trust me, I'd rather go huge, but I will not put myself in enormous debt and risk my home and personal assets, and I do not want to seek outside investment at the level I would need right now.
I once aspired to make movies, and I recognize this model from that industry: you make a calling-card short and use it to sell financial backers on your idea for a feature. For the DIY brewer with more energy than money, it's a way of getting into the business without taking on a huge amount of risk.

The biggest downside I can see is that small systems are harder to use and more prone to inconsistency. Quality control is a bigger issue. Having a tiny brewery limits the kinds of beers you can make--nothing that requires months or years in tanks or barrels, for example.

But within those confines, is it possible for the little breweries to get started, build a following, and then go big time? We'll see. For a shot in the arm, nanobrewers can look to Rick Allen, one of the early pioneers: his Heater Allen Brewery has made the transition to a regular micro system and seems to be humming along.

Thursday, September 02, 2010

Too Early for Winter Beers and Other Comments


Other newsy bits collected for your convenience...

Tour de Lab

Brewpublic Presents Microhopic
  • Big Horse. Jason Kahler's first Cascadian Dark Ale.

Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Nothing to See Here

Call these the end-of-summer doldrums. Absolutely nothing to discuss. I will try to have a review of Prodigal Son up tomorrow. Meantime, I guess I'll be doing not a whole lot of blogging.

Oh, I guess I should mention Lucky Lab's cool event tomorrow where they pluck fresh hops for The Mutt. Bill has the details.