Holiday Ale Fest, Full Monty Edition

For the first time in three years, I can say that I enjoyed the experience of the Holiday Ale Fest. Admittedly, it's because I showed up at 10:50 am on Saturday and left by three-thirty, four. But not everything can be chalked up to the early hour. The last few years I showed up early, and the crowds did, too. It was better this year.

Ch-ch-ch-changes
Credit the organizers for recognizing that the HAF had just gotten too popular. In past years, it has been shockingly over-crowded and noisy. Pity the party that got separated in the crowd--they're probably still looking for each other. So this year they added days and some space. These changes probably didn't affect the noise and crowds at peak times, but they did create some times when serious beer fans could sample the offerings in relative calm and solitude. Will it last? Hard to say--nature and beer fests hate a vacuum, so we'll have to check back in '09. I suspect that the new area won't remain as undiscovered as it was on Saturday afternoon. But credit where credit is due: my experience this year was almost as pleasant as the beers.

The Attic
I know others have commented on the new area in the fest, but I have to add my two cents. Historically, the HAF lived under a big-top in the lower part of Pioneer Courthouse Square. This year, they added a tent on the upper level up by the statue of the umbrella man (I will henceforth attempt to propogate my nicname by calling this "the attic"). However, rather than run a single set of stairs up to this section, organizers tried to leave an access route between it and the tent, apparently for peds outside the fest. To get people over this easement, they built a set of stairs up, a hamster-like habitrail across, another set of stairs down a ways, another habitrail, and finally, a few more steps up to this tent. Perhaps it was an on-site drunk-o-meter, but it also seemed like a massive lawsuit waiting to happen.

On the other hand, it was a great place to camp out. The main tent features about ten little tables to stand around. These are seized and guarded like the fields in WWI, where inhabitants fend off sorties of the table-less hordes. Eventually, the tables get swamped by the crowd, and in any case, they're smack dab in the loudest part of the tent. The attic had a fair number of tables with chairs, and for most of our time there, had available seating. It was relatively quiet (you could at least carry on a conversation), too. Big improvement.

The Beers
I didn't try anywhere near a reasonable number of the beers available, so this is far from comprehensive. Of the modest number I did try, most were at least good, and a few were fantastic. The big winners were:

• Dupont Avec Les Bons Voeux. My fave of the fest was Dupont's holiday beer, a robust farmhouse ale that has the sweetness of a biere de garde mixed with the hop character and crispness of a saison. It was a perfectly balanced, perfectly luscious big beer.
  
• Hair of the Dog Jim. A guy sat down at our table with a pour of Jim, and he just kept shaking his head. Not an experienced beer guy, he couldn't quite make the connection between the liquid in his mug and his conception of "beer." I'm sure he wasn't alone. It is one of the most intense beers I've tasted--regular winter beer condensed down. The flavors form a cacophany of notes, and they come at you like fragments of conversation in a noisy room. It will change month by month, but in this state the bourbon was forward, along with a spicy mid-note. In comments below, Doc Wort called it "sappy," which is exactly right.
  
• Widmer Babushka Black Raspberry Stout. I wish this stout were available year-round, just as an example of how to use fruit. In Babushka, the black raspberries offer a flavor note without any sweetness. The beer is muscular and masculine, sporting bitter notes of coffee, leather, and tobacco, maybe even a little cannibis. I was reminded of a Stumptown coffee I've had, Lake Tawar Sumatra. To this, the fruit draws out some of the flavor notes that one perceives as fruity, but adds almost none of the sugar. Fruit doesn't have to overwhelm or make a beer treacly sweet. This is proof.

Other good ones:

• Allagash Curieux. A lush, complex tripel aged in Jim Beam barrels. The whiskey note is a subtle one.
• Cascade "Sang Noir." Only sour fans need apply. Whiskey and fruit notes also subdued, and are bent to the dominance of the sourness.
• Golden Valley Oaken Bomb. Rich and tasty, and not nearly as sweet as last year's iteration. Nice hopping. I would love to try this after it aged another year.
• Yakima Twin Stag Scottish. I know nothing about this brewery, but I like the introduction. This was a very big Scottish ale, reminding me almost of a doppelbock. Accomplished.

Misfires:

• Lauganitas White Pepper Stout. Not at all pleasant. Weedy.
• Stone Vanilla Smoked Porter. Root beer.

Swigs from friends (ie, too little tasting to really know, snap reactions only)

• North Coast Old Stock. Stanky. Funky. Old Sock.
• Pyramid Snow Cap('n & Tennille). Terribly embarrassing name. Somewhat sweet but superficial riff on their impressive regular Snow Cap. So perhaps aptly named.
• Full Sail Dry Hopped Wassail. The dry-hopping seemed more understated than I would have liked, but it was still a fine beer.
• BridgePort Raven Mad. A friend grabbed this late in our stay, and I'll admit that it didn't wow me. I don't blame the beer but my palate. It's a problem with beer fests--after a few beers, your tongue can lie to you. A word to the wise when you read reviews like this one.
  

I had a great time--hope you did, too.

Early Reports on the Holiday Ale Fest

Who needs me when you have such a vast and accomplished blogger corps? (That's a rhetorical question!) Seems like everyone but me headed down to Pio Square last night. Here's what they found:

Bruce/BS Brewing
Testing, testing…. is this thing on? Trying out the WPtoGo app on the G1 phone. 1 failure so far. It’s about 3:45 and numerous beer geeks and chronic alcoholics have already arrived, but nowhere near tha capacity crowds that will be here in the evenings.

DA Beers/Beer Around Town
So the Wednesday session is on! Arriving at 3pm for the opening founding me waiting in a 40 person line, sure maybe a few more people than I expected, but I was in the company of people that were truly there to drink and appreciate some good brew. I have to give it up to Preston for adding this day, as I trekked around the tent I met a ton of great local beer enthusiasts. This really was the day for the beer geeks to show up and mingle.

This years fest featured a new navigational hazard... the 2nd beer tent. ....Now, i've been to my share of beer fests, but this looks like a fricken mine field in the making, I mean how the heck do you expect people to traverse this thing after some of these beers? Now I was only here for a hand full of samples, but I have seen Friday and Saturday nights and some of the sauced people it creates, this looks like a lawsuit in the making. I understand the need for more space, but this was head-scratching. Also, no Jim for wheelchair bound people. But overall it lead to this tent.

Bill/It's Pub Night
The 2008 Portland Holiday Ale Fest has begun at Pioneer Square. At 5 PM today it was still manageable, but by 5:30 PM it was breathtakingly crowded. If you plan on attending one of the next couple days, the earlier the better....

I didn't expect to like Widmer's fruity stout at all, but it was really well done -- the blackberries complemented the stout flavor nicely without being a nuisance. Van Havig's tripel and Hopworks' barleywine were right on the money. The stout from Firestone Walker -- who seem to be landing on Oregon with both feet right now -- was very solid, especially when you consider that its 5.5% alcohol is about half the strength of most of the beers at the festival.

Angelo/Brewpublic
[Mostly an overview/preview, but he has some great pics from the media event last night.]

Not for nothing, I'll lay ten to one odds that Oregon has more and more able beer bloggers than any state in the country. Great work, men!

Holiday Ale Fest - Special Tappings

The Holiday Ale Fest kicks off in about an hour. When it does, a very, very special beer will be pouring: the mythical Jim '06 from Hair of the Dog. It sparked a frenzy like few the town has seen, and for good reason (video below). I believe it will be just a single keg, and when it blows, it's gone. They'll also tap the '07 version--wonderful, but not guaranteed to confer enlightenment like the '06.

Tomorrow they'll be tapping four beers you should note:

• Allagash Curieux (pronounced "curio" unless I misheard brewer Jason Perkins), a bourbon-aged tripel,
  
• Cascade's barrel-aged (and misnamed) Baltic Porter, which is really a tasty Gansberg funk-o-rama,
• Firestone Walker Imperial Oatmeal Stout aged in--wait for it--bourbon barrels,
• Ninkasi Vanilla Oatis, which is the closest thing to a desert you'll ever taste coming from a brewery.

Cheers!

Holiday Ale Fest
Pioneer Courthouse Square [map]
Wednesday, Dec 3rd, 3pm - 9pm
Thursday- Sat, 11am - 10pm
Sunday, 11:00am - 7:00pm

Initial $20 tasting package required--includes mug and 10 tickets. Additional tix $1. No previous years' mugs. Prices for a 4 ounce taster start at one ticket, though some beers require more. Full pours are four tickets. 21+ only.

Is the Holiday Ale Fest Too Popular?

Last year in my write-up of the Holiday Ale Fest, I kicked off with this observation:

Something's gotta give. Pio Square is a wonderful location, looking out as it does on the downtown buildings. But it's only wonderful if you can get a beer in less than 20 minutes (or say, two minutes) and aren't in constant physical contact with all 23 of your closest neighbors. I stopped off after work on Friday for a full pour of Jim (just to be sure) and returned at 11:30 on Saturday. Friday night, even at five straight-up when I arrived, was insane. It was so crowded and so loud that I had to text Sally to find her once she'd gotten (almost instantly) lost in the crowd on her trek to get us tickets; when I tried to call, I couldn't even tell if she picked up. Saturday was all right until about three and then almost instantly the lines went from ten-person affairs to behemoths that ran the length of the tent.

Preston Weesner, the impresario of the Fest, has done a fantastic job bringing in exceptional beers. Problem is, we're running up against physics here--bodies cannot be folded into other dimensions so they can all fit under the tent. Short of that, I fear Weesner's success at luring the masses in will result in something that looks like a Bombay train. My request last year was to move the thing. Admittedly, this cuts into the charm. I suppose you could also limit bodies in who get inside--but this would probably result in riots outside the tent. (In 2006, the tapping of Hair of the Dog "Jim" almost led to riots inside the tent). Perhaps stretching it out to five days will help. I plan to go on Saturday, so I can test this theory.

But if it's as bad as it has been the last couple years, I may have to rethink things in '09.

Holiday Ale Fest - The Intriguing Beers

I have here in my hand a copy of the beer list for the Holiday Ale Fest (Wed-Sun, Pio Courthouse Square). It contains 37 regular beers*, and of them, I would very much like to try 35. Since I recently had Raven Mad and Redhook Double Black, and since Rogue Yellow Snow is an old standby, these I could skip. If I winnow the list down further by beers from area brewpubs, I can cut the list to 26. No doubt you'll do a similar calculation depending on your point of origin, and have a similarly overwhelming number of beers to try.

So I'll do what I do at every fest and create a list of a few beers that I must try. These will be the lines I visit first so they don't blow before I have a chance to try them. After that, well, it's like surfing--you ride the waves (generally to the smallest lines). What follows is not a defensible list. All these beers look enticing. But you gotta start somewhere, so here's where I'm starting:

• Widmer Babushka's Imperial Stout. [9%, 1.086, IBU: 70] Brewed exclusively for the fest (get used to that phrase), this is their long-time draft KGB stout fermented with 14 lbs/barrel of local black raspberries. I don't know what black raspberries are, but this sounds fantastic.
• Lagunitas White Pepper Stout. [8.2%] In their usual manner, the folks from Lagunitas tell us nothing about the beer. The name is actually yersinia pestis the latin name for the plague. Hell, I don't even know if it's white pepper stout--I'm basing my pick solely on the basis that it is a white pepper stout.
• Cascade Drie Zwarte Pieten "Sang Noir." [9.5%] This comes from Ron Gansberg's brewkettle, and it will be strong, sour, and funky. Whether the designation "Flanders red" has anything to do with this beer, which has been aged in whiskey and pinot barrels and fermented with cherries, is really beside the point. Brewed exclusively for the fest.
• Hair of the Dog Jim. [9%] Jim is a blend of several HotD beers (Adam aged in Elijah Craig barrels, Fred aged in new oak, Blue Dot, and Doggie Claws) and is made exclusively for the fest. This is the third iteration. Will it match the sublime first year batch? I must know.
• Stone Smoked Porter (with vanilla beans). [5.9%] This has two interesting--and one would imagine--conflicting flavors, smoke and vanilla. It may be terrible, but I have to try it to confirm. Plus, it's the only one less than 7% alcohol in the bunch.
  
• Pyramid Special Snow Cap. [7%, 1.069, IBU: 47] I almost resisted putting this on the list because of the actual name, so bad we shan't speak of it here, but I concluded that that was a little petty. Truth is, this will be one of my first pours, because it was aged with Sharffenberger cacao nibs, so it makes the list.

There are more Holiday Ale Fest considerations to be made, and more posts as well. But ponder these in the meantime. Have a look a the list. What will you absolutely have to try?

___________
*Special beers also pour on Wednesday and Thurday nights--that's stuff for another post.