Ninkasi at 10

How do you measure the modern era of American brewing? For me, there was a specific moment when the possibilities of the American tradition yawned in front of me like an almost unlimited chasm. I can date it to an exact moment, back in December 2006. I was attending the Holiday Ale Festival, and this new Eugene brewery with a lot of buzz brought a beer called Believer. Here's how I described it:

It had one of the most succulent aromas I've ever encountered--sweet, citrusy, with a little mint. I had four people give it a sniff and they all did the same thing: sniff, eyebrows up, head back down for another sniff. 

That experience pretty well describes the transition from the second epoch in American brewing into the modern era. In my schema, the first epoch was marked by the pale-amber-porter period, lasting until the mid-90s; the second era was the transitional hops period, when brewers were going crazy for IBUs in their IPAs. The modern era dawned when brewers realized the true, full potential of the hop, one that lay more in the aromas and flavors rather than the bitterness. No brewery seized this flavor terrain as fully as Ninkasi did in its early years. For months, the only beers they had on the market were Believer (a red IPA, now retired), Total Domination (the flagship IPA), Quantum, a hoppy pale, and Tricerahops (a double IPA). Not only did they introduce our palates to this new way of brewing, they basically only made these kinds of beers.

Big tanks

The entire country has gone through palate shift, but each region has its pivotal products that initiated the change. In Oregon, Ninkasi was patient zero. Each one of those early beers bore the DNA of this new way of brewing, and Ninkasi, making a big, splashy debut, was the perfect delivery mechanism. Even though ten years ago seems fairly recent, it was actually the tail end of a long fallow period in beer. In 2006, there were still only 1,377 breweries in the country, and the craft segment of the market was just 3.4%. It was breweries like Ninkasi, bringing an exciting new version of hoppy ales to the market, that jump-started the current boom in brewing.

This had to do in part because of the beer, but the company's approach, ethos, and personnel were also a big factor. Jamie Floyd had been brewing for over a decade in Eugene when Ninkasi launched, and he had always been a huge proponent of hops. (I recall a heated debate in the late 90s he had with a Colorado brewery who derided hoppy ales--"all you do is throw a bunch of hops in the kettle; anyone can do that.") Floyd has an outsized personality, simultaneously big and gregarious but also small-d democratic. Ninkasi reflects Jamie, and even when it was the cool brewery, there was something approachable and everyman about it. Ninkasi has never been twee or hipsterish, and this was probably one of the reasons it grew so fast so early.

Their initial phase took Ninkasi through two brewery expansions and put them in six-packs on grocery shelves. They fueled that rise with variations on hoppy themes, introducing hoppy seasonals along with their flagships. Of course, no brewery stays in front of the novelty curve for long. Ninkasi therefore needed a second act, and it was a surprising one: traditional European lagers. It turns out that, in addition to his love of hops, Floyd also had an abiding love of classic, balanced lagers. (He may have shown his hand when Ninkasi put Schwag out early in their life; a light lager with a throwback style, it was a decade ahead of its time.) So while they were at the apex of their popularity, and still growing so fast that there were occasional diacetyl problems, Ninkasi released a pilsner and a helles, both straightforward, un-Oregonized examples, that seemed entirely at contrast with their brand.

I think the most startling was Helles Belles, the helles they released in the summer of 2011. It was a 5.1% beer with just a scant 22 IBUs of Hallertau and Spalt hopping. I loved it (of course), but it really threw people off. Drinkers were used to pulling whatever Ninkasi released off the shelf, assuming it would be a hoppy ale. I watched more than a few confused friends crack open a bottle of one of their lagers and wonder what they were drinking. But there was a perverse genius to it, too. Ninkasi has brought a lot of people into beer over the past decade. By offering a pilsner, helles, and Dortmunder, they introduced those same people back to the kinds of beers they thought they didn't like--and I think with quite a bit of success.

The metal shop.

This demonstrates something unusual about the brewery. The first is that Jamie Floyd and co-founder Nikos Ridge keep their own counsel. They don't work with outside marketers, brand folks, or PR people. Everything, including the artwork, is done in-house. Indeed, Ninkasi's commitment to the arts extends to sponsorship of local music, hosting an "artist in residence," and metal craft. They have both a music studio and metal shop onsite. If you visit the main offices, you can find a room with artists working on the next label or event art. Even though Ninkasi has grown to become the third-largest brewery in the state, it still has a bit of Eugene's DIY feel about it. In the case of the lagers, there was no one there to suggest this ran counter to brand. The brewery's instinct was pretty solid, though--just at the moment Ninkasi was investing heavily in lagers, craft beer was finding them newly interesting as well.

It's safe to say no Oregon brewery--and few American breweries--have had a better decade than Ninkasi. It has passed through its constant-growth cycle and now has a large and impressive campus in Eugene. It remains one of the strongest brands in the state (more than half the regular line-up date back to the first couple years of production), and acts as a great vehicle for Floyd and Ridge to do the extracurricular activities and philanthropic work they clearly enjoy.

But it's also at an inflection point. The lineup, though solid, is starting to look dated. Most people in Oregon now think of Total Domination as a "classic, old-school" IPA. Ninkasi has added a couple of trendy IPAs to their regular lineup (session and fruit), but debuted them well into the fads. They don't have much of a barrel program and have largely ignored kettle-souring. None of that is bad--and in fact, older breweries never look good chasing trends--but it does put a question mark on the future. A brewery making over 100,000 barrels doesn't have the flexibility to pursue trends and must support core brands, but it also needs to find a way to appear fresh and interesting. What will Ninkasi's third act look like?

Ninkasi has long been mentioned among likely targets for buy-out, and it certainly makes sense on paper. Having toured the brewery with Jamie and Nikos a couple of times, though, I'd be surprised about that. You don't spread your focus to non-bottom-line activities like the arts, philanthropy, and the environment. You do hire branding firms and spend money on strategic planning to boost sales and reach in anticipation of an acquisition. Anything is possible, especially when big enough sums are mentioned, but this doesn't look like a brewery that's looking to sell.

As one more piece of evidence, I'll recount what Jamie told me when I toured the brewery back in 2010. He talked about the feeling of place he got from the old regional breweries that used to scatter the Pacific Northwest, and how he thought that was a good goal for Ninkasi. The NW has a different feel and vibe than the rest of the country, and local companies were the only ones who really knew how to address it, he told me. He wanted to be a part of the region, an institution that both understood it and helped define it. No doubt people can change their minds, but that always struck me as such an unusual, Oregon goal. It put Ninkasi's approach into a context that the brewery has continued to live up to. And I do hope we can continue to write about them at twenty, thirty, and forty years as an Oregon institution.

Happy 10th, Ninkasi--

Beer flowing overhead, from one building
to the next.

The Curious Case of Ninkasi's Dortmunder Oktoberfest

I invite you to study the label on the latest beer in Ninkasi's Prismatic Lager series.  Emblazoned in attractive gothic script one finds the seasonally-appropriate Oktoberfest written in monochrome.  But then underneath it, this odd description: "Dortmund-style lager."  What the ...?

Let's set that riddle aside for the moment to comment on the beer.  It is delicious, and had memories of Bavarian steins dancing in my head.  A quietly lush aroma of soft malt and peppery hops that unfolds when it enters your mouth into grainy fullness.  Jamie and Co. played this one straight, with German ingredients that go right down to the Reinheitsgebot-compliant acidulated malt.  A brewer is not allowed to adjust the pH of his mash artificially (nein! verboten! unnatürliche!), but can acidify it naturally or--much easier--use acidulated malt.  I actually hated the Sterling Pils that preceded it because the American malts were rough and thick.  In this 5.1% Oktoberfest, Ninkasi has found the softness of German malt, the aromatics and lovely graininess that make helles one of the world's two or three best session beers.  This is about as close to Munich as you'll get beerwise here in far Oregon.  Drink up.

But what about this weird language on the label?  Ninkasi sent me to a secret in-house video the brewery made for employees and distributors describing the beer and why it had these names.  Brewer/founder Jamie Floyd explained that it was largely because the Brewers Association style guidelines essentially don't distinguish between the two.  In the video, he gives backgrounders on how the two styles have sort of grown together so that--at least to far Americans--they look pretty much the same.  Essentially: both have gotten weaker and Oktoberfest has gotten lighter-colored.  Same-same.

On the one hand, I guess I can see how this happened.  Both styles have changed a bit and one has gotten quite weak in the country of its origin.  But on the other hand, this is really a disaster.  We shouldn't describe beer solely by its sensory or statistical profile.  History should play at least a supporting role--and maybe in this case should take precedence, for Americans likely have no idea where these beers came from.  I don't blame Ninkasi for this as much as I blame style guideline-writers who made the two seem indistinguishable.  They're not. 

Dortmund Export
The town of Dortmund is located in Germany's industrial north, far closer to The Netherlands (60 miles) than Theresienwiese in Munich (375 miles).  Northern Germany was late to lager-brewing and Dortmund only picked it up in the mid-19th century, coincidental with the rise of the city's coal and steel industries.  It took even longer for pale lagers to come into vogue, but they eventually did in 1887 when Dortmunder Union began making the first Dortmund-style pale lager.  The brewery made two strengths, a regular and an "export," which was brewed strong.  Export was a sturdy beer that ranged from 5.5% alcohol and up.  It had some of the malt sweetness of helles, but added the hopping of pilsner and the whiff of sulfur that came from the local water--which also stiffened the hops (like Burton).  It was a robust beer for thirsty men.

Source: Dortmund Brauerei-Museum

Export would one day conquer Germany--a shocking fact for a style that is all but extinct there now.  By the middle of the 20th century it had a staggering two-thirds of the total German market, most of that coming straight outta Dortmund.  As you easily surmise, that was the high point.  Export began losing out to other pale lagers of the day--helles and pils--and the great Dortmunder breweries closed one by one.   Now there's just one, DAB, and that beer is no stronger nor more hoppy than a helles (4.8%, 22 IBUs).  It is still a firm lager, hardened by calcium-rich local water, but not a beer of enormous character. It is, by historic standards, a pretty diminished and shrunken example of the style.  An export should be made strong, with strong flavors.  Think of the burly coal men.

Oktoberfest
Lagers originally got their start way down south in rustic Bavaria--hundreds of years before Dortmunders got around to digging out cellars.  All those early lagers were dark--dunkel--because Bavarians loved them some dark beer.  It wouldn't be until 350 years later, in the middle 19th century, that the brewers there began to fiddle with lighter malts.  I could actually get very deep into the weeds here, but suffice it to say that lighter malts did come, though in Bavaria they were called Munich malts and were honey-colored at the lightest.  They could be used as base malts, and used alone produced deeply-colored beer.  (Dust off your Oxford Companion and look up Sedlmayr and Dreher if you want more).

One of the popular beers was known as märzen, brewed in March (hence the name), a lager that summered over the hot season in cool cellars until the fall.  Because they didn't have artificial cooling at the time, breweries couldn't make beer in the hot months--March was a brewer's last blast until the autumn chill returned.  The idea that märzens are an amber beer is seared into our small brainpans, but this isn't essential to the style. Märzens are just 13-14 degree Plato beers that may be any color.  (Go buy a bottle of Schlenkerla's standard beer, a märzen, and see what color it is.)  In dark-beer Bavaria of the 19th century, märzen was dark.  The first oktoberfestbier was brewed by Spaten in 1841--that was the famous "pale" märzen made with rich Munich malt--and it was probably pretty dark, too, owing the Munich's preference for dunkel.  We can further gather this from the fact that Spaten didn't release the first helles until 1894 and the event threatened to cause a split among Munich's breweries, many of whom thought pale beers were a debasement of the true Munich art. Had that 1841 beer been pale, the outrage would have come much earlier.

Over time, the beers that became associated with Oktoberfest (only six could legally use the term) became amber lovelies of slightly amped heft.  Even today, the great Munich Oktoberfests approach 6%.  Eventually, of course, hellesbier would win out over dunkel in Munich and the Oktoberfests--once chestnut--slid closer to helles in hue.  Those old Oktoberfests would have had lots and lots of Munich malt.  Now they're just a shade darker than the fave style of the city and rely a lot more on pilsner malt--with just a hint of Munich for that glimmer of gold. As Bavarian beers, they are soft and just a touch spicy with hops--beers built for easy drinking by the liter. 

Verdict
So here's the thing.  By all reasonable, historic standards, both Dortmund and Oktoberfest should be beers of 5.5% to 6%.  But besides that, they're actually different beers.  Only recently have the Oktoberfests ditched the Munich malt.  When I spoke to Jürgen Knöller, the Bavarian-born and trained master brewer at Bayern, he told me how much things have changed since he got to the US. "I’m still brewing the German lager beers from 1985.  When you go to Germany you have some of the older breweries that still brew the same way, but the bigger ones certainly don’t do anymore.  What’s different between our beers here in general is that they’re all probably a little bit stronger, a little bit darker, whereas in Germany they have gotten a lot lighter."  It's strange to think of an Oktoberfest that completely eschews Munich malt.  Perhaps they exist, but I will maintain a prejudice against any Oktoberfest without Munich malt.  It strikes me as a minor form of apostasy. 

Americans are under no obligation to follow the modern German shift to the light.  We can easily accept the not-exactly-truth we always thought was true--that Oktoberfest should be amber beers with a bit of that rich, honey-caramel Munich malt flavor.  Dortmund beers are more like a Burton pale lager, with a sulfurous, mineral edge and a fair bit of hop and no Munich malt.  Both should be a bit on the burly side, certainly not less than 5.5%.


Ninkasi has brewed a glorious helles.  There's just no other way around it.  It's neither an Oktoberfest nor a Dortmund, but it is very much a German-style lager--the most important thing.  It has the flavor of authenticity and Munich.  It's just not either of the styles listed on the label.

Old-School Barley Wines and Other Thoughts

Fred with the BridgePort Old Knucklehead that bore
his likeness.  Credit: Norm Schoen.

In the year of Deschutes' birth, 1988, I was twenty years old--which is to say well into my drinking career.  The Northwest was getting into hops by then, but the trend hadn't cohered into the categories we have now.  When breweries wanted to stagger you with hops, they tended to go big and brew barley wines*.  In retrospect, this was an interesting layer in the sediment of craft brewing.  By today's standards, those early barley wines weren't especially huge--seems like nine to eleven percent was the range--but they were crazy unbalanced.  The hops were screaming banshees of grating Chinooks placed atop a gelatinous goo the flavor and consistency of caramel sauce--everything was baled together with the razorwire of higher alcohols.  A lot of these came in wee nip bottles, which was a kindness to the customer who had to handle the damn things with tongs and gloves.  Let them age a few years and they softened into the texture of worn saddle, but that was as gentle as they ever got. (Old Crustacean is still made to what looks like a pretty classic recipe.)

So that was barley wine. 

A few weeks past, during the time my blogging was quick and cheap, I got a bottle of Deschutes collaboration Barley Wine Ale.   The conceit of was that:

Deschutes Brewery, North Coast Brewing Company and Rogue Ales have teamed up to create a traditional barley wine as the first in Deschutes Brewery’s Class of ’88 collaboration series. Each of the three breweries working on the project brewed their own interpretation of that original recipe. The Class of ’88 Barley Wine was based on the guide lines published in renowned beer connoisseur Fred Eckhardt’s The Essentials of Beer Style, which was originally published in 1988.

I must report with ambivalence that Deschutes' reboot isn't the least bit old school.  It's much more along the lines of what we now, in this much more taxonomically-precise era, would call a double IPA.  Barley Wine Ale has a snickerdoodle malt base and a rich fruitiness that is accentuated by melon-papaya hopping.  (In 1988, melons and papaya were available mainly in fruit and candy form, and certainly not humulus lupulus.  We also had to walk barefoot in the snow for 14 miles to get to a pub in order to procure a bottle of molten barley wine.)  The alcohol is very well hidden, coming in just at the end, when the hops turn spicy.  It has a mousse-like satiny body, quite rich, which is the one way in which it deviates from the modern imperial IPA, but it is not a caramel bomb, as beers of the 80s inevitably were.

If you actually want something that evokes the 80s--in a palatable 2013 kind of way--you might prefer Babylon, a beer Ninkasi calls a double IPA.  The malt bill, though, which relies heavily on bready Maris Otter, actually makes Babylon more reminiscent of those crazy old barley wines.  It's not an exact match: there's no caramel (the rest of the grist is a melange of malts from different brewing traditions) and the hops are a lot more marmalade-y than alley-catty.  There are El Dorados and Horizons--modern--but also old-timey EKGs, Fuggles, and Targets, which also remind me of the old days.  But it is quite a bitter blast, and the malting is thick and syrupy (if short of gelatinous).  For those of you who are younger than me--something like 60% of the population--and who live the terrible, benighted lives of plenty, Babylon isn't a bad place to start.  Throw in a splash of gasoline for the full effect.

As a last comment to the geezers, I invite you to mention your own recollections of the 80s and their hoppy beers.  Perhaps I'm just misremembering the beers of the day.  This is unlikely, but I'll entertain the question.

_________________
*Barley wine, not barleywine.  That latter term came about because the government wouldn't allow Fritz Maytag to properly label his first batch of Old Foghorn.  Apparently they believed it would confuse consumers, who might mistake it for Chardonnay. 

Beers: Change of Seasons

When I lived in India, there were two seasons--hot and oven.  The shift from one to the other was subtle.  You knew it was winter when your skin stopped visibly crisping when it was inadvertently exposed.  People always talked about "change of seasons," as though something profound washappening.  In any case, I was reminded of this when all of a sudden I started getting flooded with beer.  In the US, fall is a big moment to shift from summer sippers to the more complex, fuller beers that get geeky (and brewer) blood flowing.  So here's a few reviews, with more to come.

Ninkasi Lady of Avalon

Located somewhere within the busy walls of Ninkasi Brewing is a Don Quixote.  The Ninkasi brand is built entirely on muscular, lupulin-injected ales, so popular they've fueled growth that has made it one of the nation's biggest craft breweries.  What is the most off-brand thing they could do?  How about a series of lagers and, even more strange, subtle Bavarian lagers like helles and dunkel?  And so we have the Prismatic series, confusing customers (behold the BeerAdvocates as they sputter) but delighting me. 

In about two weeks, I will have a far, far better handle on the style of beer they've brewed with Lady of Avalon (I will be in Franconia beginning the 19th and then on to Munich).  As it is, dunkel being rare in these parts (both locally-brewed and imported), I'll skip thoughts about fidelity to style.  Indeed, with a perfume of earthy hops and a noticeable spicy bitterness, it probably qualifies as "Oregon Dunkel."  Pure comfort beer for chill nights--creamy, walnut malting with a roasted twist.  If you're in a mood for Black Butte Porter, let your hand wander to a sixer of this instead.  It will satisfy.

Final question: how did Ninkasi get the nipple past the TTB?

Gordon Biersch Weizen Eisbock
Gordon Biersch has entered the big-beer, barrel-aged, specialty-bottled beer market (someone should come up with a category name for these).   I failed to review the imperial pilsner they sent over the summer.  It's a style I don't love, but GB managed to find hop delicacy in its heft, and I quite enjoyed it. An impressive debut.

Next comes a Weizen Eisbock, which is pretty self-explanatory. The brewery started with a weizen (probably a strong one, based on the beer's final ABV--10%) and coaxed plenty of banana from the yeast.  Then they froze it, took out some ice, and concentrated the beer.  This method of distillation is a tricky one and it works--when it does--because the concentrated flavors continue to harmonize.  Bocks make a great starting point; they're clean and balanced.  Weizens emphatically do not.  What Gordon Biersch has done is concentrate the banana flavors but also roasted flavors.  This is an unhappy coincidence--like anchovies in your chocolate mousse.  One of those ideas that draws up interestingly on paper, but doesn't pan out in the real world. 



Redhook Winterhook
I was recently writing about how Northwesterners like their winter ales (Full Sail Wassail, Deschutes Jubelale), and a classic brand is Winterhook.  It is very much in the vein of those eighties winter beers that seem to have sort of died out--but which are really quite special.  Brewed with a touch of warming alcohol (usually closer to 7%, but Winterhook is six), a deep blush of color and a touch of Maillard roastiness all spiced with the finest, usually insistent local hops.  It's a wonder no one has said, "screw it, let's just make one of these and sell them year-round."  They are always welcome and always loved.

Winterhook has had its good years and it's meh years, and this is a good one.  The beer is deep amber, but has a noticeable roast in both the nose and palate.  It has been laced with wonderfully lush, floral hops--they deepen into spice at the swallow.  Very nice beer.  One word of caution: most winter ales can use a bit of ripening, and some are nice after a year.  Don't cellar Winterhook.  The hops are a big reason this beer succeeds, and they're delicate and crisp, two qualities that won't age well.

Southampton Burton IPA

This is a bonus beer I picked up at Belmont Station.  Burtons are something of a white whale for me; it's one of the most important (changing) styles in beer history, but effectively an extinct one.  Revivals pop up from time to time, and I'm always quick to try one to see if it can transport me back to the 19th century.  Of course, since I didn't actually live in the 19th century, this is all impressionistic.

I think Southampton gets it pretty close to the mark--close to the mark in my head, anyway.  In my head, a Burton should be pale-ish (but not pale), strong, thick, minerally, and relatively hoppy.  Burtons are sticky with high terminal gravities, but they achieve balance through pretty stiff hopping.  All true with Southampton's.  As a bonus, the Burtonized water adds quite a bit to the experience and is a key element to the balance.  Heavy maltiness is sweet and gloppy on the tongue; the minerals cut against this perception and help lighten the experience.  You wouldn't want this beer on a hot summer day.  Fortunately, you don't have to worry about that anymore.  As time travel goes, this is a pretty cheap way to do it.

New Beers: Ninkasi and Widmer

A new season means a new tide of seasonals, and they have been washing up on my doorstep with delightful regularity (I mentioned the scrumptious Redhook Winterhook already). For consideration today, Ninkasi's new Imperiale Stout and two from Widmer. With alacrity, since I know many of you resist reviews....

Ninkasi Imperiale Stout
I have spent three years trying to like Oatis, Ninkasi's longtime oatmeal stout. It is well-loved by many trustworthy stout fans, and I consider it a strange personal failing that I don't enjoy it more. (An overwhelming roast bitterness spoils the experience.) The new Imperiale, sold in the seasonal 22-ounce four-pack with Total Dom, Believer, and Sleigh'r, is the stout for me. The modern world of imperial stouts is one of unnecessary excess--gargantuan beers soused in bourbon and thick enough to lose a race with molasses in pouring speed. It need not be so. A stout brewed at 8-10% without bourbon-aging can actually be a beer of balance and subtlety, and so it is with Imperiale. With a grist of eight malts (including flaked and roasted barley), Imperiale achieves a layered palate that I absolutely swore had a dollop of rauchmalt. Nope, it's the roast, vamping as smoke and giving the beer a satisfyingly antiquated quality. Lots of plum and dark fruit, too, of the kind found in aged beers. But since I got the smoked malt bit wrong, I won't assert that the brewery's been letting this beer ripen. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised, either. An excellent stout.

Widmer O'Ryely IPA
You have to hand it to Widmer: they like what they like. And what they like are Nelson Sauvin hops, which the brewery embraced a few years back and have become sort of a house character. They are intense hops that run a continuum from fruity to musky and they're as difficult to ignore as a sweaty linebacker: you like 'em or you don't. I don't, so there you go. O'Ryely is the third in the series of Rotater IPAs, and a definite departure from the old-school Falconer and new school X-114 (made with Citra). What I will say is that the rye malt adds a welcome earthiness that does cut back on the musk. If you're a fan of Nelson Imperial IPA, you'll enjoy his little brother, O'Ryely.

Brothers Reserve Lemongrass Wheat Ale
The newest entry to the boxed, one-time-only Brothers Reserve series is a nicely experimental beer made with muscat grapes, lemongrass, and champagne yeast. The aroma and initial taste suggests a wheat wine, but then the grapes arrive, sweetly, sending the beer off in an entirely different direction. To my tongue, lemongrass doesn't taste like lemons--it's a more herbal flavor, a light complement that doesn't overwhelm a beer. Where the beer didn't thrill me was in its wet, heavy finish. The use of grapes, so sweet already, in a delicate, wheaty ale, tend to amp up the sugars. The thick alcohol notes accelerate the effect. I wondered what a version of this brewed to about 5% would have tasted like--or a version without the grapes. It's an interesting beer, and one worth investing ten bucks in, but its conceptual promise may leave you wishing for a version 2.0.

Widmer also sent me Brrrbon, the barrel-aged version of Brrr, but it's really not for me. I was never a fan of the base beer, which is in a style I'm also not a huge fan of, and bourbon-barrel aging it (a practice with which I've developed a love-hate relationship) didn't help matters. There's a reason they're bringing it back though: most people disagree with me. So go enjoy.

We also have the issue of the new Jubelale, with its reformulated recipe. But that deserves a post of its own.

Ninkasi's New 4-Pack Strategy

Here's the great paradox in the beer business. Most breweries achieve stability by selling large proportions of one or two labels to a broad, loyal consumer base. That's good, but it doesn't lend itself to clever hooks for bringing attention to the brand. So what do you do to make noise? Some breweries have a specialty line or a barrel-aging program; others have test breweries to produce experimental beer. Ninkasi, which has neither, has conceived a novel strategy with their summer four-packs.

Inside, you get four different 22-ounce beers: the best-selling label (Total Domination), the summer release (Radiant), the beer geek's delight (Maiden the Shade), and one beer you can only get by buying the four-pack (Nuptiale). In addition, Ninkasi has included info about how to download music they promote, which is not only an added bonus, but alerts people to the fact that Ninkasi is in the music promotion biz. (In a parallel universe, brewer Jamie Floyd is the front man in a hardcore funk band.) Finally, there are blotches on the box that, when scanned with a cell phone, will take you to videos of Jamie discussing the beers. (You can also find these vids the old-fashioned way, by browser. Here's the Nuptiale video, for example.)

This is all clearly a form of gimmickry--but it's a good gimmick! Ninkasi has always sold their 22s at a bargain, and in this form they work out to $3,50 each (a six-pack equivalent of $11.45). You get four solid beers at a very good price--reason enough to buy. But adding in a rare beer is quite clever. I've wanted to try Nuptiale since I first saw it appear on the Ninkasi website. For Ninkasi, it puts more than just Total Dom in the consumer's hand, which may broaden their other beers' appeal. And, while Ninkasi's taste in music does not mirror my own, the free song downloads are pretty cool, too. (That they further the brewery's rock 'n roll brand is also pretty smart.)

Some sales strategies are strange and mystifying, others just silly. Ninkasi's summer four pack is one of the rare birds that is both good business and also a great deal. I hope they do more of this kind of thing.

______________

Oh, one more thing: the Nuptiale. It's called a cream ale, and for the most part, Ninkasi plays it straight. It's a bit robusto (5.7%) and a bit hoppy (26 IBUs) in relative terms--but quite subdued compared to what Ninkasi fans may expect. I think everyone wants to like cream ales more than they actually do. Recognizing this, Ninkasi used an all-malt grist (no corn or other adjuncts) and spiced the brew with a classic, neutral hopping. It's tasty, smooth, and summery. It won't knock anyone back, but on a hot day, you'll enjoy it more than a Total Dom.

A Little Knowledge Can Be a Dangerous Thing

A couple of weeks back, Widmer's annual "W"-series release hit the supermarket shelves. The beer is a slightly refurbished version of an old Gasthaus fave, KGB imperial stout. This one is at once bigger (a hefty 9.3%) and smoother, employing dark wheat malt. Amid this unexpected tsunami of new beers, I hadn't had a chance to try it, but my friends had. These are a couple of guys who enjoy good beer but aren't afflicted with terminal beer geek disease. In an unprecedented move, they started raving about it on the email. (Politics and current events are the usual topics.) They never talk about beer.

As a contrasting view, I checked in with BeerAdvocate to see if it was unanimous acclamation, and was a little surprised to find a tepid B coming from the 24 reviews. And some of the reviews are just scathing:

"What a joke. It looks like an Imperial Stout that was severely watered down, probably a one part stout, two parts water ratio."

and

"Moiuthfeel is very thin, to thin, it is about as thick as a lager really, a bit of carb, but leaves a very dryness afterwards. Overall, I really hope this is just a dumb'd down for the masses version of from what I heard was a great beer."

I had a pour of this at the Collaborator release a week ago, but I didn't take notes and it was the third in a line. A review will come later. But my impression is that Widmer was aiming for something specific and very different from, say, Abyss. Reading through the negative comments, one has the sense that people weren't tasting KGB for what it was, but rather measuring it against a beer in their minds Widmer had no intention of brewing.

It happened again with Ninkasi Renewale, which I tried last night. It's an Irish red ale, made mostly to style. A bit strong (5.2%) and quite a bit hoppier (40 IBUs), but still in possession of the hallmarks of the style--a rainwater softness and gentle heather-like malt sweetness. This is one of the most sessionable styles, and it should really please the palate. Ninkasi's does, and I admired it quite a bit. (I'd give it a B+, knocked down for just 5 BUs too many hops--forgivable for a Ninkasi product.) Only five reviews on BeerAdvocate, but they average out to a B-. The unimpressed reviewers remarked:

"A beer to bring to a dinner party as it won't offend or put off many beer drinkers or overpower the food served."

and

"Ok on the palate ,i suppose quite thin and watery near the end. Very very average beer."

Again, these reviews seem not to be judging the beer for itself, but compared to some bizarre standard--like a double IPA. It's hard to imagine any beer below 50 IBUs and 6.5% alcohol getting any kind of nod from these drinkers.

As many of you have noted, I've been on a bit of a small-beer kick lately. A related phenomenon, and one which didn't become clear to me until I started thinking about these beers, is that this extreme-beer phenomenon seems to be in danger of swamping craft brewing and setting the standard for what "good" beer is. If you look at the "best" beers in BeerAdvocate's ratings, almost none are below 6% (in the top 20, only Weihenstephan Hef crashes the party--there are only three in the top 40). Seven of the top ten bests have 10% or more alcohol.

I know most of the people who read this blog--those of you who are afflicted with terminal beer geek disease--will probably agree that size matters little to accomplishment. And there are a lot of regular drinkers out there who are also able to appreciate lots of different kinds of beer. (When I look at the beer selection in the grocery store, I notice that mostly the beers people actually buy are closer to 5% ABV.) But there's this middle stratum of Xtreme beer fans who have very fixed ideas about what a beer should be. And somehow they freak me out.

On the other hand, it could be because today's my birthday. The older I get, the more my get-off-my-lawn-you-damn-kids nature emerges. Lucky you.

Not All Breweries Are Built Alike

Note: some of the language cleaned up for clarity.

Nearly a month ago, Patrick Emerson and I took a long-overdue tour of the lower Willamette Valley. We managed four breweries in about 27 hours, which is by far the most condensed brewery-touring I've ever done. Eventually, I'll give separate write-ups about each one, but I wanted to do a meta post about an insight that came by virtue of doing all four.

Everyone who starts a craft brewery loves beer, but they don't all have the same goals and aspirations for their breweries. Some models call for multi-million dollar plants with scores of employees; others are tiny, shoestring-budget systems that employ one--the brewer. Some are designed around a restaurant/pub; others are industrial sites that may have a only a tasting room (or nothing at all). Some are maximized to produce idiosyncratic, one-off beers; others to produce consistent beers in a line, batch after batch.

These differences in goals became evident in our inadvertent scheduling of four very different models of breweries: the small production brewery, the large production brewery, the high-end brewpub, and the neighborhood local. They were very nearly a complete range of the types of models brewery owners shoot for when they start their businesses (I'd add the restaurant-brewpub, where beer is subsidiary to to the restaurant, as a final slot).*


Large Production Craft Brewery
From the very start, Ninkasi was designed to grow. Jamie Floyd had worked in a medium-sized brewpub (Eugene's Steelhead), and when he and Nikos Ridge set plans for Ninkasi, they very intentionally decided to create a "roduction brewery (a brewery producing bottled and kegged beer for wholesale--not a retail location with attached pub). The growth spurt Ninkasi has enjoyed wasn't probably in the plan, but Floyd and Ridge have been extremely aggressive in growing the brewery. As Jamie took us around the plant, it was pretty amazing to hear the hours he's worked.

The first step was spending long hours becoming the house beer of Eugene--a sizable market that fueled their first round of growth. Almost immediately, they expanded their brewhouse to a 30-barrel system. (Whenever you hear the size of a system, it means the size of a single batch of beer. A ten-barrel system is common for small breweries and brewpubs; in a single batch, they make just over 300 gallons. With a 30-barrel system, Ninkasi was making almost a thousand gallons a pop.)

The next frontier was Portland, which again meant more long hours promoting and selling around a town two hours north of their homes. Beer is a relationship business; breweries need to have good connections with distributors, retailers, and now, thanks to the avid beer scene in the NW, customers. Floyd picked up an apartment in Portland to save him a drive after long days selling beer. Portland has now eclipsed Eugene and accounts for about 45% of Ninkasi's production.

The next step is further market saturation and expansion. When we visited, Ninkasi was just completing a move to a 60-barrel brewhouse. They recently picked up a bottling line so they can sell both 22s and regular six-packs, and are busily adding massive tanks to condition the beer.

All of this is very high-risk, high-reward work. Ninkasi now employs dozens of people, and boasts impressive revenues. But it's also risky. Selling a lot of beer is enormously complicated: the plant is a huge industrial operation, which poses plenty of challenges itself, but there are also the distributors and retailers, the promotions operation, the ingredients, bottle, and equipment suppliers--and on and on. The bigger a company grows, the more small problems can trip it up. As Patrick and I got in the car after our tour, we were both exhausted. Jamie has been going pedal-to-the-floor for four years, with no end in sight. He seems to be working pretty much constantly. The reward may be one of the largest craft breweries in America (Ninkasi is already one of the larger Oregon breweries), but that will come only at the cost of enormous effort.

Small Production Craft Brewery
An ostensible competitor across town, Oakshire Brewing is about an eighth as big as Ninkasi. In many ways, though, size is really the distinguishing characteristic. Both are industrial plants--and in fact, Oakshire is in a more industrial area, and their brewery has only a provisional tasting space. (In its last remodel, Ninkasi added a haute tasting room.) Both produce kegs and 22s, with distribution mainly centered in Oregon.

But behind superficial similarities, there's a big difference in their goals: Oakshire doesn't seem to have aspirations to take on Widmer and Deschutes. Rather, it looks like the brewery is a vehicle for owner Jeff Althouse and brewer Matt Van Wyk to earn a decent living while making high-end beer. Matt told us his story, which started out as a teacher. Brewing seemed interesting, but he's not one of those guys who had his heart set on being a brewer. But ultimately he did end up in Chicago brewing, and was interested in coming to Oregon--but he didn't want to take a job for no money just to be here. He met Jeff and they were in discussion a while before it became clear that the Oakshire job would be a good fit. When it seemed like Oakshire could afford him, Matt moved out.

Production breweries have less flexibility than brewpubs for tinkering with their line. Putting beer in a bottle is an arduous process that involves art design, printing, and a federal label-approving process. Breweries can't easily just throw out a one-off beer and take it to the grocery store. Ninkasi's beers are almost all in their regular line-up, with few deviations. Oakshire, though, can afford to tinker. They have a barrel room and they talk a lot with Nick Arzner at Block 15 (see below) about souring and aging. Matt, who hails from Iowa, has the Midwest love of lagers, and they have both a doppelbock and a schwarzbier in tanks. When we were there, they had an absolutely perfect small beer they made from Ill-Tempered Gnome. All of these will go into kegs, and they can easily find distribution for these small quantities around town (so much so that I note with pique that they don't often come up I-5 to Portland).

Some brewers like to tinker, and some breweries like to have lots of fun projects going on. And not everyone is willing to work 80-hour weeks. There's real money in brewing, even in small breweries like Oakshire. I'm not enough of a brewer ever to take up the mash paddle myself, but if I were, this is the kind of job that would appeal to me.

High-End Brewpub
This may be more of an Oregon thing, but some of the breweries producing the best beer in the state are brewpubs. Pelican, Double Mountain, and Cascade spring to mind. I think there was once an idea that production breweries were for serious brewers and brewpubs were more a gimmick--a restaurant with beer. But this may be exactly backwards: brewpubs offer a creative brewer the opportunity to brew almost any beer she wants, in the way she wants.

This is clearly the case with Corvallis' Block 15, the basement of which was referred to as the "fermentation wonderland" by someone on our trip. Block 15 is in many ways the standard brewpub. Owner/brewer Nick Arzner has a background in food service and understood the restaurant side of things. It has standard taps and pretty standard menu. On the brewery side of things, he wanted to hit the ground running with high-quality, clean beers. He had only homebrewed himself, so Block 15 hired Steve Van Rossem, a brewer with nearly two decades of commercial experience. Block 15 has a regular menu of a dozen or more beers, and Steve mans these regular brews.

Nick, meanwhile, tinkers in the fermentorium down in the basement. Over time, they have expanded out, underneath adjacent businesses, and now the cellar is a riot of grundies, hoses, and oak barrels, all nested in warrens of small rooms. (If he could figure out how to fit people down there, Nick could sell it on ambiance alone for its prohibition vibe.) Here, Nick can follow his bliss. When we visited, he let us sample souring beers from the barrel, and then unveiled some absolutely stunning beers he's got in bottles--a soured wit, a very dry saison, and some of that La Ferme’ de Demons from Cheers to Belgian Beers (it's aged beautifully). He's fiddling with quite a few others, as well. Oh, and he picked up a coolship recently, too, so he can start spontaneous fermentation.

So long as Block 15 stays where it is, it won't be producing vast amounts of beer. Nick said they'll do 1200 barrels this year, which is quite robust for a brewpub. But unlike production breweries, these little guys are just not built for quantity. Instead, Nick has the freedom to brew absolutely anything that comes into his mind.

The Neighborhood Local
The final model is an idiosyncratic one, and one I didn't fully understand until I visited Brewer's Union Local 180. From my distant vantage point of Portland, I regarded owner/brewer Ted Sobel as "the cask guy." Indeed, the conceit of his brewpub is that all his beer is served cask conditioned. He has a few guest taps on regular CO2, but his beers go only into firkins. As a huge cask fan myself, I have seen Ted as a kindred spirit, the Johnny Appleseed of real ale.

But to visit the pub is to understand Ted's plan more fully. His real aspiration--the reason he quit his tech job to start the pub in the first place--was to create in Oakridge, Oregon the kind of local pub he found in Wales. He wanted to create a town living room, a place where everyone (6 to 86) can come, have a basket of fish and chips, and enjoy each others' company. Cask beer--this is the path, not the destination. Ted sees it as part of the holistic nature a pub plays in a community. Some people open a bakery because the innate wholesomeness of fresh bread seems like an end in itself. Cask ale is like that, particularly as it's the glue that holds neighborhoods together.

Whether Oakridge, Oregon (population 3000--though Ted said, indignantly, that it's 4400 if you include the whole Westfir-Oakridge metro area) has the population to support that is a different matter. We got there on a dark, cold Wednesday in November and the place was humming with life (until about 8:30), so let's hope so. It's a beautiful little pub.

_______

If Kevin's numbers are right, Ted has a shot at hitting triple digits this year (100 barrels!), so he's clearly not in this to get rich selling beer. Going from Ninkasi to Brewer's Union caused a bit of whiplash, but it was also revealing. Jame and Ted are both brewers, but man, do their goals differ.

____________
*The numbers I'm working with in this post are unverified, but they look like this. Annual production 2010: Ninkasi - 20,000 bbls, Oakshire - 3,500 bbls, Block 15 - 1200 bbls, and Brewer's Union - 100 bbls.

Brand Dissection: Ninkasi Brewing

In the fifth part of this ongoing series, I consider Ninkasi Brewing's brand. If you want to read previous editions, follow this link.

Background
Ninkasi has only been around since 2006, but it's already become one of the state's larger breweries. Co-founder Jamie Floyd was not new to either brewing or brewing in Eugene, having been with Steelhead for years before opening Ninkasi. (The other co-founder, Nikos Ridge, has a background in finance.) Floyd calls their approach the "Chico strategy" (after Sierra Nevada) to become the city beer of a smaller community and expand from there. Check. Now Ninkasi is expanding out, and actually sells more beer in Portland than Eugene. The brewery just installed a new 30 60-barrel system and has a new bottling line and lots and lots of capacity to grow.

The Name
Ninkasi is an obvious choice--so obvious I was amazed Floyd found it free of trademark. The name refers to the ancient Sumerian goddess of brewing, documented in a famous 4000-year-old hymn. But surely someone had already snatched it up? Someone had--Fritz Maytag, whose Anchor Brewery had used it for their Sumerian Beer Project. But, over the course of 15 years, the mark expired, and Floyd and Ridge were the first ones to discover its availability. It's a classic name, like Gambrinus, the patron saint of brewing. Interestingly, Floyd says it has the dual virtue of still being slightly obscure ("a lot of people think it's Japanese")--familiarity to beer geeks, intrigue to those outside the loop.

Elements of the Brand
Back when I first started writing about beer, BridgePort had just changed their line-up from the old, iconic nature labels to one of consistent brand identity. A PR woman told me at the time that they wanted to get away from beer branding to brand branding. The idea was that people would just order a "BridgePort," ignoring the style of beer. It alerted me to just how hard that is. Breweries are known for certain beers--rarely does the brand permeate the full line-up. With Ninkasi, that's not true.

Everyone knows what Ninkasi beer is: hoppy. There are variations on a theme, but most of the core lineup features pale beers of vibrant hoppiness. For this, Ninkasi has earned the enmity of some beer geeks (a minority), but from a branding point of view, it's impressive and rare. You can just order a Ninkasi and have a good idea of what you'll get. (When I visited the brewery last week, they had a Berliner Weisse on draft at the tap room, and Floyd agreed with a laugh when I said I bet his customers were shocked when they tasted it.) This may not be the direction every brewery wants to go, but for Ninkasi it works: they're delighted to be known as the hophead's beer.

Logo
Interestingly, Floyd and Ridge decided not to use goddess iconography. There's no visual reference to the goddess, just the name. Instead, the logo is a starburst pattern surrounding the Ninkasi "N."

"The logo itself is based on an Egyptian revival mirror that used to hang in my house. All the original branding was done by me and my ex-wife [Brianna Jackson]. She's a graphic artist by profession and so we created a lot of that stuff together. We wanted something that was modern but timeless and had a Middle Eastern feel to it. It said a lot without really having to say a lot."

The rays of the logo are echoed in some of the labels as well--Radiant and Maiden the Shade. Although Floyd didn't mention it, this seems like a nod--perhaps unconscious--to the crunchy vibe of Eugene. There's a strong streak of tie-dye running through the city, and Ninkasi channels it in subtle ways.

Colors
Since Ninkasi doesn't do images, the brand relies on colors. Each label has a strong, clear field--almost like a flag--which is pretty much the only thing that distinguishes one beer from another. This intentionally stark scheme emerged as a way for customers to distinguish beers by looking at the tap handle, and Floyd likes the way it makes Ninkasi stand out on grocery shelves, too: "But when you walk up to look at a row of bottles, you see a blur of things, they don’t come out. In some cases our beers are next to each other, and in some cases they are separated by style--so it's easy to identify them." (I can speak to how easy they are to spot, too; I'm colorblind, and a lot of colors are muddy and indistinct--Ninkasi's have pure, saturated colors.)

Music
Two of the beers are homages to heavy metal bands--which I've already written about (Maiden the Shade and Sleigh'r). I have wondered what this says about the brewery's tastes, and Floyd confessed that there were lots of resident metalheads there. But even these are part of the brand--Ninkasi has a side interest in promoting local bands and has even toyed with the idea of producing music. (Apparently they're big supporters of music in Boise, Idaho--which based on my youth there, could use it.)

Interestingly, the first beer Floyd ever brewed (at Steelhead) was called Starchild for the messiah figure in Parliament Funkadelic's mythology. So the link to music goes way back. Let me be the first to request that Dr. Hoppenstein be the next homage--funk's far cooler than metal. (Take it up in comments.)

Brand Success
Ninkasi's brand is consistent and distinctive, two clear markers of success. You don't mistake a Ninkasi label on a grocery shelf. But brands also reflect a company's identity, and the Ninkasi brand does a good job here, too. Ask ten beer fans what they think of Ninkasi, and I doubt you'll get a neutral opinion from more than one. The brewery knows what it's doing, and it doesn't wander in the weeds searching for direction. The brand is similarly confident and direct. I don't doubt that there are some who don't like it, but everyone recognizes it. In an increasingly crowded field, that's maybe the most important sign of success.

IPAs and More IPAs: Ninkasi Maiden the Shade

I'm a little late to the party, but I wanted to comment on Ninkasi's new (or rather two-month-old) 22-ounce release, Maiden the Shade. Let's start with the label, a curiously discordant pastiche of themes. The artwork comes from Jerry Garcia's daughter, Annabellle, a perfect tribute for a beer first brewed for the venerable Oregon Country Fair. The image shows a young woman under the shade of a summer tree, receiving a painted Ninkasi logo from a tree sprite. I take this to be Ninkasi herself, but perhaps this is projectiong. (In the first rendering, a fair amount of the Goddesses buttocks are visible and she is topless. Apparently the government found this too risque--she now sports a bikini top and arse-covering sarong.) It is consonant with the Fair's crunchy vibe and the Dead's canon of cartoon art. All in all, spot on.

But then there's the name and title font: a separate tribute to a different Maiden, the Iron one, a band very much un-crunchy nor Dead-like. I am getting the sense that the good folks at Ninkasi like their music hammering to the hammer of double bass drums--recall that the winter seasonal is Sleigh'r, with similar fonty homage to the homophonic band Slayer.

Eugene is, of course, a sacred site along the spiritual ley line of famous Dead/hippie haunts, so the crunchy part makes sense. But perhaps the thrash metal allusions point to the music Ninkasians actually prefer. (It would be interesting to see Jamie Floyd's iPod. Rarely do you find "Number of the Beast" and "Aiko Aiko" on the same machine, but stranger things have happened. Or maybe it's a Nikos Ridge/Jamie Floyd dichotomy. But I digress.)


Tasting Notes
There appears to be emerging a trend toward what you might call a "summer IPA"*--a pilsner-hued, light-bodied beer brewed at substantial strength and bitterness, but in a kind of stripped-down, pure-essence presentation. I would count Double Mountain's Vaporizer as a member of this small club. Both beers vent hop aroma like glue vents brain-destroying vapors. Both are surprisingly light-colored (though unlike pilsners, they have the shimmering haze of hop particles). Maiden the Shade was purported to have been brewed with ganja in mind--another homage to the OCF--and does have a sticky, resinous musk. It is not, to my nose, as stanky as Racer 5. Instead, I found it more layered that that--notes of lavender, pine, and sage make it an earthy, spicy bouquet. Ninkasi employs seven hops to get the effect: Summit, Centennial, Simcoe, Columbus, Crystal, Palisade and Amarillo. Sometimes the result of potpourri-hopping is a muddle, but here you get quite a bit of articulated flavors.

I give special credit to the beer for its surprising sweetness. Some of this comes from the malt bill, but I think more come from the hop esters--or more likely, the interaction between the two. Some sharply-hopped beers either exhaust or dull one's palate; because of its lightness and sweetness, Maiden the Shade remains fresh and sessionable despite the 72 IBUs and 6.8% alcohol.

When you see the Ninkasi label, you have certain expectations. Despite the fact that Maiden in Shade penned out to exactly meet them, I was surprised by the beer. It was both more delicate and yet oddly more bold than I expected. A great beer.

The review panel at the New School took a look at this beer last week, so you can compare and contrast my findings with those.

_______________
*I am not wedded to the term, but if it takes off, or if there's a movement to enshrine this style into the canon of the BJCP, I claim full rights to Summer IPA ™.

Foyston on Ninkasi

On days like today, when I open the paper and see a 1200-word article on Ninkasi, I am pleased that we still have one old-school beer reporter working for a mainstream outlet. John's written a nice piece that really captures the Ninkasi way. Even if you're familiar with a lot of the information, you'll like the presentation and find the quotes enlightening. Really great stuff. And, John, I think you've given me an idea for my next brand-identity piece:

Ninkasi also has a clean, coherent graphical identity that helps it stand out. The logo is a distinctive N in a turquoise sunburst on black, and it's part of every label and poster, every T-shirt and hat and hoodie. "There's nothing like our logo or colors," Floyd said, "and nothing like the way we market ourselves."

Go read the whole thing. It even has cool pics.
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Steve Duin Hearts Ninkasi

Every newspaper worth its salt features a flinty columnist who is equal parts cynic and romantic. The Oregonian's is Steve Duin, who today showed his romantic side by writing an ode to Ninkasi.

Just when crafting a product seems to be a lost art in Oregon, [Jamie] Floyd and [Nikos] Ridge are successfully making great beers and energizing the community of beer drinkers....

Everyone in Eugene buys in. "Ninkasi has taps in 95 percent of the bars in Eugene," said Chris Ormand at Portland's Belmont Station, which stocks 1,200 beers. "That level of saturation has an impact up here when Oregon students come home from college...."

They're proud the brews are local and glad the beers are rich. They want to believe there are profits, as well as rewards, in doing everything the right way.

Oh, Steve, Ninkasi is so yesterday. Don't you know all the Eugenies are now insane for Oakshire?

Kidding. Still, a strange piece. Ninkasi is a phenom right now, but surely Steve knows that crafting beer is not exactly a lost art in Oregon. Surely he had heard that there were a few breweries doing this before Jamie and Nikos. (Like, umm, 90.) If there is anything unique about Ninkasi, it's their phenomenal growth.

But it took only 24 months for Ninkasi to outgrow the building in Eugene's Whiteaker neighborhood that was meant to last 10 years. Its expansion has been fueled by great instincts, memorable graphics, unrivaled marketing and undeniable karma.

When I spoke to Jamie earlier this year, he said they'd probably hit 20,000 barrels this year, though according to Duin, it looks like it will be more like 17,000. What's interesting is that Ninkasi has done it solely with keg and 22-ounce bomber sales. As a business model, I wouldn't have expected that kind of growth was possible without six-pack sales. According to Jamie, 80% of Ninkasi's beer is sold in Oregon--which is roughly 13,500 barrels. That means the growth is coming in one of the most competitive, active markets in the country. That is newsworthy.

I have lately become fascinated in the different models breweries identify for growth. Rogue, for example, went for a national strategy, while Deschutes eschewed distant markets until they had grown into them. Ninkasi is going for the local strategy. Jamie told me:

It is absolutely our philosophy to be as deep as possible right here at home. We source ingredients locally and we always will stay focused locally as we grow. t is not at all important to me how far my beer gets or how many markets. It is totally not sustainable as a long term business model.

I will confess to a little anxiety about Ninkasi's growth curve. I was around in the early 90s when craft brewing was a fad, and we saw many examples of unsustainable growth. I've heard some grousing about diacetyl in beer, a buttery chemical that comes from not letting a beer age long enough, and some folks have suggested that this is due to quick growth. On the other hand, Jamie has been around since the 90s and he has a lot more experience than those early breweries did. Ninkasi seems to have tended very closely to its identity as a local brewery, and that's paying off in loyalty.

And with love like Ninkasi gets from Steve Duin, they should be fine.

Ninkasi Sleigh'r

I suppose we should get this out of the way first: I am not comfortable with the allusion by Ninkasi's Sleigh'r to the thrash metal band Slayer. Afficianados of heavy metal will assure you that Slayer is full of more thrashy goodness than the competition (Metallica partisans notwithstanding). I am not an afficianado. (I'm more of a Ponytail, Eels, Tom Waits, Miles Davis kind of man.)

But I can forgive Ninkasi their musical tastes. Beer, they say, unites all. Sleigh'r is, unexpectedly, a double alt. Ninkasi, like--well, like a heavy metal band--tends to stick to a narrow range of beers. The Ninkasi standard is an ale, large, loud, and muscular. They have dabbled in variants before--Schwag, for example. Sleigh'r is in this mode, a fun one-off.

I have to confess, I judged this beer by its label. I didn't expect much, yet it was absolutely gorgeous pouring out. You think it's chestnut brown until you hold it up to the light and see the Christmas cranberry. It produces a lush, rich head and gives off a wonderful malty nose. In the end, it's a pretty straightforward interpretation of style (which also caught me off guard). The malt body is rich and clean, and there are nicely insistent hops. They're not showy or funky, just assertive, as you'd hope for in an alt.

Overall, very nicely done. I'd give this a B+.

Hard Reviews: Full Sail LTD 03 and Ninkasi Radiant

[Note. For about ten minutes, my post appeared in a wholly scrambled format--a technical glitch with some precedent. I wrote it last night, and somehow its digital tenure overnight in The Dalles scrambled things. It's now fixed.]

For quite different reasons, I've been avoiding reviewing these two beers. Let's start with the Full Sail, which I liked a great deal. It's a pretty straightforward German pils--a softer, less aggressive style than its Bohemian forebear. At least the problem there is my own failings.

LTD 03
The difficulty here is in describing the beer in a novel way. It is a pretty classic version of the style, differing in only a couple, also quite traditional ways, from the standard. LTD 03 is hopped with Sterling, a cultivar mainly of Saaz, and bearing most of the very classic Saaz character--but with just enough floral German parentage (one-eighth) for you to smile in appreciation. It's a wee bit strong for style at 5.6%, but you have to account for local tastes. It is a leggy blond with a gentle perfume and is exactly what you hope it will be. Beyond that, I got nuthin to tell you. Good stuff.

Radiant
Moving on to the harder one, telegraphed by a few comments on yesterday's post. I have had this beer twice, once at the Brewers Games, and once from a bottle a few nights ago. I had no real opportunity to study it in Pacific City--just gulp it down appreciatively. From the bottle, well ... Eugene, we have a problem.

(But first, a necessary parenthetical. In yesterday's post I also mentioned that Ninkasi's line-up is one of the only intact family of beers I know. Jamie Floyd likes to brew big, booming ales that are almost winking stereotypes of an Oregon beer--fruity and saturated with hops. You could say they're all the same, but for Ninkasi fans, favorites are spread out pretty evenly among the different beers. They're variations on a theme, but they are variations and everyone loves that theme. I've heard critics deride them as a one-trick pony, but I don't share this view in the least. You could as easily dismiss Frank Boon if that were your sole criterion.)

That out of the way, to Radiant. The problem here is not the recipe. It's aptly named; the beer seems to exude an inner warmth. The balance between a rather sweet, caramely body and the usual thick hopping produces the sense of liquid sunshine. The problem: there was a lot of diacetyl in the glass I had from the bottle. If there was diacetyl in the one at Pelican, it was so mild that I didn't notice it in the hurlyburly of the day--and in any case, at levels that low, it would be a permissible or even welcome note. And although some commenters claim (anonymously, which demonstrates a lack of courage, if not candor) other Ninkasi beers have had diacetyl in them, I've never tasted it.

Let's hope the bottle was an anomaly. I'll keep sampling it and report back in a few weeks.

Ninkasi Spring Reign

An IPA by any other name is ... a session ale to Ninkasi's Jamie Floyd. Thus we have Spring Reign, which the brewery's website describes as:

Notes of toasted malt up front, finished with a bright and refreshing Northwest hop aroma, it’s a session beer that everyone can enjoy!

6% alc./vol. 38 IBUs

A six-percent session? That's some serious style creep. Admittedly, it's also not a proper IPA, either. On the other hand, there's no way on earth this beer is 38 IBUs. Having recently tasted the almost wholly bitter-free Widmer Drifter, a lighter beer listed at 32 IBUs, I'm guessing somebody's equipment is off-base. (Perhaps both breweries.) Then again, calculating IBUs is mostly an art, anyway.

Never mind the name; for folks who love vivid, sticky hopping, Spring Reign will be just the ticket. The mixture of Simcoe, Santiam, and Ahtanum produces a piney, resinous hopping, and the malts provide a sweet caramel base. It's frothy and creamy and leaves attractive tracery in the glass. Overall, a beer of instant familiarity, a classic Northwest ale.

I am reminded of the experience of hearing a song for the first time on the radio that I feel like I should be able to identify. It's not original, doesn't reinvent rock, but it's well-done and entertaining. Spring Reign is like that, and I suspect it will be received warmly by people whose tongues are already attuned to this style--or to those whose tongues will, having been weened on Spring Reign, become attuned to the style in due course.

Ninkasi Release

I'm pretty bad about announcing events, but this one caught my eye: Ninkasi is releasing their latest beer tonight. They came out of the gate with a fairly stable line-up and haven't added to it much in the past year, so this is good news indeed.

7-9 pm, Saraveza
1004 N Killingsworth St.; 503-206-4252.

Spring Reign- Spring forward with this new ale! Biscuit malt provides a rich toasty malt note upfront that is balanced with bright hoppy noted from American hops. It is like a British Pale with American hops. Simcoe, Santiam, and Ahtanum hops round out the aroma and flavor. 6% alc./vol. 38 ibus.

Brewer Jamie Floyd will be on hand to dole out samples and charm you. According to John, it's also already on tap around town, notably at Henry's, Cassidy's, and Red Star.

Review - Four Fresh Hop Beers

I have now tried two or three dozen fresh hop beers. I am therefore approaching or just over the number needed for my sample to be statistically significant. Revealed to me in this group is a unique flavor/aroma that I haven't yet found the words to express. None of these is right, but perhaps together you can begin to sense of its nature: "gassy," "cabbage," "sulfur," "grassy." Sally described it as that volatile smell you get when you turn over composting leaves. It has the quality of decomposition.

Guess what? I'm not super high on it.

Now, what I've also observed is that not every wet-hopped beer has this, nor is it as strong in every beer, nor is at as offensive once a beer has warmed up a touch (counter-intuitively). So I consider it a risk in working with fresh hops, but not essential to their nature. I recently went through the chemistry of fresh herbs and the constituents in hops, so perhaps after I've tried this year's batch of beers, I'll see if I can line up the "decomposition note" with a particular element in the hop. All of this is by way of introducing my review of four new versions of fresh hop beers. (Incidentally, I'll employ last year's specific scale for rating fresh hop ales: noble failure, decent outing, winner, and sublime.)

Hopworks Oktoberfest
By all appearances, this is a classic Oktoberfest. It is a clarion, russet hue, with a nice light head. It was hopped with Willamettes--not exactly the choice of dour-faced Germans, but with its spicy nature, well-chosen. Alas, there's the decomposition note. In this case, it tends toward buttery. As it warms, unexpected aromas emerge. Cabbage, which isn't that unexpected, but also a sweet rose-petal note. The flavor improves, exhibiting more of the underlying recipe, and the fresh hops turn herbal and almost savory (an adjective to which we will return). Rating: Decent Outing.

Ninkasi Pale
Again, we're off the grid in terms of familiar adjectives in describing the aroma. Ninkasi's pale, hopped with Mt. Hoods (an aroma hop derived from the spicy German Hallertau), smells of freshly-mown lawn, with a touch of fresh earth and spritz of citrus oil. Sally relates to the citrus as "pine," and I am sent down a philosophical reverie in which I ponder how it is that these two are related, before being pulled out, roughly, by that decomposition note. It's mild but persistent. There also seems to be a "hot" note which I took to be fusel alcohol, but which Sally, calling it "radish," made me think again. Could be another bizarre by-product of the fresh hops. My least-favorite of the four, I nevertheless can't give it a noble failure. Rating: Decent Outing (barely).

Double Mountain Killer Green IPA
I have noticed the increasing use of Perle hops in the US, and it's a house favorite for Double Mountain. Originally bred in Germany in 1978, they are now regularly (and successfully) grown in the US. Double Mountain manages to beat the decomposition note by dumping vast mounds of Perles into this beer. It is vividly hoppy, and has a standard IPA nose, sticky and resinous. The palate is of spruce, not atypcial for Perle, but also of tropical fruit. As the beer warms, that savory note I mentioned above comes out, and here it comes across as ... roast chicken. Sally suggests that it could actually be more like sage or rosemary (but probably sage) which could confuse the palate into thinking "chicken." I'm less sure, but it is odd. Fortunately, the bitterness calms all fears. It's a bold, tasty, and odd outing. Still, I like it. Rating: Winner.

Full Sail Lupulin (Mt. Rainier variant?)
Full Sail has three versions of Lupulin this year, one with the super new and obscure Mt. Rainier hops, and other versions with Cascade and Nugget. I think this was the Mt. Rainier batch, but it could be Nugget, I suppose (distinctive Cascade we can rule out). The aroma and flavor of this beer can be decribed in three words: piney, piney, piney. Smells piney, tastes piney. If you dig deeper, you can evoke mint, but this isn't too different from pine. Good news! There's no decomposition note. John Harris, who last year used Amarillo in his Lupulin (unavailable this year), managed a beer without the note, too. So he's two for two--impressive. I am not personally in love with the mentholated nature of the beer, but it was very well made. I can't call it sublime, but you might. Rating: Winner.

Have you tried any of these? What was your take?