All the New Beers

Several years ago, the Oregon Brewers Guild launched Zwickelmania as a way of bridging over the doldrums of late winter.  Mission accomplished.  I have been absolutely inundated with new beer releases, and many of them are keyed to release on Z-day.  (Which is cool, because whether you're a rank newbie who has only recently learned that beer is made from barley or an advanced stage beer geek who knows the varying character of Wyeast 3711 when fermented at 65 versus 80 degrees, there's a reason to go check out the Zwickel events.)  I have endeavored to sample as many of these as possible, so here's a quick and dirty rundown.

Oakshire Hellshire IV

The annual release of Hellshire has become a big deal for the no-longer little brewery from Eugene.  It comes along with its own fest, which is studded with tons of beers from around the country.  The centerpiece is Matt Van Wyk's barrel aged strong ale, of which there are but a mere 120 cases.  This year's vintage should be in especially high demand; the 2013 Hellshire took gold in the coveted barrel-aged category at the GABF.

Hellshire is a blend mainly of Very Ill-Tempered Gnomes that were aged in bourbon and rye barrels.  There's some rum-aged barley wine in there and a dab of unbarrel imperial stout.  "We're doing a lot of blending and not worrying about style," he said.  "We grab an old ale, a barleywine, an imperial stout."  I found it curious that Matt blends different styles of beer, but apparently this is a thing.  (More evidence of my slow-moving antiquity.)  It's a slightly murky nut-colored beer with a boozy-sweet aroma.  The booze is gentle on the tongue, though, and the beer has a dessert-like quality, rich with chocolate and caramel.  The liquor tracks more like rum than bourbon to me.

The only way you can be assured of getting a bottle is by heading to Eugene.  Hellshire Day looks to be a treat, though, so the trip ought to be worth it.  All the details are here.

Fort George Java the Hop
A bit more than one year ago, I spent my birthday weekend in Astoria, hiking during the day, drinking beer in the evening.   Fort George was pouring a beer I thought was going to be a disaster--a coffee IPA--but was the opposite.  The nose had lots of coffee with a bit of green hoppy underlayment, but then miraculously, the two harmonized in the mouth.  The coffee only inflected the IPA, which was less hoppy than the usual Fort George beer, and the earthy, aromatic notes perfectly complemented the hops.  Java the Hop is back this year in a can, so you can see the effect.  Unfortunately, this year's batch is not quite as perfectly balanced.  The coffee is a bit too assertive, and the flavors compete in the mouth.  (It is a lot prettier; last year's batch looked like pond water.)  Still, my judgment is affected by expectation, and you should definitely give it a try. 

Widmer Upheaval
I'll have more on the making of this beer in a subsequent post, but I wanted to bookmark it here.  Upheaval is the new year-round IPA, and it coincides with the brewery's 30th anniversary.  Appropriately, it has a grist very similar to Hefeweizen, with 40% wheat.  It's a nice way of underscoring the brewery's long history with wheaty American beers.  It's a modern IPA, though, with tons of late-addition hops, and a light, delicate palate.  Widmer has really dialed in their house flavor, so that in-house Alchemy blend lets you know it's a Widmer beer.  I also want to mention that Columbia Common is back out for a second year.  It's small, delicate, and not show-offy, so it's not going to set geek palates on fire.  It's an excellent beer, though, and a great session for, say, watching the Olympics.

Breakside
Breakside has--shocker!--a flurry of new beers.  Last night, brewer Ben Edmunds was showing off the latest saison, called, with tongue firmly in cheek, Suburban Farmhouse Ale.  (Their friends at the Commons brew Urban Farmhouse Ale.)  Jokes the brewery:

Traditionally, Suburban Ales were brewed in garages and backyards in urban middle-class neighborhoods of America. These beers were born out of expendable income and free time as good commercial beer was readily available and affordable. Our rendition was developed in the spirit of that noble tradition. The beer pours with a copper hue and an aroma of freshly mown grass and old copies of Willamette Week Beer Guides.

Nice. They used the French farmhouse yeast strain and hopped it with Australian Topaz.  Ben said the info they had described the hop as having juniper, "Mediterranean Sea" (because Black Sea is just gross), forest floor, apricot, and a few other strange notes.  The juniper is what really comes through--I thought it was a gin-barrel saison.  You can pick up a bit of the sea too, if you're suggestible and look hard enough.

They also have a barrel-aged strong ale called Elder Statesman made with rye-aged barley wine (80%) and a bourbon-aged strong golden.  It is creamy, rich, and very smooth.  Finally, Breakside has bottles of Caramel Salt Stout, which is just what it sounds like.  They caramelized some sugar and added that to the grist and then dosed it with some salt.  The salt is a subtle but evident note, but the caramel could easily just be a component within the stout.  It works and may be my pick of the three.

That's in no way an exhaustive list.  Alan Taylor has made the old new again at Pints by brewing a bitterbier--you know them as India Pale Lagers--called XL-5 Experimental Lager, complete with "hop stuffing" (dry-hopping); Double Mountain has released their two Krieks in bottles (and they also have a 2.6% small beer at the pub); Gigantic just did a five-cask release of Bang On! with different hops in the casks (though they're probably all gone now); Portland Brewing, doing its best to rally in the minds of locals, has the spring release of Rose Hip Gold; and Abram Goldman-Armstrong's new project, Cider Riot, just released their first cider.  More on that on Saturday.

Oaktober? Oakshire Seizes the Month

The Willamette Brewery was just a toddler when it learned a very important lesson about naming rights and the law: common words have all kinds of legal strings attached. Someone knowledgeable pointed out that if they invented a word, no one could hassle them, and thus did Willamette become Oakshire. I'm thinking the brewery ought to look into putting a mark on "Oaktober," if 2011 is any guide. To wit:

1. Ill-Tempered Gnome release. Matt Van Wyk will be at the Guild on Thursday with the Portland debut of the Gnome on tap--and not just the '11 debut. Apparently, this beer has never poured on draft in the Occupied Republic of Portland. The Guild will have six taps pouring with Oakbrew, including rare Single Batch Series beers. I will test Matt's fealty to reading this blog by asking whether the exceptional Well-Mannered Gnome, a small beer made from Ill-Tempered, will be one of those beers. (Let us know in comments, Matt.) As much as I admire Ill-Tempered Gnome, I have to say that the small beer is one of the best examples of session ales available in all of Oregon. So consider this either a plug a cruelty, depending on whether it makes the trek. Thursday, Oct 13, Guild Public House 1101 East Burnside, 5-8pm.

2. Wildwood Brewers Dinner. The Great American Brewers Festival highlighted food and beer pairings in a special pavillion called "Farm to Table." Just 16 chefs and breweries were invited to attend, and Wildwood's Paul Kasten was one. He demanded to be paired with the Oregon brewery in attendance, Oakshire. The two are reprising the partnership at Wildwood for one of Paul's famous brewers dinners. I have often praised Paul's ability to craft menus to harmonize with beers, so I'll just say: tasty tasty tasty. Friday, Oct 21, Wildwood, 6:30 pm, $65, call Shelly Jones for reservation, 503-225-0130.

At the newly-designed New School, Ezra mentioned that Hellshire II, a barrel-aged imperial stout, will be released in November. A pity; the hat trick would really have been nice for Oaktober.

The Making of a Mighty Mite

This is a guest post from Oakshire brewer Matt Van Wyk, who graciously agreed to tell the story behind Lil Smokey, his contribution to the Mighty Mites fest. Although I like to think you can tell a brewer's personality by his beers, this post gives you an even better sense of Matt's. If you've found a little insouciance in his beer, now you can see why. Thanks, Matt, for taking the time--


A few months ago, Jeff asked me if I could design a beer for his upcoming session ale fest, Mighty Mite. Of course, I am always honored when people think enough of the beers we make to personally request it. Last winter, on a visit to Eugene with Beeronomics' Patrick Emerson, Jeff got a chance to sample Well-Mannered Gnome, our small beer made from the second runnings of Very Ill Tempered Gnome; I know that Jeff is not one to chase down the latest Quadruple IPA just to be the first to experience it and share it with the world. So I shouldn't have been surprised that they were such a big fan of this little 3% hoppy mild ale. But what I didn't know is that I would be asked to make a beer for one of the events at the first ever Portland Beer Week.

So, I began the arduous task of writing a recipe. But first, the style. It often goes like this: Drink, think. drink, think. Don't you get your best thinking done when you are drinking? Luckily, I get to call that R&D. I figured I would just make a pale ale type beer. Something I knew people would like, even if the alcohol was lower than normal. I started scratching out a recipe. Malt? Easy. Hop?. Don't forget balance. Not to much, not to little. It's pretty difficult to make an exceptional sub 4% abv beer. Usually, there is a lack of body and mouthfeel to help with balance. Flaws could stick out more. Good thing we don't make flaws! You know, maybe I should consult my malt inventory. I don't need much for this beer. And if there is any partial bags that need to be used up, perhaps I can incorporate that? Once I started looking in the malt room I had a change of directions. 5 lbs. of cherrywood smoked malt in that bag, 13 lbs. of smoked malt in that bag. Hey! a full 55 lbs. of unopened smoked malt. Maybe. There's some chocolate malt, some caramel malts. Smoked Porter! Petite smoked porter that is! I decided I'd make a dark beer in the hottest of Oregon months. Perfect.

On brew day, as I was milling the malt, I started tasting the specialty malt. This is something I always do when I am using new or unusual ingredients. I knew the cherrywood smoked malt was old, but only had 5 lbs. Use it up, it smells nice. The other opened bag had less smokey aroma, and sadly, the unopened bag had the least amount of smoke impact. Hmmm... is there enough to call it a smoked porter? I raced to our secondary storage area to see if we had any more smoked malt in house. Nope, I came up empty. Well, I just hoped the lighter body, alcohol, and roast flavors would let the smoke shine through. Brew away, nervously.

At Oakshire, beers like this are part of our single batch series. We make them for draft only and in small (22-24 kegs) batches. Often these beers are never seen again. We have made nearly 30 unique beers in this program so far this year. When then come out, we make unique tap handle stickers (Bryan Taylor of Treeman Design) for each of the single batch beers. I had decided on Lil' Smokey as the name of this beer so had Bryan, our graphics designer, start on the sticker, all the while hoping it was actually smokey. The beer finished fermenting at 3.2%. Hmmm... I'm not sure if this will do it. Of course, I am a huge fan of rauch beers. My threshold might be a little higher than others. Let's get some other feedback. I took an uncarbonated sample to the sales team and to my team of brewers. Is it smokey, I asked? Enough to keep the name? The consensus was that it was mildly smokey, balanced with the rest of the elements. The vote was to keep the name and the already designed logo. (As a side note, round one on the graphic was a factory with smoke, and as I thought that was a little more NW Indiana feeling rather than NW United States, we changed to a campfire).

The result of all this will be served Saturday in Portland at the first Mighty Mite fest. It is a lighter bodied porter of 3.2% with hints of chocolate, roast, and a faint smokey aroma and flavor. It is super easy drinking, even in the 90 degree weather we have been experiencing. So much so that the beer is totally sold out in both Eugene and Portland warehouses, so check with your favorite publican to see if they snatched a keg. If not, what better reason to get over the the festival and try a little sample of this little guy. Cheers!
~Matt Van Wyk

Gems from Beervana: Block 15 Berliner Weisse and Oakshire Baltic Porter

This blog is available on the world wide intertubes. Not many of citizens of that wide world actually read it, but they could. Therefore, when I write about beers available only to a tiny handful of people in a tiny sliver of that wide world, I feel a twinge of regret--not just that you won't be familiar with these beers or care about them, but that you can't taste them yourselves. Consider this my open invitation to all: you must come--the beer here really is all that. Cases in point:

1. Block 15 Berliner Weisse
Block 15 is a little brewpub in Corvallis, a little town with a little Pac 10 school (with a wicked good baseball team). Yet brewer Nick Arzner is committed to making some of the most interesting and most authentic beers you'll find anywhere on the blue marble. (If you buy Best of Beervana, there's some chance you'll see his name in the book-only material. Just sayin.) Berliner Weisse, an exceedingly rare style even more rarely brewed to style, is an example. Nick has a detailed description of Berliner Weisses, how it is often brewed (aka the cheater's methods), and the way he brewed his. I strongly recommend you go have a look, even if you won't be able to try this beer.

The truth is, this beer appears so rarely that I have only a couple other examples to which to compare it. (I did shoot an email to someone who knows more than I about German brewing, and reading Nick's description, gave a Teutonic nod of approval.) The style is designed to quench thirst in the manner of a crisp lemonade--it should be tart, light, and crisp. And lemonade is exactly what Nick's beer evoked. It's a milky white in the glass and has a nose of wheat, lemon, and yogurt. It is a tart beer and crisp, but not in any way acetic or aggressive. The wheat comes through surprisingly well, and there's a gentle citric quality which may or may not be lemony--but my brain went to lemonade and so it seemed so. A perfectly refreshing summer beer.

2. Oakshire Axe of Perun Baltic Porter
It seems that brewer Matt Van Wyk produces more single-batch beers than just about anyone in the state. I read about them on his blog and then look around--but mostly they're gone before I have a chance to sample them. I thought Axe of Perun was a goner, but it was pouring at the Grain and Gristle, where I found B15 Berliner Weisse. What luck.

Baltic Porters are mostly not brewed to style in the US. Generally they're over-roasty and brewed with an ale strain. The result is stout--one of my favorite styles, but a beer readily available in most pubs in the city. A good Baltic Porter is a rare thing, bringing into harmony elements that don't necessarily seem synchronous: a hearty but gentle roast note, a clean, lager smoothness, alcohol warmth, and an ester-free vinous note. Some have a suggestion of sour to them, as in rye malt. They are at once rich and intense yet eminently approachable. You get complexity, but you don't have to pay for it. Matt nailed the style with Perun the Axe. Put that in a line-up with some nice Polish and Baltic Baltics and it would seem like a twin brother. Easily the best American Baltic porter I've encountered.

The Grain and Gristle was a real treat, too, but I'll do a review of it later on.

Oakshire Willamette Dammit

Having put 36 hours between myself and that painful ending at the national championship game, I am now prepared to return to the scene of the crime. Not to talk about the game, but the beer. I watched from the Guild Public House, auspiciously celebrating its first night of business with a packed house. On tap was one Willamette Dammit from Oakshire, a part of the brewery's single-batch series. A super simple recipe, with just Maris Otter and Willamette hops (the old workhorse bred in the 70s from English Fuggle hops), a session of 4.9% heft. What a joy.

Rarely do I sit down for a full session with just one beer, but the experience is delightful. A session ale really doesn't show its chops until pint three, when it needs to be just as fresh and interesting as the first sip. Any faults will, after two pints, be evident to the drinker--and annoying. Ah, but a good session is greeted by the tongue as an old friend, one who can recognize and appreciate its good qualities. I would say Willamette Dammit was about 8 BU out of balance, but that was perfect for me (if a bit much for Sally)--especially on pint three. Also a joy was the name, a lovely homage to the pronunciation of our famous river (the two words rhyme)--all doubly perfect when watching the Ducks play. I only wish it wasn't a single batch.

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NB. Here's an interesting question: is balance an objective or subjective concept? We don't have to agree that beers should be in balance to agree that such a thing exists objectively. Some regions will prefer beers skewed toward malt, others toward hops, but I wonder, would all parties agree that their beers were in fact skewed? Or is balance like chili fire--a subjective continuum where each taster is his own judge?

I tend to think balance is mostly objective--say objective within a range--but I might be kidding myself.

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.

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*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.

Summer's Perfect Beer: Rye Pale Ales

Rye is a weed. Or was, anyway, 3,500 years ago, when it infested the wheat and barley fields of Southern Asia. As a consequence, it co-evolved with these other grains long before it was accepted in its own right. Its heyday as a bread, according to Stan Hieronymus' Brewing With Wheat, was the middle ages before dying off in the time of Victoria. It remained only in certain precincts where people were made stupid and dull by its hearty density, so said snotty wheat-eaters. In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder--the possibly apocryphal discoverer of hops--sneered at rye, saying it was "a very poor food and only serves to avert starvation."

In beer, rye has mainly been yoked to darker beers, to spice them and make them hearty. But counter-intuitively, certain breweries also put them in pale ales, and the result is a spicy, dry, quenching beer perfect for a summer day. In the Northwest, the first credit for the style probably goes to Redhook, which brewed a light rye ale more than 15 years ago. It didn't sell well and died out. (Revived for one season a few years ago and then killed off again.) This summer, I note that at least three versions were available: Oakshire Line Dry Rye, Laurelwood Wry, and Three Creeks Stonefly (a regular in their line-up). It could be that these are also flash in the pans, or that we're seeing the shoots of a new fixture in Beervana. I hope it's the latter, because the style is absolutely perfect on a hot day.

Three Creeks Stonefly Rye
The difficulty with rye is that it's a husky, ornery grain, and has been the ruin of many a young beer. Fleming Threee Creeks wisely pairs it with wheat here--they actually seasons a wheat beer with rye--and the result is a light, refreshing beer with a lively, spicy note. I found bright and tart notes (lemongrass?) but the beer wasn't aggressive or grinding--as it can be if you extract too many tannins from the rye. Of the Three Creeks beers I've tried, this is the most accomplished and also my fave. (4.6%, 28 IBUs) [Note: I just pasted this description in from my earlier review, failing to catch the bit about Dave Fleming, the founding brewer at Three Creeks who has since left. A sharp-eyed reader emailed to point this out.]

Oakshire Line Dry Rye
Oakshire substitutes honey for Three Creek's wheat. Poured very cold, the spice of the rye and the resin of the hops create a slightly aggressive flavor that seems at turns soapy or piney. But with a bit of warmth, the honey sweetness emerges, and the honey seems to provide a voluptuous creaminess that offsets the sharper notes nicely. I am re-painting my house, and after a few hours of scraping and sanding, I poured this out last night and was so happy to have a refreshing, light beer to slake my thirst. (5.5% 35 IBUs)

Laurelwood Wry Ale
My favorite rye ale comes from Laurelwood, though there may not be any left. This year's batch was on tap only briefly at the brewery, but they did bottle some, too--but you can bookmark it for next year. A drier beer than the first two, the spiciest, and most astringent. Rather than balancing it with wheat or honey, Laurelwood goes with Cascade and Amarillo hops; their citrus marries perfectly with the spice. As you can see from the picture, there's an indelible image on the label. I always forget what the actual name is; to me, it's always Hayseed Rye. (5.6% 40 IBUs)

A bit of summer yet remains. Go forth and have a rye.

Oakshire Overcast Stout and Watershed IPA

Inspired by the video of Matt Van Wyk at the GABF, I decided to go buy a couple of bottles of Oakshire's beer and do a proper review. I had--and was impressed by--the Overcast Espresso Stout at the Organic fest, but I've never done more than nod at it in passing. Time to rectify old oversights.

Watershed IPA
Oakshire, at least in the greater Portland area, is not a well-known brewery, and yet in my little IPA poll a few weeks past, Watershed IPA did surprisingly strongly. (I think pollsters would say it "overperformed.") I see why people liked it. The IPA style is actually a pretty broad one--brewers have fair latitude to interpret it in a personal style. Matt's beer is in what I consider to be the traditional style--a hefty beer that you eye with some respect (weighing in at 7.1%) A deep golden in the glass with amazing head retention, it is a beguiling beer. The malt base is a pure, clean sweetness, with just a bit of biscuit, which allows the hopping to shine through. Matt's interpretation is rich with pine, both in the nose and on the palate. The pine tails off at the end to grapefruit. It's a very clean beer--none of the notes are murky or muted. Although the alcohol is evident, the overall presentation of the beer is not overly aggressive. It's not an IPA that pushes you around. The flavors are clean and saturated, but not punishing. A lovely beer. An A- on the patented ratings scale, with room to ascend after I have a few more.


Overcast Espresso Stout
Coffee and espresso are now becoming pretty common combo--and popular, at least in Beervana, where we like our java only marginally less than we like our ales. (Except for breakfast, where we like the java marginally more.) It's not the easiest combo to manage, though. Coffee can either disappear or overwhelm. Perhaps because of my overactive imagination, I think I can identify the coffee character; Kona's coffee porter, for example, really tastes like Kona coffee to me.

And so it is with Overcast: it tastes like espresso, not just coffee generically. Good espresso should not be bitter. It should be intense, but the final note shouldn't grind or strafe--it should end with an almost berry-like sweetness. Oakshire's gets this part right. The espresso is a major note--like John Philip Sousa major. You get it in the nose and it suffuses the palate. Matt's gone for a relatively light beer (5.8%), so the espresso has room to to toot its horn. (Getting tired of that metaphor yet?) The effect is more like a mocha than a beer. I personally love it, and as a mid-afternoon tipple on a nasty Oregon day, I would find it perfect. Whether you'll like it or not will depend heavily on your relationship to espresso. I'm rating it a B+ (a bit more heft in the body would raise the score), but if you hate coffee, don't go near.

Matt Van Wyk

Nice local color--Matt Van Wyk, brewer at Eugene's Oakshire Brewery.



Cool that, with 12,934 breweries at the GABF, they chose Matt.