Thirty Years in Portland

My grandparents arrived in Eastern Oregon in the 1930s and raised their two daughters in various farming communities. One of them stayed, married, and has been farming around Vale since the 1950s. But one of them--my mom--decided to head off to the big city to seek her fortune. Thus was I born and raised (mostly) in Boise, Idaho. I made my way back to Oregon to attend college here, arriving when I was just a few years younger than my grandparents had been fifty years before me. That was 1986.

Portrait of the blogger as a
young man (with mother).
Circa 1987.

Portland's transformation in those thirty years (along with a surprising vein of continuity) has been radical. Our minds are built to create sense of disparate inputs, and 2016 Portland seems like an organic result of an unseen trajectory 1986 Portland traveled; when I put my mind back on what the actual town was like then, however, this 2016 seems like a near impossibility.

In the mid-eighties, Portland was a poor, rough town. Portland had 66 murders in 1987--one of the highest rates in the country (the current ten year average is 24, and the city's a good deal larger now). It felt dangerous; there were places you didn't go. It was a visibly racially divided town. A century of racist policies had concentrated black Portlanders into a section of the Northeast, a poor section neglected by the city. Crimes of all kinds routine throughout the city, and petty theft was so common I just started leaving my car unlocked so people wouldn't break the windows to get in and discover there wasn't anything worth stealing. You were lucky indeed if you managed to avoid having your car, apartment, or house broken in to. For many of us, it was a regular experience.

Unlike many larger cities elsewhere in the country, Portland was never an industrial hub, but rather the focal point for the extractive industries that dominated the state's economy until the 1970s (logging, commercial fishing, ranching, and farming). Until a few years after I arrived, you'd still see giant flotillas of Douglas fir being pulled down the river. The reason Kurt Cobain wore flannel was not because it was a proto-lumbersexual moment in music and fashion, but because he came from Aberdeen, the heart of the Washington logging industry. In Portland about half the men wore jeans and flannel, but they were work clothes, not affectations.

source

Portland's unusual status had positive and negative effects. As early as the 1970s, the qualities that led Portland to become Portlandia were present. It was dirt cheap to live here. A couple years after I arrived, I became a hippie artist at Saturday Market, and I lived in a group house on Clinton Street that had five bedrooms and rented for $495 a month. At one point we had seven people living there and my rent was $80 ($176 in today's dollars). This meant it was a great place to live for the young and broke. I could string beads by day and scrape together enough money to pay rent and buy a half-rack of Rainier pounders every now and again. There wasn't really an upper class in Portland, and there wasn't a restaurant in the city that would have barred someone who was in jeans. (When we'd buy new Levi's, we'd joke they were our "dress jeans.")

Portland also didn't have industrial wealth that cities like Detroit and Pittsburgh had to build symphony halls and theaters. This led to a distinctly DIY approach that has been fundamental to the city's ethos. But it also meant there wasn't a lot of money to improve the city. Small businesses were run on a shoestring in provisional spaces in buildings that hadn't been much improved in 75 years.

Of course, a lot of this affected things like breweries, which required capital startup budgets. Banks wouldn't even look at them. (Karl Ockert, founding brewer at BridgePort, famously reported that one of the banks he went to told him, "Breweries don't open, they shut down.") Fortunately, dairy equipment was cheap and plentiful, and rents were cheap. Entrepreneurs who wanted to start breweries could get off the ground with relatively small investments (usually from personal savings, family and friends). Breweries were, in this way, much like other businesses. They were started by industrious but often cash-poor entrepreneurs who strapped their breweries together with baling wire in less-desirable precincts of the city.

Changing Geography
To get a sense of how much the city's geography has changed, let's start with the warehouse district behind the Henry Weinhard Brewery on Burnside. Immediately adjacent to downtown, it was in the mid-1980s almost vacant. Warehouses filled the blocks, but the streets were empty. It was as if a catastrophe had happened and forced all the people to leave suddenly. This was, predictably, a place of cheap rents, which ultimately led to its revival as artists moved into the warehouse and created lofts. A few galleries followed, and so did a few other businesses--like the three new breweries that opened between 1984-'86.

Source

Throughout the 1990s, city planners planned, and around the turn of the century it was rebranded "the Pearl District" and soon the wealthy began displacing the artists. In the decade and a half since, it has become the city's wealthiest enclave, a mini-Manhattan home to people with the kind of wealth no one seemed to have in the 1980s.

Widmer Brothers Hefe at 30: A Reconsideration

This is the first part of a pair of posts on the legacy of Widmer Brothers Hefe. For the sibling post, an oral history of the beer, go here. 

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The City of Portland officially declared May 15 "Hefe Day."

On Sunday, the Widmer Brothers are throwing a party at Pioneer Courthouse Square to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of their flagship, the venerable Hefeweizen. It is almost impossible to overstate the significance of this beer in the history of its hometown. In the early days of craft brewing, breweries had a hard time convincing beer drinkers to switch over to the heavier, more full-flavored ales they were selling ... until Hefeweizen came along.

It became the city's first breakthrough beer, and in the late 1980s, everyone in the city wanted to hold a tall, curved weizen glass of the cloudy orange liquid, garnished ostentatiously with a lemon slice. In most cities, it took years--often decades--to reach that tipping point where craft beer was an accepted, popular drink. Thanks to Hefeweizen, Portland made the transition by the time Nirvana was first playing Satyricon downtown.

That MTV-era success launched both Widmer Brothers and their strangely-named beer, and both became giants in craft brewing. But it also dated them as surely as shoulder-padded power suits and synthy new wave music. As with any multi-generational phenomenon, Hefeweizen now carries with it the weight of all those impressions that have accumulated over the decades. It's interesting to speak to people who encountered this beer at different times; those who know it from the 80s have entirely different impressions than those who came across it later (see here for more). Those impressions seem to contain as much of the mood of the industry at the time as they do of the beer itself, for good and sometimes ill.

I began my own reconsideration of this beer within the last decade, and particularly when I had to write about it in the Beer Bible. When Kurt and Rob decided to call it a "hefeweizen," they plunged us into a netherworld of stylistic confusion, a legacy with which we're still contending. But, leaving aside the name, the beer turns out to be more interesting, unusual, and influential than we give it credit for--especially us old timers--and it's actually better positioned now than it has been in decades. If you strip away all that history, it looks surprisingly contemporary. And for the first time, it may also be poised to exchange its status of "old" to that rare category of "classic."

"American" Bones
For the past few months, we've been enduring a weird little boomlet in very cloudy IPAs that supposedly come from New England. Oh really? Cloudy beers have been pretty popular here in Oregon since 1986, when Widmer Brothers first launched Hefeweizen. In fact, if you look at the bones of Hefeweizen, it has all the hallmarks of what we have come to think of as the classic American style.

• Cloudiness and rusticity. In 1986, that cloudiness was the most potent rebuke to industrial lagers Portlanders had ever seen. It said, without words or PR gloss, 'this is not your father's Lucky Lager.' That visual cue has been a part of Oregon brewing ever since, though the valence has changed as hops have come into the picture. Haziness is now associated with the addition of bales of hops, and when an IPA is absent at least a shimmer of haze, many drinkers regard it with skepticism. As craft beer gets ever larger and more industrial, that haze becomes a more potent proxy for artisanal. This is all something Rob and Kurt learned in 1986.
• Late hop flavors. American wheat beers have become their own thing. Made with neutral yeast, they accentuate the soft breadiness of the grain and are brewed to be drunk in twos and threes. This style really flourished in the Midwest, where beers like Bell's Oberon and Three Floyds Gumballhead have become perennial favorites. Hefeweizen is not actually a member of this group. It's really a pale ale, featuring a lovely layer of citrusy American hop flavor. The Widmers were certainly not the first to feature the bright notes of Cascade hops, but they understood how well it worked with a beer highlighting a citrus smack. 
•  Sessionability. The life-cycle of craft beer has come back to where it started. Beer was a sessionable drink, and people rarely sat down to drink just one. As craft beer evolved, beers got ever more intense, pulling the focus away from sessionability. Ultimately, drinkers started coming back around to sessionable beers that were full-flavored but not so intense they resisted having a pint or three. Hefeweizen, which combines light hoppiness with a layer of soft malts, is a perfect session beer, and has the complexity even beer geeks admire.

If you look at where American beer is right now, Hefeweizen looks remarkably contemporary. It even predicted the move to fruit. That slice of lemon, once derided by purists as a gimmick, doesn't look at all out of place in a world where grapefruit IPAs are the hottest trend. Go pour out a Hefeweizen and then grab another old-time craft standard--a Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA, for example--and pour that out for comparison. Which one seems more in keeping with the mood of 2016? Not that strange, heavy, bitter old IPA, that's for sure.

Sustained Success

It's also worth noting how few beers introduced in the 80s are still on the market. Beer is a commercial product, and breweries can't afford to keep any brand alive for nostalgic reasons. In the thirty years since Widmer Brothers released Hefe, they've introduced scores of beers to the market. They would happily be brewing, say, Drifter Pale Ale now if it were still selling well. But breweries can only afford to sell what people are buying When I spoke to Rob Widmer earlier this week, he mentioned how this phenomenon affected Hefe's predecessor, Weizenbier. It was actually just a filtered version of Hefeweizen, but it couldn't compete with its unexpectedly alluringly cloudy incarnation:

“Backing up even further, there were very few people who appreciated Altbier. We were kind of circling the drain—there wasn’t really any velocity there at all. We introduced the Weizenbier because we realized people wanted something that was a little more approachable. So Weizen really saved us. Originally we hoped to have Altbier, Weizenbier, and Hefe on tap. What we found was that Weizen drinkers, once they discovered Hefe, they just stopped. Over the course of the rest of ’86, we just slowly wound down Weizen. It was bittersweet; we hated to see that Weizenbier go.”

Over the course of thirty years, the craft beer segment has changed radically--and gone through several stages along the way. Each one of those shifts in preferences killed off a certain number of formerly-popular beers. But ever since its introduction, Hefeweizen has been far and away the most popular Widmer Brothers beer, even as other brands in the portfolio came and went. Over the thirty years since its introduction, they've brewed millions of barrels of the stuff. There's never been a time when it didn't account for the lion's share of the brewery's production and sales.

Sometimes craft beer fans are wary of the old. When he was master brewer at BridgePort, Karl Ockert called this the "novelty curve"--that period when a new beer sells well simply because its new. Other industry watchers call it "drinker promiscuity." Popularity is a double-edged sword, though. Everyone's trying to capture that lightning, but holding on to it--that's the trick. One of the reasons Hefeweizen has had this sustained success, year after year, era after era, is because it has a classic timelessness that people respond to.

I will confess that in the 1980s and '90s, I was not much a Hefeweizen fan. It had a status in that era of an entry-level beer. In the '80s, it also had an association with yuppies that warded me off. (For youngsters, yuppies, though very different in class and status, were sort of the hipsters of their day: a lot more people were called yuppies than claimed to be one.) It wasn't until sometime in the 2000s that I rediscovered Hefeweizen, and I was startled by what I found. My own palate had gone through that shift toward balance and subtle complexity, and I discovered what a triumph Hefeweizen was. In the years since, I will occasionally find myself in a place with a mediocre tap list that includes Hefe. I smile as I order it, knowing I've discovered this wonderful gem hiding there among the Stellas and Blue Moons.

After years of seeming like they were vaguely embarrassed by Hefeweizen, the Widmer Brothers have started to give full-throated support to their flagship again. Sales are up. They've even begun extending the brand a bit with beers like Hefe Shandy. (I'd love to see a cloudy, wheaty, late-hop IPA next; it would bear all the fingerprints of its ancestor and be on the cutting edge of the new trend.) My sense is that even beer geeks have come back around to it.

If you survive long enough, you're no longer old. You're classic. Maybe Widmer Hefeweizen has, after thirty years, finally gotten there.

Widmer Brothers Hefeweizen, An Oral History

This is the second part of a pair of posts on the legacy of Widmer Brothers Hefe. For the sibling post, a reconsideration of the beer itself, go here. 

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Good beers that manage to survive any time at all pass from the ownership of a brewery into the hands of a community. They survive because they create a strong impression in people's minds, often associated with key moments in life. I put out a call on Facebook and via email for reminiscences, and they form a rather striking portrait. I've arranged these chronologically, and interspersed among them are quotes from Rob Widmer, whom I spoke to earlier this week. Some of the folks are private citizens and beer fans, others may be familiar to you. But all tell a similar story.

I'm going to get things rolling by telling my own story. Widmer Hef--the name I've used for 28 years--was never one of my go-to beers. The doorway into good beer for me was stout, but I happened to live in Portland in the 80s and I had eyes--you really didn't need anything more to be aware of this beer. I first became aware of it in about 1988, the year the brothers installed a test brewery in the B. Moloch restaurant in what is now Southpark. It had already been gaining steam for a couple years, but that brewery, in a downtown location (all the little breweries at the time were in the cheaper, industrial areas), really helped magnetize people. Holding a vase glass of Hef and a wedge of lemon became an early status symbol in Portland. The visual presentation was so distinctive that people really wanted to be a part of it. Widmer Brothers Hefeweizen was astonishingly popular, and took beer from the pubs into the upper echelon of Portland's eateries. It transcended gender. I have very little doubt that one of the reasons craft beer became so broadly adopted was because Hefe crashed through so many barriers so early on.

“It was not long after we started pouring Hefe at the Dublin Pub. It was a Friday night and I was sitting at the bar with Carl Simpson, the proprietor, and he said, ‘I’m going to do something here. Watch what happens—this is incredible.’ He was already using the half-liter weizenbier glasses, so he filled up the four glasses, garnished them with lemon, put them on a tray, and had the waitress just walk around. There were tables full of people, and conversations would stop. When she would walk through, people would look at the tray, they would point, and you could tell how it completely grabbed their attention. By midnight everybody had one of those half liters of Hefe in front of them.”
Rob Widmer

The combination of the look, the flavor, and the approachability made it a big status symbol in the city.

"My own recollection has to do with my racquetball club, where I have now been a member for 27 years. In the early days, they had three taps…Bud, Bud Light and Widmer Hef. We played a lot of racquetball games for beer throughout the 1990s. If you really wanted to go for the gusto, you played for Widmer Hef. It was considered the gold standard. They kept lemon slices in a plastic bin behind the counter for all the folks who ordered pitchers of Hef. Man did that stuff taste great when it was paid for by some poor suckers. Major status symbol when you were drinking Hef while the other chumps sipped Bud or Bud Light."
Pete Dunlop

When he visited Oregon several years back, Stan Hieronymus noticed that haziness was a unifying theme in local beers. One reason is because so many of us were introduced to good beer in the form of that cloudy, yeasty Hefeweizen.

"I first had Widmer Hefe in the fall of 1988. I had moved to Portland to go to college, and we drank a ton of Henry's ale. But the Widmer Hefe was a revelation.  There wasn't another cloudy beer, the flavor seemed remarkable, and everyone would freak out when a keg got tapped. That beer was a huge favorite for everyone all through college - really the preferred keg to buy if you had an extra $20 or whatever it was. I do recall the sort of buzz and excitement whenever you heard that someone had a keg."
Van Havig

*

"I recall drinking it in the very early 90's and was surprised by the enormous amount of yeast in it. It really looked like a milkshake back then. I had just spent a semester in Vienna (not the Weizenbier capital, mind you) and had enjoyed a few Bavarian Hefeweizens, but wasn't an expert at that point. When I talked with Rob Widmer in 1997 before starting my studies at the VLB, he said they renamed it an American Hefeweizen. That, I thought, was a great addition to the moniker. The yeast load has definitely dropped since then, but it was one of the first fresh and local micro brews I had and it was special."
Alan Taylor

*

“We have all of our recipes, including weizen. But it was not really a batch of Hefe, it was just weizen. I have the kegging log that shows that when we were kegging that batch, we bypassed filtration and just went direct to keg, and those are the ones that went to the Dublin Pub. So there isn’t really a Hefe recipe. Some we filtered, and some we didn’t, and that was Hefe. That was the thing—the weizenbier was just a bitch to filter and once Hefe really started to go, we were like, ‘this is the greatest thing in the world.’ We could go right out of the tank and into the kegs; it saved us a day. Filtering ten barrels of Weizen was ridiculous, and all of a sudden—boom!—didn’t need to.” 
Rob Widmer

And then of course there's the issue of the lemon slice. Now we regularly add citrus to beer, but back in the 80s, this was seen as a lot of things--innovative, transgressive, gimmicky. It seems now to be mainly recalled with affection.

"In 1992, there was a small beer shop just off campus in Eugene called Taste of Germany. It had mainly imported German beers with one notable exception, this cloudy yellowish beer called 'Hefeweizen' from Widmer Brothers. I had never heard of it, having a naive beer palate. We ordered a pitcher, and the host gave us a small plate of limes... and it was heaven. A cloudy taste of flavor unlike anything I had ever had at that point. A Widmere Hefe with a lime not lemon, to this day, remains my all time favorite beverage."
Dann Cutter

 *

"I remember living in Ashland in the mid-90s. This was prior to Widmer Hef being available in anything but kegs. We would go sit at Omar's on campus and order pitchers, the rims of which would be lined with lemon slices."
Matthew Diment

*

“I guess it was Carl Simpson at the Dublin Pub [who first garnished with lemon]. Carl was already doing that with our weizen. When we went with Hefe, it just stuck.” After considering it more, he continued, “Well, honestly, I don’t know. Did we start it? I don’t know if Carl started it or if we started it.”
Rob Widmer

It seems that the Widmers' flagship was also something of a siren, calling people to this land of cloudy skies and cloudy beer.

"In the mid-90's I lived in Illinois, a craft beer wasteland. If you wanted a beer in the Land of Lincoln, your choices were macro. Miller Lite and Bud Lite where essentially your options. I chose to avoid beer entirely. Around this time, I visited Portland for the first time on a business trip. While at dinner, one of my co-workers suggested I taste a local beer. I recalled hearing something about Portland having decent beer, so I figured I'd give it a try. I asked the server to surprise me, and she brought back a tall curvy glass filled with what appeared to be orange juice. After attempting to send back the orange juice, she told me it was a beer called Hefeweizen."

With a few sips, the seeds of my beer journey were planted, and I have the Widmer Brothers to thank for it. Widmer Hefeweizen has always held a special place in my heart because it was my first good beer. It was unlike anything I ever tasted."
Sanjay Reddy

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"My first taste of Widmer Hefeweizen came from a 6 pack I purchased from a convenience store in Washington D.C. Seeing a Portland brewery on the shelf, while picking up snacks, was a landmark moment for me. This was during my nascent years as a beer drinker. At the time, as an east coaster, all beers from the west coast seemed exotic and were presumed to be superior. The limitations of distribution in the early 2000s meant that I had few occasions to drink west coast beer. I returned to my friend's apartment. We sat on his porch and drank the beer straight from the bottle. I recall the seed of moving to Portland being planted in my head on that day. I wasn’t savvy enough to appreciate the construction of the beer, or its legacy. But I liked it, and bought another 6 pack before I returned home to New Jersey. The Hefeweizen provided a distraction from the beers I was exposed to at the time. It didn’t taste what I thought of as ‘German.’ It wasn’t laden with crystal malt. But in the beer I was able to capture an essence of something changing. It was intriguing enough to get me thinking about something beyond what’s inside the bottle."
Josh Grgas 

*

I had my first Hefe in 2002 in Pittsburgh, PA. It was fantastic. I worked at a bar that was on the forefront of supporting craft beer, and it really was life changing.

"One of my favorite memories I have was when Rob and I delivered an hours-old keg of Hefe to the Dublin Pub for the kickoff of the first 100 Days of Hefe celebration. I had the honor of donning Kurt's leather apron, and the signature red carnation that the brothers would take to each delivery in the old days. We loaded up the old Datsun and made the (slow) trip to the Dublin, where Rob pulled the keg-unloading move with the tire he had done thousands of times before (I think there is video somewhere. I'll try to find it, or maybe Brady has access to it). It was a special experience that I'll remember always, and the beer that flowed after we tapped that keg was the best tasting Hefe I had ever had (and I've had a lot of Hefes)."
Aaron Burget (who left Pittsburgh and ended up working at Widmer for a time)

And since no story is complete without the alternate view, we go to a drinker who came to this beer knowing what the word "hefeweizen" meant. With predictable (and fairly common) results.

"I remember being very excited to taste my first Widmer Hefe back in 2002. Having grown up watching my grandpa get home delivery of Maisel's hefe by the case and drinking it leisurely in the garden on summer days, I couldn't have been more stoked to return to my birthplace and begin feeding those olfactory memories (of beer!) from childhood."

"So when I got my first beautiful looking pint in the classic Hefe glass (and tossed the lemon slice away), I took a big strong sip ... and exclaimed "bleaugh! What is this crap on tap?" Thus my introduction to something called 'American style Hefeweizen.'"
Mark Bunster

You may wonder why I buried the negative recollections--and I'm sure there are some. But perhaps people decided this was the moment to praise this icon of American brewing rather than bury it. In any case, no one sent me an unkind word.

Please feel free and invited to share your own stories in comments. Prost!

Do Portlanders Line Up at Bars? John Hodgman Speculates

Okay, hive mind, I have an interesting case for you. I was listening to the latest episode of one of my three or four favorite podcasts, Judge John Hodgman, wherein he adjudicates minor disputes (with support from bailiff Jesse Thorn).  John Hodgman is known to most as the "I'm a PC" guy, though possibly also for his deranged millionaire spots on the Daily Show.  In this recent podcast he ruminated on a topic that flatly mystified--but also intrigued--me.  It touches on one of my very favorite topics, the culture of pub-going.  (I have a whole section on it in The Beer Bible.)  Here he turns to Portland, but espies something I don't really recognize:

"There's one city that I've been to in the United States, Jesse Thorn, where people line up at bars.  They form an orderly line without being asked, and the line is sacrosanct.  Can you guess what city in the United States that I've been to where this is part of the culture of the bar."

[Jesse guesses Walla Walla.]

"You are not far off; it is a Pacific Northwestern city known as Portland, Oregon... In Portland, you'd think, 'oh, it's because people are very polite.'  But in fact, it's because people in Portland who go to bars, especially cool bars, don't actually feel comfortable dealing with one another--in my opinion.  So, they line up in order to adhere to a social code that will make outsiders feel unwelcome and will make them feel sanctimonious and self-righteous.  And, with the added benefit of, they never have to deal with the messy human interactions like, 'oh sorry, I was here first.'  Or, 'hey, do you mind if I just get this before you because I gotta go out, or do whatever.'  Do you know what I mean?  Those minor, tiny, little negotiations that humans make with each other all the time in order to get their alcohol and do other things in life.  It feels like when people line up at a bar in Portland, that's to my mind what they're avoiding.  If there are people from Portland, Oregon who disagree with me, who feel that I am unfair, write me a letter and I'll engage with you.  Maybe I broke your rule and you're rolling your eyes.  But that's how I feel."

Hodgman is principally a liquor man (he jokes that rather than a sweet tooth, he has an "alcohol molar"), so he may be talking about upscale bars in the Pearl for all I know.  But I throw it out to you, Portland bar-goers: does this make a lick of sense to you?  I don't recall ever encountering a line in a bar.  I think it's even more unlikely that his interpretation about the meaning of these (possibly apocryphal) lines is accurate.  In my experience, Portland bars are communal and unfussy.  I'd say interaction is one of the key elements of Portland bar culture.

But it's also the case that locals are sometimes blind to manifestations of their own culture--culture that smacks visitors across the face with its weirdness.  So I'm reluctant to dismiss it out of hand; maybe I'm just missing it. I'd love your feedback in comments.  We can pass along our collective opinion to him.

Finally, a couple of notes in terms of tone.  Hodgman's comic style is sardonic, which doesn't come across so well in print.  He's also not only very familiar with Portland, but seems to consider it a dwelling of his immediate tribe (he currently lives in Brooklyn).  He therefore kids Portlanders like you do a sibling.  There's been tons of Portland content on the podcast over the years, including probably the best episode ever, Rashomom, which gave birth to the quantum "Gray House Universe" theory.  There are others like this transportation dispute (of course), and inevitably, one involving a food cart.  I guess what I'm saying is, don't spend a lot of time analyzing him. (But do listen to a podcast if you're intrigued.) I'm much more interested in getting to the bottom of this lining-up question.  Do Portlanders form lines in bars?  Where have you seen it?  And, if we do line up, any theories as to what's going on?

A "Revealing" Promotion?

Just yesterday, I was arguing vigorously that craft brewing promotes an atmosphere of family-friendly conviviality and enjoyment. But today I get an email touting a secretive after-hours pub crawl of establishments where children definitely aren't allowed:

I hear that you are attending the Beer Blogger Conference this weekend in Portland. As you are aware Portland is known for making some World Class Ales and Lagers…. and also for its wide selection of Gentleman Clubs with good beer. How convenient! With that said an “Unsanctioned” group of us from [redacted brewery] would like to load you up on a bus (no pun intended) and take a tour to the following Portland Iconic locations; Acrop, Sassy’s, Mary’s, Union Jacks, or Cabaret. [Redacted brewery] has been known to throw down and the bar tab will be taken care of, but sorry, not the lap dances!

I don't disapprove of this, and I don't want to get anyone in trouble or scotch the event--thus the redacted names. I found it so remarkable, though, that I thought I'd pass it along. To the [redacted brewery]'s credit, lady bloggers were also apparently invited.

For all those visiting bloggers, this is actually a perfect example of the strange city that is the People's Republic of Portland. We have, on the one hand, an ethos so crunchy and socialistic that we have a TV show to mock us, but on the other a classic pioneer libertarian streak that has led to the greatest number of strip clubs per capita in the US. Those strip clubs are also the most flamboyant; the Oregon supreme court has ruled that stripping is expression, and the Oregon constitution has an even more expansive definition of speech than the US constitution. All I'm sayin' is, if you go on the tour, don't expect thongs or pasties.

Nanos of the Grape Kind

I would like to direct you toward Katherine Cole's article in today's Oregonian about a rising phenomenon--urban wineries based in Portland.

A new guard of winemakers has bucked this trend. Instead of moving out to rural areas or driving more than an hour each way, every day, they're staying put in the city. They've started making wine out of their garages and graduated to full-production professional facilities amid the hustle and bustle of city life.

With the formation of a new group called PDX Urban Wineries, this spring appears to be the coming-out moment for metropolitan winemakers. I recently met a few of Portland's garagistes and tasted their wares.

This trend is pan-alcoholic. We see it in the case of nanobreweries, microdistilleries, and now urban wineries. What all three have in common is the intent to become a part of the thrum of the city. The wider trend extends to coffee micro-roasters and farmers markets, where the commodity isn't just designed for general consumption--it feeds (or, I guess you could say creates) growing trends in hyper-local consumption. As Katherine points out, we already can go from coffee shop to bakery to brewery and find this going on--why not wine?

I'm ignorant enough that I will offer no opinion on the wineries--but the trend is consonant with larger a larger cultural evolution in the city.

Snowpocalypse 2011!

We're getting hammered pretty hard here in Portland this morning--blizzard conditions, snarled traffic, really a terrible situation out there. I'm just glad we haven't lost power. The city's doing yeoman's work, and the busses are chained up so folks can get into work--those folks whose bosses are mad enough to attempt to transact business in this maelstrom. If we're lucky, and if God smiles on our sorry little town today, we might--just might--get out of it with minimal lost life.

Being a hardy blogger, I braved the violence to snap a quick picture so you can see just how bad things are:


I mean, just look it it: you can see that accumulation threatens the actual sidewalk and streets.

Of course, I kid. For those of you who don't live west of the Cascade Mountains, this is a little bit of local color. Once or twice a year, the threat of snow appears on the doppler radar of area meteorologists and this threat--yes, just the threat--is enough to shut the city down. Today most of the school districts in the metro area have canceled classes and lots of people will skip work. The local news has been obsessed with it--the Oregonian devoting two full articles to this specter of doom--all while people raised in Wisconsin and Massachusetts snigger.

It's a razor's edge, because Portlanders don't really know how to drive in the snow, and the city doesn't have the resources to handle a once-every-two-years snowstorm. When the roads are covered, it can be a horrendous mess. On the other hand, shutting the city down on the threat of snow also has some disadvantages. Oh well. All cities are dysfunctional in their own way.

I guess a day off means an opportunity to go grab a pint, so it's not all bad.

Portlandia: Mildly Funny, But Where's the Beer?

If you live in Portland, you are no doubt aware that a new TV show is about to debut featuring our fair city: "Portlandia." (If you're like me, you became aware of the channel broadcasting the show, IFC, only after becoming aware of the show itself.) If you live elsewhere, probably you don't know about it or care. But around here, it's been getting a lot of buzz--due mainly to this viral video:

The entire show is actually streamable via Hulu, and I watched it recently. Sketch comedy, from SNL's Fred Armisen, with help from co-creative Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney. I'm not a fan of sketch comedy, and I'd say this is mostly miss with a few nice chuckles along the way.

The idea is to poke fun at Portland's unique culture--and they do a fairly good job of identifying and capturing it. Portland's the butt of the jokes, but in the manner of Portlanders kidding themselves. The biggest oversight, however, is the lack of beer references. Inexcusable! So, as a public service, here's a mini-script the writers can steal and expand upon.

Portlandia: Beer

Scene: Set in an industrial pub with lots of concrete and steel. A picture of a haloed Fred Eckhardt hangs above the bar. Three people are sitting at the bar, Armisen, Brownstein, and oh, I don't know, Sam Calagione. A bartender stands ready with a tulip glass behind the bar.

Mike (Armisen): Have you tried the new Ninkasi Quad IPA?
Kylie (Brownstein): Quad?
Mike: Yeah, it's 19% alcohol and 432 IBUs
Kylie: I'm over the IPAs. It's all sour for me. [To bartender] I'll have that new one from Cascade, the dragonfruit-artichoke strong blond.
Bartender to Joe: What are you having?
Joe (Calagione): Fat Tire.
Mike and Kylie begin to laugh.
Joe: What's so funny.
Mike: nothing. (snorts)
Kylie breaks into peals of laughter.
Bartender, to Joe: Beer geeks, just ignore them.
Andrew (James Mercer) enters. Goes to the bar, orders a Pabst tall.
Mike and Kylie nod approvingly.
fade.

Guild Public House Opening on Burnside

Apparently it's official. An old friend of mine, one of the original founders of BlueOregon (along with Kari Chisholm and me), is ditching politics and getting into the pub biz:

His new joint, The Guild Public House, will open in mid-January in the first-floor space under Noble Rot that, in its most recent incarnation, was the Report Lounge.

Says Cornett: "The notion is to have high-end yet limited pub grub priced to compete in a food cart city. We won't have burgers and fries (kitchen limitations) but we will have great sandwiches, classic salads with unique twists, and feature seasonal specials on an ongoing basis. As a very Portland Pub, we'll be local sourcing as much as possible. We're also cognizant that we're moving into a LEED Platinum building and going to make sure that we continue the environmentally friendly theme to the fullest extent possible. I think we'll be the only pub in Portland on a well and heated/cooled with geothermal."

I knew this was in the works, and behind the scenes I've been directing my meager influence toward securing a cask tap at the place. Either way, though, I hope it's a hit. Good luck, Jesse--

Review - Amnesia Brewing

832 N Beech Street
Portland, Oregon

Monday 4-11 pm
Tuesday-Sunday noon-Midnight
Pints: $2.75
Pitchers: $10.00
Seasonal outdoor seating; dogs allowed.

Beers: Pale ale, porter, IPA, ESB, seasonals and specials.

Brewpubs come in a few major styles, and among these, a Portland standard is the converted warehouse. While it has its aesthetic virtues, generally the warehouse brewpub is the result of a thin pocketbook: breweries need space and warehouses provide it. Cheaply. Amnesia, like so many brewpubs, was an early resident in a marginal neighborhood. But it also fits the vibe of the no-longer-marginal Mississippi neighborhood: straightforward, hardworking, and a little funky.

The building is made of corrugated metal, and except that the parking lot in front has been converted to outdoor seating--picnic tables under white tents--you might mistake it for a metal shop. In fact, once you're inside, you see an old sign on its side up near the rafters that reads "Ornamental Iron" and you might still think it's a metal shop. The building is a one-room job, but the brewery is set off from the seating area by the bar. The rafters are open and disappear into insulation at the roofline. Tables are oak, and the chairs may even have been picked up at auction from the old, original BridgePort--anyway they're exactly the same variety. All in all, a Lucky Lab-ish vibe.

Food
The menu is simple: meat. The kitchen consists of an outdoor grill, and the brewery will throw a burger or four varieties of sausage on for you. They also have a mixed appertiser plate that includes cheese and bread. Since I'm still irrationally afraid of mad cow disease, I skip the burgers and go for the sausage and, as a connoisseur, I give them the hearty thumbs up. My fave are the slightly spicy Hungarian sausages.

Beer
Brewer Kevin King seems to groove to the pale tune--he's currently got two IPAs and an ESB on tap, and he usually has a pale as well. They are Northwest in character, with lots of citrus and bite, but fairly approachable. During the holidays, he had on two winter ales, a big and bigger, that de-emphasize hops for malt and warmth. They are, like the brewery, straightforward and hardworking. Most Oregonians will recognize these beers as variations on very popular themes. As a group, they're above average--not at the Roots/Laurelwood level, but substantially above the McMenamins. Below are some capsule reviews I scribbled out the last time I was there.

ESB - Very nice, balanced ale. Has a good, malty structure and a spicy hop complement. Almost tending toward brown in the glass. A classic English-style ESB. Rating: Excellent.

Porter - The palate is chalky and I get more tannins in the mouth than I would like. The brewery's weakest beer, but, if you like dark ales, perfectly respectable. Rating: average.

Copacetic IPA - Rich, super creamy, sweetly malty with a spritely citrusy hopping. Their strongest beer. Rating: excellent.

Frosty's Revenge (winter seasonal) - A rich, malty beer, akin to a Scottish ale. It's frothy and creamy, and has a touch of diacetyl that's actually a nice note. Rating: good.

Sleighjerker (winter seasonal) - A traditional winter warmer with lots of hops and alcohol (8%). It did end with a sweet note that not everyone at the table found uniformly delightful. I thought it was fine. Rating: good.

Amnesia is one of those great brewpubs that reflects the character of the neighborhood and feels like a happy gathering place for locals. Of course, it's worth a drive, too.
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PHOTO CREDIT: Vicki Jean