Hot Days and Cold Beer

I understand a great deal about beer. I understand how its made, a lot of the history behind various national traditions, even baroque stuff like the way pH affects fermentation. Before I started writing about beer, I had favorite styles and styles I didn't much enjoy; through the process of writing about beer, I even started understanding those unenjoyed styles so now there's basically no beer I don't actively like. What I cannot understand is a thing almost everyone else on the planet knows by intuition: that a cold beer tastes good on a hot day.

As I write this, I am huddled next to a mediocre air conditioner in the bedroom as the afternoon sun bakes the city of Portland in this alarmingly changed climate. We are people of the clouds, Oregonians, and like amphibians, hot, dry weather causes us existential panic.

I could imagine having a beer now, here by the air-con, but the second I step into the un-air-conditioned house (or unthinkably, the deadly outdoors), it's the last thing I want. There's nothing about beer that slakes thirst, nevermind all the half-baked poetry (and ad gloss) devoted to convincing me it's so. Beer, even crisp, light lagers like my summer go-to Pacifico, are relatively thick and heavy when compared to life-giving water. On top of that, the alcohol dehydrates, which is the last thing an amphibian needs on a hot, dry day.

I know I'm an outlier on this point. I was recently talking to a woman who doesn't even drink beer, and she was mentioning how this weather causes her to crave a cold one. I nodded and agreed, knowing she was just using the opportunity to find common ground. But, as I yawned and thought about the bad night's sleep I had gotten and the bad night's sleep I was about to get, I was actually thinking about a cup of coffee to cut through the haze.

It's summer, and brewers are swamped during the busiest time of the year. The whole world wants to find a shady patch and crack a frosty one. You're crazy, the lot of you. This is the one day I don't want a beer. Give me a tall glass of water with a java chaser. And please, rain gods, a nice low-pressure system and an inch of rain.

Drinking Beer in the Triple Digits

In Portland, the mercury rises to triple digits in summer about as often as snow falls to the ground in winter.  I feel the same kind of awe in the face of both.  The snow is unmitigated pleasure, while the deathly heat, which settles even into the shadows and persuades all creatures to lie low in silence, is more awe than awesome.  We're getting a little run beginning today of very hot weather.  Maybe not Phoenix hot, certainly not New Delhi hot, but pretty good by any measure.

And the last thing I want is a beer.  It's possible that I'll want something extremely light very late tonight, as I wait for the house to cool enough to sleep.  But if I do, it will be yet another doomed tonic, and I'll enjoy it far less than I would on a drizzly 40-degree night.  Heat and beer are like oil and water to me.  Yet I know that summer is when Americans buy the most beer, so obviously I'm an outlier.

But perhaps there's a ceiling for regular folk, too.  Portlanders (and others experiencing triple digits today)--will you be tippling beer or something soft and cold like iced tea?

No Blogging Today

And I blame this endless Portland sun. It is unwholesome and alarming. I'm trying to work on my computer, and it's slanting in at a devilish angle, sending reflected knives of brightness throughout the house. I should be complaining about the long dark nights that lighten only marginally under the batting of slate winter cumulus. It should be 38 and pissing rain. This is Denver-like weather. No good can come of it.

Memorial Day Weather Report

The sun has broken through and all delight under its tender rays. Current temperature in Portland, 58 degrees. Now, you might think we'd complain about this, but no, for behold I pass along to you these stats (via Portland weatherman Rod Hill):

Our cool May weather is like the warm weather in Fairbanks, Alaska, each havering highs in the low 60s. Fairbanks has seen 12 days reach 70 degrees or more; Portland just five. Our warmest day [was] 74 degrees; Fairbanks has hit 85.

Despite this, May has been a slight improvement. March and April were the two coldest on record and also the wettest. This year, both 60 and 70 degrees arrived later than ever, and we're still waiting on our first 80-degree day. The poor breweries have been putting out the light, sunny beers, but all we want is stout. Of course, with the violence Mother Nature has visited upon other regions, we're not complaining. Just observing...

Rain Squalls Make...

Deep Thought

Nice Maine weather we're having here, isn't it? Wind howling around the corner of the house, temperature still in the twenties (all right, 29 according to the iPhone--still), pallid little sun, weak as a warm Budweiser, skimming across the Southern sky. At some point, I'm going to have to give up on the idea that summer will give me another dog day, aren't I?

Hot Weather Beers

It doesn't look like this heat is going to let up any time soon. Forecasts for Portland project weather in the triple digits for the next couple days, and heat in the 90s through the weekend. That means that if you want a beer, you're going to be wanting something other than a double IPA. Angelo has a good list at Brewpublic, and in response to Geoff's query, I'll add a few more.

General Principles
The first thing to acknowledge is that alcohol and high temperatures are a bad combo.

Alcohol lowers the body’s tolerance for heat and acts as a diuretic—meaning it speeds up dehydration—and affects the body’s ability to regulate its temperature. The body loses needed fluids through the urination alcohol induces....

Alcohol also raises the body’s blood pressure, increasing the risk of a heat-related illness like hyperthermia over heating and heat stroke especially for people with high blood pressure.

If you're not in an air-conditioned environment, it's probably best not to drink any alcohol while it's this hot. However, if you can moderate your environment a bit, a beer can definitely taste refreshing. You want to look for specific characteristics in a hot-weather beer, though. Heavy or sweet beers are out--they'll make you feel gross. High-alcohol beers will exacerbate the effects of heat and while some of them taste good, it's best to stick to something around 5% or lower. And among those beers, the best are those that are tart or dry (low in residual sugars and not sweet to the palate).

The good news is that a variety of styles have been developed specifically to beat the heat. The bad news?--Oregon's brewers, inhabiting a region where summers are temperate and winters are protracted and dark, aren't known for brewing a lot of them. Here's my best bet of for classic styles and the examples you can find around the Northwest:

Bavarian Hefeweizen
In my humble estimation, the very best style for summer heat are the wheat beers from Southern Germany, where they're variously called hefeweizen or weisse. Although they are a typically low-alcohol beer (5% on average), they're brewed with lots of wheat, imparting a fluffy, creamy texture. They are characterized by a spicy palate that emerges from the fermentation (no real spices are added), with notes of clove, banana, vanilla, and citrus. They finish, as all hot-weather beers must, crisply; whatever sweetness you detect in the palate does not cloy. American versions of this beer tend to lack the spice (Widmer's is a case in point), though the recently-introduced Sierra Nevada Kellerweis is good. If you're in a grocery store with any kind of beer selection, you should see a German import from one of the major producers: Weihenstephaner, Schneider, Paulaner, Ayinger, Franziskaner, or Erdinger.


Belgian Wit
Across the border, Belgium produces a classic summer wheat beer much in keeping with German weisses. The word wit means "white" and indicates the cloudy, whitish color of the beer and its snowy head. Unlike their German kin, however, the Belgian variants do get their zesty, crisp character from spices. These harken back to the Dutch colonial period, when traders brought back exotic spices. Typically a Belgian wit has orange peel from the bitter Curaçao and coriander. Other spices are often added, as well (chamomile, lavender, black pepper, etc). In the US, Coor-owned Blue Moon has popularized the style, but it's a lackluster version. The original, which you can sometimes find around town is Hoegaarden. Other nice versions available in bottle are Unibroue Blanche de Chambly, Allagash. Alaskan recently introduced a year-round version that will do in a pinch.

Pilsner
Ah, the king of beer (styles). Considered by many to be the quintessential summer beer, and it's hard to argue strongly against them. I've written about the two main varieties of the pilsner style before (the Bohemian/Czech original and its lighter, less hoppy German brother). Pilsners are simultaneously paragons of both lagers and hoppy beers, and for some reason the former has prevented the latter from propelling this style to mass popularity among hop-loving (but ale-swilling) Northwesterners. The best examples are widely available at grocery stores--Pilsner Urquell and Czechvar on the bohemian side, Trumer Pils and Full Sail LTD 03 on the German side. Check local brewpubs, who now regularly brew a version.

Tart Beers
The maze of tart beers is a tangled affair. They range from the merely tart to the eye-wateringly sour. Their summer-month virtues are several: a crisp acidity, lots of flavor with little alcohol, refreshing fruit without cloying sweetness. For hot-weather drinking, the best are those that aren't too tart--forget the straight lambics or Flemish reds. What you want is a light body and just a bit of zip. Full Sail still has their Berliner Weisse on tap at the Pilsner Room, and that's a perfect choice--even if you're only looking at the heat through the windows. You can try it with a little bit of syrup or straight. Upright Four, with a mild lactic zing, is perfect warm-weather beer (and word is it will be available in bottles soon). If you're feeling really adventuresome, go to a beer store and try a fruit lambic (but skip Lindemans).

Others
Kolsch, the native beer of Cologne, can seem insipid in cool weather. In the heat they open up and refresh, with a crisp dry palate, just a touch of hopping. Hard to find good examples locally, but a delicious version inspired by the style is Double Mountain's. I love a tasty mild or bitter ale from England, and these are also very hard to find. One you sometimes see--the Horse Brass often has it on tap--is Coniston's Bluebird Bitter, a small beer nevertheless lushly hopped. Full Sail Session is tasty, but beware, at 5.1%, it's stronger than it looks. Finally, and a tip of the hat back to Angelo, the Mainer, who remembered that Sam Adams Boston Lager is flat-out one of the best hot-weather beers made in America.

Devil Sun

Okay, this is bad. Average high for July 28: 81°

Temperature: 8:53 am: 79°
_9:53 am: 83°
10:53 am: 88°
11:53 am: 92°
12:53 pm: 96°
-1:53 pm: 100°
-2:53 pm: 102°
-3:53 pm: 104°
-4:53 pm: 105°

Key quote to put things in perspective comes via Twitter from Oakshire's Matt Van Wyk:

103 degrees today. Even the 6am brew shift of a double brew won't be enjoyable. Which breweries have an air conitioned brewhouses???

And apropos of nothing, I offer you a phone pic I snapped outside my Boeing en route to Minneapolis. Even with just two megapixels, one has a sense of the grandeur. Lucky people will be driving up that mountain sometime this morning and not coming down until Thursday.




Update.
Widmer weighs in on Twitter: "Currently, the brewhouse is 115°, the boiler room is 135°, and the cooler is 46°. We'll hang out in the cooler, thanks very much."

In London

You may have seen/heard the news that London just got hit with a snowstorm that shut the city down as tidily as the one that visited Portland before Christmas.

Londoners do not routinely see much winter snow and the city rarely seems prepared for unusual precipitations. “You get half an inch of snow in this place and everything falls apart,” said a stranded north London commuter.

Sound familiar? From Stonch, our London publican/correspondant, comes this lush description of the challenges of coping with snow in a city ill-prepared for such rarities:

Our kitchen porter and cleaner have both called to say they can't make it, so chef's going to be chopping his own spuds and I'll have to acquaint myself with a mop and bucket. A character-building day lies ahead, then....

I'll have to cope without a barmaid, too, it would seem. It's just me and the chef. The fishmonger and the greengrocer have both delivered but the all-important draymen are nowhere to be seen. I expect them to turn up in the late afternoon with faces like slapped arses and tales of woe to relate. To be fair, I wouldn't want to be skidding around central London in a lorry full of beer barrels. Thankfully, I've got plenty of ale ready to go in the cellar: Landlord, XXXB, Thwaites Nutty Black, York Nordic Fury and Adnams East Green. I might run out of Carlsberg, though. What a shame.

Hang in there, our weather-kindred. With the right balance of coffee and stout, you'll pull through just fine. We did.

No Pub-going Tonight

At least, not if this keeps up:


It's more a cup of hot chocolate in front of the fire kind of day, anyway.

Century Temps ≠ Beer drinking

1. Yesterday it was hotter in Portland (101) than Yuma, AZ (100).

2. My frog-like Oregon body needs an aqueous environment to survive, which means practically hooking up a saline drip just to stay alive.

3. Beer is a diuretic. And heavy. And filling. And bloating.

4. Today it's supposed to be 103.

5. Blogging to resume ... eventually.