Smeirlap! (Taras Boulba, De La Senne Brewery)

Since I've spent a few days castigating the Belgians, I think it's time to praise them. Last week I picked up a bottle from Belmont Station--I hesitate to admit this and sacrifice my street cred--based solely on the label. My knack for decanting beer is clearly greater than my skill at photography, but at right you can see the label that beguiled. The image shows a burly, teamster-looking guy about to crush a scrawny beggar-looking man. They are inexplicably near a circus, and the teamster screams "Smeirlap!" That and the three words I could read ("Extra Hoppy Ale") were enough to make the sale.

As a now-elderly man who must scuttle around on bad knees while nursing a case of low-grade sciatica, I have few remaining childish joys left to indulge. One is purchasing beers from foreign lands, particularly when the label is inexplicable and bizarre. One has a sense (however romantic and inaccurate) that the beer represents something essential about the country, and that decanting the beer is a little like pouring out a bit of the country. (I should note that less than half the beers acquired in this manner have been worth a damn. Still.) It turns out there's a story behind the label (with Belgians, there almost always is), but more about that later.

Tasting Notes
It turns out the beer is a paltry 4.5% alcohol--substantially lighter than Full Sail Session--but I didn't know that until after I drank it. Absolutely nothing tipped it off. It is a corked beer, and comes roiling out like a Belgian strong. The head is absolutely magnificent, as thick and well-structured as whipped egg whites. (In the picture, you can see the peaks.) It's a hazy golden and sports a massive bead. Upon visual inspection, I had already concluded it was going to be a big beer.

The aroma and flavor mislead as well. The aroma in particular is complex and interesting--at first just peppery, but then I detected something that made me jot down "soap," and later it hit me--lavender. It is predictably rocky and effervescent on the tongue, which draws out the "extra hoppy" character advertised on the label. The bitterness--robust, but not out of balance--is of an almond/apricot pit quality. Far different from our green hoppiness. I detected no candi sugar (for reasons now obvious), but it felt every bit as big and substantial as many of the complex Belgians that ring in at 7-10%. No funk in the yeast, but it is very, very dry. A great beer, and a revelation when I learned it was a session ale (though at ten bucks a bottle, you won't be drinking it by the liter). I would like to hear about the 4.5% beer that has more flavor and more character than Taras Boulba.

The brewery is brand-spanking new--so new they don't even have a brewery. They borrow De Ranke's. (Interesting. Wonder if time-sharing is an option here? I have a sweet little brown I wouldn't mind trying to take to a wider audience. Kurt and Rob?) Their lineup features five beers, but only two are imported to the US. The other, a 4.5% stout, I did not see.

Okay, so what about the label? Don't bother trying the website--it's in French or Dutch, your choice. English, tantalizingly listed on the splash, is not yet operational. Fortunately, Shelton Brothers, the importer, has the details.

It's all been explained to us by the brewers, but we're still not entirely clear about it. What we can understand is that a young Flemish man has gone and married a French-speaking Wallonian girl, and his father, Taras Boulba, is very angry. (Smeirlap means 'fool' in a bizarre local dialect, which combines Flemish and French, somehow.)

This is all a bastardization of the original story by Gogol, whose protagonist was Russian, a Protestant. His son marries a Polish girl, a Catholic, during the religious war between the two countries in the 1600's, and the Russian father simply kills his son to eliminate the shame.

I am pleased to hear that the explanation only makes the whole thing more charming, if no more coherent. I recommend you try a bottle, should you see it. Another wonderful mold-breaking beer from Belgium, and only a smeirlap would fail to see that.

Sympathy for the Devil?

InBev has a lot of chutzpah. They make a hostile takeover bid for Anheuser-Busch, a bigger company, and then have the temerity to get pissed off when Bud doesn't fall in line:

Yesterday, InBev CEO Carlos Brito sent an annoyed letter to Anheuser-Busch’s board, complaining about A-B’s talks to take over the rest of Grupo Modelo. Brito warned, “In light of the reports, we believe it is important for you and your Board to understand that our proposal to combine with Anheuser-Busch by means of acquiring all Anheuser-Busch outstanding shares for $65 per share in cash is made on the basis of Anheuser-Busch’s current assets, business and capital structure.”

The issue is this: if Bud buys the Modelo Group, it will be too big for InBev to swallow. (Mainly because InBev has to go $40 bil in debt to swing the deal in the first place.) I have no idea what the shareholders will think, but putting the Modelo deal on the table is certainly a wise--it puts control back in A-B's hands and gives the company options. The irony is that InBev here is playing the American role--invading a company, but telling the invadees it's for their own good. Makes you sort of root for Bud, doesn't it? Sort of.

Amusing.

Borrowed Money--Wait, isn't that as American as apple pie?

This is sort of interesting. Despite a tight credit market, InBev managed to score forty billion (or 86.4% of the total) of its $46 billion offer on credit.

InBev, the brewer of Stella Artois and Beck's, said it would finance its $46.3 billion bid for Anheuser-Busch with at least $40 billion in debt and a combination of non-core asset sales and equity financing.

"This is going to be one of the top five global consumer companies. People want to hold the debt," said a source familiar with the InBev offer. "For the right deal in the right industry, banks will come up with the money."

That's one kinghell of a bet. InBev really thinks Bud is a great company, don't they? Interestingly, A-B could block the deal by getting bigger:

Something that may play a role in whether or not the deal goes through is Anheuser-Busch's joint venture with Grupo Modelo, brewer of the Mexican beer Corona. Modelo might see the Inbev proposal as a chance to buy back Anheuser's half of the joint venture, but it is unlikely that Bud would go for it, said Douglas Cogen, co-chair of the mergers and acquisitions group at Fenwick & West.

If Anheuser-Busch, on the other hand, purchased Modelo's half of the profitable joint venture, something that is rumored to happen, it would add $10.0 billion to $15.0 billion to its value, making it more difficult for InBev to follow through with the deal.

I know, I know, you don't care about this deal. Still, I can't stop myself from telling you one more thing. In reaction to this deal, wherein Belgians (who speakFrench!) gain the reigns of an American behemoth, nationalists are in a tizzy.

The Save AB website, which has garnered more than 8,000 signatures, compares the Budweiser brewer's place in the American pysche to “baseball and apple pie”, adding: “With your help we can fight the foreign invasion of AB. We will fight to protect this American treasure. We will take to the internet, to the streets, to the marble halls of our capitals, whatever it takes to stop the invasion.”

A $47 BILLION Bud? That's What InBev Will Pay

The rockin' huge news of the day--sorry, I'm late posting on it--is Belgian beer behemoth InBev's unsolicited bid to buy out Anheuser-Busch. (As penance, there's some value-added analysis below.) The deal:

BRUSSELS -(Dow Jones)- InBev (INB.BT) wants to turn Budweiser into its "global flagship brand" as part of the Belgian brewer's plan to buy Anheuser-Busch & Co. (BUD) for $47 billion, InBev executives said on a conference call Thursday.

The merger, which values of Anheuser at $65 a share, would create the first global beer company, combining InBev's sales in Western Europe, Latin America and Canada with Anheuser's dominant position in the U.S. market.

InBev, maker of Stella Artois, Beck's and Brahma, will use its global distribution networks to boost sales of Budweiser, the iconic U.S. beer, in places such as China, Canada and Latin America, InBev executives said on the conference call. The goal is to capitalize on a growing demand for imported beers that can be sold as premium products.

"Budweiser is known by consumers but it's not available in many cases," said InBev chief executive Carlos Brito.

Brito and Chief Financial Officer Felipe Dutra downplayed the role that cost- cutting will play in the merger, focusing instead on opportunities to boost sales of Budweiser and other Anheuser brands outside the U.S. and InBev brands in the U.S. The merged company won't close Anheuser's U.S. breweries, which Brito called "highly efficient."

Background
First: who the hell is InBev? InBev is the result of extremely aggressive growth by a Belgian company called Interbrew that started gobbling up cool little breweries back in the late 80s--including a whole raft of venerable and exquisite Belgian labels. It's big national brand was Stella Artois, which it started to turn into an international brand during this massive growth spurt. In 1995 it bought Labatt's and later snapped up England's Bass (2000) and Germany's Beck's (2001). The big change came in 2004, when it bought Brazil's AmBev (becoming ImBev) and became the world's second-largest brewery--after A-B. Now it has over 200 brands, including large holdings across Europe. It seemed to be very successful at snapping up post-Soviet breweries, too, and has a number of labels from the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Russia, etc.

Business Aspects of the Deal
For A-B, it probably means "streamlining"--creating efficiencies by cutting jobs and consolidating management. This is a regular feature of the now-familiar InBev method. It means taking A-B international, which brewery analysts criticize Bud for not having focused on. The Budweiser label may enjoy greater international fame, but residents of St. Louis are not happy:

Calling the offer to buy Anheuser-Busch deeply troubling, [Missouri Governor Matt] Blunt conceded that he lacked any immediate way to block such a sale. He called the St. Louis-based brewer “a great employer, a great corporate citizen and the maker of great products that are enjoyed in Missouri and around the world.”

For other US macros, it's terrible news. SABMiller was courting InBev and now has to confront a titan with twice the institutional advantage. As many of you know, macros have flatlined in recent years, leading to consolidation as the mini-macros (Miller and Coors) try to compete with A-B. This would further weaken their position--and probably lead to further consolidation.

Craft Aspects of the Deal
This could be a biggie, and we dive now into fully speculative waters. As the hops and barley crisis have shown, small breweries can be seriously affected by brands against whom they don't compete. The hops markets, in particular, are global, so the Lucky Labs of the world have a stake in this thing. Craft breweries have left juice to swing deals for hops, and many of the little guys are left on the outside. With InBev controlling some massive percentage of the world's beer production, this seems like a scary proposal.

Then there's the institutional advantages afforded by having such a huge stake in the market. Recall my recent post on distributors--InBev's bid would make A-B distribution deals all that much sweeter. In markets on the West Coast this won't be as big a deal as it will in smaller markets.

Finally, what about breweries in other countries? If InBev is trying to increas Bud's reach internationally, that means aggressive marketing that will overwhelm many small, venerable national brands elsewhere. One of my favorite things about international travel is sitting down with the local beer and seeing how regional tastes have evolved to suit the culture and climates there. The Buddification of the world is a nasty thought.

Local Aspects of the Deal
Bud has a stake in Widmer and Redhook--two locals who are in the process of merging right now. My guess is that it won't much affect their operations or the merger. A-B's stake is a minority one, and they haven't been involved in day-to-day operations. But I sent an email to the brewery, so I'll report back when I hear.

Could be storm clouds passing, but all things considered, I don't see any upside in this development.

[Update: No comment from Rob Widmer.]

(Yet) More Honest Pint Project in the News

To my regular readers: sorry. I know that this is becoming exceedingly tiresome, and I have no doubt that the story's about to die. But since it hasn't yet, I'm still riding it. Writers for online editions of the Baltimore Sun and Portland (ME) Press Herald are asking their readers if they are seeing fishy pints out there.

From Maine:

This begs the question, anyone seeing anything fishy around these parts? Funny glasses at Sebago Brewing? Foam overload at the Great Lost Bear?

I should point out that I'm not making any accusations, just simply asking the question that could be on a lot of people's minds.

Is this bar trickery? Bad business tactics? An assault on the freedom of beer drinkers everywhere?

Sound off!

From Baltimore ("Ballmore," to locals):

The 14-ounce glasses have a thicker bottom, so they give the appearance of being an honest pint. Defenders of the practice say (a) nobody wants that much beer, and (b) that with the climbing cost of beer, this is a way to deliver a glass at the same price.

It seems to me if someone wants less than a pint, he or she could order a half pint.

This caper reminds me of the great candy bar wrapper trick. The size of candy bar is shrunk but the wrapper remains large. It is dishonest. Agree?

Anybody seen any of these so-called "cheater pints" or "falsies" in our area?

Does anybody actually take the time to measure how much beer is in his glass?

Part of the reason I'm mentioning this is because it's exactly what I'd hoped to see--growing awareness that this heretofore clear volume might not be as clear after all. Makes me think I oughta get a website for the Honest Pint Project up and running. Hmmm.....

(Oh, and lots of blogs got interested in the story, too. I guess the WSJ has a better reach than this blog.)

More Honest Pint in the News

Sorry, I know this is becoming a one-trick blog, but it's unlikely the Honest Pint Project will be on NPR anytime soon. My name wasn't used, but surely you can dance to this music by now:

The skyrocketing price of hops and barley has pushed up the cost of beer. So, many drinking establishments are squeezing as much as they can out of kegs by serving "pints" in 14-ounce glasses. The word is "falsie"--that's what these smaller glasses are unofficially called. They have thicker bottoms, so customers don't notice they're getting less than the proper 16 ounces

But the Wall Street Journal reports that beer activists are on the prowl, measuring pints and outing offenders. One activist in Oregon wants state regulators to enforce a 16-ounce rule. Something like in the UK, where an imperial pint, equivalent to about 19 ounces, has been the government standard for centuries.

The story changes by increments and has a mind of its own. This mythic "beer activist" sounds like quite a rebel, doesn't he?

Honest Pint Project Update

Where We Started
If I had known seven months ago that a posting on this rather, ahem, modestly-trafficked website would result in a story in the Wall Street Journal (among others), I may have approached it with a little more intention. My main goal was to raise awareness of the issue, not be a firebrand for a major policy change. And certainly not Portland's pint-glass cop. I guess you could say that the goal has been accomplished--awareness raised. Unfortunately, I should have considered these issues more carefully and had a plan:

• Are 16-ounce glasses adequate? Most Portland pubs now using shaker pints use the 16-ounce version, but of course, that means a pour of 13 or 14 ounces.
  
• Should shaker glasses just be verboten, since it's nearly impossible to distinguish between 14 and 16-ounce versions?
  
• How manageable would it be to police this? In starting the HPP, was I signing up as the cop?
• What was the endgame--encouragement of pubs to switch to honest pints, or a statutory change to enforse it?
  

Where We Are Now
Thanks to seven months of experience, I'm now prepared to answer some of those questions. Given the total lack of clarity surrounding shaker pints, I declare them a wholesale blight on the concept of an honest pint. I will henceforth only cite those pubs that serve glasses of 18 ounces or more. Since this is a spirit-of-the-thing endeavor, I think the spirit of a "pint" demands that you get a pint of liquid. I will cite as Purveyors of an Honest Pint those places that serve a full liquid pour of 16 or more ounces, so I'm drawing the line for glassware at eighteen.

I am not a cop. I love Oregon beer and have an unreasonable optimism about retailers' sense of fair play, and so rather than try to catch out the bad guys, I'm going to celebrate the good guys. For now, that's what I, as an unpaid blogger, can manage.

Where We're Headed
I will support a statutory change if it comes to that--and maybe it should. However, I think the most effective change would be to certify certain glasses as honest and leave aside an enforcement mechanism. Instead, pubs could advertise their state-certified 18- or 20-ounce glasses. That would allow consumers to make their own judgment about places that didn't use certified glassware--effectively making it a market-based enforcement. (Imagine how many people would go to gas stations where a "gallon" was not a certified unit of measure.) It would save a lot of money and reward good behavior rather than punishing bad behavior.

Honest Pint Project in the Wall Street Journal

I would like to call your attention to a fantastic article in today's Wall Street Journal (despite, rather than because, I'm in it). Nancy Keates got interested in the story a few weeks back, and we went out to a couple of places to discuss honest pintage and its various layers of issues. Well, she put together what should be considered the definitive piece on the issue. Really, really fantastic article. (Real journalism makes a blogger's scratchings look meager indeed.)

So as not to invoke the wrath of Rupert (on whose dime I had two pints and an order of tater tots) I will quote somewhat sparingly. Do click through, though--you'll love this article.

Two of the world's biggest glassware makers, Libbey and Cardinal International, say orders of smaller beer glasses have risen over the past year. Restaurateurs "want more of a perceived value," says Mike Schuster, Libbey's marketing manager for glassware in the U.S. Glasses with a thicker bottom or a thicker shaft help create the perception. "You can increase the thickness of the bottom part but still retain the overall profile," he says.

Dedicated beer drinkers are fighting back, with extra vigilance about exactly how much beer they get for their buck. They are protesting "cheater pints" and "profit pours" by outing alleged offenders on Web discussion boards and plugging bars that maintain 16-ounce pints, in hopes peer pressure will prevail. And they are spreading the word about how to spot the smaller glass (the bottom is thicker)....

Jeff Alworth, a Portland, Ore., beer blogger, university researcher and a founder of the Honest Pint Project, has been testing suspected short-pouring bars, in some cases measuring his beer-glass capacity by the men's room sink. His group collected more than 400 names in two weeks for an online petition urging state regulators to enforce a 16-ounce rule. And at one point, he was posting the names of bars that didn't measure up on his Web site. But in response to complaints, he now has taken to listing the names of establishments serving full pints in bigger glasses. "I'm not a firebrand," says Mr. Alworth. "I am devoted to Oregon beer, and it seemed like using glasses where you don't get a 16-ounce pour was not so cool...."

Beer activists are talking about developing stickers to adhere to the windows of bars and restaurants where pints live up to the name. Oregon legislator Brian Clem is taking up the issue for the state's 2009 budget, hoping to fund monitoring of beer portions by the state's agriculture department.

In one passage, Keates notes that my "procedure" [in measuring glasses in the bathroom with water, for accuracy "revealed it held 14 ounces"--this at Henry's Tavern. Just to be clear, that procedure was implemented by Keates, whose own glass was the shorty. I didn't actually witness that ladies-room test.

Oh, and I should add that Good Morning America (corporate partner of the WSJ) contacted me today about doing a shoot with them, but I was a bit gun-shy. Those of you who know me will not be shocked by that.

Two Good Ones: Full Sail Prodigal Sun and Hopworks Baltic Porter

I have had occasion to actually drink some beer lately, and have a couple of must-tries for you to track down. The first is available, but not perhaps for long, the second not yet released. Make your preparations accordingly.

Hopworks Baltic Porter
While I find some of the paler Hopworks ales overly astringent--an intentional and popular house character--I generally cotton quickly to the darker beers. On my recent visit there (a day like today, grimly cold, spitefully drizzly), it was an easy call to make once I heard they had this seasonal on tap. It is a wonderfully elegant, warming beer, and an early candidate for the Satori award. Baltic porters are generally made with lager yeasts, and combine elements of blackbier, Russian imperial stouts, and sometimes even the smokiness of rauchbier. It is an under-appreciated style, perhaps because it's difficult to make well.

Hopworks has, producing beer of light-capturing blackness that is surprisingly creamy and light on the tongue. It has a sophisticated, aged quality that recalls a tawny port. As with some of the other Hopworks dark ales, it has a smoky, roasted note as well. The alcohol is evident and adds to the sophistication. It is a rare beer that is simultaneously complex, mature, and very approachable. I would love to see this beer become a regular at the pub--it could become a Portland classic.

Full Sail Prodigal Sun
Before we delve into the description of the beer, let us pause briefly to acknowledge--on this rainy June day when the forecast calls for a high of 57--the genius of the title. When summer starts elsewhere in the nation, here we soak. Sometime after Independence Day, the sun will return to Portland, penitently, having lavished its heat elsewhere. We will be welcome it with Prodigal Sun beer.

And what a welcome. This is a pure crowd-pleasing beer, for crowds made of hopheads. I don't doubt you could detect the vibrant citrusy, piney hops at six feet as they waft out of the glass. This is a beer saturated with hoppy goodness. It's bitter, but this isn't the first thing you notice--you're too distracted by the flavor, which has layer upon layer of hopping. Some heavily-hopped beers seem weighty, but this one is lighter and brighter. As John Harris pointed out, the bitterness does come eventually, gathering at the back of the tongue. There's a nice malt foundation here (in contrast to some of the stripped-down big reds), which I think supports the hops and allows them to express themselves on more levels. It gives it balance that allows you to keep enjoying the beer. The website says it's 80 IBUs, and I think John said it was 95, but you get the point: hopppppppppppy. It'll be on shelves for the summer in 22s, so get a bottle. (And, while it will age well enough, you'll lose some of the more delicate hopping, so drink it fresh.)

[Post slightly edited for clarity.]

More on the Distribution Merger

Based on the heavy flow of comments on my distribution pieces, I can tell you're all as hot to trot on this issue as I am. So let's have another!

As expected, John Foyston has a piece in today's Oregonian that's worth a look. It voices the same themes I expressed as assumptions earlier, and also confirms the piece about diesel prices.

Now the companies will consolidate warehouse space, trucks, sales routes and staff for improved customer service and significant savings in the time of $4-plus diesel. "The merger is an opportunity to realize business synergies, and fuel costs are a big part of this," said Lindy Bartell, a spokeswoman for Mt. Hood Beverage Co.

"We're all going to the same places," Hodge said, "and nine times out of 10 there's room on that truck for more product."

But more is at stake here than efficiency because beer distributors are not just warehousemen and truckers: Their salesmen are the boots on the ground in the battle of the beers. They push one brand over another in the escalating struggle for shelf space at the grocery and tap handles at the pub. That battle is especially pitched in Oregon, with its more than 75 breweries, many of which are small enough to get lost in the shuffle as the distributors get bigger.

"This puts the smaller brewers so far down the ladder that they're not going to get any play at all," said Ron Gansberg, head brewer at Raccoon Lodge's Cascade Brewing. The brewery produces about 1,500 barrels -- 46,500 gallons -- annually and sells more than half of that to outside accounts. "This vastly reduces the ability of the small brewer to get to the marketplace."

And it offers the usual talking points from the mergees:

"The craft brewers will not get lost in the portfolio," [Chris Hodge, Columbia's director of sales and marketing] said. "Consumers know what they want, but the missing link has been that army of passionate beer geeks to go out and work with stores and pubs and educate them about the different beers available.

Of course you don't really expect him to say, "Yeah, it'll screw the little brewers, but what can you do? It's all about our bottom line"--even if it were the obvious truth. One more interesting tidbit, though--consolidation has begotten more consolidation:

He notes the wave of consolidation taking place in the beer world, specifically the all-but-complete merger of SABMiller and Molson Coors and the much discussed $46 billion purchase of Anheuser-Busch (Budweiser, Bud Light) by InBev, the world's largest brewer.

The Miller-Coors merger made CoHo possible because Columbia distributes Miller and Mt. Hood and Gold River distribute beers made by Molson Coors Inc., and the twain never meets in the world of beer distribution. "Until the Coors-Miller merger, we were competitors," Hodge said.

Even in Portland, CoHo will be focused a lot more on its clients from Milwaukee and Golden, CO than it will those in town. Further reason to regard the sunny predictions about service to craft breweries with suspicion.b

Rumor Mill: The Distribution Merger

At last night's inadvertently well-timed Brewer's Guild event, I had the opportunity to chat up some folks about the Columbia-Mt. Hood merger. What I have to report doesn't exactly rise to the level of real reporting, but I think it's good enough for blog work. The news was too recent for people to have formed solid opinions about it--and of course, no one knows the actual effects yet--but there were some unexpected observations. No one wanted to go on the record yet (one brewer, adopting a comically glassy-eyed look and robotic smile, said something like, "I am perfectly happy with our distribution and look forward to a long and fruitful relationship with them"--evidence, if any was needed, that these relationships are a bit tetchy), so that's why I'm calling this stuff rumor. Take it for what it's worth.

Assumptions
Based on my previous post, you can imagine that I went in thinking this merger was going to be bad--at least for small breweries. I figured that a broader distribution network would streamline systems, create efficiencies, and further homogenize the market. I could imagine some benefit for mid-sized breweries that had already gotten some city market-share, like Caldera and Terminal Gravity, but it seemed that breweries like Roots--which is about to install a bottling line--might be screwed.

Craft Glamor
Well, it turns out that there are some currents in this distribution game I didn't anticipate. Craft breweries are hot right now, whilst the macros are dull property, flatlining or contracting (especially in Oregon). Distributors looking to increase their business have nowhere to go but craft beer. This has led to an interesting phenomenon where Maletis, erstwhile A-B distribution behemouth into whose wide channels Widmer once bought, now represents such wee players (and I mean that only in terms of volume, not quality) as Ninkasi and Old Lompoc. So it's possible that a shakeout won't cause breweries to fail so much as realign.

CoHo Was Already Big
In the old prescription, Mount Hood was the little guy, Columbia the "mainstream craft" distributor, and Maletis the big dog. But Mount Hood now has contracts with Sierra Nevada, BridgePort, and Full Sail. It also has macros Coors, Miller, Pabst, and Henry's. Columbia has Pyramid/Portland, Anchor, and a bunch of imports and smaller players. It also has Miller's line. In other words, these two were already big business.

Gas Prices?
Someone pointed out that diesel prices may be a factor here. Diesel is currently selling at just south of five bucks a gallon, which means higher costs which likely disproportionately affect the smaller distributors. (If I'm wrong on this, I suspect the good professor will clear up my misunderstanding.) In any case (I think my econ is on solid-er footing here, any efficiencies that can be gained in the system will reduce miles and costs. This merger will create a two-state network, and must surely reduce the overall miles beer travels.

That's the scuttlebutt for today. I've included my email above, so if you're reading this and you have any inside info and want to talk on or off the record, drop me a line. I'm keeping my ears open, and I suspect the real reporters will be giving us some news soon.

Distribution Backgrounder

I suspect that a great many Beervanians don't give a flying fig about how their beer ends up in their bottle or pint glass, but it's actually quite important stuff. I am about to post a bit more information I've gleaned from yesterday's Mount Hood-Columbia distribution merger (well, rumors more like) , but before I do, this here's a bit on what distribution is and why it's important.

The brewery brews the beer. If it's a brewpub, they sell it on-site or ship it to a limited number of other self-owned pubs (one? two?). If it's a brewpub selling it more broadly or a brewing company selling bottles, it must be sold next to a distributor who in turn sells it to a retailer--a bar or grocer.

The system was put into place because back in the old world, breweries owned pubs, mucking up the free flow of beer to the market (a Guinness-owned pub wasn't going to be selling a whole lot of Beamish, or worse, the new micro from Paddy O'Malley over in Dún Laoghaire, who might find it very difficult to get his Oyster Stout to the public). The American system is called "three-tiered," as opposed to the one it replaced, known as "tied house." It resolved one real-world problem, the power of breweries, but created another.

Beer distributors now exercise enormous control, particularly with regard to smaller brewers. Since breweries can't sell directly to retailers, they have to negotiate with these intermediaries, the distributors. Problem is, the distributors have no particular loyalty to a brewery--so long as they can sell a truckful of beer, good enough. They don't care what's selling at the grocery store or pub, so long as it's one of their beers. The selling is for retailers. Therefore, if a retailer shifts an order, say upping its Full Sail order and dropping down its Deschutes, the distributor doesn't really care, so long as he has both breweries under contract. The bigger breweries with bigger volumes therefore appeal to distributors the most--because they know their retail accounts will reliably buy their beer.

In the case of the very big breweries, like Anheuser-Busch, this means lots of power. A-B annoints distributors like the Queen annoints knights--to receive a contract from Bud is to have a printing press for cash. (In the annals of American history, more than one story of political corruption includes a lackey and a beer distributorship.) In many cities, A-B has a proprietary distributor that will carry no other non-sanctioned breweries. This is why Redhook and Widmer did a "strategic alliance" with A-B, or whatever it was called, because it gave the companies access to the superhighway of Bud distribution.

Historically, it's been hard for smaller breweries to find reliable distributors because there's not necessarily anything in it for the distributor, which isn't going to aggressively promote the beer. If there's a market, okay. But if the retailer doesn't know about the beer or care, the distributor has no particular interest in promoting it.

There have been smaller distributors who pick up the little guys, and in a town like Portland, there was money to be made at each level. But that bucks the trend. Since 1970, the number of beer distributors has been cut in half--despite the number of breweries increasing by 1,400. It's only in towns like Portland where the volume of a bunch of smaller breweries can make it possible for a smaller distributor to make a profit. And in any case, the three-tier system collects power in the bottleneck of the distributor. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but certainly something to keep an eye on. And with the merger of Columbia and Mount Hood, something even more important to keep an eye on.

Oregon Brewers Guild: Webby

Last night, the Oregon Brewers Guild held a website-launch party in the groovy offices of the web designers. For those of you who have been to the site in the past, you know it was ... under-designed. It had the happenin' style of them new internets, circa 1994. And some content from that era, too. As OBG Director Brian Butenschoen demonstrated the features, there were a couple of side jokes about how it was nice the new site had joined the 21st century. Indeed.

The current version is clean and easy to use and has a couple of features to which I'd like to draw your attention:

• Much of the design is structured around a blog. Thanks to the wonder of tags, this means there's an updated events page.
  
• The breweries page is updated and accurate, sorted by region or alpha.
• Proving its 21st-century cred, the site features Twitter, which I'll admit isn't something I've spent a lot of time studying.
  

It has stats and info you'd expect to find about the industry. If I could offer a little constructive criticism, I'd mention that the breweries listing could include more info--for example, the brewers' names, year founded, and hours of operation (in the case of brewpubs). It's possible that I'll figure out how to put a widget on my site that includes updated events info (does Twitter do that), which would certainly be handy. There's a feature called "Meet a Friend for a Pint" which essentially sends an email (except when I tried, it--then it sent an error message). Dunno if that's going to revolutionize anything, but I like the idea, anyway.

It would be cool if there was even richer information, like a database of the brewers in Oregon, with one- or two-paragraph bios. These guys are rock stars, and I imagine I'm not the only one who would like to know more about them. It would be a great way to feel an even more personal contact with the beer we love.

But hey, they just launched. It's a vast improvement, so let's not focus on the negative. Brian and president Van Havig deserve credit for finally dragging the thing into the new millenium. Congrats!

Three Major Oregon Distributors Merge

Hat tip to Dave at Portland Beer Blog on this story. Quoting now from Columbia's press release:

Columbia Distributing Company, Mt. Hood Beverage Company and Gold River Distributing announced today that they plan to merge their beer and non-alcoholic beverage distribution businesses in Oregon and Washington, following approval from their respective suppliers....

The new organization, which will be named CoHo Distributing, will have annual sales of more than 35 million cases of beer and non-alcoholic beverages and is planning to operate out of consolidated facilities located in Seattle, Everett, Portland, Eugene, Medford and Bend. In addition, the Mt. Hood Beverage operations in Yakima and Kennewick Washington will be included in the merged company effective January, 2009.

Columbia has a distribution network in Portland and Seattle. Mt. Hood is a competing distributor in Portland, areas of Western Oregon, Bend, the Tri-cities in Washington, and Yakima. Gold River is a Southern Oregon company.

Although this isn't particularly sexy news, it could have a profound effect on the beers that make it to market. Columbia and Mt. Hood both had extensive craft-beer clients, and this consolidation is quite likely to hurt the little guys--but that's my first blush reaction. I'll be going to an event hosted by the brewers guild in a couple hours, so I'll ask around and see what the mood is. Stay tuned--this is a big one.

Blogging to resume in earnest tomorrow.

No foolin. There's some kind of wingding hosted by the Oregon Brewers Guild that will provide immediate, actual content, including a taster of the new Full Sail IPA. Sorry I've been lame, I've been busy.

Picture dump

Green Dragon Shindig

I'll be out of town through the weekend, but before I go, here's an event I regret to have to miss. Maybe you can check it out and report back. It sets a pretty high standard for brewing events.

Ninkasi Brewing and Pop Tomorrow Present a live concert and music video release party by local Indie band The Grokkers*and a meet-the-brewer event all in one.

Jamie Floyd of Ninkasi will be bringing a ton of special Ninkasi beers made exclusively for this show. So don't miss out on a rare opportunity to drink some unique beer and to meet the brewmaster himself.

Saturday May 31 at 8pm
Green Dragon Bistro
928 SE 9th Ave
Portland, OR 97214
(503) 517-0606

Added bonus: one of the Grokkers works at Belmont Station, so there are further beer connections here.

__________
*The band elucidates: The Oxford English Dictionary defines grok as "to understand intuitively or by empathy; to establish rapport with" and "to empathize or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment." Other forms of the word include "groks" (present third person singular), "grokked" (past participle) and "grokking" (present participle).

[Post updated with the date and time. Sorry!]

Next Gen Online

When I first started writing about beer over a decade ago, I quickly discovered the fastest way to find out what was happening in Oregon's beer scene: get on the Oregon Brew Crew email listserve. It is not fully accurate to say the Brew Crew is a homebrew club, though it is that. It is the homebrew club, and if you start to track the number of brewers, brewery owners, pub owners, fest-runners, beer writers, and other assorted of the beerly connected, you'll find most have been members or affiliates of the Brew Crew. And the listserve is their rumor mill and grapevine. For well over a decade, members of the listserve have been posting up to two or three dozen emails a day.

Here's the genius of technology like this: it harness the brains of scores, a neural net that can harness the activities of members all over the globe. Add to those brains Google and you have a system that produces information in near real time (thanks to cell phones and Wi Fi, readers have seen actual real-time emails appear from drinkers at fests or in pubs).

But that's old school, dinosaur stuff.

There's a new generation in Beervana, and they inhabit places known as "wikis" or "social networking" sites. I don't actually know if they'll replace listserves, or if we'll have a generational divide, or what. But here are the latest developments.

Portland Beer Wiki
If you're reading this, you must know what a wiki is--because who among us have not visited Wikipedia. Wikis are open sites that users edit to include new and updated info. Much like the listserve harness the power of many brains, wikis do, too. Since webpages are only as good as the information they contain, having more participants is always handy. The site contains a growing collection of information. Kerry Finsand is the fellow who started the Portland Beer Wiki, but of course, he'd love to have company.

Brew Zoo
Where wikis are essentially resources, social networking sites are essentially communities. Famous versions include Facebook and MySpace. In Seattle, a bunch of twenty-somethings have started a social networking site revolving around beer. It's a little bit raw now, but I could imagine it developing into a robust community. A site of its general design will surely be the next generation of beer website, because it can contain so much more information than a single blog, but can offer communication and personality, like a tangle of blogs. (Thanks to aggregation and information design, users can personalize and sort these sites to suit their own interests, whether they tend toward Corona and clubbing or the latest sighting of The Abyss.)

Go check 'em out and give them some support.

Product Note

Real email:

Jeff,

One thing that most of us have experienced at one time or another is a Hangover.

Are you interested in Hangover Buster, a new product that your readers will find appealing? We would be happy to send samples. Hangover Buster is an effervescent tablet designed to counteract alcohol intoxication. Formulated by a team of physicians and laboratory chemists who are experts in the field, the carefully selected FDA approved ingredients are targeted at the causes of a hangover. The discomforts of a hangover are alleviated by hydrating the body in addition to restabilizing the vital vitamins, minerals, and amino acids that have been lost as a consequence of alcohol consumption.

Are you interested in introducing this product to your readers? We would be happy send samples for review.

Regards,
KZ
name@xxxpartners.com

The makers of Hangover Buster neither endorse nor encourage excessive drinking. Hangover Buster is offered as a safe, effective remedy, using healthy ingredients, to counter the ill effects that can result from overindulgence. While the usage of Hangover Buster will help to eliminate the after-effects of excessive alcohol consumption, there is no evidence to suggest that it will encourage heavier drinking. In effect, Hangover Buster replenishes the specific vital vitamins, minerals, and amino acids that have been lost as a consequence of dehydration. Using Hangover Buster is a healthy way to take care of oneself after having had alcohol.

I declined the free sample.

Odds and Ends

Random interesting tidbits from around the blogosphere.

1. Stan visited Terminal Gravity and was, of course, charmed.

2. Full Sail is releasing a new ESB, brewed originally by Barney Brennan, an assistant at the brewery. Because, you know, Full Sail doesn't have enough brewers. (This is good news--ESBs are great beers but far too rare in Oregon.)

3. Everybody's linking to this Floridian's list of "best beer names" (what's the first problem you see with that sentence?), containing in my view not very good names. (Two of his choices cause immediate suspicion about his nature: Dogfish Head Golden Shower and Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast Pooh Coffee.) But as a pub game, it's pretty fun.

4. Gruff Philadelphian Lew Bryson reviews Elysian Jasmine IPA (not their best beer) and snorts about its "jasmine hippy character" and concluding "what the hell?" Hippy? Maybe it's been awhile since Lew's been west. (When the glass house in which you reside serves a beloved local speciality featuring Cheez Whiz, you best not start hucking rocks.)

Tis all.

Memorial Daze in PDX

As those in the greater Beervana region know, May is no reliable time for outdoor barbecues. As I write this, it's 79 in Chicago, 76 in Boston, 75 in New York, and ... 56 and cloudy in Portland. While other northern cities bake under the lengthening days of late spring, the Pacific Northwest (west of the Cascades, anyway), enjoys that lush, rainforest air. Heavy with water, still, clouds crowding down around the tops of tall trees in a gray blanket. It hasn't rained for a few hours, but the blades of grass are beaded with water that has nowhere to go. The air is already saturated.

So there will be barbecues today, mainly on decks. A day off work is a day to be outside. The mood is different in Oregon, but the brilliance of spring no less stunning. For most of the rest of the country, that means skin brushed with the season's first heat. For Oregonians, it means marveling at the layers and hues of green. For the rest of the country, it's Boston Lager weather, or Pacifico, or Sierra Nevada Pale. For Oregon, it's still the season of bigger, heartier, darker beers.

Fire up the 'cue, gents. Anyone for a stout?

Bracketology - IPA Winners

I see there's a request to report on the winners of the IPA challenge refered to in the post below. Happy to do it, though all I can do is reprint what I found on the Hops and Barley blog. Add more if you have inside info in the comments below.

Biggest First Round Upset: #31 Weinhard's IPA over #2 India Pelican Ale. Weinhard's went on to the Elite 8 after upsetting #18 Pike IPA in the second round.

Other big first round upsets: #10 Hop Ottin' lost to #23 Mongoose IPA; #27 Fish Tale IPA over #6 Titan IPA; #26 Dick's IPA over #7 Indica IPA; #24 Broken Halo over #9 Total Domination; #29 Thunderhead IPA over #4 Hop Devil.

In the second round, top seeded Stone IPA made it past Lagunitas IPA, and Broken Halo upset Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA. Thunderhead's slipper no longer fit after loosing to #13 Mojo IPA, and #5 Seed Green Flash West Coast IPA cruised through a second round victory over #12 Avery IPA. As mentioned earlier, Weinhard's made it through to the Elite Eight, as did Dick's IPA.

The Final Four: The first match-up of the Elite Eight yielded the second largest upset of the Challenge with #1 Stone IPA falling to Broken Halo! In the second match-up, Green Flash West Coast IPA had more mojo than Mojo IPA. On the other side of the bracket, Weinhard's IPA slipper fell off against Dick's IPA, and Big Sky IPA kept the momentum from their second round upset of Racer 5 by defeating Boss IPA.

And the winner is: Dick's IPA beat Big Sky, but Broken Halo ran the table with victories over Green Flash and Dick's in the final heads-up match.

I would love to see the actual brackets, but you can actually sense the drama in the write-up. Sounds like a fine time.

Beer Bracketology

I have been meaning to comment on a little bit of genius I discovered on the Hops and Barley blog (I have been meaning to write about and link to it, and was shocked to discover it's now five weeks old--yikes, time flies!). It is a system for blind tasting that is so astute and so obvious that the second I read about it, I couldn't believe it hasn't become the standard for taste-offs. It has several virtues of the blind flights, not the least of which is drama.

They did it with the IPA category and started out with 32 beers (!). He describes it thus:

He picked 32 IPAs available from his local grocery store, and ranked them based on ratebeer.com data and held a blind tasting (names were revealed only after beers lost) to determine round-by-round winners down to a single IPA Champion!

The way brackets generally work is that the field is divided in half or in fourths, and the low seeds are matched against high seeds. I'd probably do a version with 16 (32 seems more than I could manage), split the field so that there were twin sides, with #1 versus #8, #2 v. #7 and so on. In the first round, you'd have eight head-to-head matchups, then four, then two, then the final pairing.

The reason it's genius is because it allows tasters to make a binary decision. Blind flights with several beers can be overwhelming--especially when the beers are similar in style. But even very similar beers can be judged in a simple pairing. I got excited enough that I created a stout brackets using the Hops and Barley system based on beers I know are available in Portland as an example. The intention was to actually run the pairings, but I may never get that far. I include it here for fun. The wild card was for to accommodate availability--I saw two or three that are available sometimes. Also, you could get a growler from a local brewpub. (Click to enlarge.)

Someone should really run with this. Good stuff--

Craft Bud

Via John, here's an interesting development--A-B is going to introduce what amounts to a fuller-flavored version of Bud:

About five months early, DRAFT recently snuck a taste of Budweiser American Ale, the darker, more craftlike Bud offering that’ll hit your corner bar this fall. Billed by brewmaster Eric Beck to be a “more robust” Budweiser, that’s exactly what American Ale is: The beer pours amber with a hefty beige head, and a nose with hints of pine and citrus. Dry-Cascade-hopped, there’s noticeable bitterness, but with an obvious malt backbone--a balance achieved by more than a year of test batches. The mouthfeel is smooth, with Budweiser’s signature quick, crisp finish. Packaged in a curvier, classier bottle than your usual Bud, this 30-IBU, 5.3%-ABV brew seems an earnest, heartier version of the brewery’s famous lager, ideal for craft newbies and beer geeks willing to see this big brewer in a new light. Watch for American Ale on shelves beginning October 6.

Now, I have no great interest in this beer. Bud has something like 8 IBUs and tastes like old dishwater. This version may have stats that seem shocking by macro-lager standards, but I doubt it could compete with Oregon pales and ambers, which are saturated with flavor, rather than "hints" of pine and citrus. (I could be wrong--dry-hopping is a sure bet for radically improving a beer.)

But whether it's good or not, this is a development to watch. Remember those horrible gimmicks beer companies rolled out every few years--dry beer, ice beer, cold-filtered beer, and on and on. Yet still, what the breweries offered were beers that had less flavor in each iteration. It was as if they were trying to come as close as possible to alcoholic spring water as possible. (Zima was a zenith of sorts, a chemically alcoholic beverage that contained no flavor you couldn't find in a soda.) The effect was to slowly destroy beer culture across America.

Craft beer may be winning one battle, then. Circa 1980, when the nascent craft movement was getting started, the macro-breweries had managed to restrict and control variability effectively enough that the war was being waged on intangible "brand" elements. After all, no one could taste the difference between Hamm's or Pabst. But now, the big companies have lost that control. The cat's out of the bag, and Americans know that "beer" doesn't refer solely to canned dishwater.

Anheuser-Busch may still be making most of the money, but it can no longer control the market. Growth is elsewhere. They may now have to compete on the basis of flavor. Who'dda thunk it?

Something Completely Different

Keep in mind that this is a Reuters story. If it passes their criteria for decency, I guess it passes mine. Now, onto the news: Belgians, bladders full of urine and heads full of biere de Trappistes, have invented a video game played in a urinal and operated by a stream of urine.

Said the inventors, Werner Dupont and Bart Geraets:

Werner: We were drinking what, while we were thinking this?
Bart: Beer.
Werner: Trappistes.
Bart: Trappistes. Bel--Belgian beer.
Werner: Very ... [gives "thumbs up" sign]

The very entertaining, and somewhat un-genteel video is here.

Suitable Beer for Obama Win?

For the first time in my voting life--probably lifetime, but I haven't done the research--I have cast a ballot for the primary candidate of my choice. Thanks to Oregon's May primary, every other time, my candidate was long dead and buried before our election. There is every indication my candidate in this election will not only have my vote, but the majority of Democratic votes in the state. Which raises the really tough question--which beer to hoist in celebration?

I'm working on a short list here ...

IPA
Pro - Aggressive flavor, celebratory style
Con - "bitter"

Red Ale
Pro - red is the traditional color of left-leaning political movements
Con - red is the color of the current GOP

Light Lager
Pro - a fave of working-class whites
Con - not a fave of Oregonian working-class whites

Abbey Ale
Pro - nod to the evangelical vote
Con - Belgian

Brown Ale
Umm, let's not go there.

Well, in any case, I'll be hoisting one to my man. Cheers, Barack!

Lindemans Peche

Last night, as I stood in front of the Fred Meyer beer cooler, I submitted to a foolish urge: reacting to the unseasonably warm weather, I bought a Lindemans Peche. I love lambics, perhaps more than any style, but I am a cheapskate. The Buddhists say that we are governed by twin urges of craving and desire, and this decision was wrought with equal measures of each.

I know Lindemans to be a treacly imitation of the wonderful lambics I love, but--well, it was only five bucks. The Saison Dupont, one of my top five faves in the world, was twice that. I counsidered Maudite, at $8, but ... eight percent's a lotta beer. So I palmed the peche ("peach") and decided to give it a whirl. It's been so long that I thought maybe I misrembered just how treacly Lindemans is.

I did not.

What's a fruit lambic supposed to taste like? Let's turn to Jackson:

[T]hese are beers, produced from grain, with fruit added as a further fermentable material or flavoring. The best of Belgium's artisan-made, lambic-based whole-fruit ... beers have a great complexity and delicacy, and are dry. They are the beer world's elegant response to pink champagne, and make a pretty, unusual and appetizing drink with which to welcome guests at a summer party. [itals mine]

Fruit lambics may emphasize either the dry, sherry-like aspect or the sour wild-yeast aspect, but they should never be sweet. In a good lambic, the fruit's sugars will be wholly consumed, leaving the nose and color and the flavor of the fruit, like the essence you find in unsweetened fruit seltzers. I have had lambics that smelled intensely of freshly-picked fruit but had almost no flavor. In others, the fruit comes through on the palate, but runs up against the sour before it can ever take you to sweetness. Many are dry and perfect refreshers.

Lindemans is peach soda. It is syrupy sweet, a single-noted beer that is scandalously absent of sour. There is a cola in India named Thums Up (in India, "th" is aspirated, so you say 'Tums up"), which ranks as the sweetest beverage ever made; you expect the sugar to recrystalize on your tongue as you drink it. Lindemans is sweet in a different way, like the syrup that comes in canned fruit, but no more pleasant.

In the end, I learned a valuable lesson: spend not your five bones on a crappy beer lest ye waste it; instead, double down and get the transcendent Dupont. When will I learn?

Only Gathering Strength

I am in the midst of one king hell of a busy week, with busy-ness lasting through the long, hot weekend. I've scanned the web briefly for some low-hanging fruit to fake-blog about ("hey, look here, someone else wrote something interesting"), but it's a slow period of the beer year, as everyone's gearing up for festival season and summer releases. All of which is to say that I got nuthin.

Good content will resume next week. I actually have some interesting things to mention, like what the young generation of beer fans is up to. But for now, apologies. Anyway, you're probably playing hooky today and enjoying the sun. Cheers--

FredFest

I'm way backed up in life and in blogging. So let me direct you to a nice recap of FredFest, complete with pictures. Champagne of Blogs has the story. And with a start like this, how can you resist?

The dirty white tent ruffled and snapped in the hot wind. Inside, a mystery, a holy revival waiting to be borne here upon the wild plains. All of us cowboys lined up in silence, clutching our hats and wearing dirty boots, squinting against the flying grit. All we wanted was to come inside, where for once in this cold life, perhaps a strange preacher could bathe us in the glow of the everlasting, for which we had searched so long.

Enjoy.

Women and Beer

I blog in two spheres that are overwhelmingly dominated by men--beer and politics. Politics, like sports, has a strongly macho competitive element that attracts men. But with beer, it seems mainly a cultural issue. In America, anyway, men drink beer, and women drink wine. Somehow, the qualities of beer have become symbolic of manhood--it's working-class, unsophisticated, canned. Wine, with its sensual sweetness, its deep color, the curvy, feminine glass its served in--obviously feminine. (Could the fact that men drink wine support American mistrust of the French? Hmmm.) It probably doesn't hurt that until craft brewing came along, drinking beer was a kind of test of endurance.

Craft brewing abetted these stereotypes in its early years by falling for the foolsgold of "crossover beers." These were light, sometimes fruity, generally insipid beers that early brewers thought could coax drinkers away from their Hamms. The success of Widmer Hefeweizen, McMenamins Ruby Tuesday (as it was called before the lawsuit), Pyramid Apricot Ale, and Saxer Lemon Lager seemed to confirm this. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, as craft brewing was just taking root, these beers were disparaged as "chick beers." They seemed suspicious, as if harboring an innate femininity men feared. (The were also, of course, light and uninteresting, more reasons to shun them.)

You don't really hear that anymore. Go to a brewpub, and you see men and women in roughly equal proportions. A few weeks ago, I was at the Green Dragon, and two couples came in, one with their toddler, and sat at the table next to us. Dad had a light beer and mom ordered an imperial stout. Dad minded the daughter while mom--clearly the beer geek in the family--minded her stout. Two weeks ago, I sat next to two gray-haired ladies at Hopworks. They each had pints of IPA. There is no longer chick beer. There is just beer.

I don't doubt that the culture at the campus level is still beer-fueled masculinity. But in the circles I frequent, we seem to have acheived full suffrage. Among beer writers, we have Lisa Morrison, the Beer Goddess and Suds Sister. Morrison was one of the first women to break into the mens' club, and now she spreads the faith, teaching a course on beer appreciation for women. Two women, Megan Flynn and Annalou Vincent, are the bodies behind Beer Northwest.

Women are not nearly as well-represented in brewing, but perhaps that's changing. (Actually, the stats are still dismal; women probably represent less than 2% of all brewers in the country.) Oregon may be doing better than most. Teri Fahrendorf, an early pioneer in craft brewing, not to mention female brewing, has formed a society for women brewers called the Pink Boots Society. And yesterday I mentioned Tonya Cornett, the Bend Brewer recently cited by the World Beer Cup as "Champion Brewer." There are others working as assistants, and Abby Sherrill is moving into a leadership role now that Dave Fleming has left the Lucky Lab. The upshot is that things are changing even on the brewing side of things.

This is all very good news for Oregon brewing. In terms of numbers, it's obviously good for the market--doubling your target audience is a good thing. But it's also good for the culture that supports Oregon's scores of breweries. The more beer becomes a regular element of living, the more it becomes something native and iconic, like the "cuppa" in England, Italian espresso, or a pint of plain in Dublin. Soon, it could be that a Portland meal without a beer is akin to a Parisian meal without a glass of wine.

What, no IPA? Sacre bleu!

Tonya Cornett

There's a great article in the Oregonian today (and not by Foyston -- ?) about Bend Brewing's Tonya Cornett, who recently won a brewmaster award at the World Beer Cup.

Cornett is the first woman brewer to win the award sponsored by the Brewers Association, a craft brewing industry group. The honor marks a milestone -- women's gradual but ongoing ascension in the male-dominated world of beer making.

I have some comments about women and brewing, but for now, go have a look at the article. And the next time you're enjoying a beer, raise a toast to yet another Oregon brewing first and to Tonya Cornett.

Beaverton Campaign Promise: Obama Agrees to Try the IPA

Obama is a man of substance, obviously. And locking down the IPA demo isn't a bad way to play Oregon.

Happy Friday, y'all.

FredFest - a Few Tix Left

Lisa Morrison sent out an email today with the beer list for FredFest '08. I will include it below. But first, the key fact: there are a few tickets left, so order now if you want to attend this exclusive affair. Send an email to fredfest@comcast.net to find out how to reserve your space. Tickets are $50, and the proceeds go to Parkinson's Resources of Oregon.

Okay, here's the list. Read 'em and drool:

BridgePort - Bourbon barrel-aged Old Knucklehead barleywine
Laurelwood - Bourbon barrel-aged Olde Reliable barleywine
Widmer - Altbier
Lompoc - Oak-aged Lompoc Strong Draft
Deschutes - Barrel-aged Belgian ale
Rock Bottom - Oak aged IIPA
Cascade/Raccoon Lodge - 2006 Wild Blackberry ale (Flanders red style)
Lucky Lab - Double Alt
Hopworks - 2007 Kentucky Christmas (Bourbon barrel aged IPA)
Hair of the Dog - Cask Fred from the Wood
Full Sail - Bourbon barrel aged 1998 Old Boilermaker
Rogue - Brewer Ale
Roots - 2006 Pinot Noir Oak aged Epic
Ninkasi - Dry Hopped Cask Tricerahops
Firestone Walker - surprise beer
Hair of the Dog - Jim 2007 Holiday Ale Fest

FredFest 2008
Saturday, May 10 from 2-6 p.m. at Hair of the Dog Brewing in Portland

Admission includes commemorative "What Would Fred Drink?" (WWFD?) glass, access to all beer and food, which includes Fred-inspired pairings with cheeses, chocolates, cookies, candies and cereal, plus a picnic including homemade pastrami cured in Hair of the Dog Fred ale, a raffle ticket and bottled water.

Stumptown Tart - Review

Let us say here at the front that BridgePort is really workin it. A couple of years ago they came out with Supris, last year they put out Hop Harvest, and now Stumptown. Clearly a brewery that likes to experiment and take chances. I particularly appreciate the journey into Belgian-style ales, an exploration far too few breweries have taken. And Supris was a a good effort and an authentic beer.

(You sense a "but" here, don't you? Read on.)

Tasting Notes
Nowhere does Stumptown Tart advertise itself as a lambic-style ale. But how are we to conclude anything but that this was the approximation of the latest "Belgian style ale" in the brewery's Big Brews line? It contains a nod to Dan Carey's famous Raspberry Tart, a beer Carey (whom BridgePort consulted) describes as a "framboise"--a traditional style of fruit lambic.

BridgePort doesn't say how they managed the sour. In traditional Belgian versions, the sour comes from wild yeasts that float through the Zenne Valley. The quality of the sour may range from dry and puckery to fertile and almost compost-y. The addition of fruit gives the beer added depth, but hardly any sweetness. The fruit becomes an essence, turning the lambic into something very similar to a dry wine.

BridgePort's version, however, has a quality unlike any lambic I've ever tasted. Let's start with the positive--the aroma and appearance of the beer beguiled. Marionberry essence rises off the glass like fresh fruit. There's a sour note there, too, and it seems very lambic-like. My two pours produced little in the way of a head, but the beer looked like a nice fruit lambic--hazy and berry purple.

It's the palate that's strange. The sourness is wrong. I'd describe it as inorganic, like a chemical creation, rather than the interplay of yeast and sugars. Aging it in oak probably didn't help matters; although the berries add some softness and flavor, it finishes with a long, puckery dryness. I had Sally try it, and she didn't like the sour note, either (though, caveat emptor, she likes sour beers less than I do). Although I admired the berries in the beer, and liked the idea, whatever it was the brewery used to sour Stumptown Tart didn't work.

I have a couple more bottles in the cellar, so I'll see if anything changes. For now, I hate to say that I can't recommend it.

Rating: D

[Update. It did change--and for the better. See this later review from February '09.]

New Brewpub - Captured by Porches

There is apparently a new brewpub slated to open in St. Johns "soon." The evocatively-titled Captured by Porches will be just south of the St. Johns Bridge on Highway 30 (5909 NW Saint Helens Road), with Forest Park on one side, and one of those industrial plants on the river side. But beyond this, I know only what they say at the Beer NW blog:

Help support one of Portland's newest (and smallest) craft breweries--Captured By Porches. This Saturday, May 10, CBP's brewer and owner, Dylan Goldsmith, will be hosting a party with local bands and a variety of CBP beer to help raise funds for his new brew pub, opening soon in St. John's (5909 NW Saint Helens Road). Enjoy the sounds of Schicky Gnarowitz, Hey Tiger, Deadpan Pariah, andMcDougall. Be there or be square.

Party is at Liberty Hall, 311 North Ivy Street, Portland. Doors 7pm, bands 8pm. $3 cover; 21 and over.

The website has no info. Anyone know anything?

(Oh, and a shout-out to Beer NW for finally getting a regular blog going. It looks to be a nice source of info, and I've linked it in the blogroll.)

Jamie Floyd is Staying Put

In the post below, the Eugene Register-Guard made this odd comment:

Eugene-based Ninkasi is one of the companies feeling the pinch. The brewery, which is restructuring its warehouse in preparation for a new brew master, needs to expand to remain successful, Floyd said, even in the face of rising costs.

It didn't sound right, and it wasn't. From Jamie himself:

It means they said brew master instead of brew house. They also said Nikos' last name was Brink instead of Ridge. Pretty common mistake for journalists. We are expanding our facilty and upgrading our brew house. We hope to have it up by August. I will very much be there for it all, along with the rest of our Ninkasi family. They are printing a correction tomorrow. I am just getting started friends.

Excellent.

Business Up, Profits Down

A nice article by the Eugene Register-Guard about the squeeze local brewers are finding on their profit margins, thanks to hop prices:

Eugene-based Ninkasi is one of the companies feeling the pinch. The brewery, which is restructuring its warehouse in preparation for a new brew master, needs to expand to remain successful, Floyd said, even in the face of rising costs.

Ninkasi has responded to the increase in hops prices with some short-term price increases of its own, and by reworking some of its formulas to deal with the realities of fewer available hops and higher prices. “We have subtly changed some recipes,” Floyd said.

With only a brewing operation, Floyd said he’s not able to compensate for the rising hops prices through other revenue sources, the way a restaurant can.

“We did raise our prices but our prices were not as high as other brewers to begin with,” Floyd said. “We were actually able to sell additional units because our prices are lower.”

Despite selling more kegs, Ninkasi’s profit margins are still being squeezed.

By the way, in that first paragraph I quoted, it mentions Ninkasi looking for a new brewmaster. Anyone know anything about that? Odd.

Deschutes Opening - The Final Roundup

Okay, some more content to pass along, and then I'll pipe down. Keep in mind that this is a major opening and bloggers cover minutiae. That's my story and I'm stickin' with it. Now, onto the post.

Should you need your background and story to be told in audio and moving pictures, the Oregonian obliges. Nothing new here, but who doesn't love video?





Also, there bloggers are starting to pick this up. From Rooftop Brew, a review. And there are pics of the burgers (which do indeed look tasty) and reviews at the un-secretively named "Portland Hamburgers." If I do come across any more info, I'll put it here and spare you further posts.

Deschutes Pearl - Food

I made my second trip to Deschutes' Pearl pub last night--the first tim in years and years I've been to a pub two nights in a row. The special return trip was occasioned by Sally's interest; she was unable to join me on Wednesday. We had one of their pizzas, a $12 entree that we ordered to split more as an appertiser.

Let me stipulate: I'm no foodie. I enjoy good food, but I don't know what I'm tasting, what the ingredients are, what the dish's lineage is, or how it is prepared. I generally minimize this weakness by focusing on the beer, which is what I've done with Deschutes. But based on that pizza and an anonymous comment here (take that for what it's worth), I'm wondering if the kitchen needs some focused attention, stat.

Our mushroom pizza was unimpressive: doughy, undercooked, and not particularly thrilling in terms of sauce or topping. It was also wee. I have no sense of these things, but maybe six inches across--and twelve bucks. It was billed as an entree, but I can't imagine what kind of waif would find it satisfying. The problem isn't the price or the size--people are used to spending a lot and getting a little in the Pearl--but the quality. Portland now has an abundance (or possibly over-abundance) of exceptional, innovative eateries. If you drop $5 mil and open a place in the center of the Pearl, you better offer decent food. People will come for beer, and they'll come because it's Deschutes, but they won't return for the food if it doesn't meet the standards of the neighborhood.

Of course, all of this comes with one VERY BIG caveat: they haven't even had the grand opening yet (that's tonight). I have a standard practice of giving a brewpub at least a month, and generally two or three, to get their kitchen in order. And maybe it's just the pizza that's so-so. I'm keeping an open mind. Report back if you've been there and tried the food--I'm curious to know what others have found.

Deschutes Pearl First Look

A couple of months ago, I received my regular copy of Deschutes' newsletter The Bitter Truth, and in it was a story expressing anxiety about heading to Portland:

Portland here we come! We’ll be opening our new Pub in the Pearl District in early May. The Rose City. Stumptown. Puddletown. We feel a little like the Clampett family.

I guess I always saw Deschutes through the inverse lens; they have for years been the state's top dog, the big brewery who wins all the awards. But consciousness is local, and coming from a town of 78,000 in the middle of a remote stretch of the state--well, I guess I can see how it may have felt like a country cousin crashing the big city. Especially since Gary Fish and Co. chose the urbane Pearl District--Portland's most un-Bend-like neighborhood.

I mention all of this because when I walked in yesterday, I was instantly reminded that this is a Bend company, and they're putting Bend front and center. It is not particularly evident from the outside, where the building, just next to the Armory/Gerding Theater, fits right in with the neighborhood. With it's brick facade and industrial picture windows, it also recalls the history of this patch of hallowed brewery land, where within a few square blocks Weinhard's, BridgePort, Widmer, and Portland Brewing all got their start.

In this picture to the left, you can see what I mean. Unlike so many of the buildings in the downtown core, Deschutes has not gone for an austere use of space. Although the building has soaring ceilings that stretch up 20-25 feet, they have have done two things to offset the feel of a warehouse. As you can see, they've created a series of low rafters that look and feel like pergolas. So while you can look over them and see the ceiling above, it creates a cozier atmosphere. Second, they used heavy wooden beams for the effect, which gives the feeling of a lodge.

The use of wood is a major architectural feature. Framing each row, like a trellis, are these carved arches that seem very central Oregon. They feature the kind of art I am familiar with, having grown up east of the Cascades (way east--in Boise)--rough-hewn sculptures of outdoor scenes. These are by J.Chester Armstrong, and they start with a chainsaw. In the picture below you can see owls, and eagle, and cougers. Very manly touches befitting a lodge--and quite distinct from the current Portland style. For contrast, see Hopworks' approach.


In the picture below, you can see the bar--a thick slab salvaged from a building that had been demolished for condos. Not in these pictures, but at the far end of the bar, is a stone fireplace, which adds further texture to the lodgey feel of architect Stuart Emmons' design.


Light is another major feature of the building, and in the picture below, you can see how it creates warmth on the 11th Avenue side of the building. (The network of lowered beams is just to the left of the picture, on the other side of a wall at the building's inner core.)

The brewhouse is visible when you walk in the building through a huge glass window. In the picture below, light reflects off the window, showing the street to the left. Beyond are the tanks housing Brewer Cam O'Connor's fresh beer.

In the dining room area, the copper kettles are literally framed by windows over the bar. Of all the touches in the new building, this was my favorite. Beer's art, and Deschutes is making sure you get the point. Try the cask ale, and you won't need further convincing. I began with one of my favorite beers in the world, Bachelor Bitter on cask. The peppery notes of the hops were more vivid than I recall. I moved on to cask Black Butte and was amazed at how so much of the subtlety of flavor is lost to bottles and kegs. How many Black Buttes have you had? Try a pint on cask and see if you recognize it.


Of course, two pints later, and you'll find yourself here, in front of what must be the finest pair of urinals since the salvaged tanks at BridgePort.


Dave Selden happened to make his first foray to the pub last night, too. He's got his take up, and has photos of some things I missed. Incidentally, I didn't stay for food, but the menu looks like standard pub fare--sandwiches, burgers, pizza, plus a few specialty items. Like lobster ravioli, which I'd love a report on. Have you been? What'd you think?