Open Thread Friday: Your Best Porters

Note: post updated with my thanks.

One of the most difficult tasks in writing a comprehensive beer book is locating appropriate examples of style. The problem isn't that there aren't any good ones, it's that there are way, way too many. Worse, a lot of them are being made in places like Michigan and New York (not to mention Copenhagen and London)--that is, far beyond the gaze of my weak eyes. Sometime in the middle of one of this week's nights, I woke up with an idea: why not crowdsource it? So your task, should you be so generous as to help me out, is to list a half dozen or so of your favorite examples of the week's style. I will use them to narrow down my search.

The book is structured around styles, and it ends with a list of beers that are good examples. I obviously want very good beers, but that can't be the sole criteria. The beers need to be relatively available to people who read the book, and at least some of the beers have to be available across the country. Finally, they should be regular, established beers that will still be in production when the book comes out. Except in the case of obscure styles, I'm trying to avoid brewpubs or very tiny breweries that don't distribute out of their home state. International examples are welcome and necessary, but they need to be imported to the US.

I have no idea if people will participate, so this may be a one-time thing. I hope not. I'm working on porters right now, so let's start there. So far, the examples I think are serious contenders include these:

1. Anchor Porter
2. Deschutes Black Butte Porter
3. Fuller's London Porter, and
4. (coincidentally) Geary's London Porter

What am I missing?


Update. Wow! This is an astounding response. I see it's absolutely critical that I track down Founders, Meantime, Porterhouse Plain, Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald (which was already on the "must find" list), Bell's, and O'dell's. There are a number of others on the list I have noted down--I'll keep my eyes peeled for those, too. Special kudos/thanks to Flagon of Ale, who is exactly right about the Yuengling. It deserves notice somewhere.

Friday Flick: Floor Malting

Today I have nice treat. This is a series on floor malting--the old-school method of malting barley that has died out in all but a few malteries in Britain. Some of them are at whisky distilleries, and that's where this footage comes from. However, except that the distiller uses peat to kiln their malt, the process is the same as with beer malt. I love especially that the kilns are old (200 years) and new (150 years). You can tell: they use coke to fire them, a fuel that was state-of-the art in about 1640. I doubt seriously Great Western is shoveling coke off railcar to fire their kilns. Anyway, here we go.

Part One: Floor Malting





Part Two: the Peat Fire





Part Three: The Kiln Floor

!$#&% Blogger

Right now you should be reading the first in my series of pub crawl recommendations, but last night, Google's Blogger, always a buggy system, ate it. All of it. Gone, vanished into the ether. I spent OVER AN HOUR on it last night (quite long for a blog post) and so it will take some time to reconstruct. As we are nearing the holiday weekend, I'll probably delay it. But if you would be so kind as to curse Blogger for me in one of your free moments, I would be obliged.

Craft Beer Consumption Hits 15% in Oregon

The estimable Brian Butenschoen, Director of the Oregon Brewers Guild, may produce the best state-level craft beer data in the US. For an old researcher like me, getting his annual state of the state report is always catnip. Lately, it's all great news--but there's one eye-popper in the numbers that has my chin dragging the ground. First, the set up:

The Oregon Brewers Guild announced today that Oregon’s breweries crafted 1,085,000 barrels (or roughly 270 million pints) of beer during 2010, a 3.5 percent increase from the previous year. Retail sales of Oregon-made beer sold in the state totaled approximately $235 million in 2010. In total, the brewing industry contributes $2.44 billion to the state’s economy. Despite overall weak employment figures for the year in Oregon, the state’s brewing companies added 200 jobs in 2010 and directly employed more than 4,900 people.

Portland, Oregon currently has 40 breweries within its city limits, more than any other city in the world. The state of Oregon has 91 brewing companies operating 121 brewing facilities in 50 cities.

Mmmm, sweet, sweet stats. But then there's the pièce de résistance:

Roughly 14.4 percent of the 2.7 million barrels of all beer - both bottled and draft - consumed in the state were made in Oregon. This is the highest for any state in the United States and was a 16 percent increase from 2009.

Brian is interested in how much Oregon beer Oregonians drink, not how much craft beer. But of course, the Oregon craft market includes beer from the rest of the United States, which means it's somewhere north of 15%. This is three times the national average. Moreover, Oregon now produces about a tenth of all the craft beer brewed in the US (over a million barrels of roughly ten million sold in the US in 2010).

These are pretty remarkable numbers. I've always felt that a five percent market share is a tenuous position. It's not enough to ensure anything more than a niche position, and with a shift in trends, could easily head the other direction. At 15-20%, you begin to hit a tipping point where craft beer is no longer a niche and where it's difficult to imagine it evaporating anytime soon. Congrats to the Guild, its members, and all the people who deliver and serve good beer in Oregon. You are way, way out in front.

A Brief Meta Interlude

Oregon Craft Beer Month starts in a couple days, and since a lot of people will be visiting the state and looking for a good pint, I plan to do a series of pub crawl posts. This idea didn't entirely originate from me, and herein lies the meta part of our post. As you are no doubt unaware, Portland is host to the second annual beer blogger's conference in August. While this will be of only passing--very passing--interest to you (and rightly so), it has had a small effect on the ever-growing corps of beer bloggers in this fair city. We have hatched a plan to unite in a more formal version of my jokey United Brotherhood of Beer Bloggers, Local 503--we're calling it the more prosaic "Portland Beer Bloggers"--in part to help make the conference fun for all. Unsurprisingly, the subject of beer crawls came up, and following that, my scheme to do some posting on it myself.

Anyway, we're not off the ground yet, but we do have a twitter feed. You'll know when we do get off the ground because, like and earthquake rumbling down the Cascadia Fault, we will shake the world.*

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*Hyperbole, in case anyone missed it.

That (Really) Old-Timey Beer

Forget about those Burton ales--those are trendy newcomers compared to this:

Dr. Pat[rick McGovern] ... is the world’s foremost expert on ancient fermented beverages, and he cracks long-forgotten recipes with chemistry, scouring ancient kegs and bottles for residue samples to scrutinize in the lab. He has identified the world’s oldest known barley beer (from Iran’s Zagros Mountains, dating to 3400 B.C.), the oldest grape wine (also from the Zagros, circa 5400 B.C.) and the earliest known booze of any kind, a Neolithic grog from China’s Yellow River Valley brewed some 9,000 years ago. Widely published in academic journals and books, McGovern’s research has shed light on agriculture, medicine and trade routes during the pre-biblical era.

That comes from a fascinating article in the latest issue of Smithsonian Magazine. It's pretty much a must-read for anyone interested in the roots of brewing.

Now, speaking of Burtons, is that what divers retrieved off a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea? Finnish researchers cracked a bottle and found:

The bottle contained a liquid that was a beautiful pale golden colour, identified as beer because of the presence of malt sugars, aromatic compounds and hops typical of the beverage. The beer in the bottle examined has not stood the test of time well, and it was contaminated by salt from sea water. Dead yeast cells were discovered in the beer, indicating fermentation that took place long ago. Live lactic acid bacteria were found in the beer. Especially in earlier times, lactic acid bacteria were often present in beer fermentation alongside brewing yeast.

The date of the shipwreck matters. Long before porters were shipped to Russia, Burton ales were the beer of choice. However, in 1822 (189 years ago), Russia enacted a massive tariff on most British imports, including Burton ales. (The Russians loved their porter, however, and since they believed they couldn't make it anywhere near as well as the London breweries it was granted an exception to the tariff.) Up until the tariff, Burtons were mostly brown; after it, the Burton breweries retooled the beer for domestic markets and got paler. I'm not enough of a scholar to know what that beer might have been. An example of IPA from the golden age of its export? Perhaps the real scholars will comment.

The Buttery Beers of New England

Tuesday last, Sally and I caught a six am flight from Portland to Portland. I recommend it to anyone interested in novelty. We were traveling unexpectedly and it wasn't a trip for pleasure. Nevertheless, I did manage to track down a beer here and there, and this is the piece of the trip I wanted to share.

When you breathe the air of beer geekdom, you necessarily end up with a skewed view of the larger world of craft beer appreciation. As craft brewing got started, there were distinctive regional preferences in the places I knew about--the Midwest, the Northwest, and a little later, New England. But reading the blogs and talking to beer geeks has given me an impression of a nationalization of tastes. You hear a lot about imperial beers, hop bombs, sours, and farmhouse ales. But these styles are, of course, not the norm. My trip to Maine confirmed that regional tastes do still exist.

New England has a lot in common with old England--or has had, anyway. You find lots of the traditional styles, including lots of sessionable bitters. (Try to find those in Oregon.) They are minor-key beers made with muted hopping--and very often, with English hops. (They love their Fuggles--or Willamettes in a pinch.) And what was really surprising: they like a dollop of diacetyl. Somewhat early in the trip, I had a Gritty's Pub Style, a 4.5%, 20 IBU bitter. Now, Gritty's has a variable reputation, so when I found the diacetyl in Pub Style, I figured it was unintentional. But then I had two more classic bitters and they both had diacetyl, too.

In each case, the levels were modest. By the time I sampled a Shipyard Export--a strong bitter--I was certain this was intentional. The levels are low enough that the vast majority of people don't notice it (even on BeerAdvocate, only one person among recent reviewers remarked upon it, and favorably at that). Generally speaking, diacetyl, a buttery compound produced during fermentation, is a no-no. On the West Coast, it's always considered bad. I suspect this harkens back to the old days of rapid growth in craft brewing, when it was common to find butter-bomb beers. It's easy enough to eliminate the problem; yeast reabsorbs diacetyl, so as long as you're not trying to rush beer out to the market, it's self-regulating. Historically, though, it's not always frowned upon, and in caramelly bitters, it's far from objectionable.

My ah-ha moment came with that Shipyard. I was at J's Oysters on the waterfront in Portland. (Put that on your list of must-visit restaurants. It's a legendary place that has a slightly gone-to-seed quality but features absolutely perfect, fresh fish at reasonable prices. Plus you can sit outside and soak in the environment.) We ordered the Shipyard and an Allagash White. With our first course of raw oysters, both beers were fantastic, but they did different things. The Allagash played on the briny qualities of the fish, while the Shipyard ensconced it in sweetness. Sally had fish chowder, and here was where the Shipyard sang. It married perfectly with the cream and brought out some of the character of the haddock. The Allagash, by contrast, was too tart and dry--it classed with the cream.

Beer has the versatility to blend in with local culture. It can harmonize with local foods and lifestyles and become a part of regional identity. Although there are some interesting similarities, the two Portlands are really quite different. Stripped of their context, I would have found the three bitters slightly underwhelming. But in Portland, especially when coupled with local food, they were a delight. An example that appreciating a beer may involve more than just the contents of a pint glass.

Rogue Workplace Followup

Last week, I mentioned some news about some potential labor strife at Rogue Ales. The original article came from a labor group, and I solicited feedback that would either support or refute it. I especially would have liked to hear from Rogue. I got three emails, and there were a few comments left by anonymous writers on the blogs. Unfortunately, no one from Rogue got back to me. The folks who emailed all did so under their actual names, but asked that I keep their names out of the discussion. Fair enough.

A few things stood out. One is that Rogue's long-time master brewer, John Maier, remains a much-respected figure. He was praised both for his skill as a brewer and for being a great mentor (not surprising when you consider how many brewers have come up through Rogue, having worked with John). In a similar vein, folks were reluctant to paint Rogue with a single brush; they mention having good experiences while working there and felt that the situation is far from clear-cut.

On the other hand, they all also agreed that the work environment is brutal. One mentioned "ridiculous expectations" and a gulf between ownership/management and the production staff. Another witnessed a scene in which a manager was "screaming" at his staff with menace and vitriol. In the story I referenced, there was an anecdote about a brewer getting fired in front of the staff; one of my emailers confirmed this.

An anonymous commenter at A Good Beer Blog (who offered his own unconfirmed tales of mistreatment) made another great point. He looked through the jobs listing at ProBrewer.com and noticed that "they are hiring brewers, a head brewer, director of production, and national sales manager." That may be coincidence, but is more likely an example of staff turnover.

So, again, I don't see anything here to suggest that Rogue's behavior in any way crosses lines. The picture that emerges is of a hard, aggressive environment that leads to lots of job churn. There are ugly incidents, but also opportunities to learn and grow. It would be nice if Rogue commented on the situation, but I can see why they wouldn't. (This has the classic "when did you stop beating your wife" set-up of doomed issues.)

I'm interested in the story because I'm interested in businesses that treat their employees well. There's a huge amount of good beer in the world, and I'm the kind of customer that rewards good labor relations and eco-brewing. As this issue evolved, there were a group of commenters who wanted to defend businesses to treat their workers badly, believing that the logic of markets would compel Rogue to improve its practices if there was a problem. Although I think that's a specious argument (markets work for businesses, not employees), I do agree with one element of the argument: the marketplace can decide to reward or punish a brewery for good or bad behavior. This story is useful in giving consumers the information they need to make their call. The more you know, the more you can make an informed purchase.


Update: Users had posted a couple comment threads discussing this issue at BeerAdvocate (one, two). It appears BA has pulled them down. Interesting.

Leave Town For a Week...

Wow, big doings. First off, the beeronomist caught an important piece in the Toronto Sun describing the bad barley crop in Western Canada. Which, you hardly need me to tell you, isn't a great thing. (The effect on climate change on brewing will inevitably be bad, and may cause more than higher prices.) Speaking of higher prices, Bill has the latest quarterly Portland Beer Price Index out, and for the first time in long while, prices are ticking upward. A regular reader of beer blogs elsewhere, I'll note that people have been complaining a lot lately about a spike in prices. Thanks to the PBPI, I know that we haven't seen that here--which either means that everyone always thinks prices go up, but Bill's the only one doing a survey of prices so we know that's not true in Portland, or prices are more stable here. My guess is the latter, and I attribute it to the amazing bounty of products, which keep prices low.

Next we have the news that Laurelwood's Chad Kennedy, one of my favorite brewers and one of Oregon's most underrated, is decamping to Bend to start a brewery. Angelo has the full details. If it seems that Bend has a king hell lot of breweries for a town the size of the crowd at a Timbers game, there's a very good reason: it does. Jon Abernathy, who has been covering the bend scene for six or more years (since blogs will save us, I attribute the ferment to him), is stunned by the development. His blog's sidebar now lists ten active breweries and six in development. Let us not forget that the city is home to Deschutes, the fifth largest craft brewery and 11th largest American brewery.

Oh, and speaking of the Timbers, the New York Times was sufficiently moved by their coolness to devote an article to them.

Friday Flick: Savor Flowers

The Brewers Association is dipping its toe in the waters of video production--and if this is any gauge, they're getting it right. This is FAR more effective as a craft-beer promo than that embarrassing "I am a craft brewer" thing. Showing guys making beer--that's the best promo there is.

Enjoy--

Book Review: Brewed Awakening by Joshua Bernstein

Brewed Awakening
Joshua Bernstein
On sale November 2011
Sterling Publications, 304 pages
$24.95




Most beer books are aimed at the very general reader. They assume a person has interest in good beer, but very little experience with them. Brewed Awakening is one of the first books that aims at a slightly more experienced audience--evidence, I assume, that publishers now think there are enough such people to support a decent print run. Beyond that, it features an interesting and innovative structure--which at times pleased and at times infuriated me. More on that in a moment.

The book attempts a few things simultaneously. It aims to be introductory enough for the everyman while at the same time it highlights obscure, advanced styles and themes; it aims to be comprehensive, covering the usual slate of beer-book topics (ingredients, processes, styles, food pairings, enjoying/drinking, homebrewing), yet it also wants to capture cutting-edge trends in craft brewing. Here's where the innovative structure comes in. The sections are structured roughly in the order I listed, but Bernstein spices them up with commercial examples. So, after he describes malt, he offers "Five to Try"--beers made with wheat and rye the reader can buy to get a sense of their qualities. This concept--a selection of beers to try that illuminate the topic at hand--pervades the book.

(This was the part that irritated me, for idiosyncratic reasons. I'm the kind of person that likes to go back and locate a certain beer or category of beer but, because my brain is old and leaky and these are sprinkled throughout, they'll be hard to find. This is especially true if you're looking for a particular style, which will be placed somewhere to highlight something else in the brewing world. Or it may not be in there at all.)

I was pleased to see current developments addressed in the book. Things like gose, gypsy brewing, nanobrewing, collaboration beers, cans, and low-alcohol beers are all in here. It doesn't feel like a rehash of other books, but a serious attempt to capture the full scope of good beer in America. It's like a snapshot--or even a long, extended blog post. It's written in a breezy style and lacks the detailed scholarship you'd find in a Mosher book--but this may be more virtue than defect. Bernstein's not targeting Mosher's turf.

You'll have to wait until November to buy a copy--probably so you can buy two or three and give them away. You could do worse for the average beer geek than putting a copy of Brewed Awakening in a friend's Christmas stocking.

Labor and Breweries

Separate from their personal style of managing workers, the Rogue case does raise certain interesting questions, none of which will be resolved here. They may, if we're lucky, at least be fully enumerated. To begin with, breweries of any size start to look a whole lot like factories. Brew 50,000 barrels of beer, and you're working on an industrial scale. For decades, working at a brewing plant meant a union salary, job security, and probably all the work you wanted until retirement. We don't have a overwhelming number of manufacturing jobs left in America (owing mainly to computers and machines--we actually continue to produce more stuff year by year), so breweries have long been great places to work.

Small breweries, on the other hand, have a different situation altogether. Margins are razor thin, and the same guy who makes the recipes may be the guy who hauls grain and hoses down the brewery. Even decent-sized small breweries that employ a few people don't have the kind of income to offer manufacturing-type union jobs with good pay and benefits. Somewhere between Oakshire and Deschutes, there's a line where scale begins to earn breweries enough that they could conceivably begin paying line workers fairly decent wages. Many people have asked me over the years (mainly BlueOregonian type people) which breweries treat their workers the best. I haven't known--nor have I even known how to assess the question. I keep my ears open, but it's usually apples-and-oranges breweries.

I'm one of those fairly unreasonable pro-labor guys who seem to have mostly vanished in America (to us, the word "socialist" means "good and true"). There's no evidence that free markets are much endangered by fairly-paid workers. Still, not every business in the world can afford to pay the same thing. As with so much, there's lots of gray area.

Rogue of the Week: Rogue Ales

Don McIntosh of the NW Labor Press--a worker's rights publication that's not exactly neutral--has a devastating article about how Rogue Brewery treats its workers. The main issue is an effort to unionize Rogue that the management has aggressively fought. They have deployed tactics familiar to anyone who has followed labor relations in the US over the last 20 years--all legal by today's laws. But worse than that, McIntosh paints the picture of a hostile work environment where management acts capriciously to ensure full compliance. Examples:

• But what provoked him to call the Teamsters was a January 2011 company meeting at which a brewer was fired in front of everyone else for having made sophomoric comments on a “letter of accountability.” Employees had been made to write the letter after some production mistakes. Alruiz says he remembers the boss’s exact words: “F*** off. You’re fired.”
• Alruiz had his own complaint: He says when he agreed to serve as crew leader, he was promised a $1-an-hour raise, but didn’t receive it.
• A week after filing the petition [to request a union election], Rogue Ales suspended Alruiz for two days, ostensibly for arguing with a co-worker. A week after that, it fired two of his friends, also union supporters.

And McIntosh also noted this on the company website: “Rogue is not for everyone,” says the jobs page on Rogue Ales’ web site, which adds the company’s opinion that “job security is a myth,” and “seniority is not fair.”

Rogue is a for-profit company and they can run their business however they wish. Furthermore, we haven't heard Rogue's side of the story, nor from the workers directly. Still, this is a hell of a lot bigger deal than honest pints or expensive beer and food. IAnd it's especially ironic, given Rogue's socialist-revolutionary brand identity.) As a consumer, I can also spend my money however I wish. I'd love to hear from Brett or Jack--they refused to talk to McIntosh--or Rogue workers. Holler if you want to clarify anything (the_beerax (at) yahoo (dot) com). In the meantime, I think my beer dollars will be directed somewhere other than toward Rogue.

Book Review: Brewing Better Beer

Brewing Better Beer
Gordon Strong
Brewers Publications
315 pages
$17.95





This is a book that lends itself to an elevator pitch: Gordon Strong is the only three-time winner of the national Ninkasi homebrewing award and the highest-ranked BJCP judge in the country; let's let him a book to walk homebrewers through his approach and technique as if they were there in the back yard with him.

That's how the book reads, anyway. Strong is given broad latitude to just offer his opinion and preferences about how to brew. This isn't a comprehensive how-to guide; it's sage wisdom from one of America's best homebrewers. So, you get an extensive preamble on Strong's philosophy of brewing, with nuggets like, "I manage complexity through abstraction to avoid information overload" (emphasis his). In another passage, he encourages you to "think like" and offers five subheads: an engineer, a chef, a judge, a carpenter, and a Jedi Master. This is perhaps the weakest chapter.

In subsequent sections, he just walks through various topics and offers his views--things like processes, equipment, and ingredients. Here's a section on hop selection to give you a sense of the book:

For high-alpha bittering, I like Magnum for a clean bitterness and Tomahawk otherwise. Challenger is my favorite for English beers, but they're somewhat hard to find. For moderate bitterness, I'll use whatever I have; it doesn't much matter. More often than not, I'll just use the same types of hops I'm using for late additions so the character will be compatible....

I don't dry hop much anymore, although I do when I make IPAs and American barleywines. I much prefer hops added at knockout or in the whirlpool.

At first, I was put out by the style: what do I care what your preferences are, Gordon? Everyone has preferences. But later, I began to enjoy it. There's a sense of liberation in reading about one man's opinion--you realize that so much of brewing is personal preference. Many homebrew books make you feel like there's a right and wrong--or at least a pretty serious orthodoxy. (Having interviewed enough professional breweries, I've already encountered one version of this. Pros all have their preferences, they are absolutely adamant that this is the only way--and they all contradict the preferences of other, equally adamant, equally celebrated pro brewers.)

Strong only discusses all-grain brewing, but I wouldn't call it a book for advanced brewers. It's accessible enough that even I could follow everything, and I am by no means advanced. It's handy in exactly the way talking to other brewers about their methods is handy: you discover tips and techniques you haven't tried. Since Strong is so accomplished, it's worth paying attention.

Blogger Note

I had a family emergency arise over the weekend that's going to take me out of town. Everything's fine, but I just need to travel to New England for the week. You shouldn't really notice anything on the blog--I've pre-loaded a week's worth of content. I won't be commenting, tweeting, or emailing regularly, though.

See you next week.

That Old Timey Beere and Ale

What's the new sour? (Since there's always the new something, and since the last couple years everyone's been saying sour is the new hoppy, it must be that we're due for a new new.) Old. Anyway, among certain small brewers and homebrewers here in Beervana.

Hot on the heels of my encounter with Burton, I read about Kevin's flirtation with mumme. Mumme, as you know, is an extinct style of malt porridge tinged very lightly with alcohol. You didn't know?

Mumme being a treacle-like dark beer with a massive starting gravity and very low attenuation. Think 3-6% ABV with a final gravity over 1.200. No, not 1.020, 1.200; we’re talking moderately alcoholic malt syrup here.

This level of attenuation makes Burtons look like ultra-dry saisons. Kevin cites Pattinson (whom we'll deal with soon), who cites a clutch of 19th century writers who peg mumme's attenuation between 8% (!) and 20% (dry mumme). Keep in mind that most modern beers finish out with attenuations in the 70-80% range. I found a German Wikipedia entry on the style that cites older sources, but doesn't seem to contradict Pattinson (seem, because I'm working with the Google translate version of the page). In any case, it sounds like a ghastly style, one the world is surely better off to be rid of. I urge you to remember that during the great mumme epoch, people bathed twice in their lives, lived to be 13, and believed some of the womenfolk of the villages to be witches.

The British Connection
The catastrophe of mumme aside, the interest in authentic recreations is a great trend. The historian/bloggers Martyn Cornell and Ron Pattinson are major instigators. They would no doubt be surprised to learn how many people in remote Oregon are inspired by their studies of lost styles. Yet I keep encountering late-stage beer geeks who are planning to brew--or have brewed--a beer based on their research. I can't say how much it has influenced the pro ranks, but I think somewhat. Brettanomcyes is slowly creeping into English styles, a trend I imagine goes back to the research of aged British styles--all infected with brett.

I doubt very many of these lost styles are likely to gain broad popularity. Yet gose has shown surprising resiliency, so you never know. Yet brewing things like gratzer, broyhan, koyt, Burton, or brown-malt porter are all extremely useful to understanding the evolution of brewing--not to mention a fun trip down memory lane. (Personally, I'm hoping for an Adambier recreation--that's a style with legs.) The aspect I find most encouraging is that Oregon brewers (home and pro) are among the most activist tinkerers. The future of beer is the past. And we're on the cutting edge.

Overcompensation?

Serving as further evidence of Sally's Rule*, we have the latest gambit from Belgian-owned Budweiser (via email):

This week marks national flag week; which is a time to pay tribute to the greatest symbol of patriotism in our country. It is a time for all Americans to display the American flag and celebrate our freedom. It is also a time to honor those military heroes that have fought for our freedom with the American flag adorned on their uniforms. To celebrate national flag week and the patriotic season leading up to July 4^th, Budweiser has altered its iconic can by creating a red, white and blue Patriot Can.

Let us count the ways in which this is wrong: it demeans the flag to be used to hawk beer; it's slimy to appropriate respect for the military to hawk beer; calling it a Patriot Can is bizarre for a foreign-owned company and strangely jingoistic. Bud, which for two decades had the most subtle, effective branding strategy in America, now uses cheap tricks as it casts about for a post In-Bev identity. Fail.

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*Macros don't sell beer, they sell packaging.

Brewer Opening

Seems like a decent gig.

JOBS

Brewmaster. Deschutes Brewery is seeking an amazing Brewmaster. The successful candidate will have a passion for craft beer and share our desire to constantly push the envelope when it comes to quality and creativity. We need a brave soul, willing to experiment while also having the experience and expertise to run a sophisticated and growing brewery. This person will bring outstanding leadership skills, technical & creative expertise and proficiency in brewing operations.

Homebrewers shouldn't get their hopes up, though: "Our ideal candidate will have a degree in Fermentation Sciences, a minimum of 10 years professional, production brewing experience."

Friday Flick: Beamish Documentary

I don't think I'll find videos of this quality very often. But today's a good day for Friday Flick. This is almost a half hour long, so don't press play if you're looking for a short diversion. But do click play--this is fascinating.



Whoops. Apparently no embedding. No worries: you can watch it at Vimeo.

Events, Annotated

The hydrant-flow of events gushes on. With a few comments, a few of note.

1. Kriek Kamp, July 13-15
A huge amount of what goes into a bottle of beer is hidden to the average drinker (and blogger, actually). Double Mountain's Kriek Kamp cracks open the door and lets you see inside a bit. It's a three-day immersion into brewing, using the extraordinary DM Kriek as an access point. On Wednesday, there's a seminar on krieks and a vertical tasting with brewmaster Matt Swihart. I'm guessing this covers the finer points of style and method, and the vertical tasting will be used to illustrate what happens in the glass. Thursday is a sensory training--invaluable for associating flavors and aromas with chemical compounds--a cherry-picking party at Matt's orchard in Odell with bonus tour of nearby Logsdon Farmhouse Ale brewery, and barbecue. Finally, on Friday, you see the annual cherry crush for use in the 2012 vintage Kriek. It's $150, which includes everything but overnight accommodations--a deal, given how much a person stands to learn. Call 541-387-0042 to reserve a space--there's just 20 total.

Comment: I'm planning to attend, though whether this makes you more or less likely to join the party is best left secret.

2. Hopworks BikeBar opens on Williams
Hopworks becomes the fifth Portland brewpub to open at least a second location with the arrival of BikeBar at 3947 N. Williams Ave. Nearby is Lompoc's Fifth Quadrant, the third outpost in that brewpub's mini-chain, and down the road is EAT Oyster Bar, one of my fave places in the city.

Comment: there was a big blowout yesterday, when the place opened. Sorry.

3. Organic Brewers Fest, June 24-26
The once-Roots-sponsored fest, now in its 7th incarnation, snuck up on me. I wasn't even sure it was going to happen, but it will, as usual in Overlook Park. The beers look pretty decent.

Comment: is Craig Nicholls running it? If not, who?