Review - The Mash Tun

2204 NE Alberta St.
Portland, OR 97211

Hours: Mon - Fri: 4pm - midnight, Sat - Sun: noon - midnight
Prices: 20 ounce English-style pints: $4.
Other info: Seasonal outdoor seating (with awning); kids and smoking allowed
Beers: A range of NW-style ales plus seasonals.

You can trace the evolution of brewpub fashion from the Barley Mill through the Mash Tun. Originally, they were converted bars and they looked a lot like: bars. Into the light they came, however, and in the next phase they had windows and transparent (that is, not cigarette-blue) air. Along about the time they became restaurantized, we saw the emergence of the chain brewpub--BJ's and Rock Bottom, not McMenamins which are uniquely unchainy--which took them yet a further step away from their saloony forebears. By my reckoning, we're right around 1997 as this all happens.

Came then the backlash--hipsters eschewed the brewpub scene and found little windowless haunts with blue smoke, pool tables, and Pabst (never Hamm's, alas, always Pabst). Fortunately, the Lucky Lab had opened already and offered the promise of grit and blue collars as well as the delight only 85 BUs of Chinook hops can deliver. The Lucky Lab, perhaps not singlehandedly--though this is a blog, so who's going to hold me accountable?--saved brewpubs from suburbanization.

Now their ethos defines the newer generation of brewpubs, the ones founded by those erstwhile mid-90s hipsters who went to the Lab and dreamed of owning their own pubs: Roots, Amnesia, and now the Mash Tun, which I visited for the first time this weekend. (Yes, that's an embarrassing admission, but it's the price I pay for being an introverted lair-dweller with a beer blog.)

Cast in the classic Lucky Lab industrial style, it has more than a little of the Alberta/Mississippi aesthetic to make it unique. The drinking/dining space wraps around a tiny brewery that's visible beyond the attractive bar. There's a patio out back (covered with a sheet of translucent corrugated plastic), with a big beer mural; the walls inside have local art dotting them. The space feels like it's been there forever--it is comfortable and inviting and has a lived-in quality. And, as if to highlight the ethos of the place, directly in front of the bar is a pool table; on the afternoon we visited, it attracted the kinds of kids Pabst had previously attracted. One for the good guys!

Beer
As with the Lucky Lab, beer isn't the overwhelming strength at the Mash Tun. I tried four of the five beers they had on tap (skipping, for obvious reasons, the Hunny Blonde), and one was good, two were so-so, and one was a failed experiment. None were bad, though, and they were certainly better than Pabst. It's worth noting that as a new brewpub, it could be things will improve. There are no off-flavors or anything, just recipes that don't quite rise to the highest echelon.

Most people will try the IPA first and stick with it, and they will therefore think the Mash Tun has great beer. Do that.

• Alberta Pale - Nothing sings about this workman-like pale, but it's all right. It has a nice grapefruit nose and plenty of hop interest on the tongue, but it's a one-note beer in terms of hopping. It has a slightly grinding quality that may be from too much crystal malt. Whereas a good pale need not be a transcendently complex beer, the best are usually clean and direct. This one has a slightly muddled taste. Rating: C+
  
• Mr. Rosewater Porter - This beer was being brewed at the moment the brewer heard about the death of Kurt Vonnegut. As an ode to the great author, he added rose hips to the boil and came up with a funny porter that I originally thought had an excess of fusel alcohol. Turns out it was the sharp notes from the rose hips. It also thinned out the body, making the beer disappear in the mouth. A good try and a nice ode, but not a great beer. Rating: C-
• Portside IPA - The IPA is a mid-range variety--neither too strong nor too hoppy, which makes it a reasonable choice (you can have a couple without needing a Segway to get out the door). The balance between full, rich body and hop bitterness was perfect. The hops were unfamiliar to me; they had a soapy/lavender note and finished with a bit of black pepper. Rating: B
• Inclusion Amber - This is an amber in the Full Sail style and not a bad way to go, either. It is also nicely in balance, with a strong caramel malt base and fresh, green hops. A good choice for a session beer. Rating: B-

Food
Give the Mash Tun credit for putting thought into the menu. It is expansive, with two pages of dishes: appetisers, soups, salads, and sandwiches, burgers, pita pizzas (?), wraps, and the usual pub standbyes. Where possible, they buy their food fresh, local, and organic, including local beef. They feature quite a large range of veggie options, too, including tempeh and tofu dishes. I had a brat (locally made) with McMenamins-style thin-cut fries and was pretty much perfectly satisfied. Sounds great, right? Read on.

Sally's View
My lovely and talented spouse, who knows a lot more about food than I do, offered a few observations as I was taking notes, and it occurred to me that, in the interest of multiple perspectives, you might appreciate a differing view. Here's what she said (from my notes):

"It's nice they have veggie options, but what that means is you have tempeh and some veggie burgers, but everything is heavy and there are no fresh vegetables. Nor original salads, particularly--just the stuff you'd expect in a pub like Caesar salad. Everything comes with fries, no substitutions. It's very pubby--everything's breaded and fried."

So, take your pick: perfect and satisfying or heavy and caloric.

Final Analysis
The Mash Tun won't win any awards for its beers (yet), but it would be on a short-list of places I'd recommend for its very inviting ambiance and characteristically Alberta feel. The food, while heavy, continues the theme of place and locality. It's only been open a short while, but I think it is well on its way to being a classic Portland brewpub.

Two Items About Barley

If I told you that you'd have to give up beer to save the planet, exactly how conflicted would you be? (Mighty, in my case.) It may come to that:

And that is exactly what is happening to Erdmann and other German brewers as farmers abandon barley — the raw material for the national beverage — to plant other, subsidized crops for sale as environmentally friendly biofuels.

"With the current spike in barley prices, we won't be able to avoid a price increase of our beer any longer," Erdmann said, stopping to sample his freshly brewed, golden product right from the steel fermentation kettle.

In the last two years, the price of barley has doubled to $271 per ton as farmers plant more crops such as rapeseed and corn that can be turned into ethanol or biodiesel, a fuel made from vegetable oil.

This is one of those good news/bad news things. Good news that America is currently pursuing ethanol via the extremely inefficent but politically-expedient process of converting corn, bad that we will continue to dump carbon into the atmosphere as a result. Good that we have beer, bad that it may be our last.

Onto happier news, John Foyston had a wonderful piece in the Food Day about locally-produced Scotch. No, you can't call it that, because it's made here in Portland, but that's the kind of whisky it is. I bring it to your attention on the very slim chance you don't regularly read Food Day.

Whiskeys start with a grain-based sort of beer, or wash. Medoff brews his wash of malted barley at Roots Organic Brewing, a few blocks up the street...

The wash -- or mash, or distiller's beer -- ferments to about 7 percent alcohol. In the still, alcohol boils off and condenses as a much stronger essence of 30 percent to 40 percent alcohol. Because House Spirits and most Scotch producers use less-efficient pot stills (because it makes more flavorful whiskey) they distill at least twice to reach barrel strength of around 70 percent (140 proof).

The whiskey then spends several years in oak. "Everything that comes out of a still is clear," Medoff said as he stood beside the distillery's antique-looking pot still -- its top looks like a copper onion crowned by a long pipe curving over to the condenser. "Spirits are so stable that they won't age in the bottle or the tank. The only thing that can give it some color and those vanilla flavors is time in wood. That's one thing about whiskey -- you've got to be patient...."

Changes in temperature and humidity cause the barrel to breathe, which it does vigorously enough that an appreciable percentage of the spirit evaporates before aging is complete. Charmingly enough, brewers call the missing booze the angels' share. They seem resigned to the fact that distilling is a lot of hard work and waiting that, when it's all over, yields a mere fraction of what you began with. Medoff figures that he'll brew 600 gallons of wash to fill one 53-gallon whiskey barrel.

Angels' share. Cool.

A Brief History of Oregon and Washington Brewing

In Willamette Week's current Drink supplement about Portland bars and pubs, Ap Kryza presents a timeline of hooch and offers this "fact" about brewing:

1984
Widmer Brothers Brewing opens and lights a powder keg of drunken mania: the now infamous microbrewers movement. Widmer is a massive success. Soon after, Portland Brewing Co. and Bridgeport Ales follow suit, while dozens of smaller breweries start cooking.

Not quite. Microbrewing actually got started inPortland in 1980 when Chuck Coury opened Cartwright Brewing. Although the brewery didn't survive the suspect beers it produced, credit is due for starting first. The next extant brewery to start was BridgePort, which produced its first beer in 1984. The Widmer brothers may have gotten their company registered first, but they didn't get beer to the market until 1985. Credit BridgePort for being the oldest functioning brewery.

_____

Below is a brief timeline of key events in Northwest Brewing. Washington breweries are listed in gray text.

1856 - Henry Weinhard founds his brewery
1883 - Andrew Hemrich and John Kopp begin selling "Rainier" beer at their Bay View Brewery
1896 - Leopold Schmidt founds Olympia Brewing (originally "Capital Brewing")
1928 - Arnold Blitz's Portland Brewing Company merges with Henry Weinhard
1974 - Blitz-Weinhard introduces "Private Reserve"
1980 - Chuck Coury founds Cartwright Brewing
1982 - Paul Shipman founds Redhook.
1982 - Bert Grant opens America's first brewpub in Yakima
1983 - Mike Hale founds Hale's in Spokane
1984 - Dick Ponzi founds BridgePort Brewing--now Oregon's oldest brewery
1984 - Pyramid ("Hart") begins in Kalama
1985 - Widmer, Portland Brewing founded; McMenamins begins brewing

Oregon Trail Bourbon Porter

Oregon Trail is a funny brewery. I don't know what it's profile in Corvallis is, but in Portland, it floats in and out of our consciousness, never really finding solid purchase. What beers do they brew again? Where's it from? (And most dangerously), is it still in business? Even the website doesn't resolve these questions. It looks like it was built in 1992, and the "brewery/history" page features an 11-year-old reprinted article. I still am a little unclear about the beers they brew, but based on the bottle of Bourbon Porter I bought three weeks ago, I'm going out on a limb to declare that the brewery is still in business.

(Better evidence: Tim Akimoff at Will Blog For Beer posted a video tour of the brewery, which suggests a tangibility beyond the product.)

Tasting Notes
At some point in the past decade or more, breweries realized that they could get a hold of used bourbon barrels, opening a new vista of possibilities. After all, what goes better with beer than bourbon? You could sell boilermakers in a bottle or subtly flavor your imperial stout with the essence of whiskey. I have tasted some magnificent bourbon-barreled beer (an early offering by Widmer stands out in my memory). Alas, I've now tasted a mediocre one.

The first mistake was using a mildish brown porter, which is no match for the burly liquor with which it commingled. Stouts have a long, sweet, alcoholic middle note, and bourbon nestles right in next to it in fine harmony. Porters, on the other hand, are quaffing beers. Their middles tend to be much thinner and sweeter--no match for anything as strong as bourbon. In fact, what results is more a beer-flavored whiskey cocktail--and not a very good one.

The liquor and malt give it a cloying sweetness, but there's a strong, grating metalic quality to the bourbon, which muscles the beer out of the way. I'm going out on a limb here, but it also seemed like the bourbon was pretty cheap. That seems counterintuitive, given that cheap bourbon probably doesn't make it into barrels (or does it?), but I knows what I tastes.

Oregon Trail may be a robust little brewery that makes wonderful beers. My sample size is too small to comment. But if so, this is an anamoly: call it a gentleman's C.

Ban Smoking in Oregon Bars?

Oregon has taken the first of three steps toward an outright ban of cigarettes in indoor spaces -- including pubs and taverns. Senate Bill 571 passed the state senate and will go to the House and governor (bill's text is here).

BlueOregon has a post urging people to contact their state reps and push for the bill's passage:

Time to call your State Representatives. You know they will be hearing from loads of tavern owners, and the cigarette industry will definitely pull out all the stops lobbying against this bill. Our Legislators shouldn't give another inch to restaurant and bar owners. They already get one of the sweetest and most ridiculous state subsidies ever devised (about 25% of the gambling profits from every machine), and frankly, the case that a smoking ban will actually lower their profits is flimsy.

I'm generally ambivalent about smoking bans. I have a pretty strong libertarian streak, and I don't believe in legislating behavior codes. In America, you don't have a right not to be offended. There is one issue that stands out, though, and a few minutes ago, Kari Chisholm posted a second (somewhat more nuanced) opinion that cuts directly to this point:

But for high-school dropouts, especially middle-aged women with minimal skills, there are very few jobs out there that pay a living wage. One of the few is serving food and drinks, a job that combines the minimum wage with tips.

Many under-educated older women have very few occupational options -- and working in smoky bars pays comparatively well. Right now, we're asking them to trade their health for a living wage.

I'd add that working the late shift is good for moms who don't want to be away from their kids too long. So, on balance, I guess I'll back the legislation. Mostly I go to non-smoking bars, anyway.

______________________
PHOTO: JD Pooley [link]

The Tram

I promise not to get into the habit of posting a lot of random stuff unrelated to beer, but over the weekend, I took a trip on the new tram, so it can loosely be said to be a "Beervana-related" post. It is going to become a tourist attraction as much as a mode of transportation, and since it costs about the same price as a draft beer, I'll go ahead and recommend it as a tourist site.

To be clear, I really opposed this beast at the start. It connects a vastly wealthy community--the denizens of the future Waterfront district--to what I presume will be the workplace of many of them, the Oregon Health Sciences University. Four four bucks, they are saved the humiliation of riding with the rabble on my old bus, the 8. That's what we really needed, right? A $75 million dollar public transportation system to connect the rich to work and home.

Despite my unequivocal feelings on the matter in terms of public policy, I have to say that as a tourist attraction and theme park ride--well, it's actually pretty cool. You get an amazing view of the city--and probably Mount Hood on clear days. It is sleek and modern and industrial, and it has a little bit of the "Monorail!" quality from the Simpsons. Oooooh, futuristic.... (Groening would be proud.)

So anyway, here are a few crude phone cam pics. Enjoy!

The lower stanchion.

The Waterfront district, wherein the elite will reside.

Inside the silvery pod.

The silvery pod takes flight.

Flying over Beervana.

Still Busy

Just to let you know, I haven't suddenly lost interest in blogging. My time through this weekend is going to be almost nil, so I anticipate this being a bit of a down week. If some interesting news comes by, I'll pass it along. Otherwise, regular blogging to continue next week. (Mostly I haven't had a chance to drink much beer or visit any pubs lately, either, though I did try Oregon Trail's Bourbon Porter. In lieu of an actual review now, let me at least warn you off it. Thin and a bit harsh. Fuller review next week.)

Look in the right-hand column for other blogs--the beerosphere is growing and there's a lot of cool stuff out there.

Good Site of Note

I try to keep up on the beer blogosphere. Really, I do. But I missed Stan Hieronymus's somehow. Stan is His Appellation Beer site has been around since November 2005, but it took a post on my "Beer Cred" post to alert me. Stan, for those who don't know, is a long-time journalist most well-known for his beer writing; he's currently the editor at Realbeer.com. He recently published Brew Like a Monk, which has received 8 customer reviews on Amazon, six of them five-stars. Obviously good stuff.

His site is apparently the hippest digitial pub in the beerosphere, because Stephen Beaumont and Lew Bryson hang out there. Or anyway, visited long enough to excoriate me for being a pinhead about working-class beer. (Probably nice guys, and they know a lot about beer; but they were wrong on this one.)

So, go visit, and go visit Lew and Stephen while you're at it. Meanwhile, I'll link 'em up in the ol' blogroll.

Busy Week

Sorry, content has been spotty. And probably will remain so until the weekend.

Beer Cred

Beer is a working-class beverage. Drinking beer is a working-class activity. Oregon brewers, who until '99 had Henry's as an example, got that. In the 80s, as brewpubs started opening up, they had a gritty look. Breweries were located in Portland's industrial Northwest (part of which has been overtaken by the Pearl). Tap handles for good beer appeared in working-class bars. It is my suspicion that one of the reasons Oregonians took to microbrewed beer was because it retained it's blue collar ethos.

In other parts of the country, this wasn't the case. The 80s were a time when Boomers were rediscovering all things artisinal, abandoning the 70s facination with pre-packaged cardboard food. Out went the Velveeta, in came the goat cheese. Boomers adopted Chardonnay, sun-dried tomatoes, and sea salt. And by the late 80s, microbrews. In other states, where there wasn't a long brewing tradition (you know, places where rail cars bearing the title "corn syrup" didn't pull up in front of a large, brick city brewery) micros were part of a middle- and upper-class culture. In places like California and Colorado, "boutique breweries" appealed to this group (and again, I just play a cultural anthropologist online) , but the mass of drinkers were left cold.

I mention all of this because a week or two ago I referenced the Rock Bottom Brewpub in a positive light. Although no one commented, behind the scenes, I took some heat. I get it; Rock Bottom is the opposite of gritty. It is chain-restaurant smooth, all the rough edges of personality and locality worn off by corporate flacks. It also carries with it the Colorado aesthetic, which embraces the homogenized and slightly upscale and eschews the funky and original.

All of these things are true, and I don't like to go to Rock Bottom. After getting taken to task, I did revisit the place, just to clarify. The food was tasty, if a bit overpriced, but the ambiance was still deadening. Except for reproductions of historic logging photos on the wall, we might have been anywhere in the country. The clientele tended toward a population I imagine don't spend much time thinking about beer.

But the proof's in the pint glass, and Van Havig's beers were excellent. We tried a porter, and excellent IPA, and a beer that was designed to suggest a hefeweizen (familiar to the clientele unfamiliar with good beer), but which was actually closer to a Belgian wit, with coriander and ginger. Stealth education, that.

I feel for Van, though; in terms of street cred, he suffers being at Rock Bottom. Partly because his beers will remain a mystery to a lot of folks that would otherwise love them if they were being served across the river at Lucky Lab, say. But even more because his beers are served at Rock Bottom, and it is and will remain such an un-Portland place.

(Yes, that was a random posting.)

Holy Blogging, Batman

All of a sudden, there's scads of beer-related blogging going on. The main culprit is John Foyston, who is apparently a binge-blogger. (Axiom: blogging is like drinking; you gotta pace yourself. A word to the wise, John.) In the past four days, he's posted nine items, and most are pretty long and detailed. Of note:

The beer collectors are coming, the beer collectors are coming.

You probably know already that old beer memorabilia ---- breweriana --- is a big hobby for some collectors. What you maybe didn't know is that the American Breweriana Association Annual Meeting happens in Portland this year: June 12-16 at The Airport Holiday Inn on Columbia Blvd.

A buncha beer writers go to Hood River; this is what they find.

John goes to the Raccoon Lodge, and Ron Gansberg is who he finds:

Gansberg's brewing career began about the same time as Oregon craft brewing, because he worked for pioneers such as BridgePort and Portland Brewing before leaving to become brewmaster (and construction boss for the first year) at Art Larrance's Raccoon Lodge. Since then, Gansberg has become one of the state's most respected and original brewers. He's definitely not the the stereotyped hop-mad Northwest brewer and is the first to admit it. In fact, he's working hard to nerve himself to make an over-the-top hoppy Northwest IPA, but his innate desire for a balanced beer makes it hard for him to twist the flavor dial all the way to the left to "ultra-hoppy."

Which reminds me that Angelo De Ieso has been busy adding to his growing list of brewer interviews. Today he's posted an interview with Pyramid's Tom Bleigh, and last week, he posted an interview with Christian Ettinger, founding brewer of Laurelwood, who is just weeks away from opening his new place, HUB (aka Hopworks Urban Brewpub).

Fortunately, I've got the quasi-poetic review niche locked down, so my raison d'etre remains undisturbed.

Ode to Blue Dot

It might be an interesting experiment: the metaphor beers. Take an abstraction and brew the beer to suit it. For example, Earth Day. Lesser innovators might offer a uninspired metaphor, digging through existing styles for one that is most (pick one: green, earthy, natural). Thus might you end up with an organic lambic, say (spontaneously fermented from natural, wild yeasts!).

Hair of the Dog did far better. The brewery's take on Earth Day is Blue Dot, so named for the wee speck of azure floating in Alpha Centauri's sky. But HotD pretty much exists in the realm of stylistic abstraction (contasted to German precision), unable to brew a beer to style if their lives depended on it, so this was perhaps not the most challenging task.

Blue Dot, of which I managed to taste about four ounces before all extant bottles vanished from the face of the earth, debuted last year to the usual commercial pandemonium. This year, brewer Alan Sprints offered up more of the precious liquid bullion at a dock sail, and I think he was getting six hundred dollars a case. (Kidding.) I managed to score a few precious bottles from Belmont Station, though I have no confidence they have any left. You could stop by and have a look--who knows? It might be interesting just to see what they would charge you.

I cracked my first bottle last night (the other two will remain, probably forever, since I lack the will to crack aged beer, in the larder) and was stunned by what poured out. It was not a beer so much as a liquid paean to life, saturated with glorious, resinous flavor, metaphor for wild vitality. I can't review it, so I'll do the next best thing. If you chance upon a bottle, buy it and damn the price.

Ode
Blue Dot is a tincture of hop, an alcohol solution of mild acidity saturated with the essence of green. It is vita, it is sustenence; distillate of joy. Soil terroir, root seed leaf, fresh stream water. Balance harmony cycle.

Drink, ye who love the jade wolf, and be restored.

National Homebrewing Day

Everyone who's remotely interested in beer tasting should take up homebrewing. I don't know of any other effective way to learn the subtleties of flavor and aroma than to start brewing. How hops interact with beer depending on when they're added to the boil, what makes a beer "tannic" or gives it mouthfeel--I suppose you can learn these things over time by drinking beer, but brewing is a crash course.

This Saturday is National Homebrew Day, and Steinbart's will be doing a free brewing demo starting at 9 am. I exhort you--go learn to brew!

FH Steinbart
234 SE 12th Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97214 USA

Also, in celebration of NHD, homebrewers across the globe will offer a simultaneous toast to homebrewing and beer. It happens a bit early Oregon time, but you could take heart knowing that it's a respectable time to be drinking beer somewhere:

At [10am Pacific] time (18:00 Greenwich Mean Time), homebrewers raise their glass of homebrewed ales or lagers for a simultaneous toast to homebrewing . Homebrewers from North America, Europe, Africa, Asia , South America, Antarctica and Australia are expected to participate.

Maybe it will encourage you to have a breakfast beer to know that this is the tenth anniversary of the toast.

Cheers!

Duin on the Beer Tax

Just when you thought I'd taken my tire-iron and walked away from the dead horse, here we go with another beer tax post! Well, blame Steve Duin, who today castigated the cheapskates in the brewing industry who won't pony up for all the devastation they cause to public health. (Steve's cool, if dyspeptic and occasionally off-base, so don't take the following commentary as general criticism.)

His arguments amount to the ill-considered following points:

1. The tax hasn't been raised for 30 years. Duin: "That piddling amount has been held sacred by Oregon legislators who gather in Maui every year on vacations paid for by Paul Romain, the beer-wine-and-boondoggle lobbyist."

2. Van Havig's prose is misleading, and plus, he works for a Colorado-based brewery.

3. Taxes don't actually threaten breweries, and plus, Havig says drug and alcohol programs would "rely" on the tax, when they are only one part of the income; and anyway, contributing to this fund is important because it's actually it's a punitive measure for breweries " to treat the alcoholics drowning in its product."

4. The tax is cheap. Duin: "Eight-tenths of a cent. Bear in mind that this is an industry that didn't hesitate last weekend at the third annual Oregon Craft Brewfest in Silverton to charge beer lovers $10 for a commemorative glass and four 'samples.'"

5. Taxes have nothing to do with the price of beer.

6. And anyway, mostly Bud will pick up the tab, so whatcha complaining about?

I don't mind someone supporting the beer tax as policy, but this editorial pretty much avoids the policy discussion in favor of cheap rhetorical potshots. Had Duin actually wrangled with the details, he'd have found that supporting the tax was less convenient than his article suggests. There are thorny issues here.

So, to rebut:

1. So what? It's a regressive, additional tax targeting a specific industry. Why should we naturally assume it will always rise? A better question is: should we be targeting the beer industry with an additional tax burden in the first place?

2. As opposed to Duin's prose, which is edifying. But wait, he works for Advance Publications, based in New York.

3. For a guy who massages facts and manipulates emotions to score rhetorical points, Duin is awfully touchy when Havig does it, too. As to the punitive intent, here's a question: if you're going to claim that the Oregon brewing industry is drowning alcoholics, shouldn't you--I don't know--prove it? A stat here or there, perhaps? Oregon breweries are really drowning alcoholics? Tough words....

4. The tax is not cheap to small brewers who find it hard to barely make ends meet. And if the issue is punishing people who make money off drowning alcoholics, why must brewers take all the heat, while bars and distributors get off Scot free?

5. It could be; after all, Iraq really had nothing to do with 9/11.

6. In one scenario, Bud would pick up most of the tab. Is that the one Duin supports? And what happens when Deschutes makes enough to qualify for the tax and has to take on millions in taxes. Will they be able to dismiss those expenses as easily as Steve?

Okay, enough on the rant. But that was a sloppy, lame editorial. I expect more.

Review - BridgePort Haymaker

Many people like light-bodied, mild beers. (Few of them read this site.) Many, many people. Anheuser-Busch sells them oceans of it. But there are a few people who hanker for a light-bodied, mild good beer, and in Beervana, their choices are limited. Periodically, a brewery decides to take up the gauntlet and brew such a beer, one worthy of the company's name (and able to command eight bucks a sixer) but as light an refreshing as an August breeze. Turns out, this is no easy task.

When you're working with fewer ingredients, you have a far smaller margin of error. Mistakes are amplified in the absence of massive hopping and dense body. A little too much of anything ruins the beer, a little too little and it's Bud.

So into this void comes BridgePort Haymaker, an "extra pale ale." The marketing department, much to BridgePort's shame, was allowed to write the copy, which reads:

Make Hay. It's an old, old phrase from a much simpler time. It's optimistic. It's positive. And it's the two words that sum up Haymaker Extra Pale Ale, the newest brew from BridgePort Brewing Company. Haymaker is a refreshing, extra pale ale that is simply sunshine in a bottle! It's a distinct blend of four malts and three varieties of hops that create a slightly complex, crisp and bright ale. So enjoy often and "Make Hay!"

I love the early language there, which seems to have come out of a pitch meeting and accidently got left in the description. "It's optimistic. It's positive. It's the kind of beer you take home to meet your Mom!" And later, the "slightly complex" comment is a strange miscue. (Isn't the first rule of marketing never to weaken descriptions?) However, I guess it clears up why there's a rooster on the label. Sort of.

All right, I'll lay off the marketing, which in fact belie an impressive effort at a mild beer.

Tasting Notes
The brewers at BridgePort gave themselves a little more oomph to work with, brewing Haymaker from a 12.8° P recipe for a beer that is slightly bigger, at 5.3% than Mirror Pond (5%). However, they restricted themselves to a paltry 15 IBUs, just a third of Mirror Pond's 40. Nevertheless, they get a fair amount of flavor out of the hops they do use. (The less time hops spend in the boil, the less bitterness they contribute; however, they add more aroma and the flavor comes through more perceptibly.) Haymaker's are spritely and fresh; definitely a minor note, but they give the beer critical interest.

What emerges is a crisp, light beer that recalls kolsch rather than a light pilsner. It lacks the fruitiness characteristic of most West Coast ales; instead, it's dry and seems to have a faint acidity I associate with kolsches. Perhaps the brewers finished it so that almost no residual sugars remain. And one thing about the hokey ad copy is right--it looks like sunshine in a bottle. I have attempted to capture this in a crude phone cam photo, but perhaps language will render it more accurately. It's not actually extra pale; it's a rich, bright golden that captures light and refracts it into liquid sunshine.

My guess is that most people will find this beer underwhelming. Since it's the same price as BridgePort's IPA, and essentially the same strength, many people will find it a beer to admire (at most), not enjoy. I do enjoy it and admire it. I'll be careful about whom I recommend it to, though.

Statistics
Malts: "four"
Hops: "three varieties"
Original Gravity: 2.8° Plato
IBUs: 15
ABV: 5.3%
Available: Western states, through the summer

Also, the brewery is hosting a release party on Wednesday. From the press release:

BridgePort Brewing Co. is inviting the community to make hay and come to the brewery on May 3, First Thursday, from 6 to 9 p.m. to celebrate the launch of Haymaker Extra Pale Ale. Admission to the event is free. The Haymaker launch party will feature complimentary samples of Haymaker, food specials, and live knee-slapping bluegrass music by The Josh Cole Band, a group of self-described flat-picking hooligans. Inspired by the pure, time-honored stylings of The Stanley Brothers, Josh Cole's heart-of-gold voice and the group's hard driving instrumentation are a perfect fit to celebrate the release of Haymaker.

Designing Beer

Beer design seems to be undergoing a major shift, as the new BridgePort Haymaker further demonstrates. Leaving aside the ale-quaffing rooster (what was the thinking there?), you see a classic look--sleek and retro, with a crest-based label and cursive script. Since Full Sail redesigned their look a few years ago, breweries seem to be abandoning the gaudier, more "crafty" labels for consistency, maturity, and--this is the key design cue--industrial muscularity. (Not that I'm trying to suggest that's a good thing--design is subjective.)

The new MacTarnahan's design has the same look. In their case, they went for the classic all-caps look. But note the groovy checkerboard grid, which recalls mid-century packaging. I imagine a pattern on margarine. The color palate, as with the Bridgeport, is on a fixed, muted continuum, as opposed to some of the more garish labels of earlier craft packaging.

It's weird that what is old seems new, but when Full Sail originally decided to go for their redesign, they were consciously aiming for the youth market. The kids don't drink IPAs; they drink Pabst. When they see retro, they react to it as though it is new. What seems old are the Boomer designs that craft pioneers employed--which ironically were intended to have an insouciant, do-it-yourself, "we're the new kids in town" quality.

Here's a pretty good example from Alaska's Midnight Sun. It has a woodcut look of a type that was popular in the mid-80s. It's colorful rather than sleek and subdued, natural rather than industrial. My guess is that most young folks under 30 would say it looks hokey. Since the style hails from that period when today's young people were kids, it feels dated to them. (That's probably an axiom--style feels dated when it comes from the most recent, distinctively different era.) But go back to 50s style--once regarded as the most conventional in American history--and it's hip again.

Which brings us to the allure of the industrial. Early craft brewers, for whatever reason, strongly situated their breweries in local, natural settings. The earliest city beer was brewed by BridgePort, but it was named after the city's bird and the label showed a Blue Heron, not a bridge. There is something naturalistic about brewing, and early brewers were connected to ingredients (they hauled sacks of malt themselves). So we saw beers named for birds and weasels and seals and bears.

But the current look recalls the industrial age. You don't drive past factories anymore, yellow toxins rising off flaming smokestacks, and so it's easy to romanticize this broad-shouldered past. With the collapse of manufacturing in America, there's something very attractive about massive steel fermenters and guys cruising around in rubber boots and flannel shirts. Oregon in particular has always been a blue collar place, and so it's not surprising that there's a return to an aesthetic that recalls work and industrialism rather than nature and craft.

All things change, and as breweries get bigger and more impersonal, there will probably be an effort to remind people of the naturalism of brewing. (That's what happened as breweries got bigger and bigger in the 50s, 60s, and 70s; they didn't show their massive brewing plants, they evoked Rocky Mountains, artesian water, and the "Land of Sky Blue Waters.") But for now, industrial is hip.

Max's Fanno Creek Opening - May 5

Max Tieger, who was formerly the brewer at Tuck's (westside), has been working on his own new brewery down the road in Tigard. For those of us who have a hard time rousing ourselves to go further than walking distance for a beer, that seems like a trek, but apparently it's worth it (so goes the buzz on the Brew Crew listserv, anyway). So mark it on your calendar:

Max's Fanno Creek Brewery
12562 SW Main St., Tigard (directions)

Grand Opening, May 5th & 6th
11:30a – 11:30p

On tap will be:

• Farmer's Daughter - Belgian Strong Ale, light in color, with coriander. Malty, not a big hoppy beer, and one of my favorites. 6.5% abv
• Golden Ale - One of our lightest beers, dry-hopped with Crystal hops, this beer will keep you going all summer long. For a little variation, we sometimes will offer a Habanero Golden Ale. 5.0% abv
• IPA - Nice hoppy Northwest style IPA, dry-hopped with Centennial and Cascade hops for a wonderful citrus aroma. Come try a sample glass! 5.5% abv
• Nit Wit - Classic Belgian Wit (wheat) style. Smooth, well balanced example and one of the favorites from the "regulars" crowd. 5% abv
• Stout - Big, bold and beautiful. 6.5% abv
• Scottish 100 Shilling - Amber beer typical of the Scottish style - small to medium hop profile and nice malty flavor. Made with 2-row, Munich and Roasted Barley grains and Yakima Goldings hops. 6.5% abv

In honor of the Grand Opening, Max is tapping some special beers:

• Aged Smoked Märzen - German amber lager beer / Octoberfest style made with 20% smoked German malts for a well-balanced and delightful beer. 5.3% abv
• Year old Belgian Tripel - Grand-Cru style Belgian Ale, light in color, big on flavor. Malty, big beer, come in at 9% abv
• 2 yr old Imperial Stout on Nitro - Very dark in color, big beer that ages well (we will have Imperial Stout over 1 year old on Nitro tap at the grand opening!). 9% abv

Some pretty fascinating beers there. Two year old stout for a new brewery--nice foresight, and a great way to christen the joint. The Farmer's Daughter, Tripel, and Smoked Märzen look to be worth a sip, too.

As always, holler if you go and let us know.

Blooms and Brews

There's a beerfest down the valley in Silverton about which I know bupkis. Okay, I know what the website tells me, which is this:

BLOOMS & BREWS
3rd Annual Oregon Craft Brewfest at The Oregon Garden
Grand Hall of the J. Frank Schmidt, Jr. Pavilion (directions)

Friday, April 27: 5 pm - 11 pm (no minors)
Saturday, April 28: Noon - 10 pm (Minors permitted from 12-4)

Cost: $10 and includes admission to The Garden, a commemorative glass, and 4 script to purchase samples of beer. Each additional script costs $1.

Join us for the third annual Blooms & Brews Brewfest in the J. Frank Schmidt, Jr. Pavilion! This Oregon craft brewfest will feature many local beer brewers and will offer the chance to sample or enjoy a full glass of a wide variety of specialty beers. There will be live music to dance to and great food from Roth's Family Market to enjoy.

It has a nice selection of 33 brewers, including a couple I'm not (or dimly) familiar with--Faust, and Calapooia. There are a coupla craft imposters in there, like Green Valley (AB) and Blue Moon (Coors), but plenty of other great breweries. Food, too. No info on what's pouring, so you take your chances. Holler if you know more.

Full Sail Nugget Special Red and Top Sail Imperial Porter

Full Sail has a pretty low-profile series, available only in 22 once bottles, called Brewmaster's Reserve. It is the yang to their "Livin' the Dream" series yang. Whereas that line is a mainstream offering to a large audience, Brewmaster's Reserve is for beer geeks. Available now are two beers I tried over the weekend--Nugget Red and Top Sail Porter.

In a moment, I'll get to the reviews, but first a mention about reviewer objectivity, a subject brought into sharp relief by these contrasting beers. I try to be objective. Over the years of formal and informal tasting, I've developed an appreciation for every style of beer (leaving aside the commercial inventions of light beer, dry beer, etc). I understand the intention, history, and craft behind the styles. But that doesn't mean I love them equally. I favor beers that are hoppy or black (or both), beers made with ale yeast, and anything made in Belgium. German beers are harder for me to love. Among ales, two beers could scarcely be found that would test my prejudices. Based on the results of my tasting, I'm suspicious of bias. You'll have to be the judge.

Top Sail Imperial Porter
Top Sail has been around as a seasonal for at least a decade. And, although the description "imperial porter" is obscure and unilluminating, it has always been used to describe the beer. Porters are generally lighter beers, even "robust porters," which generally top out at 6% abv. When you start getting into high-alcohol, densely black ales, you tend to think you've entered stout country. (The name "stout," as it happens, comes from the development of stronger porters, know originally as "stout porters.") So wouldn't an "imperial porter" suggest a stout? You'd think, but perhaps the brewery was just trying to be enigmatic. (Of course, there are baltic porters, which are strong . . . but the style horse is dead, so I'll quit beating it.) I'd call it a pretty standard Oregon Stout--something Obsidian drinkers would instantly recognize.

But never mind the name, what about the flavor? For any beer to survive a decade or more, you figure it has to be pretty tasty. With Top Sail, you figure right. It is an absolutely gorgeous beer, pouring out with velvety viscosity, a dense chocolate shake head piling up (and lasting pretty well, despite the high alcohol content). It has a mild, Tootsie Roll aroma; I could detect no hops. The flavor is a wonderful blending of intense, dark-chocolate bitterness, with notes of roasted coffee, and fruit-sweet notes that fall halfway between plum and blackberry. The sweet notes are unusually fruity, but you have to turn your attention to them; otherwise, the creamy, slightly chalky bitterness carries you away.

Available Stats
Alcohol by volume: 7.5%
Bitterness Units: 60
Available: March and April, in 22 oz bottles only

Rating: B+


Nugget Special Red
The style of red ale seems to be emerging, and a number of my favorite breweries make one--Roots and Laurelwood are two that spring to mind. Last year, Widmer made one for their Spring seasonal. It seems to be characterized by mid-to-high strength, hop bitterness, and a thin body (and, of course, color). "Red ale" isn't a traditional style (I discussed that in the Widmer review, linked above), but it could emerge as a new one--and one with more distinctiveness than the strong versions of beers that get affixed with "imperial" or "double." Like Top Sail, for example. Whether red ale emerges as a recognized style or not, I have to say I'm biased against it.

In Nugget's case, there's less hopping than I've found in others, but the other characteristics are here: the thin middle, the candyish, sweet malt offset by (what I assume is) crystal malt tannins. It has a hollow center and a bitter edge--a classic red! I suspect it will fail to impress more for its lack of bitterness than the reasons I dislike it, but throw that in as a demerit, too. It's not a terrible beer, and I drank my 22 ounces in mild pleasure. Still, if I were in a pub with only two taps of Oregon craft beer pouring, the great likelihood is that I'd chose the other one. Nugget doesn't hit my sweet spot.

Available Stats
Alcohol by volume: 6.5%
Bitterness Units: 45
Available: March to June, in 22 oz bottles only

Rating: C+

New Ratings!

I have decided to abandon my old rating system. Although I maintain the philosophical underpinning was sound, as a method of communication, it is perhaps inadequate. While I know what I mean when I say "average" or "excellent," apparently it's not a universal nomanclature. So instead I'm moving to the classic school-based, letter-grading system.

• A ___ World class; a superlative example of the style or an exceptionally original beer.
  
• B+ to A- __Technically flawless, just short of the kind of character that distinguishes it as as the best in its style or as a truly original beer.
  
• C+ to B __A well-made beer that is a fairly common example of its style or a near miss on originality.
  
• D+ to C __Nothing stands out; beer doesn't have off-flavors but fails to impress.
• D- to D __Off-flavors mar the recipe.
• F ___ Off-flavors so profound the beer is undrinkable

This gives me a little more leeway to distinguish within broad categories, and to distinguish the transcendentally sublime (A) from the merely extraordinary (A-).

[Note: This post has been updated to correct numerous embarrassing errors. See comments for further analysis and documentation of my crimes and misdemeanors.]