KATU on the Honest Pint Act

I will say this: regardless of what becomes of the Honest Pint Act in the legislature, one thing is certain: the issue is getting attention. When I first launched the Honest Pint Project, that was the main intention. As long as consumers recognize what's happening with glassware, they are informed enough to begin to make judgments. By that measure, this has been a roaring success--way beyond what I could have imagined. The latest comes via KATU, with a very nice report on Jules Bailey's bill.


I can't help but feel a warm sense of accomplishment.

Teaser: New Brewery

If my traffic is any guide, ain't no one sitting around reading blogs today. Good--this is a day to be outside, not reading blogs. (Current temperature: 71 degrees.) I was out myself, taking a walk down to Laurelhurst Park where the trees are putting on an early display.

(In the city fields
contemplating cherry trees
Strangers are like friends
~Issa)

On the way home, we happened by a building with an intriguing sight inside: three small jugs with air locks, looking suspiciously like brewers yeast. Two folks were puttering around inside the door (open, garage-door style, to the gentle elements) so we were able to learn that indeed, it was yeast. By a stroke of luck, we had stumbled onto the birth of a brewery. Given that this is a scoop of sorts, I'm going to milk the news and tell you about it all tomorrow--I so rarely break news. But I can share with you my joy--the future brewery will be just four blocks from my house. Four blocks!

Springtime, when breweries blossom in Beervana.

Piping Hot Serving of Fresh News

Saturday's not a usual day for a news dump, but this Saturday--sunny! warm!--is not a usual day. So let's get to it...

Honest Pint News
A front-page article by Janie Har in today's Oregonian gives a thumbnail report on yesterday's hearing in Salem. I am slightly misquoted as saying that Germany and England have glassware marked to 16 ounces. Before being innundated about further evidence of my stupidity (don't worry; plenty more opportunities will arise), let me say that I mentioned only that those countries have standards, not that they conform to US pints. (Click through to see a huge batch of cranks who've commented on the story. Amusing.)

The Eugene Register-Guard reported the story, too. David Steves and Andrea Damewood write quite a nice piece and get my position spot-on. (It's interesting--Steves is one of my favorite reporters for the R-G, Har for the O. Nice.) If you have a chance, click through and read this article--it's pretty in-depth. They did some backstory reporting on local pubs, talking about the impact on local business. One quickie response: it's true that to be certified as a purveyor of an honest pint under the legislation you'd need to buy new glassware (if you weren't previously serving honest pints), there's a simple, free fix: don't call them pints. Nothing wrong will selling "glasses" of beer.

Heater Allen
In his latest brewsletter, Rick Allen reports a malfunction with his glycol chiller has left him with six weeks of lost beer. He now anticipates the next bottling on May 17. So if you hanker for a local lager, you best stock up quick.

Bikes and Hopworks
There was a cool article in yesterday's New York Times about the bike culture in Portland. It is currently the second-most emailed story on the Times' site. That's cool enough, but for Hopworks, it is even cooler:

Riders who wish to delve deeper into Portland’s diverse bicycle culture can simply drop in on pubs like Hopworks Urban Brewery in Southeast, a tavern decorated with spare bike parts that serves organic beer.

There are now a whole lot of people across the country who know about Hopworks. That's gotta be good for business, right?

Honest Pint Bill Update

This morning Jules Bailey's Honest Pint bill (background here) had a hearing in Salem. In the past couple days I've gotten calls from reporters at the Oregonian and Register-Guard, and both wonder why I'm not more out in front of this thing. The R-G reporter called after this morning's session and wondered why I wasn't there.

I have only very minor ambivalence about the bill itself. I never envisioned the HPP as a legal initiative, but the way Jules Bailey has crafted his bill, it's mostly promotional, not punitive. At worst it will fail to deliver the goal of bringing transparency to glassware. It's not going to cost anything and won't be difficult to implement. The risk is very low. The reward is quite a bit higher. It could easily provide an incentive for pubs and restaurants to start using full pints and bring transparency to the customer. It might well burnish Oregon's already unimpeachable cred as the state that takes beer seriously. Who knows, it might even nudge us toward the gold standard--a European-style system of marked glassware. Legislation that is low-risk and high reward is axiomatically good.

My ambivalence comes from having found myself the face of the Honest Pint movement. If I had known it was going to go this way, I would have kept my mouth shut. Staying out of Salem allows me to transfer some of the burden to Jules Bailey, who is now championing the cause. As a constituent of his, I am pleased and proud to have a beer guy representing me. So, I'll probably stay low-key on the legislation, but no one should read this as disapproval.

Widmer Brewing's Place in History

Today we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the day Kurt and Rob Widmer began their long journey toward becoming the bier kings of Oregon. They weren't the first of the pioneering microbrewers--Fritz Maytag or Jack McAuliffe get those honors. In Oregon, it was mostly-forgotten Chuck Coury who got there first with Cartwright Brewing. (His was the first to go belly-up, too.) But the Widmers were early. When they started, there were only 83 breweries in the entire country. The low-water mark actually came a year earlier, when 51 companies operated a scant 80 breweries. The period marked the end of a grim era and the slow rise of microbrewing.

Founding an Industry
It's worth stopping for a moment to consider the radical act of founding a brewery in the 1980s. For generations, brewing had been in decline. At the start of WWII, the US had a surprisingly robust 684 breweries. That was the pinnacle, though, and breweries started dying off in droves. Glancing at that the numbers, it looks the counts of an endangered species: 407 (1950), 229 (1960), 154 (1970), 101 (1980). Beer production and consumption was steadily growing, though--predation by a few giants reduced the herd to dwindling numbers. The idea that an essentially unfunded start-up could cobble together some oddball equipment and compete against a giant like Budweiser--it must have seemed like madness.

In my memory, microbrewing really took off in the late 80s. But the memory lies. No brewery crossed the 25,000 barrel mark until Sierra Nevada did in 1990. The early brewers had myriad barriers: they were mostly uneducated about large-scale brewing; almost none of them had ever worked in a brewery before; they had to learn how to brew with makeshift equipment in makeshift buildings; they had to invent a market niche and create interest in a product customers didn't know they wanted.

The Widmers' own history can be read as a series of efforts to grapple with these barriers. Their first beer, an alt, was way too aggressive. They cast around, brewing a filtered Weizen next. To borrow from Angelo's interview with Rob, here's what they were contending with in terms of the market:

"There was light beer, and there was dark beer. Light not meaning caloric light, but light meaning blond, filtered. And then dark meaning Henry’s Dark, or something like that. Most people didn’t want anything to do with the dark beer…You couldn't’t even get them to try it. And, our Altbier, while by today’s standards isn’t much darker than (an IPA), fell into that dark category. Widmer Weizen was clear, so you could see through it. It was deeper colored than a Bud, Miller, Coors, so people were a little skeptical, but they would try it."

Success depends on serendipity, and they discovered it when they released an unfiltered version of their wheat. Carl Simpson sold this beer at the Dublin pub in huge, 23-ounce glasses. When he added the lemon wedge, it took off. Widmer Hef was the first "it" beer in Portland. Within a few years, it became the merlot of beer--the cloudiness was a calling card for upscale diners at places like B. Moloch (now South Park), and the flavor was exotic without being too distant from familiar beer like Henry's.

The number of breweries was definitely on the rise--286 by 1990--but they were producing minuscule amounts. This became a piece of their cachet--small was suddenly saleable. Many breweries reveled in this and most highlighted the artisinal aspect of microbrewing. But even at that early stage, breweries had different business models, and the Widmers' was focused on growth. They were the first brewery to outgrow the funky corner-brewery ideal.

Growth and Mistakes
Although there's little mention of this now, one event became a flashpoint at about this time. In 1994, Alan Sprints, a brewer at Widmer, decided to go off and found Hair of the Dog. Even though he wanted to brew radically different kinds of beer than Widmer, he had signed a no-compete contract, and the Widmers took legal action to stop him. This was a PR catastrophe. You can imagine how well, in those heady early days of brewing, this went over with the growing number of local beer fans. It was covered in the media as a faceless corporation trying to stifle the little guy. Widmer backed off, but the damage was done; to this day, Widmer hasn't been able to shake the rep of hearthless corporate giant.

It didn't help that a few years later Widmer created a partnership with Anheuser-Busch. A-B got a 27 percent stake in Widmer, Widmer got $18 million in cash and access to all A-B's national distributors. This happened in 1997, right about at the end of the first phase of craft brewing, as some of the national leaders did become pretty major players. No longer "micro"-anything, they were looking to become regional powers.

I will cop to sharing the Widmer-is-evil view back then. But let's put this in some kind of context. Breweries can enjoy growth within the confines of their capital and equipment. At the start, they can increase production exponentially until they're brewing day and night. Then they have to buy new equipment (and sometimes relocate). The decision to do so plunges them into debt and now they have to sell a lot of beer to cover their nut. Each time a brewery decides to expand, the risk spikes. We look back and have a sense that craft brewing has always been pretty healthy. But of course, no brewery knows at the time whether it will continue to be healthy--who knows, maybe the economy's about to tank.

Widmer grew slowly and steadily. In fact--and this may suprise you (lying memories and all), but they didn't even start bottling until 1996. Other breweries made other decisions. Full Sail built a massive plant on the assumption that their sales would increase at the same clip. Portland Brewing (now MacTarnahan's/Pyramid/Magic Hat) sold shares to expand their business. RedHook invested in a new facility in New Hampshire. The Ponzis sold BridgePort to Gambrinus to fund a brewery expansion.

All the bigger craft breweries had come to that moment where they had to stand pat or expand. Deciding to expand, every brewery did it differently. Thinking about certain decisions as more "evil" or corporate than others is a strange way to look at it. Portland Brewing is now gone, a brand absorbed by Pyramid. RedHook, which limped forward, shifted to production of a standard set of undistinguished ales like regional breweries of old. Widmer got cash up-front from its deal with A-B, and as a result is now a robust concern making the beer they want to.

Great Local Brewers
No Oregon brewery has had more success or been more disparaged than Widmer Brewing. To this day, thanks to a combination of factors Widmer is still regarded with suspicion, and perhaps that's the price of admission for being the biggest. The story I told above details some of the reasons why Widmer has taken heat. A brewery should be judged by a lot more than its corporate decisions, though--and it's here where Widmer shines.

The Widmers have been more involved than any other local brewery in promoting beer culture. Any, full stop. They were one of four breweries who helped mount the first Oregon Brewers Festival. Unlike most of other bigger breweries (might we say corporate), Widmer always sends a special, for-OBF-only beer to the fest. They are active in the local beer scene and deserve no end of credit for the Collaborator project, where they produce commercial batches of homebrewed recipes by the Brew Crew. Although Hef remains their biggest seller, you can get rather exotic, experimental beers at the Gasthaus that make no apologies to anything Craig Nicholls or Jamie Floyd are doing. I don't know about the general public, but if I send Rob an email with a question, he returns it within a day. Not bad for the founder of the second-largest craft brewery in the country.

If you sat down to blueprint good behavior by a big brewery, you probably wouldn't expect it to do some of the things Widmer does. Widmer saw financial potential in brewing years and years before most of the general public. They made decisions to grow, but the truth is, they've never lost their feel for being much like the local brewery you used to be able to get a jug of yeast from.

Twenty-five years is a long time. The history of Widmer is in many ways the history of microbrewing, all the ups and downs, mistakes and roaring successes. It is possible to imagine that Beervana would have evolved without the Widmers, but impossible to look at what it has become and not see their fingerprints everywhere. Today is an opportunity for us to remember this and offer them a toast. So, in the manner of their own beer caps:

A prost: to two fine brewers who helped make Oregon Beervana!

Pints a Buck Fifty at the Gasthaus

Just a note that beginning at 11 today, pints are going for a buck fitty. I assume that means it will be a madhouse, but you can weigh your various cravings and aversions against each other to decided if it's worth it. Your beer selection:

• Regular line-up (Hefeweizen, Broken Halo, Drop Top, Alt, Drifter, W'09 Belgian Ale)
• ESB
• Blonde
• Doppelbock
• Collaborator Bike Town Brown
• O'Casey Irish stout
• Nelson O-Rye-ly
  

Imports Down

Post has been updated; see below.

This isn't good: consumption of imported beer declined in 2008:

Last year's growth came from off-premise consumption of value-priced sprits, wine and beer - a reversal of the trend toward premium brands that's been driving growth in recent years.

Imported beer and wine took the largest hits. Beer imports' growth dropped from 12% in 2006 to 2.8% in 2007 to a 1.2% decline last year. Among the domestic categories, lights remained a bright spot, growing 2.2% to represent 51.8% of the total beer market.

I'm wondering how much this is related to the economy, though. If you look at the handy chart I made, the trendline--based on data from the story--was already headed south. More to the point, we don't know if people were drinking less good imports, or just less Stella. This could be a case of numbers lying. Still, worth noting for future reference.

Update. Via John Foyston, I see some glimmer of good news: Budvar's US exports rose 7% in '08.

Beer in Skidmore Fountain

[In case you've stumbled across this after the fact, note the date it was originally posted.]

It has been 122 years, but it looks like Henry Weinhard's vision may finally come true: if the Portland City Council approves the measure, the Skidmore fountain will flow with BridgePort IPA on July 4th in recognition of Oregon's sesquicentennial.

Henry Weinhard originally proposed the idea to commemorate the fountain's creation back in 1887:

The most well-known story of Weinhard’s generosity to the Portland community came with the unveiling of the Skidmore fountain in 1887. When speaking to C.E.S. Wood, Weinhard offered to pay for the additional hose length that it would take to link the fountain to his largest lager tank in order to have the fountain spout free beer on its first day of operation. Although the offer was declined, it still remains part of Portland’s collective memory.

Apparently, the proposal was rejected because the city council was worried horses would drink the beer and get drunk.

The current proposal comes from Mayor Sam Adams, well-known for his love of microbrews. His idea is to have the fountain run for just one hour, and none of the beer will be consumed due to health concerns. Adams has the support of Nick Fish and Randy Leonard. Dan Saltzman and Amanda Fritz are both on the fence, but will probably support the idea if the city can ensure children won't get the beer.

"I thought it would be a fun idea. This is the city of beer, and this is one of Portland's most cherished stories. It's been a long time that people have been thinking about running beer through the fountain. I thought we should just finally do it."

BridgePort, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, it taking a page from the Widmer's notebook. They'll be serving IPA at both their pubs for the same price it was back in 1887--6 cents a pint (limit two).

Ha, take that, Asheville!

Astoria Brewing/Wet Dog Cafe

When I last visited Astoria Brewing, the man at the kettle was Chris Nemlowill. You'll hear more about him when I do a post on Fort George Brewing, his new home. The man who replaced Chris is Bolt Minister (a family name going back at least a couple generations). I did a fairly involved review of Astoria in June of 2007, and rather than repeat things here, I'll just fill in some blanks. For the archives, I'll go back to the earlier post and update it. Feel free to click over and back if you want an overview of the pub.

Let's begin by handing the mic over to Bolt, who will describe how he got into brewing and give you a sense of his personality.



Bolt is at least the fourth brewer to work in the kitchen-sized brewery at what is now Astoria (formerly Pacific Rim). Despite that, the beer and food menu demonstrate admirable consistency. This must be both comforting and frustrating for the incoming brewer. It might be nice to have a slate of beer recipes on hand, but it also means you have little elbow room to express your personal style. John Foyston asked what his brewing preferences were like, and he admitted they tended toward lighter lagers. No worries, right? Well, the flagship is a monster IPA with triple-digit IBU hopping, and standards are the porter and stout, which warm the chilly bones of those looking out over the wind-swept Columbia.

He ran into this particular quandary early on, when he decided to ratchet back the hops on Bitter Bitch--that's the hop monster--to 93 IBUs, the threshold above which humans are not supposed to be able to distinguish further bittering. But the regulars at the Wet Dog Cafe could tell, and they did so, loudly, and now Bitter Bitch is back to her earlier octane.

When we arrived, he had three beers at the ready that aren't yet available, a kolsch, a biere degarde, and an imperial wit. The last two were made with Wyeast's Ingelmunster, one of which will be Minister's entry to Cheers to Belgian Beers. The wit was surprisingly spry and delicate, with characteristic coriander spicing. Wheat can really get cakey if you use too much, but the Ingelmunster handled it nicely, keeping it drier than a wit yeast would have been able to. At 6.8%, it wasn't imperial like a stout or IPA, and that helped. The biere de garde came topped with a head as dense as meringue, and the beer was nearly as sweet. I'll be interested to see it when it finishes out. The final beer we tried, which will be available at the Spring Beer Fest, was a kolsch--perhaps my favorite of all Minister's beers. Still a bit yeasty from the tank, but it had a gently spicy hop quality, and a crisp finish. Definitely look for it.

We sampled a variety of beers throughout the afternoon, and my notes are a bit brief:

• Pumpkin ale. The last bit from fall. The spices have fallen back a bit and the squash is now evident--a good change in my view.
• Bitter Bitch. The flagship ale is over 100 IBUs and is therefore shockingly bitter. The beer was designed to be out of balance--the hops vent out of the glass like strong wasabi--but the locals love it.
  
• Solar Dog. The nose on this beer suggests its Bitter Bitch's little brother, but it deceives. Still quite a bit of bitterness, but the malt is evident underneath, as is a richer, more floral hop flavor.
• Porter. In competition with the kolsch for brewery's best beer. The head was so creamy I asked if it was on nitro. It's both a gentle, sweet porter, but also thick, with a bit of roastiness for depth. "I praise the brown malts," Minister said by way of explanation.
• Strong ale. The final beer before my palate was certifiably shattered, this very dark brown ale was surprisingly smooth and gentle. Abram declared it an old ale, and when I asked Bolt about it later, he said, "well, it's actually an old ale..." (Abram on the case.) Also a great ship-watching beer.

In addition to these, the brewery has a weisse, an ESB, and a stout. My least favorite beer is the brewery's best-seller, so go figure. I didn't rate out all the beers separately, but none would drop below a B-, and the kolsch and porter were in the B+ / A- range. A very nice line-up.

Other Notes
Astoria Brewing is Oregon's second to go solar (you might have guessed by the name of the beer), using the same system--and vendor--as Lucky Lab. Turns out it's a fantastic experiment. After all, if a solar system works in Astoria, it'll work anywhere, right? And it does. Minister gets 150-degree water on the worst days of winter, not a bad head-start on heating.

The brewery has plans to bottle 22s sometime in the coming months. In order to use the mobile bottling line, they have to amass enough beer to make it worthwhile. For a 350-barrel brewery, this takes a bit of prep, but have a look this summer if you stop by. You might also look to see if the pub has installed a fresh fish market, as they have plans to do. It would look out onto the boardwalk, and you should be able to get a bottle of beer with your two pounds of Dungeness crab. Cool.

Widmer Turns 25

This year marks the 25th Anniversary of both BridgePort and Widmer. I'm not sure about the historical arcana, but I think Widmer actually incorporated first, but didn't get beer out the door until after BridgePort. BridgePort lays claim to Oregon's oldest brewery, without dispute from Widmer; the reality, though, is that these two companies, along with Mike and Brian McMenamin, Art Larrance, and Fred Bowman, were all having the same idea at roughly the same time. They are the pillars of the Oregon brewing rennaissance, and this is a great year to look back at what these pioneers accomplished.

I'll take a tour down memory lane this week, part history, part reminiscence, but in the meantime, have a look at Angelo's interview with Rob (part 1, part 2)--really good stuff for those of you who love history. Also, make a note that on Thursday (April 2nd, the official date), the Gasthaus will be serving all pints for a buck fitty--1984 style. 11 am to 11 pm, 955 N Russell.

An Astoria Overview

"Astoria's a different place."
--Jimmy Griffin, Rogue Astoria

Astoria is in some key ways like a little microcosm of Oregon. Like Oregon, Astoria's located in the upper left corner of the state. It is a working community, not a show place. The people share a common sense of themselves and are fiercely proud of their town. They feel like the place doesn't get enough attention for how good it is, but at the same time, you get the sense they aren't thrilled about the idea of a lot of new people coming and messing things up. It is a place where people feel and live their history, where everyone knows everyone else in the community, and that if an event happens in town in the morning, by two o'clock that afternoon it will be old news.

For all the history and prominence of the town, it only has 10,000 people, as stable a population as you find in Oregon. The history, of course, goes all the way back to Lewis and Clark, who spent a delightful winter at Fort Clatsop in 1805-'06. John Jacob Astor founded a fur-trading post there in 1810, and from there its prominence has always been linked to the Columbia River's vast mouth, opening into the frigid waters of the Pacific Ocean.

I have been to Astoria a number of times over the past decade, and among all the major towns of Oregon, it has changed the least. This has something to do with the history--old towns change less than young ones--but also because people seem to hold the entire place as communual property. In no other Oregon town have I felt the residents were so involved in the life of the community. As we made our tour of breweries on Saturday, people would refer to other townsfolk by their first name, off-handedly, like you would a relative. Of course, things do change. Astoria, despite its penchant for stability, has, as a port city, suffered the whiplash of global change more than others. Canneries disappeared, mills closed, artists arrived. Perhaps these outer forces make a town rely on inner stability more.

A good example of this came at our first stop on Saturday, at Fort George Brewing. I expected to see just the other beer writers invited along--John Foyston, Lisa Morrison, and Abram Goldman-Armstrong--but we were joined by a few locals who'd gotten wind of our arrival (that familial feeling again). One of them, Dan Bartlett, a former city manager, very graciously went and grabbed us copies of the Clatsop County Historical Society Quarterly, which had an article about Astoria's early breweries. It wasn't until I got it home that I saw the date of the issue--Fall 1989. (I'll do a separate post on Astoria's brewing history, tip of the hat to Dan.)

For visitors, all of this is very good. For history, no city--I think you can include Portland in this claim, but just to be safe I'll except it--can match Astoria. It contains several stellar museums: Flavel House, Fort Clatsop, Maritime Museum, and Heritage Museum. All of these were put together with the kind of care you'd expect from a town whose citizens can exhume 20-year-old historical quarterlies. But even more than that, the city itself has the feel of a place lost in time. To sit in the Wet Dog (Astoria Brewing) and look out on the massive Columbia is to feel like you're looking into time. The hillsides are studded with streets of 19th-century homes. In the homogenization that results from modernity and globalization, Astoria is a place apart.

Just one bit of advice: take the Gore-Tex. The 1.13 inches of rain we enjoyed on Saturday was not unusual, nor the wind that lashed us as we scampered between breweries. (It was robust enough to pin Lewis and Clark down for a winter, recall.) Perhaps more than anything else, this is why Astoria's permanent residents number no more than 10,000. The weather is relentless. I have spent summer days where it was in the fifties and rainy. (Though that's rare--only 1.2 inches of rain falls on average in August.) December is ... worse. On the other hand, there is no place as nice to enjoy a beer and watch the weather--and ships--roll through. If you have never visited, you should. And if you're a beer fan, you must. (But more on that later.)

Beer Writing Made Easy

As I labor to put Astoria to (digital) ink, I see that Bill from It's Pub Night has made my job a lot easier. Or rather, put a spotlight on an issue beer bloggers and writers suffer every time they sit down to describe a beer.

In one of the more clever posts I've seen in recent memory, he's put together a little engine that spits out generic descriptions of beer you could apply without modification to just about any beer. One example:

Pours a translucent dark chocolate color with a thin head. A tiny bit of lacing. Beautiful tart aroma, with overtones of grapefruit and lilac. Intense hoppy taste, with notes of apple and circus peanut. Thick and chewy mouthfeel and dry finish. Score: 4.15/5.

He has really gone to some effort to create some nicely satirical language, and the point is made. So many beer reviews say a lot but tell you nothing. (I particularly like that some of his parameters don't require you to choose whether the beer is good or bad, or even what style it is. It's true: sometimes you read a review festooned with adjectives and you have no idea whether they're intended to praise or excoriate the beer.)

But also: pity the poor reviewer. The bell-curve reality of beers dictates that most are average. They are indistinct. They have generic qualities of malt and hop. These are the worst beers to have to describe, but, proud reviewer that you are, you give it a shot. Pretty soon you're inventing adjectives ("hint of old cloves," "musty maple leaf") to try to inject a bit of pizazz into your description. Even very good beers may not offer you a lot to hang your hat on; what distinguishes them is not their distinct elements, but a totally vague quality of harmony produced when all those elements come together. How do you describe that?

I miss the mark more often than I hit it, but this post reminds me of a directive I try to use when writing about beer. Don't write to impress, write to communicate. How would I tell a friend about a beer so that she would get what I was trying to say? It's useful to include adjectives, but they should reveal the beer, not conceal the reviewer's inability to describe it. When I was drinking an Old Peculier, I held it up to the light to get a good look (knowing I'd have to somehow have to describe it later), and my friend Shawn said, "it looks like iced tea." Perfect. "Mahogany" doesn't tell you anything, but iced tea instantly brings to mind an image we can all relate to.

Another element often overlooked is to give some sense of the experience of the beer. Indians have a philosophy of art in which every artistic expression can be categorized by the emotional mood ("rasa") it delivers. This is perhaps an unnecessary idiosyncracy of mine, but I strongly relate to the experience of the beer, not just its characteristics. I drink beer to accommodate or augment a mood. I don't identify this quality in every beer, but the very good ones seem to suggest a rasa.

But anyway, enough of my babbling. Go check out Bill's post--it's a must read.

Preview of Coming Attractions

As if to say, "Behold, I offer you the malty riches of Astoria," Chris Nemlowill poses with one of his Fort George beers.


I have video, pics, and lots of notes from my sojourn to Astoria this weekend. I'll be rolling content out as soon as I can get it ready. (Probably no omnibus post--I'll do it piecemeal.) Qucikie upshot: a cool town, good beer, great people. More soon--

Interesting Odds and Ends

Every now and again, a bunch of small items come over the transom that wouldn't, on their own, constitute sufficient reason for a post. Today is one of those days.

1. Bailey's Taproom open at noon--today only. The sole fault of this wonderful alehouse is limited hours. Go before 4 pm and you can only gaze longingly through the window. Today they're experimenting with an earlier opening time to gauge the market. Seems a little fishy to me--the word of this experiment only came out today. But anyway, go have a pint and let 'em know this should be a regular thing.

(Advice from a blogger. If noon's too early, try 2:30 or 3. This city loves happy hour. Partly they love the cheap beer--Bailey's might offer a 3-5 early happy hour--but partly it's because there's no finer way to end the long workday than with a pint of beer.)

2. Obama is a beer drinker. Yeah, it appears he likes the cheap stuff, but never mind. A beer drinker in the White House is a good thing. He's got eight years to work on developing his palate. (Yes, eight.) This NYT story mentions that he regularly hits the town for a meal, and not just chi-chi places. What I'm waiting for is a visit to the District Chophouse & Brewery or Capitol City Brewing--both in the White House neighborhood. The picture, incidentally, was taken at a recent presdential visit to the Bulls-Wizards game.

3. Belgian cheese and beer. I get quite a few press releases, and they mostly head right into the trash folder. This item, however, passed muster:

Whole Foods Market is pleased to announce the arrival of two new artisanal cheeses from Het Hinkelspel Cheese Co-op in Gent, Belgium. The Pas de Rouge washed rind cow's milk cheese and Pas de Bleu, blue cow's milk cheese are now available in all Washington and Oregon stores.

Accompanying these cheese selections is Lousberg Belgian Ale. Lousberg was designed by De Proef Brewery of Lochristi, Belgium specifically to complement the Het Hinkelspel cheeses.

As many of you know, I would really like to see beer taken seriously as a complement for food. Wine's hegemony on this score irks me. Clearly Belgian beers are the access point, and who can argue with Belgian beer and cheese? I'll include a flier that came with the release.

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Cooking & Menus belgian cheese de proef

_____________
Photo credit: Molly Riley/Reuters

To Astoria

On Saturday, I'll be on a junket of sorts with three eminent beererati: Lisa Morrison, John Foyston, and Abram Goldman-Armstrong. We were invited out by the Astoria PR folks who would like to highlight the town's beery credentials. I am a pretty big fan of Astoria already, but I'm always up for the chance to walk through some guided tours of breweries. I haven't pulled out the vid cam in long months, so this is a good opportunity to do so. Expect a flurry of reports back and, with luck, some entertaining video.

The agenda is intentially loose so that we can do some investigation on our own. Aside from the breweries there, do you know of anything that's a must-see?

Toying With the Layout

Just an FYI for the observant. I'm trying to figure out how to put Google ads in the left-hand column. That means I'm trying to figure out how to create a left-hand column. So far, so good. You'll notice that the title banner is now too short, but I'm not messing with that until I decide to make the layout permanent. I know it looks more crowded this way, but the Honest Pint Project has a number of associated costs, and I'm trying to figure out a low-impact way to fund them.

A Toast for MJ

Tomorrow marks what would have been beer writer Michael Jackson's 67th birthday. Charlie Papazian proposes that we all toast him at 6pm tomorrow evening (at your local time). I will be delighted to do so. Join in if the spirit moves you--

Budvar Slaps Down InBud

The ever-more-steroidal American Belgian Budweiser just can't take down the mighty mouse in Budweis, Czech Republic:

LUXEMBOURG, March 25 (Reuters) - A European Union court on Wednesday upheld a ruling denying Anheuser-Busch Inbev the right to register the Budweiser name as a trade mark in the EU.

U.S. brewer Anheuser-Busch, bought by Belgian counterpart Inbev last year, applied for an EU trade mark in 1996 for the name "Budweiser" for its "beer, ale, porter, malted alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages."

The application was opposed by Czech brewer Budejovicky Budvar, which makes beer marketed in the European Union as Budweiser Budvar, or Czechvar in North America.

Budvar's opposition was upheld by the European trade mark office, OHIM. After a failed appeal at OHIM, Anheuser-Busch took the case to the Luxembourg-based EU Court of First Instance.

Backstory
Pilsners were born in the Czech republic in the 1840s and named for the town of their origin--Plzen. The style spread across Bohemia (and ultimately, the world) and was taken up by breweries in Budweis. What follows is a classic American story. In the 1870s, Adolphus Busch visited Bohemia and returned to the US with an idea about developing a style based on these beers at his father-in-law, Eberhard Anheuser's, brewery. They decided to name it "Budweiser," after the city they had found it in. Of course, the local beer made in Budweis was also called Budweiser. But the wily American managed to beat the makers of the indigenous brew to the legal punch: Busch trademarked the name before the brewery we now know as České Budějovice--aka "Budweiser."

The dispute has been ongoing for over a hundred years, surviving the Habsburg Empire, two world wars, communism, and now democracy and the EU. At issue: can a foreign country raid a traditional product, establish trademark, and essentially displace the original? For decades the dispute has been a draw: Budvar can be sold under the Budweiser name in the EU, but not the US, where it's marketed as Czechvar. The US product is sold in the EU under the name "Bud." (Interestingly, both are sold as Budweiser in the UK.)

Yesterday's news is yet the latest chapter in the ongoing battle. For what it's worth, from where I sit, the deal seems to be settled as best as it can. No company will ever relinquish rights to the name on their home soil, and the countries won't allow an interloper to threaten local hegemony. We have reached, however uncomfortable it is for the two parties, equilibrium, 21st-Century style.

Cat Per and Duck Pee

Below is the exact transcript of a text conversation I had this afternoon. It's amusing because the friend--I'll leave names out of it to protect the salty-talker--attempted but was thwarted by auto-correction from swearing. What resulted was a sanitized, but consequently bizarre, conversation.

Friend
Russian River Damnation--yes or mo.

Friend
That's 'no.'

Jeff
Oh good god. It's unique. Umm ... yes.

Friend
Sample coming.

Jeff
Wise.

Friend
Oh ... My ... God.

Friend
Cat per.

Friend
Duck--"pee."

Friend
Duck.

Now, I have no idea where he was or why it tasted like cat per (it shouldn't have). Something's not quite right there, but at least the exchange was amusing. He ultimately went for a Diamond Knot IPA.

The Troubling Stats on Underage Drinking

As we engage in the biennial debate about the beer tax, we tend to separate out into camps who refuse to look at the issues of the other side. I will stipulate at the outset that while I think the beer tax is absolutely the wrong prescription for underage drinking, that doesn't mean I'm cool with underage drinking.

There's an article in the paper today about binge drinking among underage Oregon teens, and the problem is very bad. According to a recent survey of Oregon 11th graders, we have a problem:

• Almost half of Oregon's 11th-graders said they drank alcohol in the previous month.
• Nearly 30 percent of eighth-graders said they drank in the previous month, according to the same survey.
• Oregon eighth-graders are 76 percent more likely than the U.S. average to drink alcohol.
• Eighth-grade girls now drink more than 8th-grade boys.
  
• More than 10 percent of eighth-graders taking a 2007 national survey said they downed at least five alcoholic drinks in a sitting in the previous week. That rose to nearly 22 percent of 10th-graders and 26 percent of 12th-graders.

The article suggests that liquor is the biggest danger, but this doesn't mean the beer community doesn't have a role to play. Any group who produces or promotes alcohol has a responsibility to be more engaged in the effort to stop underage drinking. Craft brewing is about the craft of brewing, not the hooch. They're trying to produce malty works of art, not adolescent alcohol delivery systems. This is exactly why they can play a positive role--craft brewing can highlight that the joy is in the flavor, not the buzz.

We can also get active in supporting efforts like these:

Health officials and nonprofits have launched a host of efforts to warn kids and parents about the risks of binge drinking. In November, a task force presented Gov. Ted Kulongoski a five-year plan to fight underage drinking in Oregon, which called for more than $15 million in efforts, including programs to prevent youth drinking and addiction treatment.

What Oregon needs is a healthy culture of moderation, not an abstinence and binge cycle. I have always felt that Oregon craft breweries contributed to a healthy orientation toward drink, but obviously, there's work to do. This is a problem we all need to address.