Weekend Best Bet

And now for something completely different. Usually I try to direct your attention to a variety of beers that interest me on the assumption that you might find yourself in a number of different pubs. Today I'm going to highlight a single beer, and one that won't even be pouring until 4:30 on Sunday. That's when Lauren Salazar will be at the Green Dragon along with four beers from New Belgium. And among the beers that interest me is Dandelion Ale.

Dandelions are an old-fashioned botanical most closely associated with wine. In this case, New Belgium has augmented a low-hopped beer with fresh dandelion greens and grains of paradise. And it's a hefty beer, too, at 7.8%. Sounds tres Belgique.

New Belgium Tasting at the Green Dragon
4:30pm, Sunday
928 S.E. Ninth Ave.

Beer Taxes and Industry Vibrancy

A couple days ago, Jay Brooks posted an interesting graphic from the Tax Foundation showing the exise rates per gallon in each state. Brooks' comment:

It’s worth noting that all the southern states have high excise taxes on beer, where the idea of drinking being sinful is, I think, more prevalent.

That's a good point. But something else is worth noting, too. Look at the map. Now look at the high-tax states. Utah, the South, Oklahoma--these are not generally regarded as brewing hot-spots (click to enlarge).



I don't want to identify the direction of causality here, but it is striking to look at the difference among the categories of taxation and see how many breweries they have per-capita. Within these categories, there's one brewery for every:

Low tax states: 164,728 people
Med tax states: 198,331 people
High tax states: 366,526 people
National average: 204,906 people

So medium-tax states are have about as many breweries per-capita as the national average. But low-tax states have 2.2 times more breweries per-capita than high-tax states.

If Oregon were to pass the current beer tax as written, we'd go from 8 cents a gallon to $1.67 a gallon--60 cents higher than Alaska, the current high. Maybe there's no causality here--maybe Southerners just don't do microbrews. But maybe there is a relationship. This is what gives me the willies--I'm just not willing to take such a massive gamble that there isn't a relationship.

New Smoking Law

So can anyone shed any light on the new smoking law? A week or so back I went to Oaks Bottom and went out to the patio area and found it thick with smoke. Nothing, however, compared to yesterday's trip to EastBurn. Seemed like everyone there was smoking. Apparently the law doesn't prohibit smoking on patios, even if they're essentially closed in?

Anyone know what the deal is here?

(Yes, I was on balance in favor of the ban, but this isn't a complaint--just wondering what the law is.)

800 Miles and 75 Years

Just as a reminder of how very different life can be, have a gander at this news from Salt Lake City:

The state took a step in the right direction in the past legislative session, repealing the inane private club law that either angered or amused visitors, depending on their mood or disposition. Beginning July 1, adults of legal age will no longer have to fill out an application, join the club and pay for the privilege of buying a legal alcoholic beverage in a bar....

But, even while Salt Lake City contemplates jettisoning archaic regulations that limit the number of bars to two per block, a stumbling block in the pursuit of a vibrant downtown, another major obstacle looms. The state is poised to run out of liquor licenses.

Only 12 liquor licenses for bars and 15 for restaurants remain for the entire state due to unnecessarily restrictive regulations that limit the number of bars in Utah to one for each 7,850 residents, and the number of restaurant liquor licenses to one for each 5,200 Utahns.

While the Legislature, composed primarily of nondrinking Mormons, is known to espouse free market principles, they seemingly don't apply when it comes to the regulation of intoxicating beverages. The state decides when and where and who sells what sort of alcohol, and monopolizes the sale of bottled wine, hard liquor and full-strength malt beverages in state-owned stores.

Good old Utah, dragging itself into the 1930s. Craft Beer Month doesn't look so bad by comparison, does it?

Craft Beer Month -- It's a Party

Thanks to a post by a certain reliably-dyspeptic blogger, there's a mini-boomlet in criticism over the events of Craft Beer Month, now less than four weeks away. Joining the disgruntled one--reluctantly, it seems--Derek characterizes it this way:

Ok, so I’ve been thinking about this whole Oregon Craft Beer Month, frustrated at the fact that we have a whole “beer month” but the excitement just isn’t there. Organization? Honestly I’d trade for Seattle beer week any day.

Craft Beer Month is what it is. The intention is not to appeal to the fringe of extremely sophisticated connoisseurs who read and write beer blogs. We have so many events that do that already we've grown complacent. (Fresh hop ale season, the cask beer fest, Cheers to Belgian Beers, an organic beer fest, a winter beer fest under the Christmas tree in downtown Portland--the list goes on and on.) We don't need Craft Beer Month to be a specialty event because we already have those.

Rather, it's a huge group hug for the Oregon beer industry and an open invitation for all-comers to belly up to the bar, any bar, for some really good beer. It's not exclusive, it's inclusive. There are 140 events across the state, and if you can't find something interesting, you're just not that interested in beer. Nearly every brewery will roll out something new and special and most will throw a bash. Can't stand the OBF? Can't find anything you like from among the 150 beers at PIB? No worries--try Puckerfest or the Concordia Ale Cup or Hopworks Bike Fest or try some cheese and beer pairings with Fred Eckhardt.

If you go into Craft Beer Week thinking it is anything other than a big party, I would suggest--gently--that you're missing the point. When you're in the backyard hanging with friends and someone brings out a half-rack of Pacifico, you don't whinge that it's not Boon Geuze--you crack a bottle and enjoy it. Of course, in this case, you will have an abundance of extremely good beer, not Pacifico. So what if it's familiar? Craft Beer Month is a party, and parties are good things. There's no region on the planet that celebrates beer in more ways than we do. I expect to find a way to have a good time and celebrate that fact.

We Need One of These

NYT:

ON a nondescript block in Williamsburg, not far from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a new bar and restaurant called Rye opened last week.

Try to find it.

There’s no sign out front. The facade, an artfully casual assemblage of old wooden slats, gives the place a boarded-up, abandoned look. It does have a street number, painted discreetly on a glass panel above the front doors, but that’s it. Like a suspect in a lineup, it seems to shrink back when observed.

There are a lot of bars like this right now. They can be found all over the United States, skulking in the shadows. Obtrusively furtive, they represent one of the strangest exercises in nostalgia ever to grip the public, an infatuation with the good old days of Prohibition.

Their name is legion: the Varnish in Los Angeles; Bourbon & Branch in San Francisco; Speakeasy in Cleveland; the Violet Hour in Chicago; Manifesto in Kansas City, Mo.; Tavern Law in Seattle (scheduled to open later this month). Everywhere, it seems, fancy cocktails are being shaken in murky surroundings.

The ultimate in speakeasy mystification takes place at PDT (Please Don’t Tell) on St. Marks Place in the East Village. Patrons have to enter through Crif Dogs, the hip hot dog place, then step into a phone booth and identify themselves by speaking into the receiver. A buzzer opens a secret door, revealing a strange, twilight world where artisanal cocktails are consumed under the watchful eyes of a stuffed jackelope and raccoon, and a bear wearing a bowler hat.

And it should lead to an underground bar, accessible through a Shanghai tunnel. Someone needs to get on this.

More Bad Hop News - Hail Destroys German Crops

Man, just when you thought the hop crisis might be over, something like this happens.

The storms hit during the evening of the 26th May and seem to have spread south and east as the night progressed. There are unconfirmed reports that some of the Czech acreage may also have been damaged. Initial estimates vary but from the figures reported below it can be seen that the acreage affected is quite significant

According to that report, the storms destroyed 19% of the Hallertau crop and 25% of the Tettnang crop. These are two of the most important hops for German lagers. Hallertauers are regarded as one of the finest hop varieties in the world, imparting an absolutely lovely spicy, herbal quality. Although particularly associated with German lagers, it's enjoying some prominence in American craft brewing these days (though probably not this year).

Charlie Papazian has been following this, and according to reports he's seen, the Czech Saaz crop may also have been damaged:

Damage to approx. 130 ha (325 acres) is also reported from the Saaz growing region, with 70ha (175 acres) suffering severe and 60 ha (150 acres) moderate damage. Another source reports: The Saaz area was partly hit by the storms; around 500 acres in that region was more or less hurt

Saaz are, of course, perhaps the most famous hop in the world, giving that distinct flavor to Czech pilsners. It's almost as if someone who hated hops selectively targeted the very best fields. If you're a homebrewer and you plan on making anything with these varieties, you might go snatch up what remains of the '08 crop. It seems doubtful that any will trickle down to lowly homebrewers in a hop shortage.

_______________
PHOTO: SOCIETY OF INDEPENDENT BRWERS

Vaporizer Release

This has been fairly well-covered already, but just a head's up: Double Mountain will be releasing a new beer at EastBurn tomorrow night. It's called Vaporizer, a dry-hopped "Golden IPA." You may ask, "Aren't most IPAs golden, more or less?" Apparently this one is more so--it's made solely with organic pilsner malt. It weighs in at 6% and has 60 IBUs.

Now, while you might have gotten that info at just any blog, we here at Beervana try to offer a little added value. To wit: I asked Charlie Devereux, who will be at EastBurn to introduce the beer, whether it was brewed with just Challenger hops, the only one cited in the press release. No: "There are some Brewers Gold in the bittering quotient, but otherwise it's all US Challengers, including lots in dry-hopping." Also, as to which yeast they used, it is the standard house yeast, which isn't particularly standard. Care to guess what they use? Hint: you can get it at Wyeast.

Double Mountain Vaporizer Release
5pm Wednesday, June 3
The EastBurn, 1800 E. Burnside
503-236-2876

Writing About Friends

Stan Hieronymus posted an interesting rumination last week about the difficulty of writing about products made by friends. It stems from a post elsewhere about wine, but the thrust--and Stan's interest--applies to beer, too:

She answers questions not asked, including the issue of writing about people who turn into friends. She writes, “I cannot think of a single wine writer who has managed the sort of hermit-like existence that would be required of them if they were to ensure that they had no real human contact with anyone in the wine trade.”

The discussion about wine junkets and samples of ridiculously priced wines makes it pretty apparent how wine and beer continue to differ (thank goodness). But friendship, that’s universal. It’s one of the joys of writing about beer. Something for me to remember when I write and you to remember when you read.

This is something I've thought about periodically since I started writing about beer. It's true that you can't write about any topic without getting emotionally interested. It's particularly true if you write about Oregon beer, because almost everyone involved in it is likeable. Mostly they're avid beer lovers, enthusiastic about their concoctions, and eager to share. You don't dislike a beer without considering that.

Still, I'll say something counterintuitive: it's not that big a deal. Consider this: very few breweries produce no good beers. Also, no one makes only good ones. If you review beer, you'll rave about some and dis others. I do have breweries I admire more than others, and this must be evident to anyone who reads the blog. But I think it's the case that if you review enough beers, tell enough about what you like and why, and establish some credibility. Brewers are people, too, and they know tastes differ. Doc Wort hates Roots; Roots is one of my faves. Does this say anything about Roots, or just about the reviewers?

(When I first started writing about beer, long before Van Havig's day, Rock Bottom sucked. It was terrible--not one redeamable beer. It was the only Portland brewery I never wrote about. They actually complained to Willamette Week, and I finally had to tell them: "Look, I can either tell people what I think or you can let it go." They let it go.)

Maybe it's different with wine. But there are so many beers and so many breweries that you just tell people what you think. Beer's easy.

Berliner Weisse Video

If you frequent John Foyston's blog, you know that he posts regular videos on beery topics as they arise. My guess is that this comes from the head office, as John is not a media personality type of guy. (He's engaging and fun to talk to, but like all writers, tends to settle to the back of rooms, an easier location from which to observe.) In any case, here's a video of John and John Harris at the Pilsner Room trying out the new Berliner Weisse. It's charming and entertaining. Enjoy.

Berliner Weisse

Estrella Damm Inedit

A couple weeks back I got a strange press release, and toward the issuing brewery--Barcelona's Estrella Damm--I directed some fairly tart criticism. Estrella Damm has been making a standard light lager for decades, but now it apparently wants to enter the craft world. The gambit? Inedit, "a beer specifically created to accompany food." This is roughly like announcing you intend to make bread that comes pre-sliced. Alert the media! To accomplish this feat, they brought in a raft of chefs, and the poor brewer went through 400 iterations of the beer before the final version.

But okay, enough of the taunting. I told the press-release-sender that I would happily try the beer and review it, and so she obliged by sending me a bottle. My lovely and talented wife helped out in the experiment by making a delicious meal, an appropriate trial for a beer the brewery says

"... is a unique coupage of barley malt and wheat with spices to provide an intense and complex aroma. It aims to complement food once thought to be a challenge in terms of culinary pairings, including salads, vinegar-based sauces, bitter notes such as asparagus and artichokes, fatty and oily fish, and citrus."

(The less we ponder the "once thought difficult" phrase, the easier this review becomes. So moving briskly along....)

Sally's meal was fairly designed for this beer: tandoori chicken, made on the grill, along with grilled asparagus, brushed with a vinegar sauce. On the side, a string bean salad with chopped hazelnuts. Good stuff.

The beer, it turns out, is a wit. A pretty traditional one, too--coriander, orange peel, wheat malt. The one innovation is licorice. (My guess is probably a strait addition of the root rather than a derivative; there's a nice, earthy quality to it.) As wits go, it's gentle and subtle. The spicing is soft and floral, the yeast benign and without much character. I give it pretty high marks for drinkability, if not originality.

It goes well with food--as of course many Belgian ales do and have done for centuries. It was a nice pairing with both the tangy tandoori chicken, which it complemented, and the bitter/sour asparagus, which it contrasted. The salad--eh, it was fine. But hey, two out of three's good.

Ultimately, this is a slight beer with a massive ad campaign. A bit of a shame, too. Anyone in town who shells out $10 for this supposedly transcendent beer will almost certainly feel let down. On the other hand, if I served you a glass--with or without food--you'd probably find it quite nice. It's even worth the ten bucks. It will not, however, revolutionize gastronomy.

There may ultimately be an up-side to this incident, however. I really should be writing more about food and beer pairings. Maybe this will serve as inspiration.

Apple Lambic

This weekend, as I was brewing a batch of beer so secretive no more can be said about it, I cracked a bottle of my apple lambic. It was a beer I brewed up over a year ago, and to which I added, months later, apples from my front yard. It was remarkably good--the apples were evident in the nose, though subtle, and they drew out the tart wild yeasts. One might mistake the note they contribute for a fermentation characteristic.

Another note: this beer was wildly effervescent. I used the Wyeast lambic blend (great yeast, I highly recommend it), and in past batches, the liveliness oscillates between almost nearly still and slightly fizzy. Rarely have I gotten a sustained head. (The age of the beer seems to have nothingn to do with it--one month it's fizzy, the next still.) This one piled up a two-inch head, and it lingered. It sported a roiling bead, also unprecedented. Wild yeasts are so ... wild.

Beer Tax in Today's O

I've been watching the news from Salem for hints that the beer tax was picking up strength. So far, nothing--despite proposals to raise a portfolio of other taxes. However, in today's Oregonian, Mark Kirchmeier tries to give it a little life. Kirchmeier owns a pub, but was formerly involved in politics. He sings a song we've heard a million times--a mixture of false assumptions, mis-statements, and disingenuous logic. It can be summarized thus:

1. Beer wreaks economic havoc on the state and the taxes don't cover the damage.
2. The per-glass cost (he cites a 12-ounce glass, just to make it even more absurd) is low! The per ounce cost is negligible! (Okay, he didn't argue that.)
3. Brewers are nothin' special, not the "icons" (his word) they claim to be, and we shouldn't be protecting them.
   

He does admit that Cannon's bill is excessive, and suggests a price hike of 5-7 cents a pint.

I've argued against phony arguments like this enough times that it doesn't bear doing so again (see here for a previous rebuttal, a general discussion, and here for a philosophical discussion; here are stats relevant to the issue, and here's a list of comparative state beer taxes). I will point out that nowhere does Kirchmeier mention that this tax affects only breweries--he couches it as a tax on bars. He refuses to mention the cost to brewers, using that BS per-glass formulation over which he has only part control. And finally, his derisive dismissal of local breweries (whom he lacks the courage to actually identify) is further spin.

There's nothing moral about taxes--they are a feature of public policy. But what enrages me is that the pro-beer tax camp won't argue the issue on it's face. They use dishonest arguments. When you're forced to do that, you know something's fishy. Kirchmeier's article stinks like a two-day-old carp.

Weekend Best Bets

We have apparently entered summer early. However, since today is the official kick-off of Rose Festival, I expect the rain to return shortly. For the time being, this week's selections reflect the weather--hot and summery. Enjoy--

• Start your weekend at Belmont Station, where at 6pm tonight Upright Brewing's Alex Ganum will be on hand along with Upright's four regular beers (4-7). You will rarely have an opportunity to try them all together--and I do believe this marks Seven's debut. (Holler if I'm wrong on that.)

• The lush, tropical Caldera Dry Hopped Orange is at Eastburn. A great beer. As an FYI, Eastburn is also hosting the world premiere of Double Mountain Vaporizor Golden IPA on June 3. Charlie Devereaux will be on hand to introduce it.

• At the Horse Brass, the Duchesse de Bourgogne. On tap. (!)
  

• The Concordia Ale House has beers from the Washington Beer Cup on tap--and they're huge, non-summery monsters. Still, since I know some of you will inappropriately be attracted to these, I will mention that two stouts (especially inappropriate): Fish Poseidon and Elysian Dragonstooth. Hale's Aftermath IPA won the event, so there's that, too.

• Update, Green Dragon. Now that the taplist has been updated, I'd say you could do worse than the Oud Beersel Framboise. Especially on a day like today.
  

Disclaimer: Until Taplister comes on line, I can't speak for the currency of these listings. If you know of an inaccuracy, please note it in comments.

A Saison, a Pilsner, and a Fine Evening

Last night, Sally and I were sitting in the still warmth of the house after dinner. She recognized a certain hangdog look on my face (thanks Senate subcommittee on Business and Transportation!) and suggested we go catch a pint.

Of course, we had to go to a place with honest pints, though this didn't particularly limit our choices. We settled on Bailey's, to which I have (borderline criminally) never taken her. It was just what I needed. There's nothing like sitting out on the sidewalk sipping a couple fine beers while the spring breeze cools the pavement. We selected a couple beers to lighten the mood and complement the weather--Sally the Wild River Bohemian Pilsner and me the Standing Stone Saison, coincidentally, a pair from Southern Oregon.

Before I mention the saison, let me note a fairly recent trend. Portland long ago became the capital of Beervana, but it wasn't until relatively recently that you could reliably expect to find beer from Greater Beervana at a local pub. The Horse Brass usually had a couple handles from further-flung Oregon breweries, but that was about it. Within the past five years, though, the regional taphouse has become a Portland mainstay--in addition to Bailey's and the Horse Brass there's the Green Dragon, Eastburn, Concordia Ale House, and Belmont Station Bier Cafe. Now most of Oregon's breweries will rotate taps through at least one of these pubs in the course of a year. A most welcome phenomenon.

Okay, a brief mention of the beer. The Wild River Pilsner is an old fave of mine. It's been around forever, and those beers often get overlooked--"yeah, yeah, been there, done that." Given the absence of local pilsners, though, this always attracts my attention. It's not flashy or tricked out--just a classic Czech-style pils, full of wonderful Saaz-y goodness. There is no substitute for a good pilsner, and this one is good.

In some ways, the other beer we had is the opposite of a pilsner. It's an obscure style that perversely is having a bit of a heyday right now. I've seen quite a few more local saisons of late than pilsners. Unlike pilsners, saisons don't have a clear-cut style with rigid parameters. Pilsners are precise and specific. Saisons are handmade and vague. They occupy a class more than a style, and you can call a beer of less than 5% or more than 7% a saison.

I don't know what I expect in a saison, but I usually walk away wishing for a bit more. Lately I've encountered versions that are bigger, sweeter, and murkier than I'd like. Not necessarily bad beers, but lacking the wow factor. Standing Stone's saison wowed me. I don't have a single stat to offer, just my experience. (I'll try to get some stats from the brewery.) As you can see in that picture, it's a hazy beer. The head was creamy and sustained and lacing decorated my glass as I drew, with regret, to the end. The aroma hints at the flavor--phenols and spice, and an interesting yeast character.

The flavor was quite complex. It's a dense beer and not particularly effervescent, yet though it's heavy, it doesn't cloy. The first sweet note gives way to phenols, an almost minty note, and pepper. Given the heavy body, you think it can't finish dryly--with my first sip I feared the Ardennes effect--but it does. There are hops enough to clip any sweetness in the aftertaste, and you're left with a crisp finish.

Standing Stone has the reputation of a brewery that makes clean if uninspired beer. The last time I was in Ashland--years ago, now--I enjoyed my visit and was happy to be able to get fresh, local beer. But I wasn't knocked out by the beer. This saison may suggest that things are changing. A very accomplished beer, and one you should definitely seek out. (Rating on the patented scale: B+)

Update.
This just in from Adam Benson, brewer down at Standing Stone.

The grist included organic pilsner malt, Munich, and a kiss of wheat. He used turbinado sugar--sort of a candi sugar substitute I gather--as well as "a little" bitter orange peel, coriander, and grains of paradise. Hopped with East Kent Goldings and Saaz (two of my faves--and I think the types used in Dupont--so that's probably another reason I liked it), and fermented warm. Finally, he used a commercial saison yeast. 15 P, 6% ABV.

Blogger Madness

So I don't know what's going on, but blogger is weirdly scrambling text. In my Burgerville post, segments of sentences are jumping up and running to different parts of the paragraph. I've now had two people note this, and I've corrected both. But I didn't create them in the first place, so there's no way of knowing whether they'll rest easy. I'm going to hell and my brain misfires constantly, but honestly, this ain't me. Stay tuned.

Honest Pint Act ... Dead

I am going to do my best not to take this personally, but less than an hour after my eloquent support of the Honest Pint Act down in Salem, the committee voted not to send it to the Senate. So it's dead now for this session. (I finally get involved in the politics of the thing and it dies. Hmmm.)

It was a fairly interesting experience, though. The committee has to run through a batch of bills, and they want you to do your advocacy and move on. Just before our bill came up, Paul Romaine, mighty big-beer lobbyist, was giving testimony on another. As he introduced the Honest Pint Act, Senator Metsger, the committee's chair, produced a glass from Ukraine or someplace--anyway, it had been marked by the state. There followed jokes about how it was a shame the glass wasn't filled.

You've all heard me talk ad nauseum about this, so I'll spare you the blow-by-blow of my comments. You know my schtick.

I have sort of been waiting to see what would happen with this before I went on a dog and pony show to get pubs certified by my project. I guess now I have some work in front of me. Too bad--I was looking forward to an assist from the state. Ah well, that's politics.

Reward Good Behavior

[Post edited for clarity. Man, I gotta start proof-reading these things before hitting "publish post."]

I have been meaning to mention Burgerville's bold experiment for some weeks now. As beery types, you have probably already heard and digested the news. In a pilot program, a Vancouver store is now serving beer and wine.

In some ways, this seems like a no-brainer. Adding locally-made beer and wine is perfectly consonant with Burgerville's commitment to our local bounty. The hard par, I'd imagine, was making the selections. For beer, they went with Full Sail Amber, Widmer Hefeweizen, and Terminal Gravity IPA. Amber is an obvious choice--it is versatile and goes well with food. Hef isn't a bad choice, either, for the same reasons--not to mention its popularity. TG IPA, though--that's bold. I suspect they have it there to match strength with their Anasazi bean burger--as a veggie, I have relied on it when I go. A burly IPA would be a tasty combo. And in any case, the idea of TG IPA at a burger joint is beautifully subversive.

Wines are harder, because they vary year to year. (Parenthetical diversion. A few years ago, Sally and I were introduced to La Bete's Aligote on our anniversary. It was sublime. A year or two later, we bought a bottle at the grocery store, and it was really an inferior vintage. This is the scourge of vinting--Ma Nature has final say. Sidebar to the parenthetical--Alex Ganum scored barrels in which to age his beers from ... La Bete.) The current selection: Ponzi Tavola Pinot Noir, O'Reilly Pinot Gris and the Eyrie Vineyards Chardonnay. Given the difficulty of finding a bottle of local pinot for under $20, it's not surprising that a glass of wine at Burgerville runs you $6.50-$9.

Fantastic, right? Well, oddly enough, Burgerville's gambit has come in for some criticism.

The group Oregon Partnership worried it could lead to trouble, since the restaurants employ underage workers.

“Fast food restaurants are filled with young customers and young employees,” Pete Schulberg, Oregon Partnership’s Communication Director said. “That’s a mix you don’t want when you are considering the sale of alcohol.”

This is mystifying to me. The presence of beer and wine cannot, by their presence, corrupt young minds. (One could more plausibly argue the opposite.)

Resist this controversy and support the local chain. It's a cool idea by an innovative and purely Northwest institution. I regret that it's up in the 'Couv, for I rarely find myself north of the Columbia. I encourage anyone who is to stop in and have a burger and a beer and try to encourage the pilot program. Because there is a Burgerville right over on Hawthorne, and I would love to see that branch follow suit.

Salmon Creek Burgerville
13309 NE Hwy 99
Vancouver, WA 98686
(360) 573-8223

Honest Pint Hearing Tomorrow

I meant to post about this earlier in the week but I have ... what was I saying? Oh right, bad memory. Anyhoo, here's the skinny. Tomorrow at 1 pm, Jules Bailey's Honest Pint Act is getting a hearing in Salem. It's currently in a Senate committee, and if it's going to become law, it needs to get to the full Senate. I plan to go down and testify tomorrow, and if you're in spitting distance of the Capitol, maybe you'd like to poke your head in.

Honest Pint Act Hearing and Work Meeting
Senate Business and Transportation Committee
1 pm, State Capitol, Salem

I will, of course, regale you with tales of the experience afterward. Unless I forget.

Guinness Anniversary Stout, Reviewed

The year is 1759, the number of democracies in the world, zero. The poet Robert Burns is born. America is yet 17 years of turmoil from birth. The world is near the peak of the Little Ice Age, which means the vast, fir-covered reaches of what will become Oregon are probably well-blanketed in deep drifts of snow, all the way to the coast. Frederick the Great rules the powerful Kingdom of Prussia.

And young Arthur Guinness has just taken out a 9,000-year lease on a dilapidated brewery (try to get one of those in Portland) at St. James Gate.

Two-hundred and fifty years is a long time, in other words. Most modern countries didn't exist then; for a company to have survived this length is absolutely remarkable. Sure, the company has been sold to a corporate empire (Diageo), but still. They're making beer now 250 years on. And so, to celebrate this grand event, Guinness decided to release an anniversary beer. It is on shelves now.


Tasting Notes
Let me admit from the outset that I expected something special. You must come out of the gates strong and offer your adoring public a pint as legendary as your reputation. It is the opportunity to remind people just how astonishing the milestone is, and just what an important part of history your beer has been. You must wow people. You just must.

Guinness didn't.

Guinness 250 Anniversary Stout ("250" henceforth) is a variation on at theme. It's slightly more alcoholic (fiver percent versus 4.2), slightly fuller of body, and slightly "fizzier." From the brewer's mouth:

Designed primarily for the U.S. market's celebration of the Guinness anniversary, Fergal Murray says "I've made a beer that works well through the summer months. It's a one-shot pour, you don't have to do the six steps (though there are still Guinness Stout rituals involved in the perfect pour)." The brew is carbonated, rather than nitrogenated for a more bubbly, "beer-like" effect rather than the traditional soapy head that builds on a stout, and involves two malts in its production. "You get a little different flavor palate, a bit aromatic, perhaps sweeter taste," says Murray, who is clearly excited about the day and life in general. "It still has all the fundamentals of a good stout--the extra barley, the extra hops, but it's a little different on the flavor profile."

My impressions do not deviate much from Fergal's. The pour is disorienting--the head gushes out like one of my homebrews and if you're not careful, you end up with half a glass of what appears to be dish detergent. As it settles, you get a Guinness-y aroma: the characteristic sour/burnt note, the roast. It smells like a Guinness.

If the fizzy head was disorienting, the fizzy palate, carbonated rather than nitrogenated, is as well. The taste isn't a huge departure from regular draft Guinness. It's got a slightly more chalky quality, but then at the end turns quite metalic. Unpleasantly. It's think and tinny. The more I went back for a swallow, the more it resisted me. Perhaps it's not a beer that you want to introduce to a warm room for any length of time.

I'm not actually a huge fan of draft Guinness. It's too thin to support what would otherwise be a rich spectrum of flavors. The Extra Stout is perpetually on my short list of world's best, but it's a very dense, thick beer. The head is brown and the body silky from the heft of all that malt. I was really hoping to see something along these lines, not a product designed, if the masterbrewer is any guide, to appeal to the summer palates of American drinkers. Call it a gentleman's C- on the patented ratings scale. A great shame.

I leave you with one of the more amusing reviews I found of the beer, from a British blogger (salty language ahead):

How to describe it? A bit more flavour than standard draught Guinness. But that's no great challenge. Vaguely milky aroma. A little bit of generic maltiness, too. No roast to speak of. What's the point of it?A slightly different, but equally toothless, Stout. No fucking clue. Diageo have no fucking clue.