Bailey's Fourth

Last night was the fourth anniversary of Bailey's Taproom, and as usual, I was remiss by not letting you know beforehand about the party, which featured rare, barrel-aged beers. The event caused a few sparks to arise from the dying embers of my brain, which is about all you can expect. Here they are:

1. Bailey's is only four years old, but it has already achieved watershed status. Geoff Phillips didn't invent the alehouse idea, but he tweaked it in a way that has now been emulated a number of times across the city. Rather than focusing on a standard range of beers with a few rotator handles, Geoff decided to rotate his whole line of 20 taps. He has focused on Oregon beers and was a huge friend to small breweries and breweries in obscure places. If you founded a pub in Nowhere, Oregon and wanted to place a keg in Portland, Geoff was the guy to talk to. If it was good, he'd put it on. The effect is like a constantly evolving beer fest. He solicits great beer, so if you're looking for a rarity, Bailey's is a place to start. There are now enough other pubs that have followed his lead (many worthy of high praise) that it seems like this is a standard feature of Beervana. It is, but it's only four years old. Four years and a day.
2. There were scads of good beers available at the celebration. One that really knocked me back was Double Diesel Stout by Cascade. It was a dense, leather-and-tobacco beer that took only enough oak, oxygen, and foreign booze (from bourbon and pinot barrels) to burnish and smooth its burly edges. Proof that Cascade can work outside the sour oeuvre if they put their minds to it. I don't know if any is still available, but Flat Tail's one-year anniversary beer is really special. It's a hard beer to describe because the facts (soured, 8%) obscure the reality. It has a massively fruity nose that some people called grapefruit and others oranges. I couldn't identify it, but I was reminded of Hawaii, and some fruit I had there. These notes don't come from hops, though, but rather fermentation and the strange fission that occurs when flavors start dancing together. It is very light-bodied and wholly absent booziness. The acid is delicate and tart, and the beer finishes crisply. It drinks like a summer quencher--right up until you figure out how strong it is and are forced to lie down.
   
3. A sort of impressionistic photo, the only one I took.
   

Friday Flick: 1950's Promotional Vid

We often mock Soviet Union for its incredibly ham-fisted propaganda, but have a look at this 1950s promo for beer. It wouldn't even work as parody today--it's way too over-the-top. Which makes it all the more amusing. Enjoy--

What People Buy at a Timbers Game

Last night, I enjoyed watching the Portland Timbers dismantle the vaunted offense of the David Beckham/Landon Donovan LA Galaxy with 18,000 of my close friends. I could go on and on about the game--my man Jorge "Lightning" Perlaza showing his speed on the game's second goal, for instance--but this is a post about beer.

I'm always interested in not only what beers are on offer at sporting events, but what sells (of course, it's a business so there's lots of overlap). The Widmer Brothers and Budweiser share honors as sponsors, and at the first game, I was surprised to see beer guys walking through the crowd with what appeared to be full buckets of Bud. Closer inspection revealed that there were a few Widmers in the mix.

Last night, it was the opposite. I struck up a conversation with the vendor, who had two Buds and maybe a case of Widmer. How much Bud do you sell, I asked. "Bud? Here? You gotta be kidding."

The crowd has spoken: don't try to sell Bud at a Timbers game. Almost makes you get a little misty, doesn't it?

Bill Argues For Small Portions, I Argue for Small Beer

Bill Night has a great post up about the issue of "session beers." The post riffs on an earlier post by Andy Crouch arguing that Americans just aren't cut out for small beers. Andy says a drinking session is a British thing, and anyway, we don't like small beers. I half disagree with Andy. Americans do like drinking sessions--those who live out here, anyway--but we don't really like small beers. Bill, however, takes it in a different direction:

Reading it as I returned from vacation in Europe, it made me reflect on the beer-drinking culture I'd seen in Amsterdam and Belgium. The beers were not low-alcohol -- that's a 10% Westvleteren in the picture above -- but serving sizes were generally very small: often 25 cl (less than 8.5 ounces) or 33 cl (less than 11.25 ounces). Instead of simply beating the drum for lower ABV beers, maybe we need to start calling for lower alcohol servings. If it's a lighter beer, the serving can be larger; if it's a higher-gravity beer, serve it in an appropriate volume.

Fair enough. I think if you're going to have a session of drinking, it's healthiest to make sure it's moderate. If that means drinking Belgian tripels by the thimbleful, godspeed. It's better than throwing back an imperial pint of Pliny the Elder.

I, however, happen to like small beers. The flavors may not be as screamingly intense, but they often have more molecular space to unfold and blossom. You find subtle aromas and flavors in small beers you couldn't hope to identify in bruisers. All things being equal, I'd choose a well-crafted 4% beer over a well-crafted 8% beer almost any day of the week.

What's frustrating for this advocate of small beers is that our team is burdened by an economic disincentive. If you pull up to the bar at the Horse Brass and consider your options, I believe a certain calculation crosses your mind. It goes like this: "Hmmm, that cask bitter looks mighty tasty, but it's only about 4% alcohol. If I have it, I'm likely to want two at the very least and probably three. That IPA looks almost as tasty, but it's north of six percent and I can probably get by with one if I nurse it. Maybe two." A session of the cask will run you $10-$15, but the IPA only $5-$10. So you go with the IPA. Bill thinks this won't affect most beer geeks, but he's wrong: I know because it even affects me.

Now, there may be a festival in three and a half weeks that could turn the tide. It may be called Mighty Mites and I may have had something to do with it. But we'll come to that in due course.

The Future is Craft

MillerCoors, seeing the writing on the wall:

Big beer brands have been losing the affinity of core drinkers over the last two years, according to YouGov's BrandIndex, a research firm that tracks brand buzz, loyalty and quality perceptions based on consumer surveys. MillerCoors' Miller Lite and Coors Light and Anheuser-Busch's Bud Light have had negative ratings for most of that period.

Craft beer has posted double-digit sales gains for three of the last five years and is likely to do so again in 2011. Craft brews account for about 5% of consumption, a figure that could rise to 10% in five or six years if industry sales were to remain flat, according to Beer Marketer's Insights.

MillerCoors isn't betting on the Silver Bullet. The article describes a strategy that foresees "craft" beer as an increasingly large part of the portfolio:

"[There] will not always be thousands and thousands of tiny brands," Long said, referring to the 1,700 brewers in the U.S. today. "Big brands will emerge, and they already have: Sam Adams and Fat Tire and others. Certainly Blue Moon fits into that category."

MillerCoors' goal "is to make sure that some of those emerging winners are ours," Long said. To do that, he said, the company will have to be successful in gateway beers that introduce consumers to the craft segment, as well as to other brews for "eclectic palates."

My post yesterday about Goose Island provoked a huge amount of skepticism--not surprisingly. Big breweries have a terrible record of playing it straight with good beer. Some commenters were absolutely certain that A-B will force Goose Island to "cut corners" and water down their product. In fact, the opposite is true. Over the past three decades, the big breweries have watched their share of the beer market slowly erode. It's gotten particularly bad in the last five years.

That trend will continue for the decades to come. It's impossible to say whether bad beer will find a stable floor of support, but even if it does, it will be substantially lower than it is now. To fill in the gaps, they need good beer. The reason A-B bought Goose Island was not for the brand--it was for the beer. Goose Island has what Bud lacks: the reputation as one of America's boldest, most sophisticated breweries. The good beer are (sorry!) the golden eggs. Why would you spend $40 million on a brewery only to turn it into a tiny plant making the same kind of beers you already make?

The future's craft, and the macros know it.

Traditional South African Utwala Beer

I got a remarkable email from Jeff Renfro, an Oregonian now living in South Africa. He discovered a local, traditional beer and sent me a detailed description of it, along with photos. My sense is that these kinds of traditional homebrews are common, but little documented. (I remember hearing about a coconut beer brewed in South India, but I could never find it.) In any case, Jeff's agreed to allow me to print it for you here, so I'll turn the story over to him. Fascinating, fascinating stuff.


Local Brewing in South Africa
Jeff Renfro

I am an economics grad student currently living in Cape Town, South Africa doing work on indoor air pollution in the townships. Yesterday, I was taken to a shebeen (small, unlicensed bar) where they make their own beer. Given your interest in local styles and their origins, I thought you might be interested. The type of beer is called utwala (pronouned ch-ala).

They can't grow normal brewing grains in these areas so they use either sorghum or corn. The process starts by boiling water and adding flour, then letting it sit for a day. Then, they boil the water again and add malted sorghum (they malt it themselves). Adding the sorghum turns it into a rich porridge. They let that sit for a day, then boil it one last time while adding more flour. The flour is for taste, sweetness, and some nutritional content.

They take their thick porridge mix and put it in 55 gallon drums and let it sit outside without a top. The porridge gets crusty on top which forms an imperfect seal and allows fermentation to occur underneath. The mixture smells like sourdough bread as it ferments. When they decide it is ready (don't get exactly how they know), they drain the liquid out of the bottom and serve it in small, metal buckets. The beer is normally less than 3% alcohol so the buckets contain about 3 pints and cost less than $1. When drinking it, you swirl the mixture frequently (I assume to make sure the flour is not sitting on the bottom).

They say if you are wearing a hat, the beer "won't work." The taste is strange. It is sour because lactobacillus is naturally floating around in the air here. You can taste the flour, and feel it in your mouth. There is also a slight metal taste that could be from the brewing process or the bucket. Hops don't grow here so they don't use them. I told them the sour taste was very on-trend where I am from. It is extremely cloudy and looks thick. I put what I couldn't finish into a 2L Coke bottle because they said the brew would continue to ferment and change over the next few days. It is sitting in my closet right now. I have to open the top every 8 hours so it won't explode because it is putting off a lot of gas. I don't think this is a style that is going to catch on anywhere else, but it shows how local agriculture and geography come together with culture to make something unique.

Photo Essay
Attached are some pictures of the South African utwala process. The township these pics were taken in is Khayelitsha which is SA's second biggest township. Unfortunately, they were not cooking when I was there.

The picture of the mix in the blue drum is soon after cooking. The porridge is just starting to create a seal on top.


The picture of the drum and wood is where they cook, and the wood is Port Jackson, which is one of the few plants you can find growing around here.


The mix in the white buckets is further along and has a pretty good seal on top.


The two buckets are the beer right before it is ready, and the foamy drum is the beer ready to drink after it has been drained out of the other drums.


The stack of metal buckets are what people drink out of.


The last picture is the beer in a glass. It is extremely cloudy.

Evolution of the Macro-Micro, Goose Island Example

This is a fascinating development:

Three months after being acquired by Anheuser-Busch, Goose Island Beer Co. said today that its massively popular 312 Urban Wheat Ale will soon be brewed in an AB facility in upstate New York.

Oh, the humanity! But wait:

Goose founder and Chief Executive Officer John Hall said the move will be a boon for fans of the brewery's higher end beers, like Matilda and Bourbon County Stout. Accounting for almost half the brewery's sales, 312 has required significant resources at Goose's Fulton Street plant. With the beer's production heading east -- partially at first and likely entirely at some point -- that space can be used for other projects, Hall said.

So A-B's purchase of Goose Island may actually increase their experimental brands. And all that A-B money will ultimately mean lots and lots of everything: "Hall also said he hopes to return all Goose Island brewing to Chicago within the next three or four years by building a massive new Goose Island plant."

Just to throw this out there: does ownership by the Lords of Darkness mean, ipso facto, that Goose Island must be dead to beer geeks? This is a question of philosophy, not beer.

Oregon Brewers Fest First Reax

The first day of the fest is down, and the second is about to commence. I have some bits and pieces, pics, and even a video to share with you. I'm not alone. John Foyston has coverage (story, pix), as do Angelo, Brady, Jon, and Sanjay.

Now, to the fest. When you take into account the number of sniffs and sips I had from my own beers and those of friends, I managed to sample a pretty broad selection of the beers yesterday. A few that really stood out were these:

• Ninkasi Helles Belles. This beer is designed to mislead. You want to read the name as "hell's" bells, but it's actually a Munich helles (pr. hell iss, not hels). You assume it's going to be an ale, a hop bomb, a booming Ninkasi beer. Instead, it's a classic helles and the beer that stood head and shoulders above others for me at the fest. A beautifully elegant beer with delicate, soft malts and peppery hopping, crisp and refreshing. It may be the most accomplished beer Ninkasi has ever brewed, and that's saying something.
• Rock Bottom Zombie Flanders. Van Havig has brewed a Flanders Red called Ned Flanders in the past, and I don't know--but I assume--that this is one of those. Thus the Zombie. But whatever its provenance, the beer is exceptional: slightly sweet, almost chocolatey malts and a sharp, true sour.
• Boulder Hoopla Pale. Colorado beers take some heat for their lack of hop character in these parts. But David Zuckerman, who cut his teeth at BridgePort before moving east, has put plenty of hop richness into this beer. A great hoppy session.
• Goose Island Pepe Nero. This is an unusual beer, a peppery dark saison. It's the kind of beer that seems a little one-dimensional at first sip, but which deepens to reveal further layers as you sip. A ruminative pour.
• New Holland Golden Cap: Speaking of peppered sasions, here's a blond example. Maybe it's the pepper: again, at first I was slightly put off by the beer, which had an astringency that seemed a bit pushy to me. But after a couple sips, it developed into a tang that I started to appreciate and then crave.

There were other interesting experiments I'd say were slightly misguided. Widmer's Foggy Bog Cranberry Ale could have used less cranberry and more ale; Dogfish Head's Black and Red featured both mint and raspberry--and the mint was too much of a weird thing. Finally, Elysian's Idiot Sauvin, made with Nelson Sauvin hops. Some people taste human sweat (me, Jon Abernathy), others get wonderful tropical fruits. In Elysian's, I got both.

Of course, there were lots of other great beers, some which others were raving about. That's the beauty of beer: its diversity pleases all palates. So sample broadly. I will leave you with some sights and video of the Fest.

A McMenamin Hammerhead escorts the ceremonial cask.

I shot this from my still camera and I don't know how to turn it off--so the end is bad. Sorry!

Organizer Art Larrance and parade dignitary Fred Eckhardt.

A rare sighting of Brian McMenamin.

The ceremonial tapping of the keg. (Again, a problem at the end of the vid by the videographer.)

Ninkasi co-owner/brewer Jamie Floyd.


Goose Island master brewer Brett Porter (an alum of both Portland/MacTarnahan's and Deschutes)

Random Bits: Lompoc and Cascade

I'm in the midst of an OBF post, but here are a couple tidbits I thought I'd pass along. First, from an email from Lompoc, announcing their 15th (!) anniversary:

The anniversary party may be a swan song of sorts - demolition of the New Old Lompoc is rumored for 2012 to make way for apartments and upscale retail. To Lompoc fans, this will be a blow to the neighborhood; enjoy every bit of it while it lasts.

Well that's not good. I mean, it's a Red Sox pub!

Next, because I worry you won't have enough beer options, I would like to point this out:

Cascade Brewers & Blenders have opened the vaults! This Thursday through Saturday from 3 to 10 pm, there will be a second bar on the production side of the Cascade Barrel House where we'll be serving vintage and/or original Bourbonic Plague, Vlad the Imp Aler, Noyeaux and Beckberry. There is only one keg of each beer per day. When the vintage runs out, we'll fill in with the new versions of the Nouveau Noyeaux, Pre-Bourbonic and various other vintage drafts like 2009 Kriek and Apricot, and possibly a few others. This will be a cash only bar, and all beers will cost $7 per 8-oz glass.

I don't know if they're going to actually let you wander the cask room, but maybe they will. If so, I highly recommend it. If not, I highly recommend it.

Friday Flick: Fuller's Past Masters

This odd, cool, deeply wonkish video is worth your investment of ten minutes. Fuller's had the rather brilliant idea to reproduce beers from an archive of over 100 years of recipes. The idea almost certainly came from the work of a certain blogger (blogs, as you know, will save us) who has spent years poring through the tight scribblings in ancient brewing logs. But credit Fuller's for not only following Ron's lead and acting on the trove, but endeavoring to create a beer as close as is humanly possible to a 100+ year-old beer. (I especially like the reference to Oregon in the piece.)

If you'd like more background than the video provides, have a look at Ron's post on the subject.

For all the great beer America now brews, we have very little continuity to the old days. Yuengling, maybe, could do something like this, but not many more.

Gone Festing

Today begins the Oregon Brewers Festival, our annual Super Bowl of beer. It starts with a parade through downtown, a ceremonial tapping of the OBF cask, and four days of sun-soaked beer tasting on a green ribbon between the Willamette River and downtown Portland. Fred Eckhardt will lead the parade, which he probably should do every year--he is the patron saint not only of the Portland beer community, but good beer in general.



I will be tweeting pics and comments throughout the day, as no doubt will scores of other folks. Watch for the #OBF hashtag to check in on the happenings. (But I can give you a sneak preview: beer, smiles, sun, whooping.)

See you there--

Brewing Companies and Brewery Names

The British have a very cool practice of naming their breweries. Bateman's calls theirs the Salem Bridge Brewery. Greene King's is Westgate. The most famous is the Griffin Brewery, where Fuller's beers are brewed. I think partly this is a vestige of history, and partly also because the British do things differently.

Still, it's very cool and American craft breweries should follow suit. Then they could say things like "Come visit Widmer Brothers Brewing Company at the Underbridge Brewery." Or whatever. It would be cool.

Oregon Brewers Fest By the Numbers

If imitation is flattery, consider this my "aw shucks." Three weeks ago, Sanjay beat me to this year's statistical punch, and I see in my media packet that a similar item is included. But superfluous though it may be, I was there first, and by god, I'm doing the annual numbers post. Note that 2010's numbers are listed in parentheses (a Beervana value-added feature) and none of these numbers include the 51 beers in the "buzz tent." Here we go.

Years since inception: 24
Total beers: 86 (81)
Total breweries: 86 (81)
States represented: 14 (16)
Percent Oregon: 53% (43%)
Percent California: 19% (22%
Percent Washington: 10% (9%)
All Others: 17% (26%)

Ale to Lager ratio: 8 to 1 (9 to 1)
Total styles (by broad category): 34 (27)
IPAs: 17%, 15 total (20%, 16 total)
Belgian styles: 16% (12%)
German/Czech styles: 17% (14%)
Well-represented niche* styles:
__- Pilsner: 4 (5)
__- Cascadian Dark Ale: 4 (NA)
__- Porter: 6 (NA)
__- Munich Helles: 2 (0)
__- Kolsch: 3 (2)

Beers using wheat: 19-ish%** (23%)
Beers using spices/adjuncts: 19% (15%)
Fruit beers: 10% (15%)

ABV of smallest beer (Riverport Blond Movement): 4.3% (4.0%)
ABV of largest beer (Dogfish Head Black and Red Imperial Stout): 10.3% (9.5%)
Beers below 5.5%: 34 (NA)
Beers above 7%: 27 (NA)
Fewest IBUs in Fest (Gilgamesh Mint Kolsch): 0 (0)
Most IBUs at the Fest (Lucky Lab Summit IPA): 103 (111)
Beers between 0 and 40 IBUs: 51 (NA)
Minimum years in a row 21st Amendment has brought Watermelon Wheat: 10 (9)

______________
*Niche for Oregon, anyway. Your mileage may vary.
**Not every grain bill was available.

Dead: MGD 64 Lemonade

What a stunning bit of news. Who could possibly have foreseen this?

MillerCoors' experiment with lemonade-flavored beer has fallen flat, with the brewer planning to pull MGD 64 Lemonade from the shelves. The limited-time offering debuted in May and had been planned to run through Labor Day. But the beverage, billed as "64 calories of crisp, refreshing beer with a lemonade twist," looks more like a lemon, with the brewer not pleased with the results.

You have to give Miller credit, though: at least they weren't playing it safe with Sally's Rule. This ties in with an early report of the company's efforts to sell British women a drink called Animee because it was:

[t]argeted at 24- to 34-year-old females.... The brew is somewhat similar to MillerCoors-owned Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy, a seasonal summertime brew that has gained popularity among females.

I am willing to give the Animee experiment some latitude--it does seem like a genuine effort to sell beer. This was obviously a doomed venture that catered not to women beer drinkers, but non-beer drinking women.

The Changing Oregon Brewers Fest

The first edition of the Oregon Brewers Fest came in 1988, when micros enjoyed little cross-state distribution. The breweries were local and, by today's standards, few. As the fest aged, it became a showcase for national breweries we couldn't regularly get in Oregon. As it aged more, local breweries, unable to get a slot in the year's showcase event, organized alternative fests. They wanted to put the Oregon back in the OBF. I'm not sure which approach is best, but one thing that didn't change was the number of taps: it stayed at a rigid 72.

Then a few years back, the OBF decided it would try to grow with the times. The number of regular taps grew slightly (it's now 86) and it has steadily tilted back toward Oregon. Where few small, local breweries could ever have had a chance for a slot in 2005, now a bunch do--including one nano. And for the first time since I've been doing "OBF by the Numbers" (look for that tomorrow), Oregon breweries occupy more than half the taps (51%).

I think the other big change is a move toward specialty beers. In past decades, breweries saw the OBF as a chance to introduce Oregonians to a beer they were pushing in the market. They may have been great beers, but it takes a bit of the luster off a fest when the beers are available at the local Fred Meyer. This year Goose Island, Dogfish Head, Ninkasi, Elysian, Burnside, Oakshire, and Amnesia, and Deschutes (Widmer, too, but they've been doing that forever, bless their hearts) are pitching off-speed stuff.

Little fests started competing with the OBF several years back, and they regularly put together line-ups of better and more interesting beer. The OBF had a choice to make: accept its place as the fest for the masses, the giant kegger by the river, or tune things up and become relevant as the premier big event on the calendar. Good to see they've selected door number two.

How Many Breweries ... ?

Stan Hieronymus, newly moved to St. Louis, writes:

The other day I had a quick keep-it-to-less-than-140-characters exchange with a professional brewer not in St. Louis. He asked, in view of the number of relatively new breweries and additional ones about to open here, how many I think the region can support. I copped out and answered I’m too new to town to guess.

Always keen to promote Oregon, I'll offer a few benchmarks. (Keeping in mind that no macro-breweries Portland/Oregon is different from notable macro St Louis/Missouri.) Based on our fair city (population 583,776, forty breweries) and state (population 3,831,074, ninety-one brewing companies), Stan's new home could support 22 breweries in St. Louis or 142 in Missouri. The actual numbers are 11 and 39 respectively.

In fact, it is nearly always the case that mental ceilings placed on the number of breweries a state can support or amount of craft beer it will buy are lower than totals already enjoyed in Oregon. More than 15% of the beer sold in Oregon is craft-brewed. If the rest of the US matched this mark, the volume of craft beer would be 30.6 million barrels sold--in 2010, the actual figure was 10 million. Maybe the rest of the country won't ever reach this point (though there's not a shred of evidence to suggest why), but clearly, it's got a lot of room to grow.

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Sources: Oregon Brewers Guild for Oregon stats, Wikipedia for population stats, and Beer Me! and VisitMo.com for Missouri stats.

My Grisette (and Breakside's)

Back in June, Breakside held a "collaboration fest"--though the collaborators were citizens, not other brewers. Well, not exactly citizens. One was world-famous beer writer John Foyston and another was world-famous beer writer Lisa Morrison. One was not SE-Portland known blogger Jeff Alworth. I sought to rectify this, and to his great credit, Breakside's brewer, Ben Edmunds, agreed.

That beer debuts this week, and we shall discuss it in due course. As it is the finest beer ever to have been brewed in this world or any other, you will want to take note. But first, and a bit more seriously, I wanted to describe the process, which was a joy. It's less a collaboration than an invitation--Ben encourages his collaborators to brew the beer of their bliss. His role is to use his experience to help craft the recipe and process.

On brewing day, you go down to Breakside and walk through every step, from measuring the grain to pitching the yeast. Ben and his newish assistant Sam help guide the process along, but it's very hand's-on, and you do as much hauling and clamping and washing as you're able. It all concludes with a particular test of brewing mettle. I won't describe it so that the next collaborator may experience it fresh. Suffice it to say that you will be judged against those that have come before. Even if you've homebrewed, it's an education. I was almost instantly asking questions like what the Breakside mill was set to. Ben is a born teacher, which makes the whole experience relaxed and fun.

The beer is a grisette--sort of. Historically, saisons were brewed at farmhouses to serve to workers. Grisette's ("little gray") were served to miners. Although the style died out, they were described as small, refreshing blonde ales that probably lacked the lactic acid that characterized their close cousin, saisons. In fact, what we brewed was more in keeping with farmhouse ales, or bieres de table. We were aiming for a rusticity of malt but a characterful beer that would come from a finicky saison yeast. For good measure, we wanted to add a bit of sour snap to evoke historical saisons, which would have been infected--and would have therefore been very thirst-quenching on a hot day at the farm. So call it a rustic small saision (petit saision?).

We used 65% pils and a dash of rye (about 2%), and the rest was split of wheat and spelt. We used a sprinkling of Spalt Ben just brewed Beach Saison using the Dupont strain, so we were able to harvest and repitch that yeast. Finally, we did a small post-fermentation sour mash to add just a touch of tartness. We were shooting for 1.035/9 P and a shade under 4%. That makes it Breakside's lightest ever--though only in alcohol. By luck, it also turned out to be Breakside's 100th beer.

When can you get this fine beer? Why right now, at the pub. (820 NE Dekum Street)

Open Thread Friday: Your Best Pales

I missed my open thread last week, which is probably fine--there are more weeks in the year than styles. Since most of the country is melting in the sun's vicious heat, let's try a nice, summery beer: pale ales. (For those new to the blog, these open threads are a way for met to hone in on some of the best examples of styles as selected by you--all in the service of a book I'm slowly writing.) The guidelines are the same: The beers need to be great examples to illustrate the style (and delicious), but also need to be relatively available to people who will read the book, and at least some of the beers have to be available in every region of the country. Finally, they should be regular, established beers that will still be in production when the book comes out.

In terms of pales, I'd like the classics for style--both in the US and abroad--but I'm not averse to a little improvisation. As I look at the state of pale ales, I see some evolution beyond the usual pale-with-a-dash-of-caramel-malt-and-Cascade-hopping versions. Exotic hops and the occasional fun ingredient, like passion fruit in Kona's Wailua Wheat. (I've got a few already in the pool of potentials, including Sierra Nevada and Mirror Pond).

Friday Flick: Kriek Kamp

Today's movie is, what else--Kriek Kamp. One of the campers put together this video and sent me the link. I'm not sure he wants me to use his real name, but you can check out his other videos at his YouTube channel. Cheers--

Beer Month Notes, With Pictures

And Oregon Craft Beer Month rolls forward, leaving tired livers in its wake. Notably, Puckerfest has delivered a tour de force of great beers, one that continues tonight when Block 15's Nick Arzner brings a four-pack of his wonderful barrel-aged beers. If you haven't been to Puckerfest yet, definitely go. I've been really impressed with the pricing structure; it encourages you to get many small pours. Many of these beers are exceedingly rare, so Belmont Station could be charging a mint. Anyway, I've been sipping and snapping (pics) of beers as I go along, and here are a few highlights.

Flat Tail Corvaller Weisse
I have now tried exactly one of Dave Marliave's Flat Tail beers, which looks impressive when you compare it to the previous total (100% increase!). At some point I'll make it to Corvallis and do a proper survey. In the meantime, I was quite pleased with the Corvaller Weisse he brought for Puckerfest. Just 3.6%, it was a great example of how flavorful small beers can be. Lots of lactic tart with a wheaty background, crisp and light, perfect for that summer we may one day get. A very nice example. Below are Dave and his beer.



BJ's Enfant Terrible
It's probably sends the wrong signal to call this a zombie beer, but I mean it only in the best sense: it's the last keg of a 2007 batch of brett-aged beer made by Vasilios Gletsos when he was at BJ's. (There's another zombie at Puckerfest, Roots' Epic.) Sometimes aged beers get mellower, sometimes they don't. Brettanomyces is not a gentle yeast, and it has roughed this beer up pretty good. Still, I enjoy tastes of the past. Plus, it was purty.



Upright Lambicus Six and Blend Love
Four Uprights were pouring last night, but two were aged in gin barrels. Let us speak no more about that. (Gin fans should consult Nicole, who likes a nice gin-soaked beer.) The two I liked were Blend Love, the kind of sour that brings folks together, and Lambicus Six, which divides them. Blend Love was a toothsome mixture of tart and sweet, shot-through with rich, summery fruit flavor (raspberries, cherries, and strawberries). Lambicus Six, made with the rye-based Upright Six and aged with a lambic blend, was deeper, funkier, and much more sour. Some of the sour-heads were giving it a big smile, others wrinkling their noses. I smiled.



Breakside Beach Saison
This is not a Puckerfest beer, nor is it sour. Rather, it's a pretty traditional Dupont-style saison made with Dupont's yeast. (A yeast Breakside's Ben Edmunds and I used in a Grisette collaboration I'll tout heavily next week.) This is a classic saison: rich with tropical fruit flavors, crisp, dry, and moreish. It's a fantastic beer, and I could drink gallons of the stuff.


Deschutes White IPA (But Not That One)
Before last night's Timbers game (another topic about which we shall not speak), I stopped in at Deschutes to see what was shaking. In addition to the usual goodies--a nice pils, Armory XPA, Black Butte XXXIII--they have a remarkable beer called Chainbreaker White IPA. This isn't the White IPA that came from the collaboration with Boulevard--still not released--but a milder, super tasty version. It's not remotely an IPA: nothing in it has even distant familial connections to that old style. Rather, it's a hoppy wit, or a spiced wheat pale, or something. It's a soft, delicate beer that has a spine of zesty hops that merge perfectly into the spices. I suspect they used sage in this recipe, as they did in the collaboration brew--in any case, my mind couldn't shake the connotation. It's one of the most interesting beers I've tried in a long time, a fusion brew that actually finds breaks new ground in tastiness, not just bizarreness.