I HAVE A MINOR COMPLAINT: Stop Using the Word "Innovative"

Jargon infects all human enterprise. It's probably a habit of mind that allowed speech to develop--which is a good thing. It also leads to the development of jargon when a group of people in a related field talk to each other long enough. And eventually, it leads to meaningless jargon where words are mere name checks that signal, apparently, in-group solidarity. And so it has come to pass that the word "innovative" (and it's variant "innovation") are now used to describe every brewery in America. From actual press releases:

• "a widely acclaimed brewery and restaurant, now serves fans of fully flavored beers in 30 states with innovative beers melding European ingredients and technology with American creativity."
• "The pioneering spirit that launched [Brewery X] spans more than three decades, with innovation emerging from both the brewhouse and sustainability initiatives."
• "[Brewery Y] also recently introduced its new series, which features a selection of small, limited releases from mostly craft brewers that rotate frequently keeping the selection both innovative and fresh." 

There may be a few innovations left to discover out there, but we've made a lot of beer in the 8,000 years of human history. If you put your beer in a barrel of some kind or add fruit to it or brew a beer with another brewery or, God help me, are introducing new label designs, you are not innovating. Truly innovative techniques and beers are exceedingly rare. The mere act of starting a new brewery is not innovative. Quit saying it.

Look at all the innovation!

Innovation has become so meaningless that, particularly when used by larger breweries, it often signals the opposite. I get things like this all the time "Our continued efforts at innovation have led our brewers to create a new grapefruit-infused IPA" (not an actual quote, but typical). In fact, this sentence should read, "Having seen how much money other breweries are making on this type of beer, we have decided to follow the trend and make an imitative knock-off."

Now, don't get me started on the word, "passion" ...

I HAVE A MINOR COMPLAINT: Don't Take that Glass!

Source

It's been a long time since a cranky old man has vented his spleen on this blog--far, far too long. I shall now rectify this terrible oversight.

Today's whinge begins with a prose portrait. Imagine if you will the following scene. You are sitting in a pub or restaurant and in front of you sits a delicious glass of beer. It is perhaps your last beer of the evening. (This is deck-stacking, but I'm ranting so stay out of the way.) You have taken a shine to this beer, and the more you drink, the more greedy you get. You consider offering your pub-partner a swallow, but it's just too good. That kind of generosity is for full glasses, when you have enough to spare. Bit by bit you lower the level, savoring ever longer-lingering mouthfuls of fine ale. (Or lager, yes, but please, don't interrupt.) The amount of beer gets dangerously low, and you start taking ever smaller sips to preserve the beer. At a certain point, you leave just enough so that it will suffuse your sensory apparatus with a long, lingering aftertaste that will take you out into the night and, possibly, follow you into your dreams.

And then, at that moment, a waiter strafes the table and snatches the glass without even slowing down. "Wait!--" Nope, it's too late. That last swallow is headed for the drain. And there you sit, despairing, like a child whose ice cream has fallen off the cone.

I grant that the above scenario may seem far-fetched to you, but it happens not-uncommonly to me. And it happened last night at La Buca, a nice little Italian restaurant nearby (where, it must be admitted, the waiters are not so clued into the whole beer etiquette thing.) Perhaps I'm weird. Perhaps this behavior is aberrant enough that anyone engaging in it should expect to have his glass whisked away as a kind of penalty for lollygagging. But dammit, I paid for that glass of beer, and as a consenting adult, I should be able to do anything with it I damn well please, including lollygagging.

DON'T TAKE MY GLASS UNTIL IT'S COMPLETELY EMPTY.

Thank you for your attention.

I HAVE A MINOR COMPLAINT: The Fruit Beer Fest's Sweaty, Cramped Quarters

This past weekend we had the latest incarnation of the Fruit Beer Fest, one of the year's best. It was, sadly, still located in the exceedingly cramped parking lot in front of Burnside Brewing. Before we get to the old man's whinge, the requisite throat-clearing: the FBF is sneaky good. It poses as a regular fest, but doubles as a symposium on the myriad ways fruit can be incorporated into a beer. Each year envelopes get pushed a little further, until at this year it seemed like half the beers were barrel-aged wild ales typical of something you'd find in Moeder Lambic. Ezra Johnson-Greenough, the founder and an ecumenical drinker, has increased cider's participation in the fest. Everything about the tasting side of the fest is great.

The location, however, is perhaps the worst in the city. I traipsed down on Friday, the first day after a cold snap when the temps toppped out at about 75. Nevertheless, the sun had baked the surfaces of the locale--concrete all, including pavement and surrounding walls--turning it into an oven. Light knifed off the hard surfaces and created a blinding glare. Even with the sun getting ever lower in the sky, there were precious few patches of shade to be found.

The fest floor--a pen, really, fenced in with chain-link--is so small that the long lines running off the pouring stations blended into the crowd, making it a chore to even know where to stand. (Creating, perversely, open jockey boxes that people at the rear of the line didn't realize were free.) Oh and: there was no place to stand. You sort of do a slow waltz with the crowd as the fluid dynamics of people standing in line or trying to get to a line sent us on a perpetual move, a half-step at a time.

I know Ezra and the organizers are aware of this, and I understand there are challenges to hosting fests. Nevertheless, as a fest-goer, these are not my concerns. My concern is spending a pleasant few hours enjoying excellent beer in the company of friends. The excellent beer is at the Fruit Beer Fest, but not the pleasant few hours. A victim of its own popularity, the fest must grow or lose cranky old men like me. (And before you say it: there weren't nearly enough of us to fix the problem with our absence.)

I HAVE A MINOR COMPLAINT: The Bombers Are Too Damn High

Bill Night has his latest survey of Portland beer prices out this week, and I want to draw your attention to one of his findings:

• 22-ounce bombers: $5.58

Five-fifty eight for 22 ounces of beer?  That's too damn high!*  It's almost exactly twice the cost per ounce as the average six-pack and getting perilously close to the average pint of a pub pour.  In fact, it's the same price as an average happy-hour pint. Due to a weird quirk in his sample, the bomber price actually down from last quarter, too.   For the visually-oriented:

Pints, of course, carry with them the costs of the structure in which you enjoy them and the paycheck of the barkeep (among others) who's pouring them.  What justifies the exorbitant price of a slightly larger bottle with no six-pack cardboard carrying-case?  Not that these are specialty beers made expensively or priced for rarity; nope, they're standard locally-made beers.  There can be only one reason: that people will pay it.   Stop it!

It's highway robbery and I for one planning on shaking my fist impotently at the bomber section of my local beer retailer until prices come down.

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*If you don't get the reference, you've missed something special.

I HAVE A MINOR COMPLAINT: Why no pitchers?

Old man vents spleen.  Just as my aged forebears raised a gnarled
fist against neighbor children everywhere, so too shall I roar

ineffectually about small matters.

 
All aboard, all aboard JB Alworth's Fantastic Flying Time Machine^TM!  Today we'll set the dial back 25 years and visit a gentler Portland, a time when men wore flannel unironically and the blogger was a dashing 21-year-old with a luxurious mane of chestnut locks.  We can pick a tavern at random--in those days brewpubs were rare--and park ye olde time machine behind that dumpster there.  After we pick our way through the VWs and Pintos, we find ourselves at the door of a window-free building, preparing to enjoy a night out on the town and MOTHER OF GOD, what is that toxic cloud!?  Oh, right!--smoking.  Ah, thems were the days.

Things are worse than I remembered.  The fashion--hoo boy, the fashion.  I had sort of forgotten the shoulder pads, day-glo pink, and mullets.  There's a melancholic warble of Bob Seger on the juke box ... oh man, let's get this over with.  As we make ourselves through the blue haze, there it is, on that table over there.  As if glowing from the inside, a beacon of light in this dark age, a pitcher of beer. Sure, it's an eight-dollar pitcher of Hamms, but focus.  I'm pointing out the vessel, not the liquid.

You see it?  All right, let's get the hell out of here.

Only hardcore nostalgics will recall fondly most of the elements of that scene, and yet I fear we have thrown the pitcher out with the mullet.  You can now get any flavor of beer ever conceived, but good luck trying to get it in a pitcher.  I get that breweries and pubs won't want to be handing out 64 ounces of barrel-aged barleywine, but what about the house stout?  On Saturday, while hanging with friends at Ecliptic, one of us old-timers asked if they had pitchers.  Nyet.  He frowned and shook his head sadly, as geezers do when they find the world has changed for the worse, and invested two minutes in a half-hearted rant.

But he's right!  You can keep the Seger, the shoulder pads, the smoky bars with bad beer--but can we at least have the pitchers back?

I Have a Minor Complaint!

 
New Feature!

Old man vents spleen

As I enter the "honored citizen" phase of my blogging career, I think it's time to start reaping some of the benefits.  New for 2014* will be the feature "I have a minor complaint!" (or perhaps I HAVE A MINOR COMPLAINT).  Just as my aged forebears raised a gnarled fist against neighbor children everywhere, so too shall I roar ineffectually about small matters. 

The offending door, blurrily off to
the left in the far background.

To get things started, today's complaint concerns that wind tunnel Laurelwood calls a pub.  For those unacquainted with the facility, it has a rear entrance that opens into what amounts to a chute that empties out onto the bar.  On cold winter nights, when you've settled down with, say a nice gose to watch the Blazers beat the Clippers in overtime, it's damned irritating to have people constantly blasting you with arctic air.  Laurelwood, one of the most successful brewpubs in the US, could easily install a vestibule to prevent this or, if they were going the cheapskate route, at least put up some heavy curtains to slow the gales. 

[Raises fist in air.]  Arrgghh!

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*Unless, due to encroaching senescence, I forget all about it.