Pyramid at Thirty

What does Seattle taste like?

The old Hart Brewing building in Kalama, WA.
Source: Brewers Association

Last week, Pyramid brewing had a media event to celebrate its 30th anniversary.  That's a big milestone, and by any definition, Pyramid is correctly described as a founding member of craft brewing.  The brewery launched a wheat beer in 1985 (not Hefeweizen, which came in '93, but a recognizable family member) and Snow Cap in '86.  Apricot Ale came in '94.  All those beers were born in Kalama, where the brewery was originally located.  By 1994, it had become a top-five craft brewery and a fixture in the Pacific Northwest.  The brewery still makes those three beers and is still brewed in the Pacific Northwest.  But Pyramid has gone a long way from Kalama.

In 1989, Beth Hartwell, Pyramid's founder (then Hart Brewing), sold the company to Seattle investors.  In 1992, Pyramid merged with Thomas Kemper, a lager brewery, and in 1995 went public.  It was one of the fastest-growing breweries of the 1990s, and added a Seattle brewery and then expanded to Berkeley.  Unfortunately, it was one of those semi-casualties of the 1990s, when a number of breweries get caught up in mergers and expansion, seeming to loose their sense of identity as they raced ahead to capture market share.  A few years later, the mergers continued anew as they bought MacTarnahan's (now Portland Brewing) and were later bought by Magic Hat and then North American Breweries, a collective that included Genesee, Labatt USA, and Dundee.  And then still later they were purchased, as if from an SNL skit, by Cerveceria Costa Rica, a unit of the Costa Rican company Florida Ice and Farm Co.  Seriously. 

To make things all the more confusing, Pyramid is actually brewed in Portland at Portland Brewing.  Unlike CBA, where Widmer, Kona, and Redhook have separate breweries and brewers, Pyramid and Portland are essentially two brands of the same brewery.  Ryan Pappe, the head brewer, oversees the beer from both lines. There is also a small Pyramid brewery at the Alehouse across from Safeco Field in Seattle, but that's where Kim Brusco, a veteran of Northwest brewing, makes house specialties that never see the inside of a bottle.  Meanwhile, there were PR folks in from Buffalo, NY who had organized and promote the event.

The whole thing is odd--like a brewery having an out-of-body experience.  My relationship with Pyramid goes back to the late 1980s, and I think of it as an old standard.  For four years, though, until the Alehouse brewery opened back up in 2012, Pyramid made no beer in Seattle.  Their presence in Seattle is still somewhat spectral, especially when you add the dislocation of people converging from Oregon and New York.

It's not to say that Pyramid isn't making good beer.  Ryan Pappe has quietly honed the process at the brewery in Northwest Portland, and recent selections from both Portland Brewing and Pyramid have been excellent.  Portland's Royal Anne Cherry Stout and the current Rose Hip Gold are both accomplished and tasty.  If you looked at the recent year-end numbers, Oregonians have quietly been drinking quite a bit of Portland's beer, too.  Pyramid's line is pretty familiar, but they launching a hoppy lager called IPL that is really nice--lots of floral hop flavor and aroma and a crisp, sessionable body.  I'm less thrilled with the spring seasonal, a strawberry saison that is a bit muddled and indifferent.  But hey, different strokes.  Whatever ill you might say about Portland and Pyramid, it won't be about the quality of the beer.

Still, the event was like a tour of the future, and I wasn't sure I understood what it meant.  We have had the luxury for the past thirty years of being able to associate our favorite beers with places.  It's the kind of thing that leads to endless debates about best beer city.  But what happens when breweries start to become disconnected from their home place.  Can they still be considered "local?"  And more to the point, what does "local" even mean?  Is Seattle beer so particular you could tell if it was brewed in Portland?

Stan Hieronymus has been working on a project that tackles this very question. I thought I'd see if he could make sense of this future that looms in front of us.  He agrees that "place" is a tricky thing to define.

The first brewery opened in Louisville/Lafayette (Colorado) in 2012 and now there are six (with more planned). Their total population is about 45,000 and they have easy access to at least 30 other breweries in Boulder County - and then there is Denver....  To use one example in Louisville, Twelve Degree Brewing (as in Belgian brewing degrees) is totally Belgian inspired. Using yeast sourced from Belgium, etc. It doesn't taste "like" Louisville, but maybe it will in 10 years.

He added a little later, "I'm not arguing that I can taste two beers blind and say, 'This one is from Michigan' and 'This one is from Wisconsin.'"

But we do know what Belgian, English, Czech, and German beer tastes like.  Those places have a taste.  They come partly from ingredients, but largely from process and culture.  America has evolved enough that we have a typical range of beer styles (hoppy, low-ester ales usually inflected by caramel malt).  But cities? 

Pyramid is firmly in the American tradition.  Their current line-up includes three hoppy beers (all use American hops and caramel malts) and three wheat beers.  It has three beers that go back twenty years or more.  With that heavy emphasis on wheat, you could even make the case that there's a Northwest influence.  I know that most craft fans will place a brewery owned by a Costa Rican company in a different category than one owned by a guy who lives down the street.  For now that's fine.  But in another thirty years (hell, in another five), we're going to have a ton of beer of unknown or murky provenance.  Will we have a solid enough sense of place that it will matter whether Pyramid is brewed in Portland or Seattle--or whether Sierra Nevada is brewed in Chico or North Carolina, for that matter?

Pyramid's 30th anniversary gives us a great opportunity to mull these things over.  And if you haven't had a Pyramid for awhile, buy a sixer of the IPL and see what you think.  It's quite nice.

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Full disclosure: Pyramid paid for my visit to Seattle.

Labatt Buys MacTarnahan's, Pyramid, and Magic Hat

Last week Widmer acquired Kona, and today, Labatt bought up the collective of breweries known as Independent Brewers United--that is, Magic Hat, Pyramid and MacTarnahan's. Labatt, which is owned under the title North American Breweries, also owns Genesee and Dundee. In a press release, the new owners claim that they will change nothing:

• The beer will remain the same: it will be brewed by the same people in the same breweries, using the same recipes, ingredients and commitment to artisanship as it has always been.
• All breweries, Alehouses and the Artifactory will remain open. They provide a unique opportunity to sample and showcase the company's best beers and brewing capabilities. Through the retail locations, we can talk to customers about the beers they want us to make.

I'm trying to track down someone for a comment on the Mac's side. I'll update you if I can find out more.

Update. Still haven't gotten anyone from Mac's, but there's a nice clarifier from Frank White in comments:

An NYC-based private equity firm called KPS Capital Partners bought bbought both Genesee and Labatt's USA rights (from Bud/InBev) last year, and formed a shell subsidiary called North American Breweries. NAB is now buying IBU, which is Magic Hat, Pyramid & Mac's.

This deal is happening because the private equity fund (Basso Capital Mgmt)that's financed Magic Hat's expansion and subsequent purchase of PyraMac (I just invented that) has been hemorrhaging cash and "has decided to exit the beer business". So they're selling the whole thing to KPS, which specializes in "turnarounds, restructurings, bankruptcies, employee buyouts and other special situations". Basically it's a distressed sale, not strategic in any way.

Summer Seasonals

I suppose it's time for summer beers to hit the shelves--though we seem to be damned far from any actual summer round these parts. The weather in Puddletown these days calls still calls for porter. But, since breweries have been sending me bottles of their various seasonals, I might as well do a post for those of you living elsewhere.

Summer Tipples, Generally
When the old devil sun starts a beating down on your head, the last thing you want is anything heavy. This much is true. Traveling through some very hot places, I have found refuge in very light beers. Some, like Panama's Soberana, are a real joy when you're at the edge of a jungle. (Beer Advocate raters, mostly not on the edge of a jungle, are unpersuaded.) In the summer, flavors, like sound, tend to get louder. What tastes like water in January may taste heavy and dangerous in July. So mostly breweries play it cool--light bodied beers, low alcohol, low hops, just enough of everything to keep the tongue occupied.

(And fair enough, too. But I wonder, do all summer beers have to be so tame? Mainly we get variations on light lagers. It is possible to make them dark but light-bodied, or give them hop zing, or even add alcohol without body. A word of encouragement: experiment. See how far you can get from Pabst while still making a summer beer. I'd love a little variety.)

Anyway, to the beers.

Pyramid Haywire Hefeweizen (tallboy can)
Been a while since I've had a Pyramid Hef, but I was convinced to give it a revisit when the cans came out. In my memory, this has always been a bit closer to the German original than to Widmer's "hefeweizen," and so it remains. There are not a lot of phenols, but I get a distinctive bubble gum note, suggestive of isoamyl. Not a lot else is going on, though. The beer's cloudy but not super wheaty. It's light, but not terribly crisp and ends with a bit of a thin, wet note. Imagine the result of combining a kolsch with a German hefeweizen.

I love German hefes, and the funkier they are, the more I love them. Somehow, the initial aroma of the source style with the ultimate failure to deliver disappoints me. Either give me the full monty or give me a straightforward American wheat. Call it a gentleman's C.


Redhook Rope Swing Summer Pilsner
There are FAR too few pilsners in Beervana. I don't mean one-off pilsnery light lagers, I mean lush, crisp, Saaz-drenched pilsners, one of the world's finest pours. In Rope Swing we have what pencils out to be a perfect remedy: a 5.3% Saaz-hopped pils of a respectable 25 IBUs. How can this go wrong?

I don't know, but it has. I just don't like this beer. There's something very unpleasant about the hops, which give a weedy, grassy bitterness wholly unlike all the other tangy Saaz-hopped pilsners I've tasted. It's a over-thin and lacks malt character. I tried one bottle with friends and to a person they all thought it was nice--including an avowed pils-hater. Later, Sally gave it an "eh," but was surprised at the vehemence of my antipathy. Not for me.

(In the "throw me a bone" category, I will highly recommend the brewery's 8-4-1, which is a pretty complex beer that had the flair of a Belgian. It charmed, confused, and pleased me, and I enjoyed it very much.)


Widmer Sunburn
What is it with weird names? Sunburn's not as bad as "Grifter," but it still seems an odd choice: why do breweries select nouns with negative connotations for the names of their beers? A mystery. Like the other beers, this is definitely a traditional summer seasonal--light, pale, and mild. But give the Widmers credit; for such an underpowered ale, it performed well in our taste tests. It's a mere 4.3% (10 P!) and either 15 or 20 IBUs (sources vary), but those few hops are well-used. The Brothers (or Joe Casey or Ben Dobler or ...) dry-hop it with Citras, and this is indeed a good move. Dry-hopping adds flavor and aroma but no bitterness, and so Sunburn gets extra juice without actually employing extra juice. That's how you do a summer beer. And in fact, 20 IBUs in a 4.3% beer ain't too shabby. This is a winner, and you don't even have to be near a jungle.

Cans

Cans are ugly.

This is one of those thoughts that passed through my mind as I poured out the latest tinned offering, Pyramid Hefeweizen, which the brewery thoughtfully sent to me last week. Bottles can be ugly, but they are not innately so. The lines of the standard bottle are pleasing, and label art has the ability to instantly attract the eye. Bottles can be shaped to suit a brewery, with long, elegant necks like Pacifico sports, or short, squat bodies as in Session Lager. They may be embossed with logos or come in different colors.

Cans, on the other hand, are purely industrial and come in one shape. Metal, though it does occur naturally, has the least natural feel of any material. Its cold, impersonal color is impossible to conceal. The colors seem to wash out on aluminum and often the printing isn't exact. No matter how they're designed, there's always a segment of the can that has small print, which further erodes any elegance a designer may try to impose. No matter how clever the design, a can looks industrial and communicates chemistry, not art.

(Stipulated: cans are actually better in many respects than glass. They are lightweight, recyclable, and have a smaller carbon footprint than glass. Beer in cans cannot be light-struck. )

And finally, no matter how hard I try, I cannot look at a can of beer and not see a halo of all the cheap beers of my past. This is a cultural artifact and may well diminish for future generation. For graybeards, though, the brain has to do a stutter step every time the eyes take in a canned craft beer. We have reified the can, freighting it with the meaning and emotion of "cheap" and "gross." Our old creaky software must find the patch which clarifies matters: "nope, the Caldera's good," we remind ourselves.

Canning is good and I'll get behind it. But I'm never going to come around to think the can is an attractive package.

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American Pales Considered: Deschutes Red Chair and Pyramid Fling

Of all the "American"-style beers now brewed, the oldest is perhaps still the most American--the humble pale. The landmark beer--and still one of the most important American beers ever brewed--was Sierra Nevada's Pale. (Shockingly, that beer celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.) Many of the early beers in the craft revolution were forgettable, but SN Pale was a fully-formed masterpiece. It pretty much created the style. Unlike English pales, it has a soft sweetness lacking the sulfur or minerals of the originals and of course, that fresh, citrusy hop character that made Cascades the signature spice in American craft brewing.

But at thirty years on, is it a style that still has legs? Both Deschutes and Pyramid think so; their spring seasonals are both pales. For Pyramid it's a beer called "Fling," and for Deschutes, that re-booted Red Chair, now dubbed a "Northwest" pale.

It's no longer possible for a brewery to make much of a splash with a Cascades-hopped pale. Even if its absolutely saturated in Cascades, it will seem like a familiar pour to most beer drinkers. Yet the style is always going to be popular because it really hits us in the sweet spot--a light(ish) session beer that has that characteristic NW/West Coast tang. A good pale is a wonder to behold. So, how did Pyramid and Deschutes do--splash or flop?

Deschutes Red Chair NW Pale Ale
Let's start with the beer most of you know. My only experience with Red Chair was at the brewery, months before it was released in 22s. It was one of I think three IPAs on tap that day (and possibly four, but I'm an old man and these details drizzle out my ears), and not my fave.

Sometimes you revisit a beer to find that you had mistaken it the first time, but nope, this is what I remember. A beer many characterize as somewhere in-between a pale and an IPA, it is definitely milder on hops than most regional IPAs. But I find it generally muddy. It's thick and chewy, with malt notes that smell bready but tend toward candy (rather than caramel) sweetness. The hops don't pop--they're vaguely citric and piney, but exhibit little character. It's by no means a bad beer, but not a memorable or distinguished one. I wonder if this isn't an IPA made more for the non-Beervana market. Scanning through the comments, I see that someone in Ohio declares it "laceratingly" bitter. Yet some of the NW types find it subdued, as I did. All taste is local, right? Give it a C+ on the Beervana ratings scale. Buckeyes, you're on your own.

Pyramid Fling
Pyramid, like Mac's, is taking an aggressive posture toward naming and packaging. It's not quite as far out there as Mac's on names, but the packaging is definitely, um, something. (Call me a traditionalist: I have long loved the old pyramid-forward labels, a nice nod to the antiquity of the product. These new labels seem to be pitched at younger drinkers--or at least are trying to send the message, "We're not old and fusty! Really! Look at the young people doing active things on our bottles. Stoked to brew, brewed ... wait, check that." But I am old and fusty, and so maybe these are good labels. I know beer, not beer packaging.)

But in a glass, all ale is naked and unaided by clever design departments. And in the glass, Pyramid is ... surprisingly tasty. Fling employs Nugget and Willamette and XP-04188, which is a Cascade/Fuggle hybrid*, to great use. It goes to show that you can get a great deal of hop flavor and character while still having a relatively low level of bitterness (36 IBU). Yet the hopping here is not exactly subtle. It is unexpected--soapy, astringent, tangy. It actually reminds me a bit of the mineral quality you might find in an English pale. Insistent, distinctive--nice.

When I cracked the beer, I was really expecting something light and harmless. I was also wondering why Pyramid would be releasing this now, in the chill of January, rather than later in the spring. Now I get it--this beer was meant to stand up to the late winter. It's interesting, this beer seems to have provoked Angelo to go on a rant against Pyramid, but I really like it. (I'm right; Angelo's crazy.) Call it a solid B+, maybe even an A-.

Moral
It's still possible to make a splash with a new pale. A "Northwest" pale ale? Jury's still out.

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*Not to be confused with the X-114--or Citra--used by Widmer and Sierra Nevada. That one was largely Hallertau Mittelfruh (50%), US Tettnang (25%) and Brewers Gold (19%).

Two Reviews

Pyramid Imperial Hefeweizen
As I alluded to in an earlier post, this proves you can have too much of a good thing. A standard German hefeweizen will be rippling with wonderful flavors, all delicate and breakfast-gentle. Pyramid makes one of the oldest American examples of this style, with perhaps less character than Schneider or Paulaner--but far more than Widmer. So they know what they're doing.

However, the intention to imperialize this delicate beer leads one to wonder: what was Pyramid aiming for? What results is approximately what you'd expect. It is cloudy and cider-colored, and fairly glops out of the bottle. The head is nice and thick, but can survive the onslaught of alcohol--and not the only thing. Delicate cloves, tart yeast character, crisp finish; all of these are mugged by the wrenching alcohol. A wee bit of spiciness persists, like a single peppercorn in a winter stew. The beer is thick, alcoholic, and without much character. It's drinkable, but not much more can be said. The inevitability of the experiment seemed clear. So, what was the brewery thinking?

Malt: 60% wheat, pale
Hops: Nugget, Tettnang
ABV: 7.5%
IBU: Not many.
Available: Sept-Dec
Rating: C

Full Sail Vesuvius
Ten years ago, no brewery in Oregon--possibly on the West Coast--and few in the US could make a decent Belgian ale. Generally a brewer would brew a variation on a regular recipe, deploy a few obvious adjuncts--coriander, candi sugar, bitter orange peel--and call it good. Yeast character--overwhelmingly the most important aspect of a good Belgian--was uniformly ignored. So it is with great enthusiasm that I welcome beers like Vesuvius, a respectable Belgian-style ale.

Last year, Vesuvius led the vanguard of Belgian strongs that have lately appeared across the state. (An odd style to crash Beervana's hoppy gates, as it happens. Unlike English strongs, Belgian strongs are approachable and sweetish. Widely appreciated, they are nevertheless not the types of beer you typically find in a Portland pub.) I am slightly reluctant to give an honest review, because Vesuvius is a rare and interesting enough beer that everyone should go buy a bottle. Still, it cannot meet the standard set by Duvel, Delirium Tremens, et al.

It looks the part--beautiful spun gold, frothy bead, dense, white head. Softly sweet of palate, with a faintly biscuity maltiness; a slight bubblegum note (phenols), and alcohol warmth drying out in the finish. One criticism: the body is too light; it goes watery just when it should be supporting the heft of the style.

ABV: 8.5%
IBU: 24
Available: August-November
Rating: B

The Virtues of Free Beer

Pyramid's Hefeweizen is a little more interesting than some other versions on the market--it's got the subtlest trace of the sour/tartness characteristic of the continental original and is nice and cloudy with yeast and wheat. But, truth be told, it's not anything to write home to Mom about. (It is styled an "American-style hefeweizen" by the brewery, and has won awards in this category. I find it more flavorful than others in this rather insipid style.)

However, as I was returning from a long day in Medford yesterday on Alaska (Horizon)--a twelve-hour round trip, not including commute times to the airport--the gracious flight attendant offered me a plastic cupful of the hef, gratis. She even came back by and offered me a refresher (I declined). It was slightly over-warm and the plastic cup did nothing to enhance the experience. Still, there's something about a free beer at the end of a long day that really hits the spot. Fred Eckhardt is famous for saying his favorite beer is the one he's drinking, and while I won't go that far, given the right circumstances, I see what he means.