Signed Copies of the Beer Bible

For your holiday shopping, consider picking up a signed copy of The Beer Bible for that someone special. I ended up with a spare box of these, and am happy to share the bounty--while supplies last! Getting copies signed has been the hardest challenge for buyers, so you now have a nice opportunity to grab one while the grabbin's good.

Because these are coming directly from me, I can personalize the inscription. I will address it to the person you're giving it to (or yourself), and include a message. I have a standard message I use, but I'm happy to further personalize it if you give me some guidance.

Books are $20, and I'll send it in a flat rate box from the post office ($6.80). These things are super speedy, so there's plenty of time if you act in the next week or so. I'll have you send a check along with instructions about the inscription, and then I'll pop it in the mail. Email me to set it up: the_beerax(at)yahoo(dot)com.

Happy holidays--

The Longueur of GABF Week

Well, here I am hoping to put together a decent piece on the uses and benefits of perennial wheatgrass, and everyone's screwing around in Denver. I guess that post will wait until next week at the earliest.

I've got a few pots simmering on the back burners, in fact, but none are ready to serve. I could try to whip up some interest in the news that Asahi is about to use that war chest they've got to buy breweries ... except they're targeting Eastern European lager breweries you've never heard of. There's also the case of a libertarian trying to get some clicks by ginning up outrage over a tired, old beer ... but that means it is itself a tired, old debate that no one cares about. And then this thing about freeze-dried beer...

Some days it just doesn't pay to be a blogger.

Presidential Debate Drinking Game

Preparation
Before the debate, pour yourself a stiff drink. If you have a back porch, take it out there and regard the crisp autumn air as the liquid slowly warms your belly, noting how a country just before revolution is infused with a strange calm.

What to Drink
This is a beer blog, sure. I know there are a few wine drinkers who read it as well. This is, however, no time to fool around with dainty potables that have only been lightly fermented. An event like this requires distilled beverages, strong and brutal. America eventually found its love of beer and wine, but it was founded on the hard stuff. (Beer Bible: "By 1763, New England alone housed 159 commercial distilleries; there were only 132 breweries in the entire country in 1810.  By 1830, the US had 14,000 distilleries, towns tolled a bell at 11 am and 4 pm marking 'grog time,' and the per capita rate of consumption was nearly two bottles of liquor a week for every drinking-age adult.") Democracy, apparently, cannot be trusted to the delicate caress of IPA or pinot noir. The revolution is coming and, like our founders, you should be sloshed to the gills when it arrives.

Game On
In this game, the first ten minutes is a no-drinking zone. You'll require your senses to take in the sweep of Trump's hair, the drape of Hillary's pant suit. There are things you need to see with clear eyes to reassure yourself that they're actually happening. There's the billionaire Mark Cuban in the front row, selected by Clinton to provoke Trump. There's Gennifer Flowers, Bill's one-time mistress, sitting nearby--Trump's earthy riposte. Note the optics of the moment: the first woman in 240 years to be nominated by a major party debating a proud sexist who cheerfully and regularly retweets white supremacists while the debate is moderated by a black journalist. Only in America!

Once you've situated yourself in the moment, it's time to start drinking heavily. Most drinking games revolve around the mention of certain key words or phrases, such as "believe me," "Benghazi," or "small hands," but they are unsuitably frivolous for this year's debates. Instead, pour out another drink when the pangs of doubt peek over the edge of your subconscious and startle you, that moment when you first think, "Sure, this is amazing television, but I wonder if it's good democracy?" As the fire of alcohol burns down your throat, comfort yourself with the fact that there are no plans for a wall north of the country and, anyway, the border is too vast to keep out fleeing Americans, anyway. Oh Canada, our (future) home and native land...

Drink again when you notice the superficial nature of the moderator's questions. If you happen to wonder why actual policy issues are not being discussed, ponder the degenerate state of journalism in the United States. How is it that presidential elections went from being moments when journalists carefully vetted the candidates who would control a nuclear arsenal to one in which they so came to resemble a reality show that they actually starred a reality show personality? Pour another drink while you consider whether there's a satiric screenplay in all of this.

Drink every time the distaste of nepotism and dynastic politics crosses your palate. Consider the ramifications of sexual politics in a country that had two and a half centuries to nominate a woman who wasn't the wife of a president ... and failed. Drink when you think of Bill Clinton serving as the first gentleman, and take note of the glimmer of joy that brings. Joy will be in short supply throughout this ordeal, so take it when you can.

Drink every time the camera cuts to a Republican or Democratic official and you find yourself pondering our two-party system. Surely we can do better than two parties. Surely we can do better than these two parties. And yet, it's also true that Great Britain has multiple parties and still inadvertently voted to leave the European Union. Drink when you consider democracy. Are we really sure it's the best system? 

Drink when you notice the anxiety that this election seems to be a metaphor for ... something. Drink when your mind lapses back to earlier elections (2008 for Dems, 1980 for Republicans) and you remember thinking, "Is America the best damn country in the world, or what?" Drink when you grow irritated they're not talking about the issues you care about. Drink when you realize they're not talking about those issues because Americans don't care about them. Drink to douse your gnawing apprehension, drink to encourage your hope. Drink for liquid courage. Drink for comfort. Drink for good old Teddy Roosevelt--man, we could really use the old Rough Rider right now. Drink to drink.

And remember, enjoy the debate!

____________________
Picture credit: Drew Angerer / Getty Images

Just IPAs on Tap?

This is worth, barely, a Saturday post. I was just emailing with Zach Beckwith, brewer at Three Creeks, and I was inspired to see just exactly how many IPAs were on tap. I used the not-random selection of taplists available in the right-hand column of this blog. I really do need to add some more of our finer pubs to that list, but it should suffice for now. Using an extremely generous definition of IPA (basically anything with notable hop character, including pale ales), here are the number of IPAs pouring at this moment in these pubs in Portland, OR. Most of these pubs do serve cider, and I did not exclude them from the calculation (because if anyone hates the prevalence of IPAs, it's cider drinkers.) Make of it what you will:

• Apex 21/50 (42%)
• Bailey's 6/26 (23%)
• Beermonger's 4/10 (40%)
• Belmont Station 12/24 (50%)
• Hawthorne Hophouse 9/22 (41%)
• 15th Hophouse 9/24 (38%)
• Horse Brass 26/68 (38%)
• Roscoe's 7/20 (35%)
• Saraveza 5/10 (50%)

Hagiographies and Game Theory

I have two random little bits here that don't amount to posts by themselves--but with a bit of baling wire and a squint we can make them appear to demonstrate some larger point. Bear with me. (Don't you always?)

The first random bit comes from The Atlantic, in a post about elections and game theory by Andrew McGill. He uses the following example to describe the way delegates may behave in the GOP convention, but that's immaterial for our purposes. He writes:

In 1936, the economist John Maynard Keynes invented a beauty contest. In examining why stock prices fluctuate, he suggested the metaphor of a newspaper pageant, where readers select the six prettiest faces from 100 photographs. But only people who picked the most popular choices would win.

“It is not a case of choosing which, to the best of one’s judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks are the prettiest,” he wrote. “We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be.”

This got me thinking about my rumination on what makes a "great brewery." Whenever we're examining something largely subjective--the best Texas swing band, which color to paint the bedroom, breweries--we're always looking over our shoulder at what the gal next to us thinks. In matters of aesthetics the currency is taste, and nothing is ever so negotiable as that. So, like Keynes' pageant models, we tend to add the opinion of the masses into our calculation. In arenas like wine appreciation and art collecting, it's hard to see much driving prices except the view of the masses. We like to associate ourselves with admired things to burnish our own prestige, so it's easy to see how certain beers and breweries seem to enjoy a reputation not entirely consistent with their actual production.

Which brings me to the following video clip, which is "journalism" in its most fawning. The object of this piece is Jim Koch and Boston Beer, and I'm guessing the folks in Boston Cincinnati and Breinigsville are tickled to death. [Stan Hieronymus tells me, "Since Schaefer built it in 1972 - and when Stroh owned it and then Diageo - it has always been referred to as the Fogelsville plant," not Breinigsville.] They could hardly have produced a more hagy hagiography if they'd put this together themselves.

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And how does this clip relate to Keynes' beauty contest? Because breweries are spending increasingly more time trying to convince you that they are the Van Goghs and Cote de Nuits of the beer world. They know that to convince you they make the best beer is only a part of the battle; they also want you to think that's what everybody else believes. And getting CBS to do pieces like this is really, really valuable in that regard.

Friday Odds and Ends

I've been trying to think of a hook for this story, but I got nothin'.

But one [distillery] has found a work-around. It's come up with a chemical process that ages bourbon not in years — but in hours. The innovation is unsettling an industry that is long-soaked in history and tradition....

Terressentia's website says its process uses ultrasonic energy and oxygenation, which "finishes chemical reactions that failed to complete in the distillation stage," and results in a "smoother mouth feel."

Interesting, though.

Next, I'd like to direct you to the latest All About Beer blog post, in which thinking about the validity of regional IPA subtypes (West Coast, East Coast, etc.) leads me to consider regionalism:

So, if we think there’s a style effect going on, it’s more likely a brewery effect. They don’t drink a lot of Dortmund export in Cleveland because of some exotic local preference (I’d find it mighty surprising to see the Dortmunder style pop up anywhere else)—but because the favorite local brewery, Great Lakes Brewing Co., makes a great version of that beer. Here in Portland, one of the U.S. cities most famous for hops, our best-selling craft beer is a wheat ale. But that’s not because Portland is a wheat ale town (they’re pretty rare), but because Widmer’s flagship is Hefeweizen, and Widmer’s our hometown brewery.

And finally, a personal note: the Beer Bible apparently went to the printer today. They're doing two versions, hard- and soft-cover, though the former is mainly just for the library market. (Just 1,500 copies, but you can pre-order one--no doubt for a Limited! Time! Only! from Amazon.) On the inner flaps of the dust cover, the publisher has written really nice copy. To celebrate the imminent tangible manifestation of the book, I'd like to share it with you. (An indulgence, and I appreciate it.)

Never in the long history of drinking have beer lovers had it so good, with a brewing renaissance happening around the globe. And never before have beer lovers who also have a thirst for knowledge had it so good—The Beer Bible is a lively, comprehensive, authoritative, and purely fun-toread guide to beer in all its glory.

The Beer Bible celebrates the pleasure of discovery, for readers new to beer, and the pleasure of connoisseurship, for old hands ever eager for more information. It’s a book built on the premise that the best way to learn about beer isn’t by trying every one out there, but instead pouring your favorite and studying it. That’s what opens the doorway to history, culture, and craft, the influences that make each style of beer unique.

Like bitter, for example. Its origins in the twin discoveries of hops as a spicing agent and modern kilning, which allowed for straw-colored malts. How it took several more centuries to displace the great porter epoch. The influence of mineral-rich Burton water. The Zen simplicity of how bitter is brewed. The quality called “moreish”—a distinctly British adjective extolling the virtue of being pleasant over the course of a full evening at the pub. And the fact that it really needs to be drunk straight from the tap or cask.

To top it off, Jeff Alworth’s ever-engaging style: “British bitters are characterized by a definite hop presence, but they have no violence in them. The hops ride atop a gentle biscuit sweetness and add marmalade and spice.” And so it goes for bocks and lambics, schwarzbiers and Vienna lagers, saisons and Pilsners, weisses, weizens, and witbiers.

Welcome to beer heaven.

(That last sentence even seems to be a subtle tip of the hat to this blog.)

A General Note to All Breweries

This is a bit random, but it's also long overdue. I get a fair number of packages from breweries (mostly containing beer, but not exclusively). Nothing like Brian Yaeger or Ezra Johnson-Greenough, but still, one every week or two. Of course, I love beer and love getting beery deliveries, but I hate the yards of plastic bubble wrap and drifts of styro peanuts that collect in the basement waiting recycling. Some breweries send me a single 12 oz beer in a box that could hold a case of wine--cossetted way too safely in a bed of earth-destroying packaging.

By an imperial mile, the best packaging in the industry comes from Deschutes, which has these dandy little boxes:

They hold three 12-ounce bottles firmly and without chance of breakage (barring natural disaster)--and without a single peanut. (They also have a version that holds a single 22-ounce bottle.) In fact, there's only once small piece of packing tape on the whole box, which holds the top flap down once it has been tucked inside the box.

Takes 12 seconds to open, and the whole shebang goes in the recycling. Other breweries take note!

(The Pinedrops IPA? Not for me. It's a bit of a throwback style, with aggressive bitterness that, because it's so piney, is a bit harsh. A touch of sweetness helps mitigate this, but it's still all a bit much. Give me a Fresh-Squeezed IPA instead.)

Four Interesting Things

Stephen Colbert, Powell's, and Amazon
I have occasionally launched sorties of barbed adverbs at the large online bookseller to the north (see here and here), much to everyone's disinterest.  And yet, my warnings were prescient!  Amazon is so big (41% of the dead tree copies, two-thirds of digital)  that it exercises enormous control over what gets published and what price it sells for.  And because of this might, they can punish unfavored publishers, as they have done with Hachette, one of the big five.  (Backstory here in a quick recap.)  Hachette's crime is negotiating with Apple's e-book service.  Amazon is essentially saying: "be a damn shame if someone came in here and took away your Kindle titles" while smacking a thin, nerdy fist into an open palm.

The authors, of course, are getting screwed and hate this, but most authors are voiceless bit players in a grand epic.  But not all of them:

The Colbert Report
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In case you didn't press "play," the upshot is this: Colbert, a Hachette author, is sending his readers to Powell's.  A heartwarming story that might benefit a local retailer--happy Thursday one and all.


How Expensive is Too Expensive?
I, like the next man, enjoy a night on the town with rich food and beer, served to me by the people who made same.  Brewers dinners are fun, indulgent, and occasionally revealing.  So I was intrigued when this landed in the inbox:

As many of you know we will be launching Beer Camp Across America this Summer.  This unprecedented celebration of our collective spirit: 12 different collaboration beers brewed alongside 12 exceptional brewery partners, showcasing the sense of pride and passion shared by craft brewers nationwide. Portland will be lucky enough to get a sneak peak of all these collaborations at a special Beer Dinner at the Woodsman Tavern featuring  Ken Grossman owner/founder of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. and Jamie Floyd owner/founder of Ninkasi Brewing. The dinner will include six different courses and all 12 Beer Camp America collaboration beers on DRAFT!

Interesting! (And, good god, 12 beers--indulgent.)  But then came the hammer:

The dinner will run $120 per person. 

That's a lot of Hallertauer.  Possibly it's worth it--entrees at the Woodsman run around thirty bucks, and an evening with Ken and Jamie is bound to be entertaining.  But $120?  I'm feeling we're edging toward 1% territory here.


Fruit Beer Fest - This Fri-Sun
I have no information except that it's happening and has, the past two years, had exceptional beers.  Based on the beer list (cool layout on the website, too), it looks to continue the winning streak.

701 E Burnside
Full details here.


Beers Made By Walking
Eric Steen has been doing a cool thing that I've been negligent in discussing.  The notion is this: "Beers Made By Walking is a program that invites brewers to make beer inspired by nature hikes and urban walks. Each walk is different, each beer is a portrait of that landscape. The program happens in multiple cities each year.  "  This summer and fall, the program explores Portland's Forest Park with six breweries (Sasquatch, Hopwork, Breakside, Coalition, Harvester, and Laurelwood).  To quote Eric, "Led by Forest Park Conservancy's Matt Wagoner and local brewers, these hikes will focus on edible and medicinal plants and inspire a series of beers that will serve as drinkable, landscape portraits of Forest Park and the surrounding area."

You can join the walks for free, but you have to register here first.  Go to the website for times and dates.

I Am Only Gathering Strength

I make this solemn vow: next week, the content you've enjoyed* on this blog for the past eight years will return to form.  I will again start delivering all the random material that has made this blog famous**.  In the meantime, the longueurs of late Spring continue, and I direct you to Pete Dunlop's nice piece on current IRI data showing Portland is now a craft-plurality town. (And it's almost certainly a craft-majority town, because IRI's data comes from grocery scans, not draft, and they don't track some of the funkier little retailers who are much more craft-centric.)

_________________
* Be nice.
** Read by at least three dozen people daily.

We'll Soon Be Getting Back to the Spotty Content You Prize

I see that I last posted on Wednesday, and a lame filler post at that.  Well, guess what?  More filler!  An article making the rounds today comes from the Chicago Tribune, recounting the grim beer scene in Germany.  I've been reading these articles for years, and to be fair, they reflect the mood of breweries in the grand old bierland. 

Yet for many German brewers, the good times are over.  A slump in consumption of more than a third in the last 25 years has hit Germany, Europe's biggest beer producer, triggering intense competition and price discounting.  With young Germans turning to spirits and non-alcoholic fruit drinks, beer sales fell 2 percent last year alone.  Traditional family breweries, also under pressure from double-digit rises in energy, glass and malt costs, are struggling, some dying.

"We're in an extremely tough market," Weihenstephan boss Josef Schraedler told Reuters. "You can't grow here unless you lower prices or .. develop a cult brand and charge a premium."

I'd like to add a Very Big Caveat here for all to consider: compared to what?  In the United States, where beer geeks have declared undiluted cultural victory over the vanquished mass market lagers, something like 90% of the beer is still mass market lagers.  In the US, beer consumption continues to dwindle, too, and wine and liquor consumption are on the rise.  Belgium, where local breweries are even more morose than Germans, has one of the most robust ale markets in the world--far stronger than anything in the UK or US.  (If I weren't doing a filler post here, I'd check on Ireland.)  At my last check, ales had about 11% of the market in Britain, but 30% in Belgium. 

So yes, things used to be better in these countries, and if you were watching production slip every year, you'd be anxious and morose, too.  But German and Belgium (and the Czech Republic) are the world's greatest beer success stories, where local styles have managed to weather the onslaught of mass market light lagers.  And things change.  The trend is down now, but that doesn't mean it always will be.  The craft renaissance may well come to those countries, and it may have unpredictable and yet still wonderful effects.

Just sayin.

Beer Styles in Their Native Habitat

I am a bit more than a month out from turning in my manuscript on the cider book and, as a consequence, blogging has been thin and will get thinner still.  (Perhaps you noticed.)  Indeed, yesterday I had no time to blog but I did spend ten minutes in a Twitter debate which, thanks to short time, I'm about to recycle as blog content.   Wheee!  (This is one of those times when I point out that you get what you pay for.)

The thread started with this post at Focus on the Beer arguing that hoppy sour ales are a burgeoning regional specialty of Colorado:

Every brewery strives to have a unique style that helps define them.  Certain regions of the country are known for influencing unique styles of beer.  Granted, this does not mean they were the inventors or even originators of a style, but due to the unique and popular nature of the beer in that region, the names stuck. 

So, what is Colorado’s regional style?... It’s a merging of the last big popular style (IPA) and the current/upcoming style (sours/wild ales), and we’re on the forefront of this new trend in brewing. We propose to call the style: Colorado Wild IPA, a tour de force of hoppy bite and sour pucker playfully captivating our taste buds in balanced harmony.  

Source

We are forever attempting to associate places in the US with certain styles of beer.  But for regional style to mean anything, it must include enduring popularity.  For about 18 months, the city of Portland was home to something like four local goses (well, more than that, because Cascade was making four).  Was this a "regional specialty" or a fad?  Go try to find a gose now.  No one is claiming it's a regional Portland specialty.  (I one-linered back to the Twittersphere, "When hoppy sours are as common in CO as helles in Bavaria, then we can talk.")

But then Stan Hieronymus reminded me that there is something typical in Oregon: cloudy beers.  They are so ubiquitous that I had just misplaced the information.  That is actually a recognizable local feature of Oregon beer that is unique to the region.  (And that's mostly just an Oregon thing, not a Pacific Northwest thing.)  Cloudy beers are as common in Oregon as hellesbier in Bavaria.

(And that led Dave Marliave and I down a rabbit hole that got us arguing about the nature of kvasnicové pivo and ... well, that's what happens on Twitter.)

So after this meandering and unenlightening ramble, I leave you with a question.  Oregon has cloudy beer.  Probably this hoppy sour thing is a bit early to designate as regional style, but I would argue that Colorado does have a particular take on the IPA, which is thick and cakey and super caramelly.  Are there others?  Criteria: must be widespread and particular to a region and a trend that has lasted more than five minutes. 

Any candidates?

The Ground They Touched

I retired a pair of shoes today, reluctantly.  They were Merrells, a brand to which I had not been previously acquainted.  They presented themselves to me on the discount rack and with their easy crossover appeal--good for the road, good for the trail, good enough for the public--I bought them two years ago.  Aside from the fact that they lasted through two years of very hard walking, I felt a moment of nostalgia when I thought about where they'd been.  They were brand-new when I took them around London 18 months ago, and in them I moseyed up to the bar for my first pint of cask bitter.  I hadn't actually realized they were waterproof, but the November weather gave me a quick lesson.  Maybe you've heard of The George in London?  I met Pete Brown there when he was still writing Shakespeare's Local.  Here I am expressing my American displeasure at the institution of the monarchy.

The shoes took me up the wall that encircles York--parts of which were built by the Romans.  They took me further north to Edinburgh, a heavy city gray with stone and cloud.  (They took me into a pub there where I had the worst curry of my life.  Patrick, a subject of the Queen, looked at me in amazement and asked what the hell I was doing.  I told him: the empire.  He said: yes, but Edinburgh.  He was correct.)  They took me next to Belgium, to the streets of Brussels, which are painted--to those with the eye to notice--with brettanomyces bruxellensis.  Later I stood next to fields of Brussels sprouts, smiling.  Up the bell tower I went in Bruges, and along the sides of those sublime canals.

A year later, they took me to Rhineland and south to Bavaria.  I spent three days rambling up and down the hills of Bamberg, stopping in at intervals to whatever cathedral or brewery happened to be handy.  I'm not sure which the town has more of.  On to Munich, the sun around which the beer world orbits, where they took me over the Isar and in and out of beer halls the size of stadiums. 

They took me to the land of pilsner next, where I hiked on and off bumpy trains and around old villages.  On a cold night after the season's first snow, I hiked up the hill in the center of Prague.  (Later, Max taught me a great deal about brewing and beer-drinking in the Czech Republic; principally, that quantity is a virtue not to be ignored.)

They took me to Italy, a country I felt had to be over-rated.   That was until on my first morning, as the clouds cleared, I looked out my window and saw the Alps.  A country that has both good beer and cheese and ready access to coffee is my kind of country, and I even had rare facility with the music of the language. 

They also took me up and around a number of beautiful rocky coasts and mist-draped forests in my own piece of heaven here in Oregon.  To a riverbank in Maine.  Up and down the aisles of the Great American Beer Fest.  (Fests, they saw a few.)  They even took me down some interesting streets in places like St Louis.

I don't expect to ever experience another two years like the last two.  Getting to write about beer sent me to some of the most interesting spots on the planet.  I shared a lot of the beer-specific parts of my journeys, though these weren't always the most interesting or memorable parts of those trips.  Shoes aren't really the kind of things you can get too emotional about, but in a very literal way they were the objects that connected me to these places.  Perhaps a particle of dirt from Piozzo still clings to them.  I have all my pictures to remind me of these places, but the further I get from them, the less they have real substance.  In a literal way, these old shoes were the objects that connected me to those places.  So I stop now and bid them godspeed.  They were good shoes.

Following Washington's Lead - Best Oregon Beers?

Our neighbors to the north are embarking on an interesting experiment:

A couple of weekends ago, more than 400 beers from almost 70 Washington breweries competed at the first annual Washington Beer Awards. Many of the state’s best breweries competed in just about every style category you can think of, and the best of the bunch were selected as winners. The results will be announced at the Saturday, June 15 session of the upcoming Washington Brewers Festival at Marymoor Park in Redmond.

Selecting the "best" anything is a dicey business, and Washington adopted the tried-and-true GABF method of professional judging.  (They even used the Brewers Association guidelines.)  I think it's a great idea to highlight a state's offering, and I'd love to see Oregon promote its beer with annual awards.  I'm not sure this is the ideal approach, though.

Washington is going to announce winners in ninety categories.  That may be great for Evergreen State brewers, nearly all of whom will be able to boast some award or other.  But it completely dilutes the effect for consumers.  A better system might be Britain's, which has just eight categories (mild, three bitter categories, golden, specialty, winter, and bottled); a Champion Beer is selected from among the category winners.  Obviously you wouldn't use those categories, but something like IPA, dark beer, Belgian-style, lager, wild ale, strong beer, and small beer, say, would be clear and meaningful. 

I would also include the public in voting.  Maybe an initial judging to select a certain number of beers in each category and then open voting.  You could do it during the month of July as a tie in with Craft Beer Month.  Maybe give SNOBs a ballot, too, and consider that 25% of the tally.  Or have professional judging, SNOB ballots, and general public ballots and average the three.  But I do think getting the public involved is a good idea--these should, after all, reflect the regional tastes of Oregonians.  That would be interesting to people outside the state who might wonder how, say, Boneyard IPA became Oregon's favorite. 

Your thoughts?

This First Thing Isn't Good, But This Other Thing Is

I'm in lounging mode, so expect blogging to continue to limp along lamely for a few more days.  In the meantime, here are a couple of things that caught my eye.  First up, from Yahoo, an article on "dying careers" young people should avoid and the new, glamorous jobs you should pursue that are taking their place.  Number two on their list:

Dying Career #2: Reporter

They say a species must adapt or die, and with the trend of the Internet replacing print journalism (you are reading this on the computer, after all), media folks who don't adjust might not survive too much longer. In short, many reporters could be going the way of their typewriters soon.

Projected Decline: Reporter and correspondent positions are expected to decline by 8 percent from 51,900 jobs in 2010 to 48,000 in 2020, for a total of nearly 4,000 jobs lost, says the U.S. Department of Labor

Why It's Dying: The Department of Labor says that because of the trend of consolidation of media companies and the decline in readership of newspapers, reporters will find there are fewer available jobs.

So, if you have a hankering for writing, you might look into...

Alternative Career: Public Relations Specialist

In the new world of Facebook, Twitter, and all things Web, the public image of a company has never been more important, and so the role of public relations specialist is a vital one...

This is so rich with cynical self-parody that I don't think further comment from me is necessary.

Our next topic is a good deal less bleak--indeed, it's downright hopeful.  Hat tip to Stan and Alan.



I love the idea of "farm breweries" and wonder if that couldn't work in Oregon, too?  The idea is cool:

Farm brewery license holders must use New York raw materials. Through 2018, 20 percent of the raw materials must come from the state. In 2023, that jumps to 60 percent, and after that, it goes to 90 percent. The phase-in period recognizes that New York hops and barley growers and malters can’t yet meet demand.

And it might even justify something that, in the Spokane case, just seems absurd.

Your Friday "Hmmmm"

If this is okay, what's so bad about Black IPA?  Just sayin'.

Very Green Beer: Coloradan THC IPA

That didn't take long:

A beer that will get you drunk and high sounds like a lethal combination, but it could be bubbling up in your neighbor’s garage.

With the move by voters to legalize adult marijuana possession, cultivation and sales in Colorado as part of Amendment 64 Tuesday, the likelihood of pot beer is out of the question for commercial brewers, but already in the works by homebrewers.

If you Google around awhile, you can see past experiments.  Apparently it's not the easiest thing to do (flavor problems, dosage problems), and if you live in Colorado or Washington, the point seems moot anyway.

On the other hand, this story (which also came via Beer Pulse) suggests that there may be financial possibilities in exotic experiments:

Hair of the Dog Brewing founder and owner, Alan Sprints, shared the news on Facebook that the total yield for two 375ml bottles sold through a silent auction (two separate lots) was $4,525.56. The higher of the two bids was $2,368.73, approximately $187 per ounce of liquid.

Dave's an eisbock, and a damned strong one at that. But it contains no active ingredients beyond ethanol.  Imagine if it were iridescent with weed. 

Whipped Cream and Stout

Last night Sally ordered cake.  I'm not a cake guy, but a glass of stout for dessert seemed like an excellent idea.  Off to the side of Sally's cake--the far side in this picture--was a dollop of whipped cream.  I idly scooped it off the plate and tried a sip of the stout.  Amazing.  Not that a serious beer aficionado like me would ever recommend such a thing, but you could actually serve stouts with a whipped cream head, ala Starbuck's.  Could.  Apostasy and all that, but...

Interesting New Breweries Plus a Challenging Hypothetical

Some years ago, when Derek was still blogging at Beers Around Town (now sadly scrubbed from the internet entirely) (okay, not entirely), he declared Block 15 to be Oregon's finest brewery.  This was after it had been open about a year.  It was a bold claim and hotly disputed, but the more important point was this: some of the breweries doing the most interesting beer were the newest. Within a year of its first beer, you could have made the argument for Double Mountain, too.  Upright?  Could be.

The financial crisis dealt quite a blow brewery start-ups, which languished over the last couple years--but now all of a sudden we are awash in them again.  Gigantic is due to open within weeks, and Boneyard, Flat Tail, The Commons, Logsdon Farmhouse, and Breakside (seems venerable, but their 2nd anniversary is yet on the horizon) have all opened to much deserved acclaim.  And what about Solera, Pints, Occidental, Fire on the Mountain, Sasquatch, Harvester, and the dozen other brand-new ones I'm forgetting?

At some point this summer, once a few of the newer breweries have had a chance to get established, I'll do some polling to see what you think of the new breweries.  For now, let me pose this question: if you had to drink beer from only Oregon breweries that were older than three years or younger than three years, which would you choose?  Given the number of extraordinarily accomplished venerable breweries in this state (Hair of the Dog, Pelican, Caldera, Double Mountain, Widmer, Full Sail, Deschutes, etc.), this should be a no-brainer.  My guess is it's not.

By the way, I turn in the first half of my book in about ten days, and I plan to go on a new-brewery odyssey and catch up on all these wonderful new places I have unforgivably ignored.  I have no doubt some blogging will result.

When Bands Make Beer, Not Music

Hmm, this gives me an idea:

London-based Signature Brew is on a quest to provide concertgoers with unique craft beers, one band at a time. The company, which launched in August 2011, works with musicians to create custom brews tailored to the artists’ specific tastes....

The idea behind Signature Brew is simple: Let a band sample a range of beers, write down what its members like and don’t like, and then create a brew specifically for them. McGregor doesn’t have professional brewing experience so he partnered with Titanic Brewery, a microbrewery in Staffordshire, U.K., which gamely creates whatever suds the rock stars request.

You see the problem, right? The quality of the beer is dependent on the band.

British guitar pop band The Rifles volunteered to be the company’s guinea pig. They taste-tested more than 20 beers and then took a trip to Titanic Brewery to learn about the beermaking process. The band pointed to Beck’s and Blue Moon as their top hops influences, then made their request.

The idea that comes to me, which, if you've read this far has no doubt come to you, too, is obvious. Find a place where the bands are likely to know good beer and then try this experiment. I am an old man who knows very little about the Rose City's current music scene (Quarterflash still rockin' it?*), and yet I know that there is a homebrewer among the Decemberists. I suspect James Mercer is a porter man. The Thermals are musical and political--surely they like beer.

In any case, I believe the possibilities are richer in Portland than almost any city in the US based on the good band:brewery ratio. Someone should get on this. Gigantic, perhaps? I envision excellent double entendre and cross-marketing possibilities.

On a slightly more serious note, it would really cool to see what kind of beer local bands would come up with.

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*A joke. Even I'm not that old. Okay, I am, but I have better taste than that.

Random Wednesday

Outsourcing content today to Angelo De Ieso, who boldly offers his 50 must-try hoppy beers. I notice the locution suggests that they are must-try, not necessarily the best ... and yet he numbered them. Of course, the only reason for these lists is discussion, and Angelo's getting some. (My comment: more foreigns, please: Senne's Taras Boulba, Thornbridge Jaipur IPA, Saison Dupont, Van Eecke Poperings Hommel Bier, Belhaven Twisted Thistle, and so on.) Your list?

Also, I got an email from a PR firm alerting me to what may be the most unnecessary beer accessory ever created: the Krups BeerTender. It's a beer-dispensing devise made for the little mini-kegs Heineken sells. It sets you back $150 and does exactly what the little mini-kegs already do. So if you want to drop a bill and a half so you can serve exactly three different beers (Heineken, Heiney Light, and Newcastle Brown Ale) on a device you don't need, here's the link.