A Drive Down the Coast

The view from The Horn in Depoe Bay

The Oregon Coast is slowly filling out its compliment of breweries. In the near future, it should be possible to drive Highway 101 from Astoria all the way to Brookings and get a beer from a brewery in every town along the way. I have driven a chunk of that coast this winter (by far the best time to visit the Oregon Coast) and visited three new or newish breweries. Below are my findings.

Public Coast Brewing, Cannon Beach
Twenty-six miles south of Astoria, you come into Cannon Beach, and one of the first structures you pass is Public Coast, a brewery named for Oregon's law that prohibits private ownership of beaches. It's in a building once occupied by the Lumberyard restaurant, and it follows that place's general vibe and approach, which is to say, upscale mainstream. It's a beautiful space, keyed by the presence of the fermenters and bright tanks that seem to peer in from the brewery. Their height lends an air of grandeur to things.

Public Coast is owned by Ryan Snyder, whose background is in resorts. That's the feel you get here. There's a ton of wood, and the pub goes from cozy and shadowy on one side to bright and sunny on the other, spilling out into a large patio scattered with tables. It is nevertheless a bit faceless, and TVs flicker with sports. The menu is similar, featuring basically burgers and fish and chips. They are muy expensive--I got the most stripped-down cheeseburger with fries and it set me back $15; they can range up to $18 sans fries. They're also fairly average. (The five dollar onion rings are well below average--avoid.) It's not bad food, but nothing to make a special trip for.

The beer, made by erstwhile chef and homebrewer Will Leroux, is more promising. He's got a traditional slate of hoppy beers, but dabbles with experimental projects like a peach wit (perhaps his best beer) and a sour blackberry stout. I presume it's kettle-soured, and it's tart; fruity notes help soften the electric current, and soft roastiness helps offset it. I ordered a pint and quite enjoyed it. For my hoppy selection, I chose a Simcoe-hopped pale ale that had a fair amount of diacetyl, but never mind. These are above-average beers, and a good reason to stop in.

Depoe Bay or ocean view; your choice.

The Horn Public House, Depoe Bay

A horn, spouting.

A hundred and twenty miles south of Astoria you come to Depoe Bay, a rocky crescent that captures the sea in a roiling cauldron of energy. As it has smashed into the lava rock over the millennia, the sea water has carved out channels and tunnels. Sometimes a wave enters one and sends surf skyward through vents in the rock--"spouting horns" in the local vernacular. Since 1951, one of the most popular hangouts in Depoe Bay had been a restaurant called The Spouting Horn. When long-time proprietor Betty Taunton decided to retire in 2014, no one was prepared to take it over, and it closed. In homage, the new brewpub in town, located in the same building, calls itself The Horn.

The Beer There (A Brand New Feature???)

Source

A few weeks back, something remarkable happened. Eric Samuelson, a beer fan who lived for a time in Oregon but who relocated to the DC area, sent me a package of beer. For no particular reason other than he wanted me to try some of the good beer he was tasting there. I would very optimistically love this to be a regular feature. I encourage everyone from around the country--nay, around the planet--to send me your good, locally-brewed beer. And, if you do that, the least I can do is offer a few comments on what I've received.  (I don't expect it. I would be a lot of money against it. But you never know. Email me and I'll give you my mailing address.) All right, then, onto the beers.

Patrick and I reviewed two of these on the Beervana Podcast--Cigar City Hot as Helles and Port City Optimal Wit. Since I received the package, Cigar City has sold out to private equity, anticipating Eric's comment ("Enjoy it before they get acquired by ABInbev.") It is not a DC-area beer ("I just had it sitting around and it fit in the box") and it was the least impressive of the batch. A helles lives and dies by malt character. If there isn't a subtle symphony of flavor, it's just a boring little lager, and I guess I'd put this beer in that category. The malts were sweet, and generically so. We've got another Port City down below, so I'll mention Optimal Wit with it.

On the wings of Armageddon  (DC Brau)
This was the beer that precipitated the care package. Eric comments, "I think this is the DC area’s version of Heady Topper or Pliny the Younger." DC Brau used the Falconer's Flight hop blend exclusively in the beer. My notes: "Wonderfully fruity aroma--orange, mango, and something slightly dank/savory. Pretty thick mouthfeel. Lots of flavor, not a ton of bitterness. Strong hoppy beers have a strange acidity that seems to singe my mouth." It seems like a wholly worthy member of the crowd of sticky modern hop bombs, though I didn't personally love it. That's not surprising since I love only a tiny number of these kinds of beers. They strike me as too intense, too crowded, as if an addled writer kept using the same page of notebook paper to write a novel. But you'd probably love it.

Fruit Basket (Champion)
Eric comments that it is, "well regarded, but I thought it was only OK." My notes were similar. "A well-done fruit IPA, with the actual fruit flavors (orange and grapefruit juice, "citrus" zest) fading more towards bitter rindiness. The zest provides a dry, bitter finish, but otherwise the fruit my be hidden. A bitter spine. Nice but not sublime." 

One comment I'll make here interstitially is that the above two beers are good examples of why the designation "West Coast" no longer has any meaning. They are typical of the beers I found around the country last fall. Basically, the American interest in hops has become universal, and we're all making them the same way now. And please do not mention Vermont.

Vienna Lager (Devil's Backbone)
Eric's comment: "DB makes wonderful beer in general and this is their standard bearer." I agree about the brewery; it's one I admire a lot, and they're cited in the Beer Bible. But I've been underwhelmed by this beer, and was again. My tasting notes: "Beautiful amber-copper. Toffee malt aroma. A bit too sweet, and the malt character is generic. I would like a distinctive flavor in these malts, and a drier, crisper finish." Like helles, this style depends on distinctiveness in those subtle elements. The brewery uses several malts, and that may actually be the problem: with fewer, the flavors might shine through more brightly.

The last two come from Port City, and they were the two best beers (by my lights) in the pack.

Optimal Wit (Port City)

Eric's comments: "This is my neighborhood brewery. They have a great line up; this is on tap everywhere around here..." I don't have notes--listen to the pod!--but it was really superb, dominated by crisp freshness, and only accented by spices (as opposed to being oppressed by them). It contains grains of paradise, and I hate grains of paradise. Usually. The spice is so strong it's almost always overused. Clearly, though, when used in the right amount, it can be great.


Colossal Five (Port City)
Eric hadn't tried this yet, but said it was getting great reviews. I see why. It is their fifth anniversary beer, an English-style old ale. My tasting notes. "Wonderful aroma of stewed fruit with a bit of toffee. Smells like 19th century London kitchen. Bread pudding. Great malt character; sweet, but leathery. Very rich. Lovely beer." This was one of those rare and wondrous beers that shakes you out of analytic objectivity and puts you into a mood of poetry and metaphor. You are searching for flavor descriptions and find your mind wandering off into smiling reverie. I would love to have a steady supply of this beer--and I'd love to see what it would taste like if inoculated with a bit of Brettanomyces Claussenii. Really exceptional beer.

Thanks for the beer, Eric! And thank all of you future participants in this ongoing series.

(Hey, you can't blame me for trying.)

Book Review: Gilroy Was Good For Guinness by David Hughes

Gilroy Was Good For Guinness
David Hughes
Liberties Press, 256 pages
$40 hardcover






How about a nice off-speed pitch?  Today's review touches only tangentially on beer.  Almost everyone, beer fan or no, is familiar with the iconic ads from the twenty years on either side of midcentury: My Goodness My Guinness, Guinness For Strength, and Lovely Day For a Guinness.  The main illustrator behind those ads was John Gilroy, an English artist whose Guinness ads started appearing around 1930.

Self-portrait.

The book's central focus are those illustrations, though it does touch on his full career, which included fine art as well as commercial art.  Although he was never able to fully ascend to the highest echelons of the fine art world, he did do some very accomplished portraiture work, capturing the vitality and spirit of his subjects.  But the book only acknowledges this element of his career; Hughes is much more interested in the Guinness material.

What interested me most was not the familiar art (though flipping through the pages and seeing rough sketches and discarded ideas is fascinating) but the amazing grasp Gilroy and Guinness had on the brand--in decades long before ad men used the term.  This part of the story is only hinted at, and yet with each new illustration, you see how the clarity of the vision led to an iron-clad sense of the brand.  One of Gilroy's most memorable series involved a zookeeper whose stouts kept getting purloined by different animals.  In one, a satisfied-looking ostrich has a pint glass descending his long neck.  In another, an upside-down kinkajou cradles the glass.  Gilroy suggested a theme with a cobra and a snake charmer--the rough sketch is included--but Guinness rejected the pitch because snakes weren't cuddly enough.  It's a great idea, and it must have taken some soul-searching to discard it, but such was the clear-eyed sense of what the company wanted to project.

Hughes doesn't do a spectacular job with the text.  The long introduction spends way too much time on Gilroy's personal life and way too little time on his life as an artist.  Except for my reading of Peter Schjeldahl, I have very little sense of art.  It would have been useful for Hughes to have covered the artistic side of Gilroy.  I would also have liked a sense of the Guinness ads in a larger context--what was their influence?  What kind of art was typical for the time?  How did Gilroy influence other illustrators and ad men, and what was the legacy of the Guinness ads?  Hughes skips all this.  

The art does speak for itself, however.  We learned earlier this year that a cache of Gilroys revealed some unsettling illustrations for export ads to Nazi Germany.  In the context of his full scope of work, though, they look pretty typical.  Gilroy was asked to adapt a lot of his themes for foreign markets, and--remember, these are advertisements meant to sell beer--he played on national and cultural themes of the countries in question.  That a 1936 campaign for exports to Germany involved Nazi images is not incredibly surprising (they were never produced commercially).  Nevertheless, they are fascinating and add to the narrative.

It's a full-color book that captures the richness of the Guinness campaign.  It's not a cheap book, but the money is well-spent on the reproductions.  Those who enjoy commercial art, and especially the fans of breweriana, would probably appreciate having this on their bookshelf.