Beer Tipping Etiquette

Originally published on It's Pub Night, a Portland Beer blog. Visit the original post here.

Last week I asked you "How much should I tip the bartender?", and a bunch of people fired back with useful information. I especially want to thank Jeff over at the Beer Cave -- yikes, another interesting Portland beer blog? -- for some great insight, but really all the comments were appreciated, even the somewhat long-winded ones from Hugh "Doctor" Johnson. As promised, here is a summary of how you can win friends and influence bartenders by tipping appropriately:

• Tip $1 per beer minimum.
• Tip 20% minimum on a big tab.
• Pay the tip with cash.
• Tip for bad service, too.
• Even if the owner serves you, leave a tip.
• Kick in some more for special favors, like samples.

A lot of you are probably stunned to hear that your 50- or 75-cent tip is no longer in style.  I sure was.  It's why I asked the question in the first place.  Don't take it personally, just breathe deep and enter the 21st century.  If your inner banker gives you a hard time about it, compare good and bad tips to the total tab.  For instance, if you buy 3 beers for $3.50 each, tipping 50 cents a beer brings the total to $12, versus a total of $13.50 if you tip $1 a beer.  Hopefully you got a couple hours enjoyment out of your investment, so don't split hairs on the final $1.50.

What about when you don't enjoy your visit to the pub, because the service is bad?  Short answer: tip normally anyway.  For one thing, if you plan on visiting the establishment again, you don't want to get a reputation as a non-tipper.  For another, failing to tip doesn't fix the problem. The remedy for bad (or rude) service is to let management know -- on the spot if that is convenient or comfortable for you; otherwise later on with an email or a phone call.  Not tipping the front-line employee isn't going to teach them a lesson -- if anything they might feel justified in their treatment of you -- and the message isn't going to reach the manager who could do something about it.  A competing school of thought says to leave a symbolic insulting tip like one penny.  That only seems like an option if you know you'll never be back, but it's also very petty.  Don't be petty.  Be big and then wash your hands of the place.  Another thing to consider: people don't stay in the same service jobs forever, and the surly bartender you stiff today might show up at your favorite haunt tomorrow.

Another thing I was curious about was the etiquette of tipping the owner of a bar.  In the comments, Jeff set me straight pretty quick about that:  tip the owner normally.  For one thing, if the owner is working a shift behind the bar instead of relaxing by the pool, he or she is probably working for a lower hourly figure than the employees.  Secondly, some of that tip money goes to the other employees on duty at the time.  And finally, if the proprietor finds you to be too generous, it's within his or her power to make it up to you -- or, to put it another way, why wouldn't you try and get on the good side of the owner of a bar you like to go to?

Finally, there's the question of cash.  Forget about the tax angle -- let's assume that our bartenders are honest citizens who will pay whatever taxes are due on the tips.  There are two issues with cash.  First of all, on the previous post, Ezra pointed out that the surest way to make sure that your tip goes to the server you want to flatter, is to put your cash on the barrelhead.  In his experience, the credit card tips are averaged for the week and distributed based on the number of hours worked.  Furthermore, as I've pointed out before, more of your money stays local if you pay in cash, instead of having the bar pay roughly a 4% tax to out-of-state credit card processors.

Thanks again to everyone who chimed in on the earlier discussion.  Tip your bartender, and tell 'em It's Pub Night sent you.

The 24-Hour Beer Cycle

Originally published on It's Pub Night, a Portland Beer blog. Visit the original post here.

Politicians and pundits decry the 24-hour news cycle: modern communications drive an unquenchable thirst for information, as media outlets strive to keep new content in front of their audience. When I appointed myself as a beer blogger, I put myself into the whirlwind of the 24-hour beer cycle -- the internet deluge of blogs, tweets, emails, and Facebook updates about beer. It's exhausting.

Here in Portland alone, there's at least one beer event happening every single day. Even if there were no special events, there are so many new or interesting beers a short bike ride away that it's sometimes hard to think about anything else. When Bob Noxious and his family were visiting us last summer, Bob shook his head as we settled in at the third stop of some pub crawl and said, "How could you keep from becoming an alcoholic in this town?" Fair question. As much as it hurts, you have to let some events pass you by, sometimes even cherished traditions like the Lucky Lab Barleywine Festival that I missed this last weekend.

In beer as in everything, the internet amplifies the amount of information, and keeps it coming throughout the day.  To keep up with local news and to avoid duplicating someone else's rant, I read about a dozen active Portland beer blogs, and a few others from around the country or other English-speaking nations.  But Twitter is the real killer.  The first tweets I read in the morning might be about @thebeernut's evening libations in Ireland, followed a few hours later by live reports of beer drinking in Boston, then Chicago and Austin.  Then when the dozens of nightly tweets from around Portland start rolling in about various bottles opened and pints drained, how can it not make you thirsty?  Not just after a hard day's work, but morning, noon, and night.  It's the 24-hour beer cycle.

For all of that information, there's some that I don't get around to: the excellent Northwest forums at Beer Advocate, the beer radio shows, beer podcasts, and beer videos are too much for me. I have a day job, a family, some exercise routines, and a dwindling number of outside interests.  I have to let a lot of beer info -- and a lot of beer -- get away from me.  Which means that sometimes the blog just gets fed a filler post like this one, instead of the substantive, hard-hitting beer analysis you expect from It's Pub Night.  Hey, not so different from the effect of the 24-hour news cycle on the news media.

That Is Cheap

Originally published on It's Pub Night, a Portland Beer blog. Visit the original post here.

Not long ago I was mocking the little beer store on Hawthorne just east of 20th for their pitiable selection. But today Dave radioed me that every bomber in the shop was for sale for just $2. So I scooted around there and found a few things that were well worth the $6.55 SPE that represents. Sure, that's not much more expensive than the usual MacTarnahan's/Pyramid bomber price, but even a 20-cent markdown lowers the SPE by 65 cents.

And that's a hellacious price on Prima Pils and Sinist0r. Dave has even rounded up $2 Total Domination bombers there before, though they didn't have any today. The shopkeeper told me that they try to clear out the stock over the weekend, starting Thursdays, so you might check in there late in the week to see if they have any bargains.

Your Thoughts on Tipping

Originally published on It's Pub Night, a Portland Beer blog. Visit the original post here.

I've been meaning for a while to ask for your thoughts on tipping at pubs. A few weeks ago I was having a beer with Charles and casually posed the question of how much to tip. Without hesitation, he said "a dollar a beer". Turns out that's pretty standard -- here's a Beer Advocate screed that recommends the same thing.

Confession time: that's toward the upper end of my tipping habits to date. Long ago my wife whipped me into shape on restaurant tipping, so that I go a little over 20% unless I've really been abused. When I run a tab at a bar, I apply the same formula. But if I step up to the bar and pay cash for two or three beers for the table, I tend to cover the whole trip with one dollar, or maybe a dollar and some change.

For a single beer, 50 or 75 cents seemed reasonable to me. Now that I've been corrected I will amend my skinflint ways, but some questions still come to mind:

• Tip one dollar for one beer whether the beer cost $2 or $6?
• How much for a pitcher?
• How much for three or four pints?
• Same tip for walk-up service as for table service?
• Same tip at dive bars as at nicer places?
• What is your remedy if the service is bad?
• Tips are meant to supplement slave wages.  Do you tip differently when the bar's proprietor is serving you?  (Geoff, Sara, et al., please don't hate me for this question.)
• How much do you tip when a bartender fills a growler for you?
• When running a tab, is 20% good, or should you still do a dollar a beer?

Please leave a comment if you have answers for any of those.  I'd love to get the perspective of current and former servers and bar owners.  If I get any good stuff, I'll write a summary next week.

No Relation

Originally published on It's Pub Night, a Portland Beer blog. Visit the original post here.

The Fred Meyers on Hawthorne seems to think that Blue Dot and Blue Moon have something in common. They shelved them right next to each other. I'm as big a fan of alphabetical order as anyone, but this is taking it too far.

At the top level, Fred's beer taxonomy is:

• Organic
• Foreign
• U.S. Micro
• Industrial Lager

I suppose those are somewhat interesting categories -- I can't think of another store that separates the organic beers -- but within those categories there doesn't seem to be any order.

So you end up with Blue Dot next to Blue Moon (no relation).

First Impressions of Migration Brewing

Originally published on It's Pub Night, a Portland Beer blog. Visit the original post here.

A handful of the Pub Night gang headed over to Migration Brewing yesterday for its opening night. There are only guest taps for now, but next Wednesday they will put on their Migration Pale Ale. The fine folks at Lompoc Brewing are doing a great community service by letting brewer Michael Branes brew on their system until Migration's rig is ready. That's Michael on the left in the picture, next to co-founder Colin Rath at last night's opening.

The space is nicely done, with high ceilings open to the rafters, lots of unfinished wooden tables, and a couple of nooks with couches in them. Last night we sat at about the spot where a pile of dirt sat next to the kegerator on my exploratory visit a few months ago -- you can see how much work went into getting the place ready. It's not a huge space, but with the open feel, the garage door in front, and the wooden bowls of peanuts in the shell, it's kind of like a Lucky Lab with a nice paint job. I hope that doesn't sound snarky in either direction -- I love hanging out at the Lucky Lab and I think Migration will have a nice hangout vibe also.

There is a square cove to the right of the bar which will soon become the home of a couple of dartboards.  Hooray!  It's a good setup, there will be a "lean bar" about chest height along the dart room wall, a place to set your beer and darts.  It's tucked away nicely, there shouldn't be any traffic issues there.

One quibble: I wish Migration had hit the ground running with honest pints instead of the ubiquitous shaker pints. Given all the similarities with the Lucky Lab, I'm surprised they didn't break out imperial pint glasses.  Or, being a new operation, why not start out on the right foot and have glassware marked with a 16-ounce or half-liter line?  More and more places are doing that these days.

Some more general observations:

• Kids are allowed until 8 PM
• Good bike racks out front
• Food is simple (sandwiches, sausages), but pretty reasonably priced.  Most things seemed to be about $7.50.
• The patio will be a great place to hang out in good weather

For further reading: eyewitness reports from Jason and Angelo.

Double Alt Smackdown

Originally published on It's Pub Night, a Portland Beer blog. Visit the original post here.

A couple years ago I became obsessed with Alts. I was confused by the wide variation of different beers called "alt" -- the bland industrial alts I remembered from a trip to Germany had nothing in common with the Lucky Lab's Crazy Ludwig's Alt, which was a far cry from Alaskan Amber. Then I brought home a Pinkus Muenster Alt from Belmont Station, and I didn't know which way was up. It took samplings of Uerige Alt and Widmer Alt to set me on the right path.

Uerige also makes a double alt -- called Doppelsticke Alt -- which is nearly twice as strong. Double alts are catching on around Portland as well: Dave Fleming did one at the Lucky Lab before he left there a couple years ago; Hopworks did one a year or so ago; Widmer -- whose (single) Alt was their original flagship -- released 84/09 Double Alt to commemorate their 25th anniversary last year; and Ninkasi's somewhat counter-intuitive choice for a winter seasonal is a double alt called Sleigh'r.

Back in December I picked up a bottle each of the Sleigh'r, Uerige Doppelsticke, and 84/09, intending to corral some friends to help me blind-taste and compare the three. With one thing and another, I never got around to it, but I finally got motivated last week when my friend Brett ordered a glass of the Green Dragon/Oregon Brew Crew double alt -- yes, another Portland version of the style -- and gave me a taste of it.  That was the final straw: I dragged Brett and Lindsey over to my house to finally do the comparison.

My feelings about these double alts are contradictory.  The couple of times I've had the Uerige in the past, I found it too syrupy.  I recognize that someone could make the same complaint about the Widmer, and yet something about it grabs me: it was one of my favorite new beers last year.  On the other hand, Sleigh'r is a drier, more restrained version, but for some reason it doesn't grab me.

So, going into the blind tasting, I expected to like Widmer the best, Uerige next, and Ninkasi third.  Interestingly, when we compared notes later, that was what the other guys expected their preferences would be, too.  Lindsey won the contest, because he correctly identified all three.  I was able to spot the Ninkasi, but I confused Widmer and Uerige.  Brett amazed us by getting all the beers wrong: he thought Ninkasi was Widmer, Uerige was Ninkasi, and Widmer was Uerige.  I assume it was his first time to try Sleigh'r and -- like Jeff Alworth -- he wouldn't have imagined Ninkasi using a lighter touch than Widmer. With that bit of background, he might have made the same guesses as I did.

The Doppelsticke was my favorite of the three, which surprised me since it had rubbed me the wrong way in the past.  Lindsey said he couldn't pick a favorite between Widmer and Uerige.  Sleigh'r was Brett's favorite.  That's two first-place votes for Uerige, one for Ninkasi.  Widmer seemed to have all-around appeal:  it got Brett's and my second-place votes, and Lindsey's tie-for-first.  Brett and I also agreed that the Green Dragon's version was most like the Uerige, so kudos to the Brew Crew for nailing it.

Too bad I didn't get this tasting done while 84/09 and Sleigh'r were still widely available, but if you're interested in double alts, you still might find a few bottles of them at the usual places.