Latvian Beer Labels, 1993

When Ezra threw his Baltic Porter party a few weeks ago, it reminded me of my trip to Latvia in 1993, when I visited my friend Kristen who was in one of the first batches of Peace Corps volunteers there. There was a fair amount of beer involved, some of which was fresh and delicious, some of which was bland or worse. Sadly, that's the extent of my memory of the beer situation.

Luckily, I did save a few cool-looking beer labels. The top one commemorates the summer solstice, Ligo, which is celebrated in Latvia by staying up all night burning bonfires to scare away the witches. It's where the phrase "You can sleep in the grave" entered my repertoire -- it was considered bad luck not to stay up and see the sun rise. Cool iconography on that label: the maroon and white Latvian flag draped down the left and back up the right; forest ferns on top; oak leaves at the bottom.

I dug out these labels because I remembered drinking some porters at the time, so I hoped I had a cool porter label to commemorate the porter party. The only one I could find was the Aldaris Porter label here, which wasn't as interesting as I hoped. I seem to remember having a lot of porters, but since this is the only label I can find, I might be remembering it wrong.

Most of my time was spent in Bauska, a small town south of Riga. There was a local brewery there, whose unpasteurized bottles of beer -- a dark ale and a lighter one -- were tasty and cheap. The bottles didn't have a big label around the middle, only a small one on the neck, commemorating the castle ruins the town is known for. I don't know the meaning of the "16%" on the label -- it's not the ABV or ABW: the beer was not even half that strong.

This "Labrit" label is one of my favorites, mainly because of the story behind it. I had taken a side trip to Lithuania, and took a night train back to Riga, arriving the morning of July 1. As I stumbled around in front of the train station, the usual small-time vendors were out, including the beer sellers. When I saw this bottle sitting on top of one vendor's icebox, I couldn't resist, because "labrit" means "good morning" in Latvian. What can I say? it spoke to me.

Taplister Launches

Last night there was a party at East Burn to celebrate the official launch of Taplister, a website that intends to offer up-to-the-minute information on what beer is on tap at various bars and restaurants around Portland. My grainy non-iPhone picture is of the four founders of Taplister: Kevin, Ken, Kerry, and Scott. The ultimate goal is to have webcams pointed at the bar's own beer list or menu. The webcam operation is still ramping up -- right now only two "live" images are available, this Saraveza taplist, and this one from East Burn. I put "live" in quotation marks, because as I write this the images haven't changed since I first looked at them last night.

While the camera system is still in its larval stage, Taplister is using Twitter to provide pretty reliable crowdsourced info. You can use your Twitter account to add to the beer listings, or to ask where to find a certain beer. To contribute a listing, add "#ontappdx" to a tweet, like this: "Mmm... Full Sail Grandsun of Spot at Vincente's Pizza #ontappdx". To query Taplister, follow @ontappdx, and send it a tweet like this: "@ontappdx where Double Mtn IRA?" In a few minutes, the Taplister robot will reply to you with any establishments where the beer is on tap. It's a clever setup.

The Twitter interface works best when the bar itself tweets in the #ontappdx info, because with one update they can say that one tap is replacing another. Bailey's Taproom is a good example of that, check out their Twitter feed. You can also tweet in that a beer is "off". As this thing becomes more popular, there will undoubtedly need to be more safeguards added to the system. For instance, with no authentication I was able to click an "off" button on the website to purge the East Burn list of a beer called "Your Mom" -- which later investigation revealed to be a joke tweet from Hopworks' Ben Love (sorry Ben, I clicked before thinking).

If you're an iPhone person, there's a Taplister app called Beer Signal to help navigate the lists. The rest of us can content ourselves with the website and the Twitter interface. There are also a couple of blog sections to the website: one a compendium of Portland beer blogs (including It's Pub Night), and another with original material including slick video interviews with local beer personalities.

Taplister is pretty nifty already; it will be really cool when more pubs around town start to host their webcams. Hopefully there's enough money in it to keep it afloat -- personally I think Google ought to snap it up while the founders could be tempted by something less than nine figures.

Roots Changes

I noticed on Tuesday that Roots is no longer open for lunch. It's a little disappointing. I had been excited a year ago when they started being open for lunch, since that's the time of day when it's easiest for me to sneak off for a pint of blog research.

On the other hand, it's not a huge loss, because lunchtime service was terrible. A few months ago I got all the way through a pint waiting on a club sandwich... on my next visit I made the mistake of ordering a hamburger, and waited -- I'm not exaggerating -- one hour for it. On both occasions, there were only five or six patrons in the place, so it's not like the kitchen was slammed. Not long after that I bravely wandered in around 1 PM to spin the wheel again. When I got there I joined three people waiting at the bar to order their first pint; when no one showed up to slake our thirst for all of 10 minutes, I tucked my tail and ran.

The lunch closure may have something to do with the "Roots closing" rumor that Derek wrote about a couple weeks ago. Of course, the other component to that is the recent departure of co-owner Jason McAdam owing to artistic differences with Craig Nicholls. I was sworn to secrecy about this fact a couple months ago, but I don't mind blabbing it now that Ezra mentioned it in a comment on Derek's post:

They did go through rough times but not because of the economy. I am guessing this got started with Jason Mcadam the co-owner and head brewer leaving Roots recently. I have not heard this publicized anywhere. But he has to get bought out so a lot of money is owed to him and others but Roots is basically hunkering down to pay off their bills. Also they were hit hard with the distributor shake-ups and mergers.

They are becoming more of a brewpub and you will see less of the beers distributed around town.

The lunchtime closure kind of goes against Ezra's "more of a brewpub" comment. I also have to wonder if moving away from distribution is a good idea. It was one of the notable things about Roots when they first opened: their beer was everywhere in town. I'm not an expert, but you would think that's got to be good insurance against the ups and downs of the tavern business.

We may get a two-fer here. Hopefully Craig will weather this rough patch and keep turning out burly organic beers at Roots; meanwhile Jason will undoubtedly put down roots of his own, it will be interesting to see what his next venture is.

Organic Brewers Festival 2009

Beer festivals are hitting Portland right and left now that summer is officially here. Friday I was able to squeeze a trip to the North American Organic Brewers Festival into my lunch hour thanks to the earlier Friday start time of 12 noon. That's not bad: exercise (biking to and from Overlook Park), lunch, a little socializing, and some beer tasting all rolled into one. And if anyone asks, I just say I'm at lunch.

The NAOBF has a lot of things going for it. Good organization, starting with arranging brewery stations in alphabetical order. A venue that has a more open feel than the cramped confines of the PIB or the narrow, dusty half-mile of the OBF. A format that allows breweries to exhibit more than one of their beers.

Last year I was actually complaining about the venue, mainly because the lone tree in Overlook Park provided too little shade on such a hot day. I closed my report by saying "Hopefully next year it won't be 100 degrees out". My wish came true: the weather for the NAOBF was perfect this weekend. Even if it had been hot or rainy, the addition of tables and chairs under a good-sized tent made for a much better setup, and suddenly Overlook Park seems like a great place to hold a festival.

The fact that a brewery can bring more than one beer to the festival may not seem like a huge deal, but I think it makes it possible to please beer snobs and more casual festival-goers at the same time. For example, Hopworks hit three targets at once by bringing their popular IPA, their entry-level Lager, and a new offering: Secession Cascadian Dark Ale. Something for everyone.

My favorites from Friday were:

• Standing Stone Double IPA (cask-conditioned): rich and flowery IPA from the firkin
• Hopworks Secession Cascadian Dark Ale: malty and smoky with flowery hops
• Upright Reggae Junkie Gruit: fabulous lemongrass flavor
  
• Nelson Brewing After Dark Mild: caramelly and satisfying but light
  
• Roots Gruit Kolsch: lovely and yeasty, less citrusy than Upright

My first sample of the Roots gruit had me very confused: the tap lines had been crossed, so for the first couple hours of the festival the Roots Pale Ale was being served as the gruit. It tasted suspiciously bitter for a hop-free beer, and I had to wonder what herb they had used for that: dandelion? quinine? Once the mistake was corrected, the world made a lot more sense, and it was fun to compare the Roots gruit with the Upright gruit, which it inspired. The gravity-dispensed Standing Stone IPA was a real treat. The Cascadian Dark from Hopworks was the only beer I went back for a full cup of: it presses all my hop and malt flavor buttons. I hope it becomes a regular part of the HUB lineup.

Upright and Captured by Porches were at the NAOBF for the first time this year. But what happened to Hair of the Dog -- which won the People's Choice Award last year for Blue Dot -- and Walking Man? Surprising to see those fine breweries drop out of the lineup. Another gripe is the double-token charge for some of the bottled beers. I would certainly have tried the low-alcohol hefeweizen from German brewery Lammsbrau, but I couldn't bear to part with $2 for a tiny taste. Surely the cost of the bottles can be recovered on $1/sample. Or you can consider the festival's charge of $6 for a disposable plastic cup as a way of subsidizing loss-leaders like that.

Last year was my first time to attend the NAOBF, and I was kind of lukewarm towards it. I definitely got a better impression this year. The weather played a role in that, but I think the addition of the tent was a good move, and giving the hard-core snobs an earlier opening time on Friday was nice also. I'll be looking forward to it next year.

[Update: The People's Choice Award winners at the festival were 1. Standing Stone Double IPA; 2. (tie) Crannog Backhand of God Stout / Hopworks Secession; 3. Oakshire Watershed IPA.]

Moon and Sixpence

Six months ago when I was musing about pubs I was more likely to visit now that Oregon bans smoking in bars, the Moon and Sixpence was second only to the Horse Brass on my list. Turns out I have been going to the Brass a lot, but I guess the Moon is just far enough away from my house that Wednesday night was my first visit this year. Lagunitas founder Tony Magee was there to play some music, and some special Lagunitas treats were being served.

Dave and I staked out a dartboard to entertain ourselves while we enjoyed cask-conditioned honest pints of Hop Stoopid and Little Sumpin' Sumpin', as well as a delicious bourbon-barrel Imperial Stout. Charles and Teresa hung out and chatted for a while before heading outside to listen to the music. The Sumpin' seemed an odd choice to have on cask, but the Hop Stoopid IPA worked very well for us -- although Ted over at Brewers Union thinks it's insane to try and serve these big IPAs cask-style.

One thing I hadn't taken note of before was how nice the outside patio at M+6 is. There might be even more seating outside than inside, and with the weather we've had lately, it's a good place to be. Of course now the cigarette smoke that used to be inside the pub has moved to the patio, but it's not a problem outside, where it used to be annoyingly dense inside.

Moon and Sixpence has a good dart setup: one room with two dartboards, and a kind of weird dog run with a single dartboard (but two chalkboards for scoring -- why?). The dart action, combined with a good selection of 15 taps and 2 casks, makes it a good destination in the Hollywood area.

Click here for the Beer Mapping Project's page on Moon and Sixpence

Moon and Sixpence

Information provided by Beer Mapping

Excess Beer Tax Deceased

Last week the news came out that the insane 20X increase in Oregon's beer excise tax, HB 2461, was officially dead. Get ready, in two years the cycle will continue, and there will be another attempt to raise it again, to raise money and stick it to the sinners of the state. Since Oregon's initiative system is so easily gamed and the population will vote against any tax, the Oregon Brewers Guild should pre-empt the next debate by proposing a constitutional amendment that forbids or impedes future beer tax efforts. Why not?

There is no denying that the state's finances are a wreck. But the beer excise tax is the wrong place to start working on that problem. Instead of focusing on such a tiny piece of the puzzle, some legislative actions that would have a much greater effect are:

1. Get rid of the insane kicker.
2. Tax corporations fairly.
3. Consider a sales tax.

I hate the idea of a sales tax, but it makes more sense than a production-side tax like the excise tax, and would do more good in terms of smoothing out revenue during rough economic times. It looks like corporate taxes are going to get some tweaking by HB 3405, it will be interesting to see if that helps rebalance the income tax load -- 95% of which is currently borne by individuals in Oregon. And the kicker -- what madness. No household or business could survive a strategy that forced them to have a $0 bank balance at the end of every year. The kicker has one reason to exist, and that is to bankrupt the state government. Is that a good thing?

Jeff Alworth linked to a very nice article by that beer-tax-raising devil Ben Cannon. In that article Rep. Cannon -- who somehow represents a chunk of Portland devoid of breweries and brewpubs -- admits to several flaws in his legislation. He admits that taxing the production side is a terrible idea, and grudgingly admits that a 15-cent per pint excise increase gets magnified before the consumer pays it, though he still doesn't have a businesslike grasp of how prices are set. He concludes by saying that he continues to support an increase of some kind. Gird yourselves, it's coming back in two years.

Portland Blog Recommendation

Surprisingly, I seem to be the only Portland blogger -- maybe the only blogger anywhere -- to link to one of the brightest new beer-related blogs in town, A Pint for Dionysus. The author, semi-anonymous like many of us, signs his name as either "DM" or "grotusque", and he's at his best when he frames his beer adventures in a kind of confessional narrative, like this gem about an outing to a neighborhood dive.

Ah yes, neighborhood dives. I sense a kindred spirit in Grotusque, someone who prefers the high life, but who can also enjoy a High Life. To illustrate what I'm talking about: he has taken on a "52 weeks" project to report on a different craft beer every Monday at Bailey's Taproom, yet he has a fair number of posts about Portland dives, like his recent writeup of the Slingshot. I hope he follows up on the hints that he's going to map out the Foster Road dive scene for us.

The articles in A Pint for Dionysus seem about evenly divided between craft beer reports, dive bar investigations, and homebrewing anecdotes. A pretty good mix; about the only base he doesn't have covered is bikini bottle-opening tricks. I also like the idea of naming your blog after a capricious Greek god: after all, bloggers are self-appointed by divine right.

Blog readers, put Dionysus into your mix. Blog authors, give some juice to a new voice. Grotusque, keep up the good work.