Don't Cook with Expensive Beer!!!

Cooking with beer is nothing new, but the trend does seem to be taking flight as of late.  I have occasionally cringed to see recipes that use a beer that would be better put to use by drinking it -- say, making an ice cream sauce from Deschutes Abyss.   But the recent event that made today's rant inevitable was Beer Advocate's Thanksgiving installment of the Homebrew Chef, which counseled readers to brine their turkeys with 4 (four) 750 ml bottles of Allagash Tripel, and serve it up with cranberry sauce made from an even rarer Deschutes beer than Abyss:  The Dissident.

Beer can chicken is one thing, but soaking a turkey in $40-$50 worth of beer which then has to be dumped down the drain is just sick.  And no matter what your opinion is on extremely sour American takes on Belgian ales, can you see opening a bottle which is nearly impossible to get hold of right now, and pouring it into cranberry sauce?

Look, if you find that beer adds a flavorful dimension to your cooking, that's great.  But suppose a recipe calls for red wine.  Are you going to add 2 cups of Châteauneuf-du-Pape to it?  No, because it's an insult to a wine of that quality, not to mention a silly waste of money.  You'll use a good-enough table wine, and your food won't be any worse for it.

I suppose a Deschutes chef cooking with Abyss is just using what he has on hand, though I don't think the dish would have suffered any from the use of the less costly Obsidian Stout instead.  Here's a picture of Alan Sprints whipping up some chocolate-raspberry sorbet that includes some Hair of the Dog Adam.  It's not a cheap beer, but he's the brewer and it's what he's got.  Even so, I doubt he would pull out some of his barrel-aged creations and give them the same treatment.  [Oops! Matt points out in a comment below that Alan has made cheesecakes and ice creams with Cherry Adam from the Wood.  Now I don't have to feel so bad for making him the expensive-beer-cooking poster boy.]

I'm not the first person to inveigh against the evils of cooking with rare beer  Here's a year-old blog post from across the pond that gets it about right:  "Sometimes, it seems the point is to impress with big beer names. Regardless of the impact it actually has on the dish’s flavour."   There are also a couple of quasi-sensible comments about it on the Beer Advocate turkey-brining fiasco mentioned above.

Respect beer: don't cook with the rare stuff!

Portland Pub Crawl: SE 9th to SE 12th

Not long ago I claimed to have invented the Portland pub crawl.  But looking back through the pub crawls I've written up over the years, every single one of them is out of date.  The other day when I asked your advice on where to send tourists drinking in Portland, a common theme was that a pub crawl is the best way to experience Portland's beer scene. I heartily concur, so I propose to outline a few easy-to-walk Portland pub crawls.  The audience for these posts is more likely to be visitors than natives, though of course I welcome your input if there's something you would change about the routes.

First up:  a no-brainer through my own zip code of 97214:


View Portland Pub Crawl: SE 9th to 12th in a larger map

The green pins represent the main points on the pub crawl.  I recommend that you go from north to south, since Apex and the Firkin are open far later in the night than anywhere else, though if you're hoping to visit the worthy Beermongers, keep in mind that they close at 11 on weekdays and midnight on Friday and Saturday. The yellow pins are optional (except for Commons Brewery:  don't miss it if your pub crawl happens during the few hours they are open).  Here's the green-pin plan:

• Cascade Barrel House: Nice patio, Crazy wild beers, but also more accessible beers available in honest pints
• Green Dragon: Great taproom.  Maybe the least Rogue-ish Rogue establishment.
• Lucky Labrador: A Portland classic.  The patio isn't very scenic, but it's a convivial hangout if the weather is good.  Great setup for darts.
• The Firkin: New place with 14 rotating taps, midway between Lucky Lab and Beermongers.
• The Beermongers: Super casual bottleshop, with great prices, and 8 well-curated beers on tap.
• Apex: Portland's answer to Toronado.  No frills, just reasonable prices on excellent beers.

Now, this is a pretty serious itinerary, and although it's only 1 mile from beginning to end, it would probably take you an entire day to finish it. Maybe it's better to think of this map as describing two separate pub crawls:  one north of Hawthorne Blvd., the other one south of Hawthorne.  Clicking on the pins will tell you the opening hours of each place -- most of them are open between 11 am and at least 11 pm every day -- as well as a short description of the pub.

Clicking on the bus icons will tell you the last departing times for the main buses to and from downtown Portland, and also gives you the Trimet stop IDs so you can check bus arrivals in real time.  If you click the "View larger map" link, the Google map lets you select the Transit overlay to see more bus routes in the area.

I added the optional yellow pins to give you more choices if you decide on one of the smaller routes, or if you need to stick close to TVs for some kind of sporting event, or if you want some different food options.  As I said, even though its pin is yellow, don't miss the Commons Brewery if your pub crawl is early on a Friday or Saturday evening -- it's a small brewery that makes high-quality, approachable beers in a variety of interesting styles.  There are many other optional places I could have added, but I didn't want to clutter the map too much.  If you crave more variety, click to the larger Google map and search nearby for "bar".

Enjoy your pub crawl!

Caps and Corks

It's not often that I pick up a beer scoop around here, but the other day I stumbled on a newly opened bottleshop/taproom in NW Portland:  Caps and Corks at 17th and Lovejoy.  As Jason and Nicole pointed out last year, the NW quadrant is hurting for just such a business.  The location had for years been the Emanon Cafe -- the name was "No Name" backwards -- but has started a rebranding this week.

There are currently 7 beers on draft and 400 bottled beers, with plans to add more taps and a few more bottles.  20-ounce pints are $5 and shaker pints are $4, both 50 cents off during happy hour.  When I stopped in Wednesday at lunchtime, the taplist was pretty good, about evenly split between widely accessible and more esoteric regional beers:

• Occidental Alt
• Anchor Steam
• Fearless Porter
• Widmer Hef
• Klamath Basin Lager
• Goodlife Stout
• Boneyard Notorious IIPA

Beer and wine bottles are available to go:  the corkage fee on beers is $1, whereas the price tag on a wine bottle is discounted by $5 if you get it to go.  The bottled and canned beer selection had some interesting choices but will hopefully evolve further; I'm not a wine guy but the wine selection seemed a little paltry to me.  They have a good selection of mainstream lagers in tall-boy cans if someone in your party can't drink the good stuff.

Caps and Corks is a welcome addition to the neighborhood for me:  it's kitty-corner from my office, and open for lunch.  Most food items are in the $4-$10 range, and the menu includes such Portland favorites as poutine, house-made pickles, and meat and cheese boards. Nice to see the 20-ounce beer option at a reasonable enough price; in a perfect world every new beer bar in Portland would start off immediately using glassware with a marked fill line, but we're not there yet.

There's quite a little tavern district popping up along NW 17th in the last year:  the Bent Brick at Marshall, Moonshine Tavern mid-block, and now Caps and Corks at Lovejoy.  Along 16th are some colorful bars that have been there a while: Slabtown (supposedly due to re-open soon), Le Happy, and my personal favorite dive bar in the area, Yur's.  Caps and Corks is the only one to focus heavily on beer, let's wish them luck.  They're already open for business, but they will have a Grand Opening celebration on January 27th.