Another Clinton Administration

The smallest commercial brewery in Oregon -- Clinton Street Brewing (warning: noisy website) -- stands just a few blocks away from new Portland heartthrob Hopworks. The brewery is an offshoot of the Clinton Street movie theater, a small art house cinema at the corner of SE 26th and Clinton. You can enjoy a Clinton Street brew while watching your movie, or have a pint in the tiny pub. There are 4 or 5 tables inside, seating about 15 people, plus a couple of outside tables and about 5 seats at the bar. No smoking inside.

It had been a while since I'd been there, so I stopped in the other day to check it out. It turns out there is a new brewmaster at the Clinton, Dylan Goldsmith, and his beers are beginning to turn up around town branded as Captured By Porches -- which I'll call by the less-embarrassing acronym "CBP". At the time of my visit, there were 3 CBP beers on tap: a Belgian Wit, an IPA, and an Amber. Now, none of these beers is going to become your new favorite, but sometimes you go out on a limb to experience something off the beaten path. The Wit was interesting, but quite a bit more bitter than I think it should have been. The IPA was a little funky. I think the best bet was the Amber, despite having a little bit of a homebrewy flavor (that's Dave's adjective).

The theater owner, Seth, told me that it was quite a feat to brew enough for CBP's 30 accounts at Clinton Street's little two-barrel brewhouse. So Dylan is setting up a new brewery in industrial NW Portland. A decision will be made soon as to whether to continue to brew on Clinton Street or not. Moving the brewing equipment out might make sense for the theater/pub, since it would give them more kitchen space and allow for expanded food options -- currently the menu is anchored by pizza slices from Hammy's Pizza down the street.

There is a concert this weekend to raise funds for the CBP brewery -- see this blurb on the Beer Northwest blog. I've also seen flyers for this on lampposts around 20th and Hawthorne. It's interesting that Beer Northwest talks about CBP as a St. John's brewpub. For one thing, I'm not sure if the NW St. Helens Road address they give qualifies as St. John's, being across the river and a mile or so south. And it would be surprising if there was really going to be a pub in such an armpit location. I suspect that Clinton Street will continue to be the tied house for CBP, with brewing -- but no pub -- out in NW. Or perhaps there's a missing piece of information here: a pub-worthy address that really is in St. John's.

At Clinton Street, pints of CBP are $4, or they'll fill your half-gallon growler for $9. They have a few other taps also -- when I was there it was Ninkasi Believer (yes!), Lompoc Strong Draft, and Bud Light. Meanwhile, keep an eye out for CBP around town. I had a near miss last weekend at Big Daddy's Barbecue on Hawthorne. The bizarre happy-hour posters at Big Daddy's included a subliminal CBP logo along with logos for Bud, Widmer, and Laughing Dog -- any relation to Laughing Cow? -- but they weren't actually serving any CBP.

The Bikiest Brewpub in Portland?

A couple weeks ago John Foyston worked a short review of Hopworks into the Oregonian under the O's Cheap Eats rubric. No slam on either John or Hopworks, but journalists must be doing pretty well these days, if a $9.25 burger qualifies as cheap. Anyway, I don't want to quibble over the definition of "cheap".... Instead I want to take issue with the opening sentence of John's review.

"Portland's bikiest, most sustainable brewpub is now open," writes John. I definitely applaud HUB's moves for sustainability, and I love the bike theme in both the name and the decor of the place. But I had a visceral reaction to the word "bikiest", because anyone who could describe HUB that way has obviously never arrived there by bike.

When I first heard of Hopworks, my immediate thought was, "How am I going to bike there?" I've been getting around by bike for a long time, and I'm not afraid to ride in traffic if I need to. Nevertheless, Powell Blvd. is one of those car-clogged behemoths that makes you roll your eyes when you think about crossing it. If you try and approach from SE 29th, depending on the time of day, you'll watch wave after wave of westbound and eastbound traffic until you get an opening in both directions to scurry through. If you'd rather cross Powell with a traffic signal, your choices are 26th and 33rd, three or four blocks on either side of Hopworks. That probably means you'll walk your bike on the sidewalk from that intersection, though if you love adrenaline you could battle the pent-up traffic both ways and turn left at 26th.

Then I thought, well, fair enough, the people living south of Powell now have a place they can bike to easily. But if you look at a map, their choices are little better -- the nearest neighborhood streets that go through to Powell from the south are 28th and 32nd. And check out this snippet from a map of pedestrian injuries and deaths between 1995 and 2004. HUB is just west of the big dot signifying two pedestrian injuries; the little dots are locations where one pedestrian was injured; the X's are pedestrian fatalities.

Here's another map showing bicycle collisions between 2003 and 2006. Whoops, looks like crossing Powell at 26th isn't such a great idea -- 4 or more bike crashes at that corner during that period. At least there was only one bike crash at 33rd. The point is, whether you're walking or biking to Hopworks, the volume and speed of traffic in that area is a danger to those not encased in metal pods, even if you come from further south.

For the bikiest brewpub, I would put forth someplace like Roots or the Lucky Lab, which draw lots of biking patrons and have good connections to bike lanes and bike routes. Or maybe the Quimby Street Lucky Lab -- the first time I biked over there, I was fuming that I had to lock up to a stop sign, only to walk in and find out that the bike rack is indoors.

Of course, there are worse locations than 30th and Powell -- at least it's close in. I've biked to Hopworks a few times and will continue to do so -- the beer is fantastic, as is the moderately-priced organically-grown food. And I'm not alone, either: the bike racks out front are usually so full that I have to lock up to the wheelchair ramp alongside the parking lot. I suspect that HUB's community spirit will be a good influence on future traffic planning for the area, but for now its location alone keeps it from being the "bikiest".

The Widmer Gasthaus

We have an embarrassment of riches in Portland. There's so much excellent beer here, that we get to look down our nose a little bit at any brewery that gets too big, like Widmer, the 11th largest brewery in the U.S. by sales last year. Widmer Hefeweizen is ubiquitous, available in every convenience store, pizza joint and tavern in town. Well, not the Green Dragon -- case in point! -- though Widmer will be featured at this Tuesday's Meet the Brewer.

There are many reasons to rise above our beer snobbishness and open our hearts to Widmer -- not least of which is the fact that the beer they sell in such vast quantities is actually good beer. Furthermore, the Widmer brothers were there at the beginning of the craft brew revolution in Oregon, long before hangers-on such as myself, and they still support the grassroots by offering homebrewers access to their brewing facility through the Collaborator project. Finally, there's the Gasthaus: the restaurant attached to the brewery, where Widmer serves a number of interesting beers that are unavailable anywhere else. Good food, too.

I dropped into the Gasthaus a couple days ago as part of my Alt quest. Turns out that a Dusseldorf Alt was one of the first beers the Widmers brewed, and it is apparently always on tap at the Gasthaus, but nowhere else. The Widmer Alt is a well-done beer, and matches the style guidelines very well: a dark, dry beer, with a bitter edge but almost a nutty flavor to the malt underneath. Compared to other local Alts I've had recently, it's more polished and flavorful than the Collaborator Alt I had at Belmont Station; it's less fruity and more bitter than Corey's Evolution Amber; and it's not a wacky hop-bomb like the Lucky Lab's Crazy Ludwig's Alt. It's not a style I love enough to have every day, but I'll certainly revisit it on future trips to the Gasthaus. I still need to track down a real Dusseldorf Alt to compare these all to.

Of course the restaurant has taps that represent Widmer's bottled-beer lines, but in addition to the Alt they had eight more taps that you can only get there. The Belgian Golden didn't impress me much at the Cheers to Belgian Beers festival, and I wasn't in the mood for a lager or barleywine, but I was happy to see that they had the NW Red on tap. This was the "W '06" special yearly bottling from a couple years ago, a tasty brew indeed. The W '08 Crimson Wheat, while drinkable, is nowhere near as interesting as the previous W's.

Speaking of W's, the first one -- the W '05 IPA -- was so good, that it became a regular offering: Broken Halo. This is what I'm talking about when I say that Widmer's mass quantities of consumables are still really good. Broken Halo's renown has spread across the country, to the point where it was a favorite of my buddy Lee before he even visited Portland. Just last month, another less-beer-obsessed friend in Austin told me -- without being able to remember the brewery name -- that it's the only beer he buys these days. And here's an excellent stunt from the blogosphere: a blind-tasting "tournament" of 32 IPAs, seeded by their ratebeer ranking. Broken Halo won, even though it was ranked 24th by the master beer-raters.

Other delights that the Gasthaus has offered in the past are the KGB Imperial Stout, aged in bourbon barrels; and Noggin Grog, Widmer's entry in last year's Oregon Brewer's Festival. A lot of beer snobs dissed Noggin Grog -- a so-called Imperial Wit -- but I loved it. Sure there's no such thing as an Imperial Wit, but it was a big, tasty beer.

The Gasthaus location, with a nice view of the Fremont Bridge, is right on the edge of a gritty industrial area, though its near neighbors are the trendy 820/Mint and the retro-chic McMenamins' White Eagle. Despite the fact that it's walled in by massive freeway overpasses, a trip to the Gasthaus makes a nice little bike excursion -- the Interstate bike lane connects with the Eastbank Esplanade right by the Steel bridge. You probably wouldn't bicycle the kids there, though -- the car traffic moves fast on Interstate, and the other route along Russell Street is kid-friendly enough on the way down, but will have them cursing you on the way back up the hill, if you're not already cursing yourself.

Next Stop, Belmont Station

When I first rolled into town, a visit to the Horsebrass was always followed by an obligatory stop at Belmont Station, the beer store next door. In a cramped little room, you would scan the shelves lined with single bottles, until you decided which Northwest or Belgian or British beers you had to have. Then you would go to the clerk and tick them off on your fingers, "I'll have two of the little Tripel Karmeliets, and a Fuller's ESB, and a Dick's Barley Wine". While you perused the glassware or the British foodstuffs -- banana ketchup??? -- the clerk would rummage around in the back and bring out your beers stuffed into a six-pack holder from some other brewery.

It was a quaint ritual, and they had a good beer selection, but the new location on Stark Street -- not that new, since January 2007 -- is far superior. Now you can pull your own beer off the shelf or out of the cooler! No more head-slapping when you get home and realize you forgot the one beer you went there for; no more buyer's remorse when you get tongue-tied and ask for the wrong bottle. The new place is bigger, too. I mean, you could still fit three Belmont Stations into John's Market over in Multnomah Village, but the inventory is comparable. Belmont may be missing some beers that John's carries, especially at the low end. But there are other Portland International Brewfest sorts of choices at Belmont -- Norwegian IPAs, Belgian Stouts -- that I don't see on the John's Market list.

Another benefit of the new location is the attached pub -- the Biercafe -- including a few tables on the sidewalk. They only have four taps, but they keep them tasty -- or, as the cafe boss Wade put it to me today, "No crap on tap". It's not unusual to see less common locals like Double Mountain or Fort George on tap. Today for local flavor they had the Collaborator Altimate, plus some California and Colorado imports: a 10% HeBrew Ale, Avery Maharaja IIPA, and Six Rivers Kona Porter. That's obscure Green Dragon-ish territory. Way to go, guys! According to the Belmont Station beer blog, the cafe has plans to increase the number of taps to at least 10. That will make it an even more attractive hangout.

If you like the selections on tap, you can get a half-gallon growler to go -- prices depend on the beer. They'll sell you a two-quart mason jar for $3 if you forgot to bring your own jug. And, if you don't like the selections on tap, pick a bottle from the store side, pay a little bit of a markup, and drink it in the cafe. Highly civilized. They also have a curious device called a "surger" that purports to turn a bottled Guinness into a draft-like pint with ultrasound waves. I'm not sure what to make of that; probably if I'm dying for a Guinness I'll go find one on tap somewhere, but maybe someday I'll think of some other beer that I want microwaved.

Belmont Station is truly Southeast Portland's beer geek Candy Store. It's also the place to call if you need a keg of something offbeat -- they'll special order you almost anything in the state.

Hooray for Hopworks!

Procrastination makes the world go 'round. I'm not really accusing Hopworks Urban Brewery of procrastinating, but when Christian Ettinger's pub finally opened yesterday after a year of delays, it definitely drew a crowd. Hundreds of people pressed together drinking beer -- it was like the Holiday Beer Fest with glass mugs instead of plastic. Maybe that's why a keg of Kentucky Christmas was on tap.

We've been getting a taste of Hopworks beer for quite a while now, starting with the classic IPA. Then the winter warmer Abominabale was out at a few places, and more recently it's been possible to find the Lager and the Deluxe Organic Ale around town. HUB is part of the talented Class of '07 Oregon breweries, so expectations were high as we elbowed our way into the grand opening of Hopworks' pub for our Tuesday Pub Night. We were not disappointed, the beers were amazingly good.

Lindsey was executing the Beerfest-inspired maneuver of "get beer; get back in line" when I arrived, so I had a taste of his Kentucky Christmas (bourbon-aged Abominabale, I think) while we waited in line. Dave showed up in time to get in on that first round; miraculously we snagged a booth and crammed in there with Brett and Chris when they showed up. With that kind of manpower, we were able to run through the beers on tap:

• Seven Grain Stout: smooth and rich, with coffee and chocolate flavors
• Crosstown Pale: floral and pretty, maybe even tastier than the IPA
• El Diablo: a Belgian golden ale, strong and delicious
• Cultivator Doppelbock: sweet and malty, right on
• Kentucky Chrismas: warm and tasty
• HUB Lager: I'm not a fan of the style, but it was very drinkable
• IPA: full-bodied, flavorful, classic Portland IPA
  
• DOA: good as always
• Velvet ESB: smooth but a little unremarkable

The IPA has quickly become a well-loved Portland staple, but as good as the HUB IPA is, the first four beers in the list were the big winners at our table. That's four pretty distinct styles, and they were all right on target -- we were astonished that Christian and his assistant brewer Ben Love were able to capture the styles so well. In particular, I almost always wrinkle my nose at micro-brewed doppelbocks, because I can't get that candy-beer taste of Paulaner Salvator out of my mind. But Cultivator -- while not a Salvator clone -- had the sweetness, the roastiness, but not the bad aftertaste that seems to come with U.S. doppelbocks. We complimented Christian on the smoothness of it, and he said, "yeah, it's got some age on it", which Brett interpreted for us to mean that it had been lagering for a long time.

Similarly, El Diablo nailed the Belgian style. Being true to style is one thing, but that's a minor consideration -- the most important thing is that it was delicious, and even "I hate Belgians" Dave was smacking his lips. I really can't think of one defect to report about El Diablo.

In addition to the beers listed above, there were two cask engines, one with DOA and one with IPA. Both are excellent on cask. I mentioned the glass mugs above: honest pint sticklers will be pleased to note that the Hopworks mugs have a 0.4 liter mark on them, about 3/4 inch below the top. Google informs me that 0.4 liters is about 13.5 fluid ounces, so we're probably looking at a 14 or 15 ounce pour here. But the point is, you know what you're getting.

Christian and Ben were working the taps and tables right up until closing time. That's Christian chatting with Lindsey in this photograph (and that's the back of Ben's head). The pub has a great atmosphere -- it will be a little more comfortable when it's a regular-sized crowd -- with high ceilings and a good mixture of booths and tall tables. There is lots of room at the bar, and lots of interesting spaces: an open loft with pinball machines; a semi-private 8-person cubbyhole table complete with a gas lamp overhead; patio areas on the side and in the back. Kids are welcome in the restaurant area and the loft.

For more information on Hopworks, check out John Foyston's recent writeup. Jeff Alworth has some better pictures than I do; I forgot my camera and just did the cellphone thing. It's really exciting to have HUB in the neighborhood, after so much anticipation. It's nice to see that it was worth the wait, they've created a nice space and fantastic beers.

The Draught House, Austin

I found myself in Austin last weekend, not for the South by Southwest festival, but for a friend's wedding. A wedding on Leap Day, another on the Ides of March... I wonder why none of my friends is getting married on April Fool's Day or 9/11. The wedding was lovely, and it was great to visit old friends and fortify myself with Tex-Mex food and a dip in Barton Springs. It was also great to sit outside on a breezy spring day and drink some beer. My friend Lance took me on a Burnet Road pub crawl that ended up at my favorite Austin pub, the Draught House.

It's been a respectable beer bar for decades, but I didn't start going there until the late '90's. A change of ownership had required the new owners at that time to change the name, so they swapped one letter on the sign and called the place the Draught Horse. When they changed the name back to the original "House" a few years ago, it completely flummoxed me, and if I want to invite someone to go there, I just have to say both names because I can't seem to remember which name is current.

It was during the Horse era that they started brewing their own beers, and our regular Austin Pub Night was Thursdays, when the horse -- er, house brews were just $1.75 for a 22 ounce hefeweizen glass. How's that for an honest pint? It was a pleasant 2-mile bike ride through the neighborhood for me, then we would drink our beer out in the parking lot with dozens of other tailgaters because the pub itself was so smoky. This was real craft beer, endearingly inconsistent. Sometimes it was amazingly good, other times embarrassingly bad. But in the bad times, the Draught Horse offered a safety net that I haven't seen at any other brewpub: sixty guest taps. Good ones, lots of classic imports: a couple Paulaners, two or three Spatens, and Newcastle, to name a few.

Things change, of course, but many of the changes at the Draught House are for the better. A city ordinance dragged them kicking and screaming into the smoke-free world, and they added outdoor seating, though tailgating is still a popular option. The guest taps still include plenty of good imports, but also more and more interesting beers from Texas and the rest of the U.S. On the downside, that $1.75 price is long gone, and I was disappointed on this visit to find the 22-ounce glasses had been replaced with 16-ounce fake-imperial-pints (like at Laurelwood). I'm pretty sure they still had the 22-ouncers when I went there last November, so that's a pretty new development.

They've also been tinkering with their house offerings, if my visit yesterday was any indication. I expected to see familiar choices like the Vanilla Porter, or Bedell's Best Brown, or with any luck, the Weizenbock or Marley's Gnarley Barleywine. But I didn't recognize any of the names: Hop Gold, Red Planet, and a Brown and a Pale that I didn't recognize the names of (or write them down). That's OK, I'm up for something new, so I tried the Red Planet and was quite impressed. It was a very hoppy Red Ale, and was easily the best Texas beer I had over the weekend -- I almost thought I was back in Portland. It reminded me of Lagunitas Imperial Red, and was that hoppy, but not quite as heavy -- maybe like if you crossed the Lagunitas with a Laurelwood Red. I'll take Red Planet's ascension as a good omen for the future of the Draught House.

Writing about the Draught Horse/House really brings up a wealth of great memories for me. I won't bore you with talk of the pizza-roll guy, stopping at Ginny's to listen to Dale Watson, or peeing off of a little-known footbridge on the way home. But I will recommend a trip to the Draught House if you're ever in Austin. Oh, and one more thing: don't drink more than one Weizenbock.

The Second-Oldest New Old Lompoc

Continuing our tour of close-in SE brewpubs, we come to the tiny but friendly Hedge House (warning: slooooow website) at 34th and Division. It's walking distance from my house, but just barely. More often I'm hitching up my bicycle to their industrial strength bike rack.

Back in the fall of 2003 we were really excited to read in the neighborhood newsletter that a New Old Lompoc pub was coming to the neighborhood. Being a newly-transplanted Portlander, I didn't have a long history with the original Lompoc on NW 23rd but the neighbors had only good things to say about it. I'd been in to try the hop-bomb C-Note IPA at least, and heard Dave's story about the keg of Lompoc beer with hop twigs still floating in it, so I was looking forward to having a New New Old Lompoc close by.

Somehow we never got the memo when it opened, and it seems like the first time I went in there was the next spring or summer. I asked, "When did you guys finally open?" and got a quizzical look. "Uh, January." Then again, they're not exactly screaming for attention, in an old house set way back from the street, with a small sign in the yard that gives little indication what line of business the house is in. I'm not even sure the sign was there for the first few months; I think you just had to know where it was.

Anyway, now we've found it, and the laid-back people and atmosphere make it a great place to pop in for a fresh beer, especially at lunchtime when it's less crowded. You might have to wait for a seat in the evenings, since the interior only seats about 25 people. There's more seating on the side patio, but only part of it is covered and heated. It's one of the more kid-friendly brewpubs in this part of town, since it's more like a restaurant than a bar, and has reasonable mac-and-cheese and sandwich choices for the young'uns.

The beer selection is much more limited than at the Lompoc flagship -- only 5 or 6 taps -- and they often seem to run out of the seasonals pretty quickly, though they had the Tavern Rat Barley Wine today, very nice. There's no cask engine, but usually either the Sockeye Cream Stout or the Lompoc Strong Draft is on nitro. A big variety would probably just be wasted on me anyway, since it's hard to talk myself into ordering anything but C-Note. Monday is cheap day, $2 pints. Well, Beervana says they're cheater pints, but at least they're cheap and good.

As for food, the sandwiches, soups, and salads are quite good. I especially like the Chop-Chop salad, it's a meal unto itself. Next door is the quaintly continental Pix Patisserie; if the beer selection at the Hedge House doesn't satisfy, Pix has a bunch of clever Belgians in bottles.

I called the Hedge House the "second-oldest" Lompoc, because they've added two more taverns to the family: the Fifth Quadrant Lompoc in North Portland, and the Oaks Bottom Public House down in Sellwood. They're all worth a visit -- particularly the Old New Old Lompoc in NW -- but the Hedge House will always be Home Sweet Home for us here in the southeast.

Set Sail for the Pilsner Room

Since the Hawthorne Bridge is the center of the Pub Night universe, it's about time I got around to writing about the Pilsner Room, the taproom for Full Sail's Portland brewery. After all, you can see the bridge from there, and it's a nice destination if you're on a bicycle, with easy access from Waterfront Park (which also means it's within stumbling distance of the Oregon Brewers Festival). I practically lived there last October because of brewer John Harris' magnificent Lupulin Fresh Hop Ale. So I'll take advantage of writing up Thursday night's tasting of barrel-aged porters and stouts to extol the virtues of the Pilsner Room.

The McCormick and Schmick's restaurant attached to the Pilsner Room provides a menu that's better than the usual pub fare, with good prices at lunch and super-cheap ones at happy hour. There are lots of 2- and 4-seat dining tables -- even more outside in good weather -- and plenty of room at the bar if you're on a solo mission or you just need to be close to the beer. The selection is fabulous: about 10 house brews, 3 cask engines, and another 10 guest taps. Besides the mainstream Full Sail repertoire -- and excellent seasonals like the Slipknot IPA -- there are always three or four rarities from the adjoining brewery, like the doppelbock, or the delicious Belgian dubbel. The guest taps are nicely done, with an interesting variety of quality beers. It always makes me happy to see an out-of-the-ordinary Hale's on tap -- it's the Wee Heavy right now. It's also sporting of them to always keep one of the engines stocked with a guest cask: a Double Mountain Red Ale was on cask Thursday, and I've seen Hopworks and (I think) Ninkasi casks.

Now, about those dark beers. Each year, the brewery takes a portion of their Top Sail Imperial Porter or Black Gold Imperial Stout, whichever they brewed that year, and ages it in bourbon barrels for nine or ten months. Thursday evening they trotted out three different examples: this year's aged Top Sail, a Black Gold from 2006, and a pre-Top Sail Imperial Porter from 2004. The year refers to when they were taken out of the oak, they were brewed the year before.

I don't know who started this scheme of aging stouts in bourbon casks, but it seems to be growing in popularity. My first encounter with it was a bourbon-aged KGB Stout that I had at Widmer's Gasthaus sometime in 2004. This year they're breaking out all over. John Foyston, the beer writer at the Oregonian, pointed out four different barrel-aged releases -- some stouts, some barleywines, some in whiskey barrels, some in wine -- in the space of a couple of weeks. And of course there's Epic and the infamous Abyss. Many of these are blends of aged and fresh beer. As far as I can tell from the Full Sail propaganda, the ones we had Thursday are just the straight-up aged item.

The usual Pub Nighters couldn't make the Full Sail matinee, so I was left on my own for this tasting. Fortunately, there was a friendly and sophisticated crowd sitting at the bar to ooh and ahh over the beers with. These were luscious, tasty brews. The 2004 porter tasted strongly of bourbon -- which could have turned out badly, but didn't. It also had a very strong chocolate taste, again, in a good way. The literature says it's 7.4% ABV; it tasted stronger than that to me, comparable to the 10% of the other two beers. I was pretty sure this was my favorite of the three, but the 2006 stout kept growing on me until I thought maybe that was my favorite. The 2006 was smooth and delicious, with that hint of minty flavor that so many good stouts have. Though the bourbon flavor wasn't as pronounced as with the 2004, it did add a nice touch to a very well-rounded beer. You can't really fault the 2008 porter for coming in third place to its accomplished older siblings. The flavor seemed milder than that of the 2004, and its lighter body made me think "cola". Still a mighty fine porter; I'm going to leave my bottle of it in the fridge for a while to see how it develops.

Good Times at the Green Dragon

Wow! The Green Dragon has really come into its own. Pub night was there Tuesday night for the "Meet the Brewer" session with Ninkasi's Jamie Floyd (more about Ninkasi lower down). It had been a few weeks since I'd been to the Dragon, and I'm really impressed at how it's shaping up. They even have pinball machines.

From Day One, they had an impressive draft beer selection. Actually, it's hard to describe the draft selection, because the 20 taps are always changing, but the consistent thread running through the choices is that every tap is special -- very few of the beers they serve are on tap anywhere else in town. It's serious beer nerd territory here. Not a single tap is wasted on Hef or Black Butte or even Laurelwood Red -- all decent enough beers, but they're available everywhere. At the Green Dragon, the regional beers are often from breweries I hadn't heard of before (!) or, if I've heard of the brewery, the beer style is one that no one else pours. The imports are stylish choices like Dupont's Avec les bons Voeux, or Kulmbacher Schwarzbier, or the J.W. Lees Harvest Ale. I don't really like the J.W. Lees -- too sweet -- but my hat's off to them for serving it.

Last spring the pub night gang was sitting outside of Roots when Lolo, one of the Green Dragon owners, wandered over and gave us some stickers. He told us about the pub they were planning in the old Yamhill Brewing space, including the plan to mostly serve rarities. We were excited to hear about a new place in the neighborhood. But after it opened, I didn't really warm up to the Dragon. The space seemed a little haphazard, and I was concerned that the pretty glasses they sold "pints" in were more in the 12 oz. range. There didn't ever seem to be too much of a crowd in there, and I was afraid the Green Dragon was just going to be a flash in the pan.

I've been straightened out on all three of those quibbles, and now I can picture myself spending quite a bit of time there. The space feels better now, they have more tables than they did, they slapped some brighter paint on the walls, and -- most important of all -- there is a well-lit dartboard set up in a good place. As for the pints, Jeff at Beervana has pronounced the Green Dragon's glasses to hold 15 ounces, which, while not a pint, is close enough for me, given the quality selection and knowledgeable servers. Finally, the crowd that filled the place Tuesday convinced me that they're going to hang in there. Food's good, too. The spicy meatloaf sandwich with gravy and fries set me up pretty well.

Eventually Lolo will be brewing his own beer onsite. Just one more thing to look forward to.

Ninkasi Night

It was nice to meet the Ninkasi brewer, Jamie Floyd, on Tuesday. (He's not in this grainy photograph, that's the pub-nighter table from Tuesday.) As mentioned previously, Ninkasi sprang onto the scene last year with some excellent beers. Jamie says he's happy just being a brewery as opposed to having a pub attached, and it seems to be working out -- the beer is all over Portland now.

The attraction Tuesday was Ninkasi's new Dunkelweizen, which was delicious. It's lighter in color than the typical German Dunkelweizen, but it has the classic yeasty/sour taste and esthery aroma. Higgins has it on tap right now also.

Another nice surprise was Jamie's version of Spank Dog Pale Ale, a recipe from Eugene's Wild Duck Brewery, which must have gone out of business about the time I arrived in Oregon. The Spank Dog was malty and tasty with almost a fruity taste. It reminded me of something I've had, but I couldn't quite put a finger on it.

The Always Reliable Lucky Lab

There's an old Trek hybrid bicycle in my garage that I bought used in Austin in early 1996 when both of my bicycles were stolen within the space of a couple of weeks. I needed transportation right away, and it had to be cheap. Our first baby was on the way, and I was on a grad-student stipend with a social-worker wife. Compared to my beautiful stolen mountain bike -- a 1991 Trek 970 -- the hybrid was a dowdy-looking thing with a dull green paint job and (gasp!) grip shifters.

Even though it was my daily transportation for the next six years, the hybrid never got any respect in our house -- oh, that old thing? I finally moved on to a slicker, faster ride. But as the years continue to roll past, it becomes more apparent that the old green hybrid is a crucial part of the fleet. It gets zero maintenance, but when there's a guest in town, or another bike is out of commission for one reason or another, the Trek comes through for us. It's always there in a pinch.

My feelings toward the Lucky Lab have followed a similar trajectory. It starts a little differently, because I never loved that old bike, but I fell in love with the Lab when we first moved here in 2003. I couldn't believe my luck: a pub in the neighborhood that always had something on cask! The neighbors and I would walk the dogs down there almost every Monday evening for Miser Monday. You can bring the kids to a brewpub? Heaven.

Pretty soon there were pubs serving slicker, faster ales in the neighborhood: Roots and the Hedge House (and now the Green Dragon). And the Lab suffered the same loss of respect as the Trek. To tell you the truth, I think the quality did decline for a little while at the Lab sometime in 2005 -- at least that's the consensus among the pub night neighbors. I don't know if something was going on internally, or if it was just one of those things. At some point we switched pub night to Tuesday to catch the cheap night at Roots.

And yet, the Lucky Lab is always reliable. In good weather you'll be lucky to get one of the tiny picnic tables at Roots or one of the few tables at the Hedge House, but the patio at the Lab seats 200 people and 100 dogs (and the patio now has heaters and rain flaps). The Lompoc beer at the Hedge House is tasty, but they don't have 20 oz. pints or cask-conditioned ale like the Lab does. How about darts? Roots has a board, but there's a table underneath it -- how does that make sense? -- so if someone's sitting there, you're off to the dart room at the Lab.

If you had to assign beer rankings, Roots and Hedge House probably come out higher than the Lab. But the Lab seems to have pulled out of the slump it was in: nowadays you'll find something worth drinking every time you go in. The Super Dog IPA is classic; even better a couple times a year when they brew up "Super Duper Dog", which I guess is the Imperial version. Last year they had another great IPA called Triple Threat, I hope it comes back. I also like Crazy Ludwig's Alt, though I suspect it's about three times hoppier than a German Alt. Black Lab Stout is good, especially on cask, but I don't care for the Irish Stout they serve. I had the Hellraiser ESB today, first time I remember having it. Nice and smooth, maybe a little stronger and more bitter than, say, a Young's ESB.

The Lab always has about eight of their own beers on tap, plus a guest tap, plus a nitro tap and the cask engine. So there's more of a variety going than down the street at Roots or Hedge House, though the Green Dragon slams everyone in the variety category. The food is decent and cheap, there's PB & J for the kids, the dogs are happy, and there's lots of bike parking. The Lucky Lab is always there in a pinch.