2012 Toronado Barleywine Festival Recap

The weekend I recently spent in Oakland happened to coincide with the final days of San Francisco's annual SF Beer Week. That was why Beer Revolution had an L.A. brewery takeover when I was there, and it's also why I was able to partake of some lip-puckering Cantillon drafts -- Mamouche and 2010 Iris -- that Saturday evening at The Trappist.

Another legendary SF Beer Week event is the Toronado Barleywine Festival, and on Sunday morning I couldn't resist heading into the City on BART for that, especially since I knew I was going to have to miss the Lucky Lab Barleywine Festival in my own hometown. Publicity for the event said it would begin at 10 AM, and following the "arrive early" rule of thumb for festivals, I walked past Toronado a little before 10 while searching for some pre-barleywine breakfast. There was already a line of perhaps a dozen people waiting out front.

Now, 10 AM is pretty early to start with the big beers like that, so I was a little relieved when I came back at 10:30 and found that the place hadn't opened yet.  I took my place at the back of the line, and waited until the doors finally opened a little after 11.  My notes say that I tried about 14 of the beers that day though some of those were little sips generously shared by my neighbors at the end of the bar.  My three favorites of the day were:

• Speakeasy Old Godfather 2009
• Emelisse Barleywine
• Stone Old Guardian 2009

All three had that brown sugar note that tastes so good in a big barleywine, with the characteristic alcohol heat.  If you're not familiar with Emelisse, it's a Dutch brewery that is starting to show up more often over here, though I'm more used to seeing their Imperial Stout than their Barleywine.  I'm a little surprised at how much I liked the 2009 vintage barleywines at the festival -- that's pushing the envelope on how long a beer should be aged, in my opinion.  Maybe I need to be more flexible about that.  At the other end of the spectrum, here were three I didn't like:

• Alaskan Rough Draft 2011 -- fruity, too sweet, "tootsie roll"
• Shipyard Double Old Thumper -- too sweet
• Triple Rock Dragonaut -- weak

Getting to the festival early was definitely a good idea.  Sitting at the bar, I was treated very well by the notoriously touchy Toronado staff, who did a good job keeping the samples flowing.  There were two sizes:  small (3 oz.) and medium (6.5 oz.), $3 and $5 respectively, though sometimes the smalls seemed to be as full as the mediums.  Apparently there was a large serving in years past, but experience had proven that to be a bad idea. 

If you go to the fest, remember this trick that Ezra told me about:  bring an empty six-pack holder to carry your samples back to your table, since you'll want to order a few at a time.  It ended up not mattering for me since I found a seat at the bar, but the people with six-packs were definitely having a nicer time of it.

Preview: Lucky Lab Barleywine Festival 2012

[Editor's Note: I'm happy to add Pub Night stalwart Lindsey -- developer of It's Pub Night's Six-Pack Equivalent Calculator Android app -- to our ever-expanding roster of guest writers.  Thanks, Lindsey!]

On Saturday I had the distinct pleasure to represent It's Pub Night at an exclusive event for Portland beer glitterati: taste testing the beers for the Lucky Lab's upcoming Barleywine Festival. Beyonce and Jay Z were there. Jay even had their new baby in one of those front facing slings. True story.

The 2012 Barleywine Festival will be held next Friday and Saturday, March 2nd and 3rd, 2012, at the Quimby Street Lucky Lab, from noon to 10 PM both days.  It's one of the more relaxed festivals in town, and the early Friday opening gives you a great opportunity to beat the crowds if you can make yourself free that day.  Since it's held right in the pub, food, water, and seating are all abundant.

Many of the barleywines at the festival are vintages from previous years, stashed away in the Lab's vaults.  Because the kegs are stored over long periods of time, each one has to be tested to make sure they are still drinkable. That was our job. Unfortunately two or three didn't fare so well and will get dumped.

I recorded 27 different beers and there will likely be a few more vintage editions plus a selection of new beers, which weren't on hand to try.  While no beer is older than '07, each day of the fest will feature a changing set of vertical tastings whenever possible.

Here are a few of my standouts -- you should try them if you attend the festival:

• '11 North Coast Old Stock: very nice and quite sweet
• '10 Ninkasi Critical Hit: mellowing nicely but still hoppy
• '09 Sierra Nevada Bigfoot: aging nicely but still has a nice hop presence
• '10 Anchor Old Foghorn: a longtime favorite of mine didn't disappoint
• '09 Salmon Creek Brother Larry: a nice and mellow trippel
• ?? Terminal Gravity Bucolic: well-balanced hop presence
• ?? Three Creeks Brewdolph: very nice Belgian
• '11 Anchor Old Foghorn: "oh f*** yes"

Thinning Out the Cellar

It's fun to cellar beer.  You get to buy something cool, and you still have it months or years later.  At some point you can amaze your friends by opening that oldie but goodie.

But there are risks involved.  All beer will eventually be too old to drink, even beers that age very well.  You invested some money and some storage space on that beer -- how long is too long to keep it?  I've been known to say that you should drink beer within two years of its bottling.  Of course that's not a hard and fast rule -- on New Year's Eve I cracked a 3-year-old Roots Epic that was truly delightful -- but I claim that aging beyond two years doesn't add much benefit to most beers, and the things that can go wrong start to have more effect.

After an initial excitement about cellaring beer when I started geeking out a few years ago, I'm now at the point where I'm trying to reduce the amount of beer in the basement -- and I'm not a very big hoarder by any means.  One part of that equation is to not keep as much beer -- hey, those big ones age well, but they can be really good fresh also.  The other part is trying to use up more of the bottles I've got.

It seems like I hear more people talking about thinning out the cellar lately.  Is it just me, or are a lot of people having the same idea?  Are you keeping less and/or drinking more of your collection?

Holiday Ale Festival 2011

The Holiday Ale Festival 2011 started yesterday in downtown Portland.  So far I'm much more impressed with the beer selection than I remember being for the last couple of years -- there were some fabulous beers, and very few failures, in my opinion.  Here are a few recommendations of my favorites, in order:

• Firestone Walker 100% Bourbon Barrel Aged Velvet Merkin: the perfect amount of vanilla/bourbon in a robust stout.  A home run.
• Elysian Bye Bye Frost: seriously hoppy yet rather dry barleywine.
• Bear Republic Old Saint Chongo: a strong dark wheat beer, with a tiny hint of chocolate.
• Lagunitas 2010 Olde Gnarly Wine: predictably delicious bitter barleywine.
• Ninkasi The Little One: a small beer from the second runnings of Critical Hit barleywine; hoppy yet light-bodied.  If you like Hair of the Dog's Little Dogs, you should enjoy this, though it's nearly twice as strong.
• Hopworks Kentucky Christmas: no surprise that this is hoppy, bourbony, and delicious.
• Double Mountain Chimney Stout: solid stout with a long, dry finish.
• Burnside Barrel Aged Permafrost:  strong hoppy ale with just a bit of bourbon.

The layout is much like it was last year, but there is a little different feel because the tents are transparent everywhere this year.  It made a huge difference in the southwest corner section, which was gloomy and claustrophobic last year but seems open and airy this year.  If you're looking for the mug rinse/drinking water station, it is tucked away near the northeast exit (near 6th and Morrison).

It's a little embarrassing that my top 4 beers are from outside Oregon, since I'm usually such a reliably provincial hometown booster.  There were several other beers I tried that ranged from not bad to very good, but the ones in the list above really shine.  It's strange, because I am often left cold by Velvet Merkin/Merlin, and similarly for Elysian Bifrost, but the souped-up versions were wonderful.

There are only a few beers I can pan:

• Breakside Cranberry Biere de Table: has a clove flavor I really didn't care for; on the plus side, it uses a nice light touch with the cranberries.
• Fort George Kentucky Girl Stout:  this went a little sour in the barrel, adding a kind of musty, chile-pepper flavor; it wasn't terrible, and you might enjoy the sourness, but I think most people won't.
• Buckman Fruit Cake: Ezra pointed out that this tasted and felt like egg nog; not a great beer.
• Collaborator Hallucinator: Pretty sure I've had this in the past and enjoyed it, but it tasted bland and maybe slightly off to me yesterday.

Great festival this year!  Kudos to Preston and the gang for putting it together.

The Old Tavern Rat

Lompoc is having a party at the Sidebar on North Williams today (November 29, 2011) at 4 PM to show off 9 of the 10 holiday beers they've brewed this year.  There has been plenty of bloggage about the beers -- I'll provide links to everything I know about below -- so I'm going to talk mostly about three Don Younger-inspired beers:  two variants of Old Tavern Rat that Lompoc is releasing, and Russian River's cleverly named Don the Younger, on tap right now at the Horse Brass.

Lompoc has been brewing a barleywine called Old Tavern Rat for well over ten years -- at the 2008 Lucky Lab Barleywine Festival they rolled out a keg of it from 1998 -- and in my experience it has its ups and downs.  This year's batch is fantastic:  a very classic West Coast take on the style, bitter and boozy yet balanced, with notes of maple, orange, and brown sugar.  It was news to me that Old Tavern Rat was named after the late, lamented Horse Brass owner Don Younger, who according to Lompoc owner Jerry Fechter used that nickname as his email address.

But in talking about the bourbon barrel aged version of Tavern Rat, Jerry said Don "would f***in' hate this beer".  Aged for 10 months in Heaven Hill barrels and cellared for a year after that, it definitely is not as balanced and approachable as the "normal" Tavern Rat (which is itself aged for nearly a year, just not in wooden barrels).  If you like lots of bourbon, vanilla, and oak in your barleywine, give it a whirl.  It's better as it warms towards room temperature, but given the choice I would still take the un-barreled version.  The bourbon-aged Old Tavern Rat is available in 22-ounce bottles this year, with John Foyston's oil painting of Don as the label art.

A far different tribute to Don is Russian River's Don the Younger, which is described as a hoppy session ale.  At 5.5%, I think it's a little out of the session range, but it is a lovely beer.  Lots of hop bitterness, on top of a bready malt base, it's both satisfying and drinkable.  Reviews on Beer Advocate tend to call out the floral hops, but I didn't find it to be especially floral.  Despite the name, it's certainly not in the same floral-hop category as Pliny the Younger, or even Pliny the Elder, and that's just fine.  The Horse Brass laid in 24 kegs of it last month on the occasion of the bar's 35th anniversary -- in fact the beer was commissioned by Don before his untimely death last year -- and as far as I know it is only available there and at Russian River's Santa Rosa pub.  If you haven't tried it yet, make a pilgrimage to the Brass and enjoy a pint or two.

Back to the Lompoc holiday beers.  Certainly the Tavern Rats are my favorites of the Lompoc holiday brews, but many of the others are also worthy.  The only two that I would avoid are the Brewdolph -- the yeast gave it overpowering clove and camphor notes that I don't care for at all -- and the Jolly Bock which tastes to me like it was not lagered long enough (it's a little gamey).  It's a shame about the Brewdolph -- the version last year that was partially aged in Cabernet Franc barrels was very charming.

For further reading, here are a bunch of reviews of the Lompoc lineup by local bloggers:

• Portland Beer and Music
• Brewpublic
• The New School
• Not So Professional Beer Blog
• Brewmance NW
• beerdrinker.org
• #pdxbeergeeks (Warning: Courier font!)
• Beervana Buzz
• Beer Musings from Portland
• A Pint for Dionysus

Hair of the Dog Bottle Share at the Commons

As a sort of pre-func for Hair of the Dog's dock sale last weekend, there was a well-attended beer-geek bottle share Friday night at the new Commons Brewery (née Beetje) facility at SE 10th and Stephens.  The dock sales have traditionally inspired impromptu breakfasts and sharing of rare beers as people waited in line, but it's just not possible to do that at the new place at Water and Yamhill.  So HotD owner Alan Sprints looked around for a place to hold a party the night before, and Mike Wright generously opened the doors at Commons.

There were probably a couple hundred bottles opened and shared around: various Hair of the Dog vintages, unmarked homebrews, rare imports, and cult favorites like 3 Floyds Dark Lord Imperial Stout.  If you were standing in the right place at the right time, you might get a little pour of Dark Lord, or some 4-year-old Fred from the Wood, or something sour from Drie Fonteinen.  I brought the Rogue/Voodoo Doughnut Bacon Maple beer that I won a couple weeks ago -- a good thing to share since no one wants a big glass of that but most people would like to say they've tried it.  It was a little too sweet, but wasn't as bad as I'd heard and feared it would be -- actually it tasted a lot like a doughnut.  Definitely worth a try just for the fun of it.  To compensate for that somewhat whimsical entry, I also brought a Rahr and Sons bourbon-aged Winter Warmer that Portland Beer and Music founder Jason Wallace brought me from Texas.  Not that they need winter warmers down there, but it was a solid holiday ale with a nice whiskey/oak touch to it.

For most of us, it was our first look at the Commons.  I don't think the tasting room has regular hours yet, but a few taps were already hooked up, and barrels full of beer were scattered through the room.  There's a nice feeling to the place, and while I wish Mike had kept the funky, unpronounceable Beetje name, it's great to have a new brewery in the neighborhood.  His Belgian-inspired beers have all been very well-made so far, usually on the lower-alcohol end of the scale, and while there are some similarities with Upright's farmhouse line, there are enough differences to keep it interesting. Weekend tasting-room hours should begin before the end of the year.

I didn't have an extra $90 burning a hole in the pocket that made me want to stand in line for a six-pack of Adam from the Wood the next day at Hair of the Dog, though I might have been tempted by sub-$6 bottles of Bourbon Fred from the Wood if I'd known about them. There was a lot of grumbling on Beer Advocate about the poor organization of the sale.  While that's not a big surprise for a sale at Hair of the Dog, I do sympathize with people who were effectively punished for trying to pay with cash instead of plastic: apparently the credit card orders were collected up first, which had the effect that some platinum-plus people further back in line were able to buy Adam FTW ahead of those waving greenbacks around.  That's rather perverse, since card fees take a bite out of the brewery's haul.  But you should also read Jim Bonomo's hilarious rant -- complete with crybaby graphic -- that shows no sympathy for people complaining about the first-world problem of not being able to buy a few bottles of a rare and highly-prized beer.

Sierra Nevada Celebration Vertical Tasting 2011

Saturday my friend Lindsey and I took advantage of a break in the rain and biked over to Woodstock Wine and Deli for WWD's annual vertical tasting of Sierra Nevada Celebration.  I had always been intrigued by the event but never attended, so I was happy to get in on that. Every table in the place was full, but it was never more crowded than that during the time we were there, so the atmosphere was busy and exciting without being uncomfortable.

Celebration is a wonderful beer, the progenitor of the Hoppy Holiday Ale category, though it ticks me off that Sierra Nevada put the misleading tag "Fresh Hop Ale" on Celebration's label again this year when the beer only contains dried hops.  Remember, dried hops are NOT fresh hops, despite SN's wacky definition of "fresh" as dried and shipped within 7 days.  Nevertheless, it is a delicious beer if you like lots of hops and lots of malt, and this year's batch really hit the spot with me.

It seems slightly odd to age a beer known mainly for its hop character, but you'd be surprised how well the hop flavor held up in some of the older batches, and it does give you a glimpse of the year-to-year variation in the hops, since the beer's recipe is the same every year.  WWD tapped kegs from seven consecutive years:  2005-2011.  For the most part, I preferred the newer batches in the tasting, though for some reason the odd-numbered years stood out over the even-numbered ones (Lindsey called this "reverse Star Trek movie ranking"):

• 2011: hoppy and clean
• 2009: hoppy with some oxidation
• 2005: hoppy and surprisingly flowery still
• 2010: hoppy and piney
• 2007: hoppy and a hint of maple
• 2008: hoppy and malty with more oxidation than '09
• 2006: hoppy but it's gone around the bend

I was surprised at how much I liked the oldest beer in the bunch, the 2005, which still had more floral hop notes than I got from the other years.  The 2006 was a dog:  interestingly, way back at the 2007 tasting Dave Selden also panned the '06; reporting on last year's tasting, Lisa Morrison found that the 2005 was off but she enjoyed the 2006.  Go figure.  Among people I talked to at the tasting Saturday, there was a lot of love for the 2008 and 2007 vintages, though they were pretty low on my list.  That's one reason I've been cutting back on my cellaring activities -- you can't go wrong with fresh beer, and there is definitely a tipping point after which even the biggest beer is too old, though the tasty 2005 Celebration shows that it's still a worthwhile experiment to age a few old favorites.

By the way, Woodstock Wine and Deli is an interesting place to shop for bottled beer.  They hide a few beers away and shelve the vintages later at random times.  Saturday there were bottles of Celebration as far back as 1996 for sale; on previous visits I've seen bottles of Bridgeport's Old Knucklehead from the 90's as well.  Even if you don't find that special bottle, they always have three or four decent beers on tap.

Hopworks BikeToBeerFest 2011

I had a nice time Saturday at Hopworks Urban Brewery's bike-in version of Oktoberfest, the BikeToBeerFest  -- the third annual.  They always roll out some special beers for the festival, and this year was no exception, with two fresh hop beers, several barrel-aged monsters, and a few other rarities pouring alongside the brewery's standards.  The gigantic glass that Hopworks founder Christian Ettinger is drinking from contains a special pale ale called Lover Brau, an homage to head brewer Ben Love, who is leaving HUB to help found Gigantic Brewing.  To keep it a surprise, Lover Brau was actually brewed at Golden Valley in McMinnville.

Last year I made a big stink about Hopworks labeling beers "fresh hop" when they contained only dried hops.  This year I'm told that the fresh hop beers really do have some "wet hops" (I hate that silly term) in them.  Perhaps my whining paid off -- I just hope that one day it will be heard in Chico, California.  I thought the true fresh hops really made this year's Fest of Fury Märzen the best batch I can remember.  The Give Me Liberty fresh-hop Pale Ale was also very hoppy and bitter, very good stuff though I didn't pick up much of the fresh-hop flavor.  Hats off to Hopworks for going fresh this year.

At the 2010 festival, the most noteworthy big beer was Piledriver -- Hopworks' dubbel, barrel-aged with cherries and brettanomyces.  It was back again this year, and people were saying it was the same batch, though that seemed strange to me since it didn't look nearly as dark as I remember it -- look at these pictures of it last year over on the New School.  Whichever batch it was, it was at least as good as before -- nice cherries and a little drying funk on top of what was already a nice beer.  I also liked the bourbon barrel-aged Ace of Spades, though several people told me it was too over-the-top for them.  And Kronan the Bourbarian was another fine use of bourbon barrels -- adding a little extra kick to HUB's already potent Baltic Porter.

The beer price scheme has changed every year of BikeToBeerFest.  This year's was the most sensible system yet, so I hope it sticks.  Normal-strength pints were $4, or $2 for a half pour.  Strong beers were $3 for a half pour.  If you remember last year, the choices were either a full pint for $4 or $6, or a four-ounce pour for $1 (even for the $6 bruisers).  The half-pint option this year is a much better option all around.  Also this year there was no charge to get in to the festival, just the cost of a glass and your tickets.

Attendance seemed to be down from 2010.  Just a week ago, we were talking about how the hot weather might have kept people away from the Beermongers 2nd Anniversary Brewfest; Saturday the intermittent rain might have similarly dampened the BikeToBeerFest crowds.  Can we blame the weather, or are we really starting to have beer event fatigue in Portland?  Whatever it was, the bike racks in the lower parking lot were mostly empty during the time I was there, and there was never much of a line for any beer -- not that I'm complaining about that.  Maybe there was more of a crowd after I left.

Bikes and beer -- a great Portland combination, and a great thing to make a tradition of.

Sanjay has a post about the event, including some nice video, over on the Not So Professional Beer Blog.

Session Beers? Or Smaller Pours?

On the plane back from Belgium last week, I read Andy Crouch's opinion piece in Beer Advocate entitled Thinking Small. In it, he discusses America's "Session Beer" movement -- the push for tasty, well-made beers that are nonetheless low enough in alcohol to allow drinking quite a few in a row.  The word "session" comes from the English custom of drinking many rounds of big pints of not-so-strong beer over many hours at a pub.

While Andy doesn't quibble with the worthy goal of having some good-tasting lighter beers available, he thinks that the Session label might be misleading, since most of us don't have the same pub-drinking culture as exists in the British Isles.  In his own words:

In adopting the session moniker as opposed to simply calling their efforts a campaign for lower-alcohol beers, these brewers face target consumers who are not given to long stints in the pub or hours of uninterrupted drinking. Our drinking culture is goal oriented: have a beer to accompany a meal or fill a short window of time after work and before a commute.

His article is a good read, check it out.

Reading it as I returned from vacation in Europe, it made me reflect on the beer-drinking culture I'd seen in Amsterdam and Belgium.  The beers were not low-alcohol -- that's a 10% Westvleteren in the picture above -- but serving sizes were generally very small:  often 25 cl (less than 8.5 ounces) or 33 cl (less than 11.25 ounces).  Instead of simply beating the drum for lower ABV beers, maybe we need to start calling for lower alcohol servings.  If it's a lighter beer, the serving can be larger; if it's a higher-gravity beer, serve it in an appropriate volume.

Now, I've been known to scream for Honest Pints almost as loudly as anyone.  In Portland, that started off more or less as a push for bigger glassware -- the 20-ounce glasses popular at several of the finer pubs in town.  In my mind, though, the emphasis should be on Honest, not Pint, which to me means draft beer is served in glassware with marked volume lines, as it is everywhere in Europe.  That way you know that you received exactly what you paid for.  So "smaller serving" does not contradict "honest pint" -- it just requires marked glassware.

What do you think?  Is it worth calling for smaller beers?  Or just smaller glasses?

Fred Fest 2011

Fred Fest is always a blast; Saturday's celebration of Fred Eckhardt's 85th birthday at Hair of the Dog was no exception.  Perhaps fittingly, a theme that came up again and again in the beers I tried was "Age has been kind to this beer".  It was especially true of the best beer of the night, a 1998 Bourbon-barrel aged Full Sail Old Boardhead Barleywine, which was amazingly flawless so many years later.  But there were four other beers that I have tried at other times in the past year that were noticeably improved after a few months of aging:

• Ninkasi UnconventionALE Imperial Stout: I liked this a lot at the Holiday Ale Fest in December.  Six months later it was even better, a knockout.
• Hair of the Dog Peach Fred from the Wood Barleywine: On a December visit to the tasting room this was unremarkable, not as good as regular Fred.  Saturday it was fantastic: a beautiful blend of boozy bourbon, earthy peach, funky yeast, and bitter hops.
• Sierra Nevada Charlie, Fred, and Ken's Helles Bock: I'd had this twice before: a small taste when Fred brought a sneak peak of it to Fred Fest 2010, and from the bottle when it was on store shelves.  It was pretty good those times, but after about a year in the keg, it's really something.
• Lompoc Franc'ly Brewdolph barrel-aged Belgian Ale: This was tasty six months ago at the HAF and even better now: nice wine and funky yeast flavors on top of a solid Belgian.

Nicole said that bottles of the Sierra Nevada Helles Bock have improved in her cellar also.  It wouldn't have occurred to me to cellar that, but I was impressed by it Saturday.  If you happen to see any stray bottles on the shelf anywhere, don't hesitate to grab them.

Besides the five beers mentioned above, other highlights for me were:

• Hopworks Kronan the Bourbarian barrel-aged Baltic Porter: big bourbon and dark fruit (bing cherry?) notes on top of a big delicious BP.
• Double Mountain Fine Pimpin' Brown ale with cocoa and chiles: one of the lighter beers of the night, it was smooth, spicy, and beautiful.
• Barley Brown's 2010 Havoc Double American Stout: completely opaque black beer: thick, rich, and bitter.
• Midnight Sun Arctic Devil Barleywine: hot, mapley, and thick. I was a little less happy when Charles pointed out to me the acetone nose that came out when it warmed up, but it was still tasty for a giant barleywine.

If humanly possible, get yourself to Fred Fest next year.  Delicious gigantic beers, nice barbecue and other snacks included in the package, and a small, jolly crowd.  Happy 85th, Fred!

Full Sail Imperial Porter

I've stashed my case in the basement, so now I'm going to share with you one of the best beer bargains in Oregon at this time of year:  Full Sail's Imperial Porter (on the right in the photo -- I'll talk about the beer on the left in a minute).  It's under $5 a bomber ($4.25 at Beermongers), and a nice hearty beer to drink right now, but cellar it for a year or so, and you'll have a great beer for any occasion.  It's on the shelves now -- I highly recommend it.  Fresh, there's an angular bitterness to it; it's pretty dry, with very roasty malts and 60 IBUs of hops.  After mellowing out for a year, it gets a little smoother, the flavors meld together, and the chocolate/coffee flavors of the double porter come to the fore.  $4.25 + 365 days = delicious.

The beer in the glass in the photo is actually not the 2011 Imperial Porter I'm praising in this post.  It's the 2010 Top Sail, which is the 2009 Imperial Porter, aged in bourbon barrels for a year before bottling.  Tonight I cracked open a bottle I had in the basement, and it's a boozy, vanilla-y thing of beauty.  I recall it being ready to drink as soon as it was bottled last year, and I can't say that I think its time in my cellar added anything, though it hasn't suffered either.  Here's the thing: when you buy the foil-topped barrel-aged bottle, it's more than twice the price of the fresh porter -- usually at least $11.  It is a fair amount stronger in alcohol at 9.9% ABV vs. 7.5% -- is that due to evaporation/fermentation in the barrel? added bourbon? -- and definitely gains some interest from the bourbon flavors.  Also recommended, but not twice as recommended as the un-barreled one, especially if you give the cheap one a year to age.

As you may know, Full Sail alternates years between releases of the Brewer's Reserve Imperial Porter and the Imperial Stout.  This allows them to barrel-age part of the batch for a year, so in even-numbered years a barrel-aged porter and fresh stout are bottled; in odd-numbered years a barrel-aged stout and fresh porter are bottled.  When I was buying my case at Beermongers, Josh pointed out to me that's another good reason to stock up on this year's porter -- so you can compare it to the barrel-aged version next year.  The barrel-aged ones get special names:  Top Sail (porter) and Black Gold (stout), though apparently in 2007 (and before?) the unaged porter may have also been called Top Sail, judging from this old Beer Advocate page.

For some reason, Full Sail's Imperial Stout -- aged or no -- doesn't grab me like the porter does.  Oh, it's good, but the porter always seems rounder and more chocolatey to me.  Look for it now, and stock up.

Barleywine Festival 2011

I spent an even shorter time than I usually get to at the Lucky Lab Barleywine Festival last Friday, but still had tastes of some amazing beers.  One thing that kept the quality high was that I was lucky enough to sit down with some skilled palates who were about an hour ahead of me, so Ritch, Eli, Sanjay, and Lisa guided me towards the hits and away from the misses.  Don't you love beer people?

As always, it helps to arrive early, though if you only hit the festival once, you'll miss some of the offerings, since they have more kegs than taps. That's part of the fun, though.  The organization was the best I've ever seen at this festival: the program was accurate and complete from the get-go, the beer was at the right temperature, and everything went really smoothly.  Nice work, guys.

Here are my favorites, in order:

• Lucky Lab 2007 Old Yeller: classic gigantic barleywine, light fruits, long finish
• Butte Creek 2007 Train Wreck: bitter, slightly oxidized, delicious
• Ninkasi 2010 Critical Hit: strong, hoppy, well done
• North Coast 2010 Old Stock: too smooth, rounded and sweet
• Laht Neppur 2008 Blackwater: dry, light mouthfeel, mild hops, very nice

Old Yeller is always a favorite, though the early tasters at our table rejected the 2009 barrel-aged version.  The 2007 was exactly what I want in a barleywine, big flavors of every kind, including a kind of caramel or maple sweetness.  The Butte Creek and Ninkasi offerings were in the same vein.  It was kind of amazing how hoppy the Butte Creek still is 3 or 4 years old -- it must have been off the charts when it was fresh.

Old Stock is a little different variation on the barleywine theme, with the hops toned down more like English versions like Thomas Hardy or J.W. Lees.  The 2010 was delicious; I skipped the 2009 on Eli's recommendation.

Laht Neppur has turned in some not-so-good barleywines to this festival in the past, though a year or two ago at the OBF they brought a lighter beer that wasn't too bad.  The 2008 Blackwater at the festival this year was very good, and an interesting change of pace.  Lisa told us that she heard it was brewed with a wine yeast -- the brewer had originally moved to the Walla Walla area to make wine.  I don't know if that was what made it so different, but it was noticeably drier than most barleywines.

The routine was different this year than in the past.  Instead of the pub providing small taster glasses, you bought a little taster glass of your own on the way in, $9 for a glass and two tickets.  Extra tickets were $2 each.  That seems more expensive to me than I remember from years past, but maybe it's just due to the expense of the glass.  The single glass and $2 samples definitely slowed down the pace a little bit, which -- intentional or not -- is a good thing for beers this big.

The near-misses and misses for me this year were as follows:

• Oakshire 2010 Very Ill-Tempered Gnome: very malty, needs more age
• Ninkasi 2009 Critical Hit: cloudy and oxidized, didn't age well even for a year
• Upright 2009 Just Another Strong Ale: dark plummy fruit flavors, but a vinegary taste creeping in
• New Old Lompoc 2010 Upsetter Belgian Barleywine: no, no, no

That only covers about 20-25% of the beers that were at the festival!  For a little extra coverage, check out these wrap-ups from Sanjay and Jeff.  For some past perspective, here are my reports from 2009, 2008, and 2007 (did I miss it last year?).

All Ninkasi, All the Time

It's weird, sometimes the name of one brewery pops up over and over in the course of a few days. Last week, Ninkasi kept invading my consciousness:

• The brewery started shipping 6-packs of Total Domination IPA and Spring Reign Pale Ale.
• The East Burn Beer Belly Dinner for March featured Ninkasi.
• One of my favorite beers at the Lucky Lab Barleywine Festival was Ninkasi's 2010 Critical Hit.

The ticket pictured above is from a 6-pack commemorative party two Saturdays ago.  Heh heh, "drinketfaster".  Take that, Ticketbastard.  I heartily applaud Ninkasi's move to six-packs.  The $12-13 SPE price on Total Domination 22-ounce bombers always rankled me.  It looks like the six-packs are going to have a regular price of about $10, usually on sale at $9?  I'll take it, especially if Believer gets down to that price.  By the way, the other day Zupan's -- which I always think of as having ridiculous beer prices -- had Ninkasi bombers for $3 (SPE $9.82).

A few days after that, this past Thursday, Carla and I went to the Ninkasi dinner at EastBurn, hosted by brewer Jamie Floyd.  If you haven't been to one of these monthly dinners, pick a brewer you like and go to one.  $35 gets you a really nice 5-course meal, 5 or 6 beers, and congenial company on the back porch.  Proceeds benefit Ride On.  Thursday most of the Ninkasi offerings were pretty standard:  Spring Reign, Believer, Total Domination, Tricerahops.  The dessert was served with side-by-side samples of Oatis and Vanilla Oatis, the latter dry-hopped with vanilla beans, which add a delicate sweetness to the already smooth oatmeal stout.  We also got a taste of Ninkasi's 2011 entry in Eugene's KLCC Collaboration -- a sessionable pale ale that Jamie hopped with Hop Union's Falconer's Flight hop pellets.

Friday I snuck over for a brief session at the Lucky Lab's Barleywine Festival.  I hope to write a little more about the fest in a couple days, but as I said above, one of the winners in my book was Ninkasi's 2010 Critical Hit.  It was a classic take, located on the Old Foghorn/Bigfoot branch of the barleywine family tree, with decent but not overpowering alcohol heat and massive hops.  I preferred the fresh article to the 2009 version, which was still good, but quite a bit cloudier and with less distinct flavors (maybe a little oxidation already creeping in also).

Speaking of Critical Hit, I won an EastBurn hoodie at the dinner Thursday night by answering -- close enough -- Jamie's trivia question about how he came up with the name Critical Hit.  Luckily, Jeff Alworth had mentioned that bit of information to me recently:  it's a Dungeons and Dragons double-damage dice roll.  Pretty cool name for a barleywine, actually.  Er, not cool, but apt.

Just four years ago, who could have foreseen Ninkasi's meteoric rise to become the brewery with the biggest-selling IPA in Oregon?  That is, who besides Jamie and company?  Keep your eye on them:  the six-packs are going to propel them even further in their goal of Total Domination.

Pliny the Younger in Portland

[Update (2011/03/08):  From Belmont Station: At 3PM Thursday March 17 we start selling tickets for the Russian River IPA event to take place Saturday. Tickets for the taster flight of Pliny the Younger, Pliny the Elder, and Blind Pig will be $12 (cash only). Tickets can be redeemed any time from Noon - 6PM on Saturday. You may buy multiple tickets for friends but we will only serve one taster flight per person. This will enable us to provide as many people as possible a taste of the Younger, yet keep the atmosphere relaxed. $6 from each taster flight sold will be donated to the Don Younger Foundation (currently being established)." (5-ounce samples)

Whoa -- Roscoe's quietly put on a small keg today. 10-ounce pours for $6. Way to go, guys!]

[Update (2011/03/02): Saraveza will be pouring Pliny the Younger Monday, March 7.  They will sell 80 tickets Saturday, March 5th at 2 PM. 8-ounce pours this time.  They also are going to do flights of bottled Russian River beers in the *-tion series: click the link above for details.  By the way, County Cork served 10-ounce pours for $8.50 yesterday (March 1st).]

Original article:

I can't believe Twitter isn't aflame with the news that John Foyston printed in the paper this morning:  tonight (Friday, February 25, 2011), Higgins Restaurant will be pouring Russian River Pliny the Younger (and its little big brother Pliny the Elder).

It's either because the Oregonian's pitiful website has not published John's print column to the information superhighway yet, or because Ezra decreed that Pliny the Younger is a joke.  I wouldn't say that it's a joke, but I'm not sure yet if I'm going to brave the crowds tonight to get a taste, even though I said two years ago that one shouldn't hesitate to get some of the Younger whenever it's being served.  It is a delicious, intensely flowery, rich and strong "triple IPA".

You should probably expect to pay $7-$8 a snifter for this at Higgins.  They're pretty proud of their beer.  [Update:  Commenter John M. reports it was $8.50 for a 10-ounce glass.  I guess my new algorithm for guessing Higgins prices is { guess the most I would pay; add 50 cents; }.  From the Higgins/Pliny thread on beeradvocate.com: they had a sixth-barrel keg, which is at most 66 servings.  Someone posting on a related BA thread said they were sitting at the bar and watched the keg arrive at 4:20 and blow at 5:26.  Hmm... 66 servings, 66 minutes.  Higgins should have sold it for $11.10, so that 6 ounces would cost $6.66.]

If you have it this year, let us know what you thought of it.

Caldera Old Growth Imperial Stout

Before there was The Abyss, there was Caldera Imperial Stout.  Well, there were other big stouts too, like Widmer's KGB, but in my early days in Portland in 2003 and 2004, I remember discovering Caldera's pitch-black licoricey stout at a lively little neighborhood place called the Buckman Bistro, connected to a fancier restaurant called William's on 12th.  The bistro was decorated with the clever conceit of dozens of picture frames containing only mirrors, and in the winter of 2003-2004 they were pouring an opaque stout with a thick, muddy head, from a brewery in Ashland that had only recently started distributing to Portland.

Caldera Imperial Stout was a revelation: complex, sticky, bitter yet smooth.  After that winter, it would occasionally pop up at the Horse Brass, but it was pretty hard to come by.  I almost wonder if they stopped making it for a few years:  at the Lucky Lab's 2008 Barleywine Festival, there were only older vintages: 2004 and 2005.  Then in the last couple of years the brewery started releasing Old Growth Imperial Stout, and it made a splash at a few big-beer festivals at Bailey's Taproom.  I don't know if it was always called Old Growth or if this is a new recipe, but whereas the main whispered-about adjunct in the early years was brewer's licorice -- remind you of any other imperial stouts? -- the rumor about Old Growth is that it is flavored with peppercorns.

I was excited to see that the brewery bottled Old Growth this year, in bombers that go for $9-$10 around Portland.  It doesn't quite live up to my grandiose memories of it as Abyss' big brother -- a caldera is a kind of abyss, if you think about it -- but it's still a beer I would recommend that you try if you get a chance.  It's less of a dessert beer than older vintages, and I feel like the 8.8% strength is lower than it was back in the day.  From the bottle, it pours with a dark tan head, not too thick, and not as dark as my recollections.  The nose is very malty, but the beer isn't overly sweet.  It has a nice dark chocolate flavor, with a long, moderately bitter finish. I said it wasn't a dessert beer; another way to express that is it's a better beer with a meal than if it was a bigger and richer stout.

Quantities may be limited, so grab it while you can.  Beermongers only had a case last week, though Belmont Station seemed to be well-supplied.

Holiday Ale Festival 2010, Day One

In my Monday preview of Portland's Holiday Ale Festival, my first piece of advice was to bring water, because there hadn't been drinking water or even mug-rinse stations in past years.  This year I noticed a mug rinse counter on my way out of the festival.  It's at the east end of the tent under the exit sign.  I didn't follow my own advice, though, and bought a bottle of water for $1 at the festival.

Water is one thing.  What about beer?  For one thing, the temperature situation is much better than last year -- the beers are not being served ice cold.  Last year's weather was partly to blame, but I think they just got their act together better this year.

I was only at the festival briefly yesterday, and used 2 of my 10 tickets on a taste of Firestone Walker 14 (mmm....).  But I have a couple of recommendations for you from my 8 other tickets (in addition to my earlier beer recommendations):

• Collaborator/Widmer Aegir's Cauldron: Very rich, dark brew with nice notes of coffee, chocolate, and vanilla.  Didn't seem like a Baltic Porter as labeled, but delicious.
• Lagunitas Brown Mashuggana: A "digestif" meme about this beer that apparently Charles started is right on the money.  If a shot of Amaro Averna dropped into a strong Lagunitas barleywine sounds good to you, you'll love it.  Nice herbal flavor, appealingly sweet, nice hop finish.
• Eel River 2009 Climax Noel: This is a big, rich, double red.  It started off strangely medicinal to me, but as it warmed up I really liked it.
• Firestone Walker Barrel-Fermented Porter: Good beer for pacing yourself -- under 6% ABV.  A very flavorful, roasty porter.
• Widmer Black Dynamite:  I only had a sip of Charles' sample, but the lemon and peppercorns really came out in the flavor, without clobbering you.  I'm going to try more on my own dime today.

My two slight disappointments from yesterday were Stone's Smoked Vanilla Porter and Lucky Lab's Pavlov's Imperial Stout.  They were both OK, but not as good as I'd hoped.  Sometimes I love Pavlov's, sometimes it doesn't hit me, though it sure looked beautiful in the mug.  The Stone was also drinkable, but a little tame on any kind of flavor.

Hey, where is Rogue at this festival?  No beer, and they aren't even there with pizza and condoms like they always are.  You can't tell me Buckman Village's Ginger Beer is the best they can do for a big winter beer.

There are two three exciting special tappings today (Thursday the 2nd) that you should not miss:

• Deschutes Jubel 2000: Not Jubelale -- Super Jubel like the Jubel 2010.  Only 10 years older.
• Cascade Sang Noir 2009: My recollection of this from last year is that it was much funkier than this year's version.  I liked it then, but I like the 2010 more than my memory of the 2009.  This years also seems to have more cherry taste.  So it will be interesting to try them side-by-side.
• Brauerei Schloss Eggenberg Samichlaus 2005:  Preston must have been a very good boy in 2005, because he's wheeling out another keg of this massive 14% doppelbock from Austria.  Maybe you remember it from HAF 2008.  It's a stunner.

The special tappings cost 2 tickets for a sample, and they happen at 2 PM in various locations:  check this map.

Have fun and maybe I'll see you there!

Preview: Holiday Ale Fest 2010

It's hard to believe that it's already time for Portland's Holiday Ale Festival, which runs this Wednesday December 1 through Sunday December 5. This year, there are 47 beers on the "standard release" list -- though they're anything but standard -- bolstered by a few one-offs on the limited release list. There are more interesting and once-only beers than you'd suspect could fit into Pioneer Courthouse Square. If you don't attend the Holiday Ale Festival, then the terrorists win.

The price has gone up $5 since last year: you'll pay $25 to get your plastic mug and 10 tickets. Additional tickets are $1, and as always they will not fill mugs from earlier years. If you're really stingy, the festival website has a link to buy a ticket in advance for $20, but since that also includes a $2.60 "convenience fee", it seems a little silly. Or, if you're a real sucker big spender, you can buy a mug, 20 tickets, and a VIP wristband for $49.60. The VIP band doesn't get you any different beers, it just lets you cut to the front of the line, provided you can elbow through the boneheads that get their beer and then just stand around in front of the counter.

Here is your survival checklist for the HAF:

• Bring lots of water. In years past, there hasn't been free tap water, though you can buy bottled water.
• No minors allowed. Period. Don't even try it.
• Entrance is on SW 6th Avenue.
• Go early. The space is pretty small and fills up quickly after work. The festival opens Wednesday at 2 PM, and at 11 AM on the other days.
• Keep watching for the special tappings. Even the regular beers are special, but some of the special ones are really something.
• Don't drive. The beers are strong, the parking and traffic are ridiculous. Best bet for bike parking: NE corner of Broadway and Morrison.
• Warm up your beer. These are some flavorful beers, but because of the weather they can't help but be poured awfully cold.
• Samples, not full pours. A full pour is between 3 and 3 1/2 times the volume of a sample, but costs 4 times as much. Typical bass-ackwards festival pricing.

As always, there is a stunning lineup of beers, and I say that without having seen the one-off list yet. Festival impressario Preston Weesner presented a few of the festival beers at a media preview yesterday. Here are my favorites from what we sampled:

• Cascade Brewing Sang Noir: A rich bourbon-aged cherry double red ale. Sour, but only in a good way, with lots of malt and fruit to back it up. Even better than last year's Sang Noir: there's more cherry and less funk. [Update: Oh cool! The 2009 version will be on the special taps Thursday after 2 PM. Compare the vintages.]
• Columbia River Brewing Paddler's Porter: Well-done chocolate-vanilla porter -- no really, it's good -- from the folks who took over the old Laurelwood Pizza location.
• Lompoc Franc'ly Brewdolph: A twist on Lompoc's usual seasonal -- partly aged in wine barrels. Think aged Jubelale, with a Belgian nose and a hint of red wine.
• Alameda Papa Noel's Moonlight Reserve: Good NW winter warmer with roasty bitterness. Like a slightly richer Full Sail Wassail.
• Coalition Lost Glove: Another classic cold-weather beer. Malty, hoppy, straddles the line between old ale and barleywine.
• Vertigo La Nina: A coffee porter. Big coffee smell; mild coffee liqueur taste.
• Gilgamesh Cranberry Saison: I was dubious about cranberries in beer, but this was just right. A little fruit, and I think the cranberries were a nice cover for the saison funk. This will be a nice change-of-pace beer.

Some beers that I was a little disappointed in:

• Block 15 Figgy Pudding Olde Stock: Lovely fig/molasses aroma, but I found the flavor too boozy, and surprisingly bitter. Not bad, but couldn't live up to its hype. You're going to try it anyway, maybe you'll like it more than me.
• Bear Republic Ebeweesner Scrooge: A blend of smoked and sour beers, partially open-fermented, with every kind of alcohol-producing critter thrown in. But for all that effort, not much flavor beyond the raspberry tartness.
• Seven Brides Weezinator: I thought this was way too bitter for a doppelbock, even though I like doppelbocks and bitter flavors.
• Natian Old Grogham: A big strong IPA, starts off nice, but has too much lingering aspirin bitterness. Think Lagunitas Undercover Brown + aspirin.

Don't take my word for it. Here are some other previews:

• New School
• Brewpublic
• Portland Beer and Music
• Not So Pro Beer Blog
• 999 Beers

I'll put up more beer opinions once I get to the festival. There are a lot of intriguing things on the list. What's on your list to try?

Mikkeller Beer Geek Brunch Weasel

A few weeks ago at Belmont Station I tried Mikkeller's Beer Geek Breakfast Stout for the first time and really enjoyed it, even during the nighttime.  So when I saw that Portland bottle shops were getting bottles of the over-the-top variant called Beer Geek Brunch Weasel, I went ahead and splurged for one. I've always wanted to be able to say I've tried the expensive Vietnamese coffee that was picked out of civet cat droppings, but it was unlikely that I would overcome my cheapness enough to ever buy even a cup of the coffee. Beer is another matter, and I set my parsimony aside to be able to try this rare beer made with rare coffee.

It turns out to be quite a different beer than the Breakfast Stout -- about 50% stronger at 11% -- but still with that smooth oatmeal stout goodness, pleasantly medium-bodied despite its strength. The coffee flavor is strong but not overwhelming; in fact as you roll it around in your mouth there's a very nice chocolate flavor, quite a bit of hop bitterness, and an earthy sweetness that had me thinking maple. I knew maple wasn't quite the right way to describe it, and now that I've read a few Beer Advocate reviews of Weasel which mention "dark fruit", I realize that "prune" would be a good description if prunes had a better reputation, so I better say "dried plum". Split between three people, it made a nice after-dinner beer.

If you don't know much about Mikkeller, it's a one-man brewing operation... without a brewery. His brews are done on an itinerant basis at fine breweries around Europe and the U.S. The Beer Geek line of stouts is done at Norwegian brewery Nøgne Ø, whose awesome imperial stouts and porters are available in bottles around town. As near as I can tell, Nøgne Ø is pronounced "Nerg-nuh Er" (maybe it's "Nern-yuh Er" -- anyone know for sure?).

Does the special weasel-excrement coffee make a difference? Mikkel the brewer admits that -- while the coffee is excellent -- it's something of a gimmick to use it instead of some other good coffee. Next time I have a hankering for a Mikkeller coffee stout, I'll probably go with the cheaper Breakfast Stout. The Weasel price is about one and a half times that of the Breakfast; there's no denying it's a more complex beer, but I don't think I got 1.5 times the enjoyment out of it. And speaking of costly gimmicks, there are even two bottlings of Weasel that were aged for awhile in Scotch whisky barrels. I doubt I'd pay the ransom for one of those bottles even if I had the chance, but I admire the audacity.

Weasels and beer, where have I heard that before? Oh yes, a couple of friends in Austin called their homebrewing operation Weasel Breweries long before any of us had heard of coffee that came from the wrong end of a weasel. Trendsetters? Or just too much time on their hands?

Where Angels Fear to Tread

This week I was in the Silicon Valley for work. Not my favorite place in the world, but I was determined to make the best of it. The rental car place had upgraded me from a Hyundai to a Cadillac, so Monday evening I decided a drive to Santa Cruz was in order. Beermapping.com recommended that I hit Red Restaurant, and I was really glad I did.  The place had a great laid-back atmosphere with lots of couches spread out around a cozy room, and a wonderful tap list of about 30 beers  The goblet of Lost Abbey Angel's Share in the picture only set me back $5.50.   Friendly service and serviceable food rounded it all out.  If you're headed there, don't be confused by the ground floor -- a burrito place and a smoky bar called the Red Room -- find the stairway outside that leads upstairs to the Red Restaurant.

That Angel's Share was a thing of beauty:  dense toffee flavors with a boozy brandy edge, balanced with unobtrusive hops.  Despite what a big beer it was, it wasn't at all cloying.  I would have drunk one after the other if I didn't have to steer a land yacht 40 miles through the rain on winding mountain roads to get back to my motel.  Back at the motel, a Unibroue Maudite -- a Belgian-style beer that I usually love, and which garners an A- on Beer Advocate -- seemed syrupy and one-dimensional compared to the memory of the Angel's Share.

Tuesday evening I took Caltrain up to the City to hang out with our friend Andy and check out a couple of North Beach places that I hadn't been to.  La Trappe is a Belgian-themed beer-snob favorite that I was embarrassed to have missed during our family vacation in March.  With my sights set on La Trappe, Beer Advocate came up with another North Beach gem to try: Kennedy's Irish Pub and Curry House.

Kennedy's has a respectable 30-some-odd beer taps, but I was also interested in the Indian-food angle of the place.  I figured the menu would consist of British-inflected curries, but when we got there I was surprised to see that in addition to the standard fare, they also served South Indian dosas and utthappam.  This was a bit of overkill for me -- I had already had a huge pesarattu dosa with upma for lunch that day at Dosa Place in Santa Clara -- but there is so little in the way of good South Indian food in Portland that I was happy to repeat myself.  The Kennedy's dosas were not exactly kosher: in fact we ordered a spicy chicken dosa and a lamb utthappam.  Those are odd variations on a basically vegetarian cuisine, but they were tasty enough and a welcome departure from usual bar food.  If you go there, one dosa is enough for two people.

The schizophrenia at Kennedy's doesn't end with the Irish-Indian juxtaposition.  There's also sort of a sports-bar vibe to the place, with TVs in every corner, and pool, foosball, and air hockey.  Andy was excited when we ambled up to the door -- "This is one of the last bars in San Francisco that has air hockey," he said.  If that wasn't enough, on our way out we discovered that one room in the place is now a wine bar with rotating exhibits of modern art, and local meet-the-winemaker events.  With something for almost everyone, Kennedy's is definitely a place to check out.

Full of spicy food, Andy and I made our way over to La Trappe.  There was a kind of resonance with my Red Restaurant experience:  the cellar dining area of La Trappe has a similarly dark and relaxed ambience, and even has a little candlelit cove of couches and coffee tables if you are just there for a beer or two as we were.  What really resonated with me was that they also had Angel's Share on tap, though at a more diabolical big-city price of $8, for a less generous pour than the one I had the night before in Santa Cruz.  I was really happy to get another shot at such a wonderful beer that isn't available in Portland.  Andy ordered a Kwak that was served in one of the more ridiculous pieces of glassware ever seen -- a round-bottomed beaker that rests in a cheesy wooden stand.  Good beer, and a really fine atmosphere that left me wishing I had more time and money to spend there.

The beer tourism was a welcome relief from the woes of business travel.  I highly recommend La Trappe and Red if you find yourself in SF or Santa Cruz respectively, and Kennedy's is a fun, funky place that I expect to return to again.  And take as many shares of Angel's Share as you can get -- it's a stunner.

Fred Fest 2010

About 11 months from now, when you're asking yourself, "Self, should I pony up the $X to go to Fred Fest this year?", make sure that you do whatever it takes to make yourself answer in the affirmative.  This is the kind of right-place, right-time beer festival that you should absolutely attend if at all possible.  I'll remind you of a few of the good reasons:

• It's your chance to chat with craft beer legend Fred Eckhardt, and pick up some of his off-the-cuff homespun wisdom.
• You get to taste several one-off or otherwise rare beers, limited only by the laws of supply and demand.
• There is copious excellent food prepared and served under the supervision of Hair of the Dog brewer Alan Sprints.
• You'll be surrounded by a jovial and convivial crowd that is dense with Oregon brewers, publicans, retailers, beer experts, and beer scenesters of all stripes.
• All proceeds go to charity.

Last year I was on-the-ball enough to jot down a couple of the witticisms that Fred tossed my way; this year I failed to take notes of that kind, but just talking to the man for a minute or two put a smile on my face and put a new perspective on whatever mundane worries were in the back of my mind.   Go to Fred Fest, be patient, and at some point you'll get a minute to talk to Fred.  He doesn't have a halo, but he's something of a saint, or maybe a Zen master, but not the kind of Zen master that cuts your fingers off.

One of the most ridiculously rare beers this year was a keg of Wild Duck Barleywine brewed in 2003 by the late, lamented Glen Falconer.  As if that wasn't enough backstory, the keg had been stashed away by the similarly late and lamented Toby Day.  With no disrespect intended at all, Brian pointed out that this beer was really a Double Dead Guy Ale.  It was the first beer that many people headed for at the festival, and it was worth it -- a classic strong barleywine, with lots of hops, a brown-sugar palate, and a little bit of papery oxidation.

Another once-in-a-lifetime beer was brought by Fred himself, and if you were standing in the right place, at the right time, you got a taste of it.  Here's Fred's description of it:

I have two big gallons of Sierra Nevada pilot brew on their Thirtieth Anniv.... Charlie Papazian and I were s'pozed to have designed this beer for Ken, but Charlies plan was way beyond mine. This is a magnificant, but very dark, Helles-bock lager. 16.8Plato, 7%abv, 35ibu.

As you can imagine, once Fred's growler was opened, it went fast, but most of the people who got their tasting glass underneath it were generous and poured it around for other folks.  In fact, that's how I got a taste, and I am forever grateful to the young fellow -- a complete stranger to me -- who kindly slopped half his glass into mine.  It was an interesting brew: grainy (like you'd expect a Helles-bock to be) with mildly citrusy hops.

I foolishly missed the Firestone Walker Parabola and the Rock Bottom 3-5 year old Maude Flanders, but here were a few other noteworthy beers:

• Deschutes Wood-Aged Double Black: strong, slightly tart, and malty
• Barley Brown's Cherrywood-Smoked Rye Whiskey Beer: mesquite smoke, like candied BBQ pork
• Cascade The Vine 2010: smooth delicious winey sour (Sharon said it was like a stronger Berliner Weiss)
• Bridgeport 2008 Fallen Friar: sour wine notes, smooth, floral yeast (2 years aging has helped this a lot)
• Bend Brewing Rocksy Stein Lager: bitter, caramelly lager -- I'd been wanting to try this lager brewed with hot stones for a long time.

This was also a first glance at Hair of the Dog's new location at Water and Yamhill.  There's definitely still work to be done there, but there are at least three exciting things about the new place:  1. Alan is no longer renting: he owns the building; 2. There will be a Hair of the Dog pub for the first time; 3. It's a lot easier to get to than the old super-secret location.  It looks like there's quite a bit more space there also.  Very exciting.

For further reading: check out Angelo's writeup at Brewpublic, Jeff's at the Beer Cave, and Lisa's at the Hop Press.  And remember:  next year when faced with the question of whether to go to Fred Fest, don't even hesitate.