My New Glassware

It all started in May, when Carla and I finally visited the Brewers Union 180 Pub in Oakridge.  Oregon's only 100% Real Ale pub also serves tactlessly honest pints.  A beer glass at Brewers Union is not only shaped like an English pint glass, it doesn't only hold an imperial 20-ounce pint of beer, it is marked with a 20-ounce fill line that also leaves room for a head.  The pub sells them for 10 bucks each, so even though I have been instructed to reduce the number of logo-bearing beer glasses on our shelves at home, I just had to bring one of these beauties home with me.  As you can see from the picture, if you're careful and slurp off some of the head, you can fit a 22-ounce bottle of beer into a gigantic BU180 glass.  Brilliant.

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Then I transgressed further.  For a long time, I have admired the hefty goblets that Rogue pubs use to serve some of their bigger beers.  At one of Rogue's "garage sales" this summer I finally treated myself to a pair of them so I could feel kingly when drinking beer at home.  I really enjoy these goblets, but they don't hold much -- 10 ounces at best.  That can often be a good thing, though it would be nice if a whole 12-ounce bottle could fit in one.

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Then I got goblet envy once more in early August when I was at the Black Star Co-op Pub and Brewery in Austin.  They were serving some beers in giant fishbowl goblets that weigh about two and a half pounds and hold at least 16 ounces.  They didn't bear any logo, and they weren't for sale as souvenirs, but my friend Brady took note of my excitement over this Holy Grail-shaped vessel.  When he saw several of them for sale at an estate sale shortly thereafter, he bought them up and was kind enough to give me one.  This is the glass I reach for first nowadays, though the huge surface area and heavy weight means I tend to slosh a bit of beer on my feet if I'm walking back to my house after filling it up at Dave's kegerator next door.

Cheers!

Brewers Union Local 180 - Oakridge, Oregon

Finally! Only four years after the one-of-a-kind Brewers Union Local 180 opened in the out-of-the way location of Oakridge, Oregon, I finally paid a visit this week and was able to sample a range of brewer Ted Sobel's cask-conditioned beers in their native habitat.

In case you're not familiar with Brewers Union, it's a pub which brews and serves "real ale" in the sense of England's Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA).  Ted brews beer in 2-barrel batches -- that's British imperial barrels, about 2.8 Yankee barrels -- conditions them in firkins, and serves them at cellar temperature in 20-ounce imperial pints.  The small batches are open-fermented, typically between 4% and 5% ABV, and drawn from the firkin with hand pumps.  So, the proprietor must be a homesick British expat, right?  Er, no, but he did learn the trade during a stint a few years ago at a Lake District pub called the Woolpack Inn.

There were only four house-made beers on the pumps Monday when Carla and I were in Oakridge, all delightful:

• Wotcha Best Bitter - 4.3%: smooth and honeyed, balanced with a touch of earthy hops.
• Good With Bacon Special Bitter -  4.9%: light caramel flavor, nice balance of bitterness.
• 3 Sigma Out IPA - 5.3%: beautiful floral aroma, light body, long hop finish.
• Cumbrian Moor Porter - 4.8%: smooth and roasty without being charred; full-bodied but not cloying.

I enjoyed all the beers, but Wotcha -- this batch made with Mt. Hood hops -- was the standout and I came back to it again and again.  It might have an alcohol content lower than Budweiser, but it was packed with flavor.  Ted credits the Maris Otter malt from Thomas Fawcett with the great taste.  Northwest aroma hops in most of the beers provide a nice counterpoint to the otherwise studiously English recipes and presentation.  The food menu, too, is more Oregon than England, though there is an obligatory fish and chips plate (I got mine with sweet potato fries).

The usual IPA -- Union Dew -- was out when we were there, but a fifth pump had on a nice malty cask of Block 15's Ridgeback Red -- at 6.3%, pretty potent compared to the BU180 beers.  There are always a few guest kegs of "regular beer" on tap for non-believers. Monday's guests were Oakshire Domaine du Lane Saison, Oakshire Watershed IPA, Seven Brides Chocolate Stout, and Hale's El Jefe Hefeweizen. There was also a cider on tap from Wandering Aengus, and a mead from Eugene's Blue Dog Meadery.

A lot of attention goes into the brewing, storage, and serving of the ales, but Ted says the important thing about Brewers Union is that it provides a space where people can get together and socialize.  He is a very hands-on publican, mingling with the customers, and getting to know them by name.  I once needled him for setting up such an idiosyncratic pub pretty much in the middle of nowhere -- Oakridge (pop. 3220) is the only incorporated city in Oregon that lies entirely within a national forest -- but his response was simple:  "Every town needs a pub".  It is a cute little town, surrounded by miles of beautiful scenery, and now that I've seen it, I do think it's a great place for a pub. If you ever have the time, take the hour's drive out from Eugene and experience it for yourself.

Cheater Pints Must Die

This picture illustrates what a menace cheater pints are, though I wish it had a better view of the glass bottoms.  These are two sibling 12-ounce bottles of Deschutes Red Chair, one poured into the cheater pint glass on the left, the other poured into the 16-ounce pint glass on the right.

For some reason the pint glass pour didn't get a head on it, either because there was water (soap?) on the glass, or because I instinctively used the no-head pour I learned in college instead of the modern beer-geek style.  But look at Dave's cheater glass.  If you get a cheater pint with a one-finger head that reaches the rim, you've been served a 12-ounce beer.  Cheater pint + head = 12 ounce beer.

Cheater pints must die.

In related Honest Pint news:

• Jeff has local news video from my dear home state of Oklahoma, where some local ladies sporting pink Honest Pint Project T-shirts are patrolling the bars of OKC.
• Alan ran across an article in PMQ Pizza Magazine -- too much free time, Alan? -- advising pizzeria owners to take advantage of the "evolution of the 14-ounce pint glass".
• The purveyor of the most honest pints in Oregon, Ted Sobel of Brewers Union 180, is in Portland for rare appearances tonight (Thursday, May 27) at the Green Dragon, and tomorrow at Belmont Station.

Since Ted's cask beer is only available in Portland when he himself delivers and serves it (!), you should try and get out to one of these tastings if you can.  Too bad the Green Dragon doesn't serve honest pints -- at Ted's pub in Oakridge the English pint glasses have a fill-line marked at 20 ounces -- but at least you're guaranteed 16 at Belmont Station.

The Cask Saga Continues

As part of my obsession about the correctness of cask ale in Portland, I resolved to go sample some of the cask nectar at Rock Bottom. If you're skeptical of chain pubs, I understand, but Van Havig brews brilliant beer at the Portland RB branch, very worthy of your patronage. In particular, the cask-conditioned ales are treated with appropriate care at Rock Bottom. Just make sure you sit at the bar when you visit -- most of the waitstaff is in an extreme state of blissful ignorance about the beer, but the folks behind the bar will keep you informed.

Charles was good enough to meet me there for lunch yesterday. Unfortunately, only one cask was pouring -- the Amber Ale -- and Charles and I got the last two pints of that. I asked, "Oh, are you going to throw another one on?", a trick question that was correctly answered "No". I should have followed up to find out how long they do let the casks settle before serving, but I can only think of one trick question at a time. The Amber Ale was lovely, a little nutty and sweet, like an ESB with a little more floral hops. Quite a head on it for a cask ale, maybe because it was pulled through a sparkler.

As you can see from the picture, the Rock Bottom setup is with real firkins, with filtered air coming in the top, as opposed to pumping beer out of a standard-issue keg. What got me jonesing for a Rock Bottom cask ale was this article on the Brewers Union 180 Blog, about the first firkins Ted has allowed to be served by someone other than himself. Block 15 in Corvallis has met his stringent handling requirements, so he sold them some of his ale after they sold out of their own cask-conditioned offering. The Block 15 blog itself has a very nice writeup of their cask system. Give it a read. Kudos to both pubs -- I've got to hit the road soon and visit them in person.

Back to Rock Bottom: they are serving a fabulous barrel-aged version of last year's Anniversary Ale (an Imperial IPA). Aged in Woodford Reserve barrels, tons of vanilla and bourbon flavor on top of a very lovely beer. This year's Anniversary Ale is also on tap, but wasn't very impressive. However, the Black Peter -- labeled as a Belgian Porter -- is wonderful. It's got the delicious Belgian floral-yeast flavor on top of a dark, strong, smooth porter.

Your Thoughts on Cask Ale

If you're a good beer geek -- in the U.S., anyway -- you are always on the lookout for beer "on cask". You hope for a more flavorful experience: warmer, flatter beer that the bartender has to laboriously pump into your glass with the big porcelain handle mounted on the bar.

Two recent internet articles have me pondering the state of cask beer. One is by Ted Sobel -- the brewer/publican of Brewers Union Local 180, an all-cask-ale brewery in remote Oakridge, Oregon -- explaining on his blog why he won't let the beer he brews out of his sight. Shortly after Ted's post, Beer Advocate asked its readers for their opinion on this question: (paraphrasing) is cask beer done right in the U.S., or are those pumps just a gimmick?

In Great Britain, the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) promotes this particularly English way of producing and serving beer. There's special emphasis placed on the condition of the beer: the publican has to cellar it while it finishes fermenting, then let it settle after he jostles it up to the serving area, then make sure it is served at the right temperature, while it's still fresh.

Here in Oregon, there are cask engines in more and more pubs, even places that don't cater exclusively to beer nerds, for example Beulahland and Bar Avignon. Ted's post was skeptical about such cask offerings:

The contents of the kegs are dubiously named cask-conditioned beer, which in many cases simply contain ale destined for keg that has been drawn off from the fermenter and primed in the cask (keg).

Now, to my mind, that's good enough. It would not be good enough if it were just an ordinary keg of beer, not re-fermented in the keg. But if the keg is conditioned, it's legit, right?

Bridgeport immediately came to mind as a place in town that serves cask-conditioned beer, and is probably doing it the right way. So I emailed Karl Ockert to ask him about their process. He replied:

We currently have three engines pulling from firkins at both our brewpub on NW Marshall St and the Alehouse on SE Hawthorne. Our cask ales are my beer of choice when I go down at the end of the day to our pub for my pint. And yes we have the stillage racks, spiles, keystones, cask breathers, etc.

And Bridgeport's cask ales are definitely a treat.

But I'd like to hear from all of you out there, especially if you work at a brewery or a pub that serves cask-conditioned beer. My questions are:

• What places in Portland serve cask ale correctly?
• What places in town are faking us out?
• What places have cask ale, but in poor condition?
  
• Can "ale destined for keg" qualify as cask-conditioned?
• What about Beer Advocate's question: is cask just a gimmick?

Honest Pints

I was tickled today to notice that the Portland Deschutes Pub now has a 0.5 liter fill line -- 16.9 ounces -- on their Irish-style pint glasses. Not only that, but their skinny half-serving glasses have a 0.3 l marker, and their tulip-shaped snifters have a line at 0.4 l. Admittedly, it's been a few weeks since I've been to the pub, but this seems like a new development. Thank you, Deschutes! You join the elite ranks of Belmont Station (0.5 l marker), Hopworks (0.4 l marker), and Brewers Union (20 oz. marker) who have a fill line marked on their glassware. Anyone else out there?

Marked glassware is really the way to go. I'm a big fan of Jeff Alworth's Honest Pint Project -- I even bought the T-shirt -- but Jeff doesn't require the glass to be marked, just that it have room for 16 ounces of beer:

The criteria for certification is simple: the pub must serve at least 16 fluid ounces for beers it labels “pints.” If the glass holds more than 16 ounces, fantastic. For certification, though, it must serve at least 16 ounces. You have to confirm this by measuring.

I get Jeff's honest pint point: if it's called a "pint", it should be 16 ounces. But that scheme goes too far, and not far enough. What I mean is, you'll rarely get 16 ounces of beer in a serving at Hopworks, but you'll know that you got at least 0.4 liters (13.5 ounces) if the beer is up to the fill line. On the other hand, a place might get certified by the HPP based on a picture of one instance of 16 ounces of beer, but how can you know how much you got in the glass you just ordered?

It's a minor quibble. The real villains are those establishments who serve "pints" in 14-ounce shaker glasses. Then you think you've got a pint of beer, but you're probably somewhere around 12 ounces. There's a one-syllable word for such a business practice: fraud. There's no enforcement against such short-changing, even though it's clearly proscribed by Oregon's Weights and Measures law:

618.096 Prohibited acts involving commercial weights and measures. No person shall:
...
(5) Sell, offer or expose for sale, less than the quantity the person represents of any commodity, thing or service.

Kudos to Deschutes for their new transparency. Support your local pub, and support the Honest Pint Project.

OBG Firkin Fest 2009

Carla and I had a nice time at the Oregon Brewers Guild Firkin Fest Saturday at the Green Dragon. Thirteen cask-conditioned beers poured by gravity from the keg; two more beers pulled through sparklers on Brewers Union proprietor Ted Sobel's nifty mobile beer engine. I had missed Portland's first firkin fest last year, glad I got in on the second annual this year. We went to the first of the two limited-attendance sessions. It didn't look like all 200 spots in our session were filled, which made for a very relaxing event: no lines, no waiting, no jockeying for tables. What was the second session like?

There wasn't a bad beer in the house, but some of them were positively beautiful. My favorites were the Rock Bottom Maltnomah Porter, the HUB 150 IPA from Hopworks, the Brewers Union North Fork Ordinary Bitter, and the Broken Paddle India Black Ale from Full Sail. It kind of pains me to single those out; as I type the names I keep thinking of others I could add to the list. That's how nice the selection was.

Rock Bottom is a place I rarely go, but I really need to make the effort: Van Havig turns out some brilliant beers. My favorite beer of the fest, Maltnomah Porter is one of the standards at Havig's Portland branch of the chain; this cask version was perfectly smooth, a little sweet but not cloyingly so, dark and satisfying with no burnt flavors and little bitterness. Opinions vary, however, and through the magic of Twitter I got instant feedback from someone who found it was his least favorite.

Brewers Union didn't have to do anything special for the firkin fest. All of the beers Ted brews there are cask-conditioned English-style ales. He's been open in Oakridge, Oregon for over half a year now, but this was my first chance to sample his wares, since I'm such a walking-distance-only pub-goer and Ted doesn't easily let his kegs out of his sight -- "they're like gold to me", he said. A stickler for correct handling of his ales, he set up his two firkins at the Green Dragon a day ahead of time to allow them to settle after the ride to Portland, and he served them at the fest himself. The North Fork bitter was fantastic: malty and a little fruity with an Oklahoma-friendly alcohol content of 3.5%. His molasses stout -- called That Dark Beer -- was delicious also, dark and roasty.

Being an unrepentant meddler, I assured Ted that Geoff at Bailey's Taproom would undoubtedly work with him to offer the beer to Portlanders in the right condition. That backfired later when I introduced the two and questions came up of stillage and how to serve the ale at 50° at Bailey's. Keep your fingers crossed that Geoff or someone in town will jump through the hoops to get BU brews to Portland. Meanwhile, it's definitely worth a detour if you find yourself in that part of the state. You can also check out Ted's entertaining blog about the hazards of peddling real ale in a small town.

Coincidentally, I had tried both the HUB 150 and the Broken Paddle IBA earlier in the week in their non-cask incarnations, which are on tap right now at Hopworks and the Pilsner Room, respectively. Both are very tasty, but the cask versions added a depth of flavor that made them all the more satisfying. In another coincidence, beer writer Abe Goldman-Armstrong was serving the Broken Paddle during the first session. Abe is on a mission to get people to use the term "Cascadian Dark Ale" instead of India Black Ale, since the style originated in the Pacific Northwest and has nothing to do with other ales traditionally called Black Ales, and certainly nothing to do with India. Hail Cascadia!

Big thanks to Brian Butenschoen of the OBG for organizing the firkin fest. And for giving my own petty name crusade a victory by not calling it a Tastival this year.