Lagunitas Buys Dr. Bronner's Soap Company

The last few years have seen explosive growth for beloved California brewer Lagunitas.  This Beerpulse article says production increased by 50% from 2011 to 2012, after a 56% jump in sales the previous year; Lagunitas owner Tony Magee noted on Twitter that January's sales were up 72% from the previous year.  All that growth is before the company's new production facility in Chicago has even been finished.

Now the eccentric beer company is branching out in a completely unexpected direction by acquiring Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, the iconoclastic family-run company that produces the Dr. Bronner's line of soaps that have long been a favorite of campers and hippies everywhere.  As a kind of intramural collaboration/consummation, Lagunitas is paying homage to Dr. Bronner's famous peppermint liquid soap by brewing a special amber ale called 18-in-1 Hemp Peppermint Pure-Castile Ale -- yes, dry-hopped with fresh peppermint.  That's the same name as the soap, except for "ale" of course, and the label lovingly imitates Dr. Bronner's jumbled spiritual exhortations -- which are not all that different from some of the rambling musings on Lagunitas bottles and six-pack holders, come to think of it.  Click on the image to enlarge it and see if you can find the beer-specific verses that have been added to the ale label.

Apart from similar styles of prose, products known as "suds", nonconformist founders, and a shared interest in hemp products, what could possibly have brought these two companies together?  Apparently some of the current generation of Bronner soapmakers wanted to add a hop-infused soap to their product line, and being fans of Lagunitas beers, reached out to the brewers in Petaluma for advice on hop-oil extraction and handling.  A kind of mutual admiration developed, and since absolute cleanliness is 99% of brewing success, Lagunitas popped the question of corporate matrimony.  Dr. Bronner's will keep its name as a wholly-owned subsidiary, and the current management of the soap company will stay on board.  The deep pockets of Lagunitas will help the soapmakers enter into new markets and finance new product development, such as the hop soap mentioned above.

Given the rapid growth of Lagunitas, you could also imagine that Dr. Bronner's location in Southern California was attractive to the brewer.  Once they wrap up the Midwest with their new Chicago brewery, perhaps they'll use their soap factory as a stepping stone towards building a San Diego brewing facility.

I haven't particularly cared for the few mint beers I've tried to date, though I do have a soft spot for peppermint.  As a longtime fan of both Dr. Bronner's and Lagunitas, I am really looking forward to trying the 18-in-1.  Let me know if you try it, and don't forget -- in the immortal words of Dr. Bronner -- KEEP OUT OF EYE!  OK!

(Thanks to @MoralABC for the image.)

Good Karma Vegan Cafe, San Jose

The Silicon Valley underwhelms with its beer scene, which is odd considering its affluence and large population. But recently I found out about an oasis of good beer served by knowledgeable people that's located right in the middle of downtown San Jose: the Good Karma Vegan Cafe. Talk about your hidden gems -- they didn't put "beer" or "bar" in the name at all. But squeeze your way past the deli counter into the tiny bar area, and you'll find 16 well-chosen beers on tap. "Well-chosen" is probably not an adequate description of the beer list -- knockout is more like it.  On a recent visit some of the taps were:

• Russian River Pliny the Elder
• Logsdon Seizoen
• Haandbryggeriet Bestefar (smoked imperial porter)
• Allagash Interlude
• Dogfish Head Old School Barleywine
• Stone Vertical Epic 12
• North Coast 15th Anniversary Old Rasputin
• Sierra Nevada Ovila Quad

I won't bother listing the other half of the taplist, but there were no duds on it.  There is also a small selection of similarly high-end bottled beers.

Good Karma attracts a small crowd of local beer lovers -- you know the type, everyone has an opinion on what beer you should order.  The atmosphere is very casual, and even though it's a restaurant/deli first and a beer bar second, the waitstaff take an interest in the beer.  Beer prices are on the high side: pints of Pliny were $7, and most of the strong beers listed above were $6 for 8- or 10-ounce pours.  Not cheap, but reasonable given the quality level.  On the plus side, the small pours were served in glassware marked in centiliters so you knew what you were getting.  What's more, with ABVs ranging from 7% to 15%, small is beautiful.

The food is really good also -- no meat or cheese of course, but a nice selection of curries, salads, stir-fries and the like, served with rice or in tortillas.  In contrast to the beer prices, I thought the food prices were very cheap -- you could eat a hearty meal for $7, or choose smaller snack options in the $2-$5 range.  So you can go in there, eat some healthy cheap food, and spend your surplus on fancy beer.  It's a win-win.  And if you're wondering -- as I did -- why a vegan restaurant has an antler chandelier, rest assured that it too is vegan:  the antlers are made of poured resin.

Here in Portland I'm always complaining when interesting beer places aren't open during the day -- thank God Bailey's now opens at 2 PM -- but Good Karma poses the opposite problem for a business traveler:  it's open for lunch but closes at 9 PM every night except Sunday when it closes at 7 PM.  The good news is it's easy to get to on public transit from other towns in the area -- the VTA light rail stops right out in front, and only a couple blocks away there is a stop for the workhorse #22 bus that follows El Camino Real all the way to Palo Alto.

Highly recommended next time you're in the Silicon Valley.

Au Revoir, Angelo!

I almost never blog about bloggers, or blog about blogging, since this is a beer blog, not a blog blog.  But the departure of Brewpublic founder Angelo De Ieso from Portland deserves special mention.  For the last few years, during this great beer explosion in Portland, Angelo has been in the thick of it:  writing about it, staging events, and most importantly, enjoying Portland beer.  He's so much more than a blogger, he's one of the beer people that makes this place great.

Angelo's off to start a new life with his new wife Ashley -- a.k.a. The Beer Wench -- in the Bay Area.  At least he didn't head to Maine or Michigan or someplace I'd likely never see him again.  But he will be missed here.

I remember meeting Angelo -- and then-girlfriend Margaret Lut -- for the first time at the 2008 Lucky Lab hop harvest.  I'd read some of Angelo's beer writing before that, but he and Margaret mentioned that they were about to launch Brewpublic.  Can you remember a time before Brewpublic?  There are more and more good beer blogs in Portland all the time, but if Brewpublic and/or the New School had been around in December of 2007, I would never have started It's Pub Night, because they document our beer scene the way I wanted to do it -- only better than I ever could.

Three generations of Portland beer writing

Brewpublic's Killer Beer Fest 3.5 last Sunday at Bailey's was an appropriate send-off to Angelo, with great beers at great prices, including the delicious and hilariously-named De Ieso Spades from Hopworks (it's a dry-hopped version of The Ace of Spades IIPA).  Angelo, don't be a stranger, you're welcome back to Portland any time!

To get Angelo's story in his own words, read Sanjay's recent interview with him. I'm sure Brewpublic will keep going, either with a new California focus, or staying Oregon-oriented with its solid roster of local contributors.  Now, if any of you Brewpublic writers want to switch loyalties and become writers at It's Pub Night, I'm happy to poach you, just send me an email.

Beer Licensing Agreements

In college we used to say, "You don't buy beer, you rent it".  That statement may become more true than ever if a trend that started with some well-known California brewers catches on.  To fight against the black market in rare beers, Stone Brewing Co. has announced it will stop selling its limited release beers, and start licensing them instead, in the same way that computer software is licensed and not sold.  [Editor's note: At Stone's request, I would like to point out that this post is an April Fool's gag.  The folks at Stone enjoyed it on April 1, but the joke wore thin as they continued to get complaints about the new policy from readers who thought it was true.  For maximum effect, be sure to click on the "Stone's BEULA" link below.]

It sounds very peculiar at first, but it is a logical extension of brewers' efforts to prevent unscrupulous scalpers from making obscene profits re-selling highly prized beers.  Several prominent brewers have been vocal about their opposition to beer auctions on Ebay for quite some time.  Lost Abbey's Tomme Arthur penned an article called *&^% Ebay about four years ago, and last year an article in the Washington Post interviewed several brewers about the problem.  Stone's founder Greg Koch was quoted in that article as saying "We have involuntarily been a part of the eBay aftermarket for many years".  Since then, Stone and Lost Abbey have hit on a clever solution to the problem.  Henceforth, their rare beers will be subject to End User License Agreements, similar to those you might be familiar with if you use computer software from companies like Microsoft or Apple.

The first beer of Stone's to be sold under a "Beer End User License Agreement" -- BEULA for short -- is a rich and flavorful triple IPA along the lines of Russian River's vaunted Pliny the Younger, aptly named "Not For Sale Ale".  Whereas the back of a typical Stone bomber is adorned with several paragraphs of whimsically rambling boasts, NFSA's bottle (click on the picture for a closer look) is embossed with a dense legal contract that stipulates -- among other things -- that purchasers "may not lend, sell, auction, redistribute or sublicense" the beer, and that the beer may not be used in "the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons".  Click here for the full text of Stone's BEULA.

As a fan of good beer, I have inveighed against Ebay beer scalpers for quite awhile -- I even auctioned an empty Abyss bottle once to demonstrate what a joke it is for beer auctioneers to skirt Ebay's rules by claiming that the bottle itself is what's valuable, not the beer inside.  Even so, I confess that I'm a little uncomfortable with treating beer as intellectual property in this way.  Aside from the essentially coercive nature of EULAs and BEULAs, the legalese in the contract goes against the convivial spirit of the beer world.  There is also the practical question of how to enforce a BEULA, though I suspect that having the prohibition printed right on the bottle might finally convince Ebay to be more proactive about shutting down beer auctions.

Several more California brewers are rumored to be working with lawyers to prepare BEULAs for future releases, starting with the next offering for Lost Abbey's Saints and Sinners club.  The Bruery and Russian River are likely to be the next breweries to follow suit -- the Bruery's license allegedly goes so far as to prohibit the use of its beers in so-called beer cocktails.  Russian River seems to be taking it a little more slowly -- supposedly they will try out their new BEULA on this year's bottling of Objectification, a lighter beer unlikely to attract much collector interest anyway.

What's your opinion?  Are beer license agreements a legitimate and reasonable way to combat beer profiteering?  Or are they an unwarranted intrusion into our enjoyment of quality fermented beverages?

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.

Oakland Beer Getaway

Last month I had to spend a week in the Silicon Valley on business.  I took the opportunity to spend the preceding weekend in Oakland and check out the growing beer scene there.  It's a good way to have a cheap Bay Area getaway -- I pricelined a hotel right downtown for $42 a night -- and San Francisco is just a $6 round-trip away on BART.

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My first stop was a couple of blocks from the hotel, a Belgian-heavy place called The Trappist.  A cozy, narrow space that they call The Front Bar calls to mind Dutch or Belgian beer bars, but opens onto a back patio that is perfect for sunny California days.  There are fifteen taps at the front bar, and ten more in a bigger room called The Back Bar -- an assortment of off-the-beaten track Belgian and Belgian-inspired beers, some nice California offerings, and some surprises from Mikkeller and Evil Twin, including an Evil Twin coffee porter specially brewed for The Trappist.

The food is reasonably-priced and not too fancy, and there is a good assortment of special bottled beers if you need to show off.  Compared to the similarly-named and -themed La Trappe across the bay in North Beach, there are more taps here, though La Trappe seems to have a longer bottle list.  Both are fine establishments, but The Trappist is less crowded, less expensive, and seems a little more laidback than its counterpart in the City.

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A few blocks toward the bay from The Trappist is the new beer-geek darling of Oakland:  Beer Revolution.  It's easy to see why people are so enamored of Beer Revolution:  over 40 taps of well-chosen beer, plus several coolers full of bottles for takeaway or drinking there ($1 corkage fee), and the easy-going taproom/bottleshop system of bringing in your own food.  It's like a less crowded, less expensive, more laidback version of SF's City Beer Store (a theme is developing here).  There's even a small but sunny patio area out front.  I had a great time at Beer Revolution, enjoyed a delicious glass of barrel-aged stout from Drake's before wading in to the LA brewery tap takeover that was going on that weekend.

One big gripe about Beer Revolution:  the pint glasses there are cheater pints, those big-booted bastardizations that only hold about 13 ounces of beer.  It wasn't just one that slipped into the mix -- after I noticed that I was served one, I started watching and all the pint glasses that came across the bar were cheaters.  C'mon guys, it's the year 2012, please get with the Honest Pint program.  Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I'll still say that the selection and atmosphere make Beer Rev a must-stop in Oakland despite the glassware, and many of the big beers they'll tempt you with will be in smaller glasses anyway.

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On the advice of Beer Revolution's co-owner Rebecca, I went from there right down to the waterfront to check out Heinhold's First and Last Chance. Something of a tourist trap which claims an association to Call of the Wild author Jack London, it is nevertheless worth a visit.  They have a couple of sessionable local beers on tap, and they also serve -- another hat tip to Rebecca -- a very nutritious and delicious Bloody Mary.  The floor and bar slope noticeably downward towards the back of the building -- a little remodeling done by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.  Heinhold's cleverly straddles the line between cheesy and authentic, and it would be better to say you'd been there than to say you'd missed it.

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There are a couple of breweries in downtown Oakland:  Linden Street Brewery, which I didn't get around to visiting but which had some tasty beers on tap at Heinhold's; and Pacific Coast Brewing around the corner from the Trappist, which is friendly and comfortable enough but doesn't make very good beer (luckily they have about a dozen guest taps). If you're looking for a good meal with good beer to accompany it, head up Broadway away from the bay to Luka's Taproom. The 16-tap beer list won't blow you away, but it's serviceable enough, and it's fun to watch the hip locals come and go while you fill up on good food.

Oakland has a lot going on beer-wise, and offers easy access to San Francisco while being much cheaper, quieter, and easier to navigate. Next time you're headed to the Bay Area, consider setting up camp in Oakland.

Dunsmuir Brewery Works

The forested little town of Dunsmuir, California, is a convenient stopping point when driving I-5 between Portland and San Francisco.  That's a trick my friend Eric taught me years ago:  driving to California, Dunsmuir's old-school vacation cabins are an entertaining place to stay the night if you got a late start; driving back, it's a convenient lunch stop.  Dave and I pulled into the little town on the way back from San Francisco a couple weeks ago, with no higher hopes than to find some kind of mom-and-pop diner.  Lo and behold, there is a fairly new brewpub open on the main drag, Dunsmuir Brewery Works.

We had a decent bratwurst lunch there.  They only had two of their beers on tap -- an IPA and a porter -- because their customers have been drinking them dry, kind of like what happened a couple months ago to Breakside here in Portland.  The IPA was not all that great, a little flat if I remember right, but I thought the porter was pretty well done and I'd be happy to drink it again next time I'm passing through.  Ordinarily they would have five house beers on tap, plus a couple guest taps.  When we were there, the guest taps were Lost Coast Tangerine Wheat (the Widmer Hefeweizen of Northern California), Stella Artois, and the tasty Phoenix Red from Etna Brewing, a small brewery just southwest of Yreka.

Dunsmuir prides itself on the spring water that provides the city's municipal water supply -- the city website is subtitled "Home of the best water on Earth".  It is very good water -- though not quite as good as our Bull Run water -- and it's nice to see a local brewer take advantage of it. If you're on I-5 and need to stretch your legs or get a quick bite to eat, pull off in Dunsmuir and hit the Brewery Works.

Russian River and Bear Republic Pubs

Last week I wrote up a visit to the Lagunitas Taproom, the first stop on a day trip out of the city on a recent trip to San Francisco.  With Andy at the wheel and Dave and I drinking at pubs and snoring in the car, we headed north from Lagunitas to Russian River's pub in Santa Rosa, and then Bear Republic's pub in Healdsburg.

Russian River was fun:  it wasn't wine-country fancy as I had feared, rather it was a spacious, kid-friendly place that would fit right in if it were suddenly dropped into Portland.  The food was pretty standard pub grub, and not surprisingly there was a fabulous selection of RR beers -- 15 on tap the day we were there.  The beers were very reasonably priced -- especially for California -- West Coast ales were $4.50 a pint, and the Belgian "-tion" beers ranged from $3.75 to $6.75 a snifter.  Whether you're going for the hop monsters like Pliny the Elder or Blind Pig, or for the sours like Consecration and Sanctification, you'll be pleased.  Go visit if you're anywhere nearby.

About a half hour north of Santa Rosa is the little resort town of Healdsburg.  Tucked behind the tourist-shopping main drag is a Bear Republic pub, which we thought we'd try, since we like quite a few of their beers, like Red Rocket and Racers 5 and X.  As near as we could tell, no actual brewing happens at the pub, but they plunked a bunch of big tanks down here and there to give it a brewy feel.  The place was a little bit of a letdown, partly because the Bear Republic meet-the-brewer at Apex in Portland a couple weeks ago had a much more amazing selection of their beers than the pub did, and partly because Russian River and Lagunitas were much more our style.  The thing that made the biggest impression on me was that a lot of people at the Healdsburg pub were drinking from German-style 1-liter mugs.  If for some reason you are being punished with an overnight stay in Healdsburg, those would be just the ticket for drowning your sorrows.  But I wouldn't recommend going out of your way for a visit.  Neither the town nor the Bear Republic pub offers much to get excited about.

Lagunitas Taproom, Petaluma

Last Saturday when Dave and I were in San Francisco visiting our friend Andy, the three of us made a pilgrimage north to Petaluma to the Lagunitas Taproom.  Dave and Andy had been there once before, but a few years ago when Carla and I were in the neighborhood and dropped in to Lagunitas for a visit, there was only a small bar/tasting room upstairs in the main brewery building.  The taproom and patio, open since the middle of 2009, is a vast improvement.  Food, lots of seating, and a good selection of Lagunitas beer.

Beer?  How about 16 taps of Lagunitas standards and one-offs, plus one or two cask selections.  When we were there, one cask was a blend of Wilco Tango Foxtrot and Hop Stoopid aptly named "WTF Stoopid".  It had been tapped the previous Thursday, so it was getting a little tired, but I'm a big fan of WTF, so it was nice to try a hoppier, caskier version of it, though it wasn't better than the standard Wilco. WTF bottles say it's an American Strong Ale, and it's a deep brown color, but the flavor says Cascadian Dark Ale to me.  Other rarities on tap were Tocaloma Amber on cask, Sonoma Farmhouse Gueuze, a double IPA called Waldo 420, and Fusion VI, which if I remember right is a hoppy ale brewed with some rye.  The gueuze is a blend of two vintages of Lagunitas' Farmhouse Saison, and it was really nicely done:  tart and funky, but with enough malt heft that even Dave appreciated it.  The Fusion was pretty good, but the Waldo was such classic burly Lagunitas that we pondered plunking down the $19 for a growler of it, until we learned that they only serve it for drinking on site.

There is also a small gift shop adjoining the pub, which is another step up from the cluttered closet that a receptionist showed Carla and I into a few years ago.  All your Lagunitas T-shirt, poster, and blanket needs are available, as well as the excellent custom mason jar pint glasses, marked with a line drawing of the Lagunitas dog logo and whimsical volume lines labeled "3.14...", "420", and "10/6" (ten shillings sixpence -- the price tag that the Mad Hatter left on his hat).

Coincidentally, Lagunitas founder Tony Magee is in Portland this week for events at Saraveza (last night, May 11), and East Burn tonight for May's Beer Belly Dinner.  I'm kicking myself for not getting seats for the East Burn dinner, those are always a fun time and a great deal, and Lagunitas is high on my list of favorite breweries.

Next time you're in the California wine country, or if you're in San Francisco and have time for a day trip out of the city, I highly recommend a stop at the Lagunitas Taproom (closed Mondays and Tuesdays).

Russian River Objectification

Last month there was a fair amount of chatter on Beervana, the New School, and even here about Ezra's racy label for Upright's cherry-infused Four Play.  A good number of people saw the label as objectifying women, which seemed to them to be a bad thing, and best left to macro brewers.  A quality small-batch brewer like Upright should stick to more elevating imagery.

In California -- where sexual mores have always been rather more expansive than elsewhere in the country -- I doubt the Four Play labels would have caused much of a stir, despite the sizable feminist population of that state.  As if to illustrate that point, the vaunted Russian River Brewing Co. has decided to make fun of macro lager advertising by giving the name "Objectification" to a new wood-aged session beer they will release this month.  The branding for RR's "-tion" beers doesn't allow the label art to go with the photographic realism of the Upright labels, but it does playfully highlight some parts of a woman's physique which male lager drinkers tend to value more highly than her elbows, her face, or intangibles like her personality or intelligence.

Here's the commercial description of the beer:

Objectification: Aged for 15 days on beechwood chips from the beech forests of Chico, California, this light, approachable beer brewed with rice adjuncts goes down like a power window on a hot day.  Whether you're mowing the lawn, fishing, water skiing -- or just sitting on the couch watching sports -- this is the Russian River lager that you've been waiting for.  Pairs well with hot dogs, potato chips, or hamburgers.
3.75%ABV / 1.001 O.G / 3 IBUs / 36-24-36

Before hitting upon Objectification, Vinnie and crew rejected some other possible "-tion" names for this beer:  Titillation, Fornication, Salivation, and a few others I won't mention.  Keep your eyes open, some of those names might come up on future releases.

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.

San Francisco vs. Portland

While waiting in line at the Rooftop Coffee Bar at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art earlier this week, I couldn't help but overhear a young lady nearby ranting about -- of all things -- how pretentious Stumptown Coffee is. She was talking to a somewhat older gentleman -- her father? her art professor? -- and seemed particularly offended that Stumptown's cafes serve French-pressed coffee instead of drip coffee. "Of course," she added with disgust, "Stumptown is from the most pretentious city I've ever been in: Portland."

Interesting.  She's enjoying a visit to a museum that currently exhibits not just one rectangular painting of a uniform gray but also a second such work, yet she thinks coffee presses are pretentious. Not to mention the fact that the Blue Bottle cafe we were standing in serves an espresso drink designed by kitsch-meister Jeff Koons, whose porcelain Michael Jackson is also on display at SFMOMA. I mean no disrespect to the museum or the art world, but isn't irony delicious? As I stood there pretentiously sporting my Hawthorne Bridge T-shirt, I turned to ask the Stumptown hater, "Portland is more pretentious than San Francisco?". "Well," she replied, "it certainly has a higher ratio of pretentious to non-pretentious people."

Oh well, Portland will always have its detractors. In fact, the girl at the art museum reminded me in a way of cranky Portland beer blogger Dr. Wort, though instead of finding us too pretentious, he thinks things are too sloppy here, and he pines for the more refined San Francisco beer scene he experienced as a lucky denizen of the Bay Area. Though conceding that SF has a relatively small number of breweries and brewpubs, the Doc fondly remembers them as places where -- this is a quote -- "the gastronomic delights abound". It's tempting to pick apart the doctor's fawning over some California places that he would excoriate for their blandness if they magically appeared here in Portland, but I think I better get on with my own report of this week's trip to San Francisco.

It was a family vacation, so there weren't any late nights or beer-soaked days, but Carla and I made it out to a few beer places. Sunday evening we swooped down on our San Fran man Andy, who hiked us from his apartment to Zeitgeist and then Toronado, neither of which I had been to before. Toronado was smashing -- an interesting, well-rounded selection of draft beers, reasonably priced. It's got a little bit of a dive bar feel to it, in the sense that you could sit there in the dark and be perfectly at ease. The place is famed for bartenders with attitude, but I thought the service was good, and they even forgave me a faux pas when I accidentally slammed my empty glass down on the zinc bar with a loud bang. The delicious cheap sausages from Rosamunde's next door were the icing on the cake. Kind of ridiculous I'd never been to Toronado; now I'll make sure and get there every time I'm in the city.

On the other hand, Zeitgeist was a disappointment. In his recent report on San Francisco, Ezra said Zeitgeist has about 40 taps, but Sunday at least 25 of those were blown -- the Sierra Nevada Imperial Stout blew with my order. My wife only gets IPAs anymore, and there wasn't a single IPA or even Pale Ale left when we were there. She ended up with a so-so amber called Poppy Jasper from El Toro. The Zeitgeist beer garden is set up pretty nicely, but it was way too crowded. We found a vacant place to sit, but had to wait awhile for the empties from the previous occupants to be bussed, and forget about a rag to wipe the table. Of the 500 people in the yard, 350 were smoking cigarettes and another 25 were openly smoking pot. I've got no particular beef with those activities, but it wasn't our scene.

On other nights we made it out to 21st Amendment and the Thirsty Bear, both walkable from our Market Street hotel. It had been a few years since I'd been to 21A, so I was glad to get the chance, but the taplist was a little disappointing -- IPA, Amber, Red, Light Golden, Watermelon Wheat... ho hum. The Smoked Imperial Porter was the standout, though it bore a cruel California price tag of $7 for 10 ounces, plus tax. Of course Carla went with the IPA, and it was very tasty -- the hop aroma would remind you of orange blossoms or apricots. The food we tried was quite decent, if a little spendy for what it was -- a brick-oven pizza and a loaded cheeseburger (no tater tots).

We didn't try any entrees at the Thirsty Bear, but the oysters with avocado granita and sea salt were brilliant. I enjoyed the abbey-style Belgian ales (one golden, one "amber") that were on as seasonals, although we found the cask IPA to be a little humdrum. It's an odd place -- they get a lot more business from the convention center nearby than from any kind of regular local crowd. It's worth a visit if you're in the area.

I realize that this post meandered around quite a bit, and might not have all that much to do with the headline. For me the main beer lessons of this trip were: first, Toronado goes a long way toward redeeming the sparsity of San Francisco's beer scene; second, be it ever so pretentious, there's no place like home.

Faultline Brewing, Sunnyvale

I spent last week at my company's headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. We have a teenage fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in our house, so we jokingly refer to Sunnyvale as "Hellmouth" -- the vampire conduit that Buffy's town of Sunnydale sits atop. If you're a Portland beer snob the South Bay is indeed a kind of beer Hell. San Jose is the third-largest city in California, twice as big as Portland, and it sports a measly four brewpubs. Sunnyvale is relatively lucky, with two brewpubs, and a Tied House location nearby in Mountain View. How is it that Palo Alto has no brewpubs? I thought Stanford was full of geniuses. All right, forget brewpubs, there should be some good beer bars.... Tacky Irish pubs seem to be about as good as it gets, which isn't so good.

The saving grace in the area is Faultline Brewing, just off 101 in Sunnyvale. They have a decent selection of regular beers, nitro taps and a cask engine, and interesting seasonals. The Maibock seasonal was too strong at 7.2% for session purposes last week, so I stuck to the cask Pale Ale and the Best Bitter on nitro. The Pale is perfect for dinner and conversation, floral but not too bitter. The cloudy cask-conditioned version was a little more flavorful than the regular tap.

Not to belittle the beer, but what's even better is the food at Faultline. It's not cheap -- $18 to $25 dinner entrees -- but it's wonderful. The portions are embarrassingly large, which is an embarrassment I'm always willing to endure. Sometimes large portions mask an inattentiveness in the food quality, but that's not the case at Faultline. The seafood gumbo was dense with fish, shrimp, and sausage, and threatened to spill over the brim of its large plate. The Macadamia-Crusted Tilapia was perfectly crisp, and similarly huge. I'm racking my brains trying to think of a Portland restaurant to compare it to. Maybe a cross between the big plates at Deschutes and the interesting menu at the harborside McCormick and Schmick's, with higher quality than those two put together.

Click here for the Beer Mapping Project's page on Faultline Brewing Company

Faultline Brewing Company

Information provided by Beer Mapping

Hop Henge and Pliny the Younger

Hop bombs. They're not for everyone, but I love them. I borrowed Dave's bottle of Deschutes' Experimental Hop Henge to photograph for this post, and noticed the flavor crystals floating in the bottle (click on the photo for a closer look). Delicious and nutritious. More on Hop Henge below.

Now that Russian River is distributed in Oregon, we have year-round access to Pliny the Elder -- we used to have to wait for the Oregon Brewers Festival to get that wonderful hop infusion. Pliny the Younger gives hopheads a new limited edition to crave: a double IPA that's even bigger and hoppier than its, er, father. Russian River had to find some way to keep the mystique level high. The Younger is a beautiful IPA. Deceptively light in color, it has an intensely floral hop smell and taste. It's bitter, that's for sure, but with the flowery bitterness that makes you feel all cheerful. Or is it the 11% alcohol content that does that?

The keg of Russian River's Pliny the Younger tapped at Belmont Station Tuesday lasted nearly six hours, thanks to the 10-ounce serving size. The place was packed around 7:30 when I got there: the cafe was jammed, and the aisles of the store were full of people also. It's Imperial IPA week at the Station, so I was also able to enjoy a pint of Fort George's XIV Chapel -- I missed it at the recent barleywine festival. XIV is another big IPA that coaxes a perfumey jasmine flavor out of its hops. Wonderful.

Pliny the Younger's hops reminded me a little bit of Hop Henge. Deschutes brewed two batches this year to see how much hop flavor we can take. The second batch comes close to matching the intense hoppiness of Pliny the Younger -- it may be technically hoppier but doesn't balance it as beautifully as the Pliny. If you have a bottle of Hop Henge and don't know which batch it is, look just above the bar code. Batch #2 is marked as such. I can appreciate both, but I prefer the first batch -- it's nearly as hoppy as the second, without leaving a fuzzy coating on your tongue. Dave and I tried them side-by-side at the Portland pub a couple weeks ago, but as of today the website only lists #2 as on tap. Carla is no stranger to IPAs, but when I poured her a glass of batch #2, she took a couple sips and then gave up. Luckily I was able to take up the slack.

If you ever see Pliny the Younger being served, don't even hesitate, have one. At least one. Hop Henge will be much easier to find around Portland. Oh! another hop bomb that's available right now is Lagunitas Hop Stoopid -- $3.29 for bombers at New Seasons recently.

Port Brewing High Tide

One of my favorite hobbies is belittling California fresh-hop ales. And I had a couple of posts this summer slamming expensive California sour beers that lots of other beer nerds think are hot stuff.

So I'm happy to be able to give a good review of a California fresh-hop offering that I tried a few weeks ago: High Tide IPA from Port Brewing. Port isn't distributed in Oregon yet, but it can be had at By the Bottle just ten miles north of us in the 'Couve (thanks to Charles for saving me the trip and bringing me a bottle of High Tide).

I'll keep saying it until I sound like a parody of myself: there's no point in making a fresh-hop beer if it doesn't have the green flavor of truly fresh-picked hops. Thankfully, High Tide does indeed have that wonderful flavor. It's a big IPA, and also has a very bitter finish, which suits me just fine. The bitterness reminded Dave of dandelions -- it was really that bitter -- but to situate it in the Portland beer world, I'll say that High Tide reminded me favorably of the Mt. Rainier variant of John Harris' Lupulin Ale this year, which had a similarly bitter edge. That wasn't my favorite Lupulin, but it's still a great fresh-hop beer, so a comparison like that is high praise in my book.

It's getting past fresh-hop time; for all I know High Tide is no longer available. But if you find yourself in Vancouver, you'd do well to pop into By the Bottle and bring home some of the other Port Brewing beers.

Russian River Blind Pig IPA

It's a beautiful thing that Russian River beers are now distributed in Oregon. I tried a Blind Pig IPA for the first time recently, and really enjoyed it. It's a little lighter in body and color than a lot of IPAs, but it's massively hoppy and bitter. Good stuff. This is one pig that doesn't need any lipstick.

Blind Pig is less big all around than Pliny the Elder, RR's show-stopping double IPA which you might have tried at the Oregon Brewer's Festival -- less malt, less hops, less alcohol. For those of us that love some hops, it's hard to say enough good things about Pliny, it's an incredible beer, and I think I'd almost always choose it over Blind Pig. Still, if you wanted something lighter, or if it made sense to drink a 6% beer instead of an 8%, crack open a Pig.

Naturally you can find Russian River beers at the specialty places like Belmont Station, but I picked up this bottle at Pastaworks on Hawthorne, which keeps a small but brilliant beer selection. New Seasons often has them -- especially the cork-stoppered Belgian Damnation -- but I had to ask them to find me a Pliny from the back the one time they had it in stock. Does anyone know, are those the only 3 RR beers shipped to Oregon?

There's another Blind Pig beer you'll sometimes see on tap around Portland, a dunkelweizen from Leavenworth (a.k.a Fish Brewing). It seems to be a regular at Clay's Barbecue on Division, and it was a guest tap at the Tugboat last time I was there.

Sierra Nevada Chico Estate Harvest Ale

Bringing fresh-hop beer into Oregon is like carrying brown ale to Newcastle. With something like 41 wet-hop beers on offer around the state this year, there's no shortage of homegrown product. Nevertheless, Sierra Nevada works a couple of interesting angles: an off-season Harvest Ale with hops from New Zealand, and the Chico Estate Harvest Ale, with hops grown on the brewery premises.

Sierra Nevada's fresh-hop ales haven't impressed me yet, though the Chico Estate is the best so far. It's a fairly malty pale ale, with a long, pleasant bitterness. It has a faint green hop aroma -- which I find to be totally missing in SN's other two Harvest variants -- but not enough to convince a spoiled Portlander. And it's not just a bottled vs. draft issue -- bottles of Deschutes' Hop Trip get the flavor right, as do bottles of Hale's Harvest Ale. I'm not sure why they're not able to capture it in Chico.

Pity. I eagerly awaited the arrival of Chico Estate when I heard it would be bottled this year. I had gotten a taste of last years' at the Portland Holiday Ale Festival (they called it 20th Street Ale at the time), and found it better than the ordinary Sierra Nevada Harvest. I got even more excited when I read a review last week that said this year's bottled version tasted "green" -- hey, that's how I describe these things. But it's not how I'd describe Chico Estate. I think I'll stick to Oregon beers -- and that tasty Hale's -- for the rest of fresh-hop season.

San Jose Airport Beer Blues

What a wasteland! Once I got past security at terminal C of Mineta Airport, my only draft beer options were Bud and Bud Light at the sports-themed bar. No one was taking them up on it. Compare PDX, with Rogue and Laurelwood pubs, and at least some Widmer taps at the hot dog stands.

The other bar in the terminal at San Jose -- called Martini Monkey -- used to have a couple of taps: Sierra Nevada Pale and Widmer at least, but now they only offer the bottles in the picture above. Gordon Biersch Marzen was the least of all evils. Six bucks... What's the six-pack equivalent price of that? Oh, $36? Guess I'll stop complaining about growler prices.

There is a GB pub in the other terminal, but there's no connection behind security as at the Portland airport. Get me outta here!

North Coast Cru D'Or

There's nothing like a trip to the Silicon Valley to make you appreciate Portland's pub culture. The intrepid West Coast Good Beer Guide doesn't get any further south in the Bay Area than Burlingame; there are a few brewpubs in the valley, but by and large the most interesting place to pick up local beers turns out to be the grocery store. My best beer experience so far on this trip is that I found a tasty beer from North Coast Brewing that I don't recall seeing in Portland: Cru D'Or, a certified organic Belgian-style ale.

Despite the name, Cru D'Or isn't a golden ale -- pardon my inappropriate hotel plasticware -- it's a darker Abbey ale, like a dubble. It's rather sweet, with that delicious flowery Belgian yeast taste. A winner.

Now that Russian River is even distributed in Oregon, I was hoping to pick some up in the stores here, but I haven't seen any yet. Oh well. Give credit to the Mountain View Whole Foods for stocking the Cru D'Or. BevMo didn't have it [Update: Corey points out that Cru D'Or is a Whole Foods exclusive -- how does he learn these things?!?], but listen to the awesome thing BevMo does have: alphabetical order. That's right, beers are shelved alphabetically by brewery. Why does anyone do it any other way?

More of Todd's Beers

Here we go with another installment of beery adventures that took place when my Texas friends were in town a couple weeks ago. In addition to the Isabelle Proximus that we opened July 4th, Todd also brought two more Lost Abbey beers from Port Brewing -- Inferno Ale and Moonlit Sessions Lager -- and a bottle of Russian River Supplication. We had a poker game/beer-tasting the night of July 1st, and those three California beers were supplemented by some Oregon heavy-hitters I'd been saving up to spring on Lee and Todd.

Here's what we passed around that evening:

• Russian River Supplication Batch 003: very sour; not so cherry; dry
• Deschutes Abyss 2007: dry, bitter, and awesome
• Lost Abbey Inferno: sweet like a strong Belgian; tasty
• Lucky Lab Pavlov's Imperial Stout: aged really well (in the fridge); smooth and dark
• Brett's homebrewed 2006 Belgian: delicious candy Belgian
• Hair of the Dog Fred from the Wood 2008: rich; strong alcohol; yeasty bitter edge
• Lost Abbey Moonlit Sessions Lager: black lager; smooth, chocolatey

A lot of work went into Supplication -- a brown ale with four different wild yeasts and bacilli, aged on sour cherries 14 months in pinot noir barrels, then bottle-conditioned -- but sadly all that work is wasted on those of us who haven't caught the sour-beer bug. It reminds me of this anecdote from the liner notes of a CD of Ligeti's Cello Concerto: "A number of the critics present [at the premiere] expressed surprise at the evident disproportion between the enormous difficulty of the work and ... the acoustic result". That's about how I feel about Supplication and Isabelle Proximus -- all that effort for just sourness. But Supplication does have its fans: here's a fresh blog entry (with nice photos) from someone who gets it.

The Lost Abbey beers on poker night were more to my liking. Inferno is in an abbey-style bottle with a champagne cork, but it didn't have that yeasty dubbel/tripel flavor; it seemed to me to be more in the Duvel family tree. The Moonlit Lager was a good poker-game beer; only 5% ABV but with a rich roasty flavor.

It was fun to rotate in the big Oregon beers also. I was happier with the Pavlov's than when I opened my other bottle of it six months ago. Brett's Belgian went over really well, and of course Fred from the Wood and Abyss are slam dunks any time. But the real Oregon success story was Dave's poker game. He was the only native at the table, and he took so much money from the Texans that he decided that Texas Hold'em should be called Oregon Hold'em from now on.

Thanks again to Todd and Andy for the California beers -- Lost Abbey and Russian River are hard for us to get here. And thanks to Brett for the awesome homebrew.