Check Out These Floaties

I was excited to hear that Two Beers Brewing would start selling beer in Oregon -- in cans no less.  When Geoff Kaiser invited me up to Seattle last year to help judge the Fresh Hop Throwdown, the entry from Two Beers was one of my favorites, and I'm very picky about fresh hop beers.

So I've been looking forward to trying more of their beers now that they're coming this way.  Yesterday I snagged cans of their Trailhead India Session Ale and Evolutionary IPA.  The Trailhead is a nice hoppy pale with a relatively low 4.8% ABV.  Not quite as bitter or even as low alcohol as the Stone-Ballast Point San Diego Session Ale, but it's a choice I'll seek out again.

I liked the Evolutionary also, but wow! what a lot of yeast floaties were in there, so many that you can see them pretty clearly even in the crummy cellphone picture there.  I was taken aback a few years ago by Hop Henge floaties, but Evolutionary takes it to the next level entirely.  It was kind of mesmerizing to watch them rise and fall with the bubbles in the glass -- it was like a beery snow globe.  Thick and sticky, with tons of citrusy hops, it's good stuff as long as the big chunks don't turn you off.

One more note about Two Beers:  the recently introduced Churchkey Pilsner is contract-brewed at Two Beers.  Interestingly, the recipe for that was developed by Sean Burke, the full-time brewer at SE Portland's Commons Brewery.

Get It in the Can on East Burnside

I'm volunteering to pour beer tomorrow evening (Saturday, July 8), at the Guild Public House's Cans Fest.  In honor of that:

Hat tip to Lee, who posted the Get It in the Can video a couple years ago.  I'm not above juvenile humor; I would normally be above linking to a Bud Lime ad, but Lee said his readership went through the roof after he posted it.  Sold!

Now, about the Cans Fest.  Put aside your fears that the BPA liners in beer cans will kill you faster than your beer and greasy food habits.  There are beers from several breweries pouring at this festival that are not generally available in Portland:

• Central City (British Columbia)
• Kenai River (Alaska)
• SanTan (Arizona)
• Ska (Colorado)
• Two Beers (Seattle)
• Uncommon Brewers (Santa Cruz)

I think the Avery selections at the festival are not usually seen in these parts, and the festival will debut cans from Portland nano Natian Brewing.  If you haven't yet been to the Guild -- a comfortable little pub located at 11th and East Burnside -- the Cans Fest is a good opportunity to check it out.  And a good opportunity to get it in the can.

Some Oklahoma Beers

A couple of years ago on a family visit to Tulsa, I finally discovered the glories of Choc Beer, a brewery with a colorful history dating back 90 years located in the small town of Krebs, Oklahoma.  I'm in Tulsa right now, and I decided to branch out a little further while I'm here and check out a few more local beers.

My favorite so far is the Washita Wheat -- pretty bold to insert a four-letter word into the name of your beer -- from Mustang Brewing.  It successfully walks the line between lighter American wheat beers and German hefeweizens, with some of the yeasty banana notes you'd expect in the latter, but with a lighter touch and not as carbonated.  A very refreshing summertime beer.  Oops, turns out it's contract-brewed in Wisconsin by Stevens Point, but the label makes a point of saying it's brewed with Oklahoma red wheat.

Another wheat beer I tried is Choc's Waving Wheat -- more in the witbier category.  Another good choice for summer, though I think I'd just as soon go for Choc's cloudier, yeastier flagship 1919.

On the stronger side, I thought the Native Amber from Oklahoma City's COOP Aleworks was a pretty good stab at a Northwest Red.  Malty and bitter, over 6% ABV, it reminded me a little of Ninkasi Believer, though I would have liked to had a little more aroma from the hops, and dial the astringency back a little. Extra credit awarded for selling this in tall boy cans (4-packs).  The brewery has been around for 2 or 3 years, but they only started canning beer in the fall of 2010.  I'll be interested to see how they're doing next time I'm in the area.

The Marshall Brewing Company in Tulsa bottles several of their beers: the one I tried was McNellie's Pub Amber, which they bill as a Best Bitter "with a New World twist".  I guess the twist is extra hops; it struck me as more of an American Pale Ale than a bitter, but let's not get hung up on styles too much.  This was pretty good, a pretty orange-brown ale, malty and fruity with some hop bite at the end.

Everyone enjoys complaining about the liquor laws in their state, but Oklahomans have more right to complain than we do in Oregon.  Of course they have the much-detested three-tier distribution -- I think they actually have a fourth tier, at least for out-of-state products, since a "broker" must import the beverage and then sell it to the wholesalers -- but the restrictions on beer and wine are particularly silly.  Beer up to 3.2% ABW (that's about 4% ABV) can be sold in grocery stores, but all other beer and wine is only sold in liquor stores.  Worse, the liquor stores are not allowed to sell strong beer cold, which is not just inconvenient, but can be a quality control issue for slow-moving products that sit on the shelf for a while, like the surprise six-pack of Bridgeport ESB I found on my first day in town.

I did a backflip in the liquor store when I saw that Bridgeport ESB on the shelf.  By the time it finally dawned on me earlier this year that Bridgeport had discontinued their ESB, it was too late, it was all off the shelves around Portland.  Six months later, here I was in Tulsa looking at an unopened case of ESB, two unopened cases of Bridgeport Blackstrap Stout, a few loose six-packs of each, and even a six-pack of Haymaker, also retired.  There were no date markings I could decipher on the bottles, but the front of the ESB case was sun-faded, and I found a sticker on the Stout case indicating it was shipped in December 2009.  Those are bottle-conditioned beers, so they could be all right, but the lack of refrigeration for 18 months in such a warm climate did not inspire confidence.  I did buy a six of the ESB -- which I always thought was far better on tap than in the bottle anyway -- and it had clearly suffered but was not entirely undrinkable.

Over the years I've been accustomed to thinking of Oklahoma as a beer wasteland, but things are definitely changing for the better here.  Like the license plates used to say, Oklahoma is OK!

Southern Star Brewing Company

My in-laws live in the city of Conroe, Texas, north of Houston. It's also the hometown of a very successful brewery startup, Southern Star Brewing, whose canned beers are now distributed in Texas and eight other states. A couple of years ago Carla was visiting her family and brought me a tall-boy of their first offering, Pine Belt Pale Ale. On this summer's trip to Texas, I discovered that they are now distributing a couple of more varieties: Buried Hatchet Imperial Stout, and Bombshell Blonde Golden Ale.

Southern Star opens to the public for tasting Saturdays from 1 PM to 3 PM. This month (July 2010), they're open every Saturday, but apparently the schedule changes, so check the website. Some people we talked to in Austin said that the tasting hours would be pretty sparsely attended, but there was a large happy crowd when my brother-in-law and I showed up there last Saturday. There were at least a hundred people there at the peak, enjoying the generous free samples. We got into the merchandise line to buy a couple of 21-ounce Southern Star tulip pint glasses, then got into the longer drink line to get a sample and our ratio of wooden nickels for our visit. They had the three flavors mentioned above on tap.

The tasting is a great time. The whole warehouse-sized brewery is open, so there you are surrounded by the fermenters, sacks of malt, and stacked pallets of canned product. There are a good number of large picnic tables and benches, but it was standing-room only when we were there. Out back a couple of guys were manning the grills, selling beer brats, smoked pork loin, and hamburgers. A beer brat on a stick is a mere $2, quite a bargain.

I liked Pine Belt Pale Ale when I tried it a couple years ago, and on Saturday I thought it might even have improved some since that time. The other beers are also very good. Buried Hatchet is a robust but easy-drinking stout. I called it an imperial stout above, but it's only 8.25% and Southern Star calls it an "American Strong Stout". The dark malts give it very noticeable cocoa and coffee flavors. It definitely appeals to the beer geek faction. The Bombshell goes the other direction -- a lighter, less hoppy ale that might bring in a broader audience, but which still has plenty of malt flavor. I thought the 16-ounce cans were such a good idea that I'm surprised the two new beers are sold in 12-ounce cans -- four-packs of the stout and six-packs of the blonde. Even more puzzling is the fact that six-packs of the lighter Bombshell are more expensive than the bigger six-packs of Pine Belt Pale Ale.

Southern Star has a smoked porter in the works -- part of their "Pro-Am" homebrewer collaboration series. They didn't have it available Saturday, but apparently it will be out soon, and will be sold in 22-ounce bottles.

When in Texas, definitely seek out Southern Star beers. And if you happen to be in the Conroe area on a Saturday, I highly recommend a trip to the brewery.

Oklahoma's Choc Beer

Somehow the Choc Beer Company in my former home state of Oklahoma escaped my notice until this year, even though they've been selling beer in Oklahoma liquor stores since 2004. It's an embarrassing lapse on my part, because the family-owned business has been brewing legally in the small town of Krebs since 1995, and has a history of black-market brewing dating back 90 years. If I had known of all that, I would never have called Oklahoma "zymurgically challenged".

Last weekend I was visiting my family in Tulsa, so I checked out a couple of Choc beers: the "original family recipe", marketed under the name 1919; and a new Kolsch called Spahnie 363, named after Milwaukee Braves pitcher Warren Spahn, who retired to Oklahoma.

The 1919 is made with part barley and part wheat, and might not be the exact recipe handed down from Grandpa, seeing as how its ingredients include Hefeweizen yeast and Cascade hops. Nevertheless, it is a nice, refreshing brew, very satisfyingly full-bodied for its 4% ABV. Naturally it calls to mind Widmer Hef, but it's perhaps slightly more esthery than Widmer, and a little darker in color. Kind of a grainy finish, not in a bad way.

The Kolsch was also nice, right on the money for the style: light and crisp, slightly citrusy. If I had had my wits about me, I would have tried some of the other Choc offerings. For such a small concern, they bottle a lot of styles: a pale ale, a schwarzbier, a Belgian dubbel, a German hefeweizen, and a few others.

Choc's history is ready-made for a National Public Radio feature. It all started in a 1920's Italian restaurant called Pete's Place. Krebs was a coal-mining town, and after Italian immigrant Pete Prichard -- he anglicized his name from its original Pietro Piegari -- was injured in a mining accident, he opened a restaurant. Even though Prohibition was in effect, Pete served homebrewed beer made with a Choctaw Indian recipe.

Homemade, untaxed Choc beer continued to be served at Pete's Place -- with a nod and a wink from the local authorities -- until 1981, though Pete apparently did serve some time for his brewing activities. In 1995, his grandson Joe restarted the brewing operation -- legally, now that brewpubs had been legalized in the Sooner State. The brewmaster is a longtime employee of the restaurant who got interested in the modern style of homebrewing and even took some classes at Siebel.

Today's Choc is a really interesting endeavor. They're marketing their historical roots, but making serious beer in a variety of interesting styles. The beers are bottle-conditioned -- or can-conditioned in the case of the canned 1919 -- something that seems very advanced for a small brewery in a small town in a state that isn't a great microbrew market. They also sell in Kansas and Arkansas, and they're marketing the Kolsch in Wisconsin (Spahnie for the Sconnies). I can't help but think they're trying to pull a Shiner: use a small-town historical angle to get attention and sell lighter, more accessible beers, but keep the brewmaster happy with a line of more interesting styles.

If you're in that part of the country, pick up some Choc. It's good beer with a great story.

Blast from the Past

When I was 7 years old, the big excitement was to bike over to the Quik Trip or the Git-N-Go to buy a pack of Topps Wacky Packages -- stickers that lampooned various national brands of consumer products. The baseball-card company sold these hilarious stickers with pink rectangles of their brittle, tasteless chewing gum. The bad attitude was right on the money for television-addled kids our age.

A couple months ago I found a picture book at Counter Media showing all seven series of Wacky Packages stickers published in 1973 and 1974. Turns out that the instigator of the Wacky Package project at Topps was Art Spiegelman, who went on to more intellectual glory as the author of the graphic novel Maus. In the preface to the Wacky Packages book, Spiegelman reveals that he recruited other comics authors to make up gags for the stickers, including Bill Griffith, the author of Zippy the Pinhead.

The only beer Wacky Package that came out in the 70s was the Blast Blew Ribbon sticker pictured here. Today it would be surprising if collectors cards for kids had even one joke about alcohol, but the reason I'm surprised there is only one is that there were no fewer than nineteen stickers mocking brands of cigarettes or cigars -- not to mention a breakfast cereal called Super Cigar Crisp, with a cartoon bear puffing away on the box. It looks like Topps has been selling Wacky Packages again the last few years, but I'll bet the alcohol and tobacco references are now taboo. The book does come with a Schmutz Beer sticker from back in the day that was never released, as well as a variant of the Blast Blew Ribbon one shown here.

It's one of the ironies of Portland that Pabst is so popular here. Do you suppose the sticker is correct, that the original flavor used to taste different?

Southern Star Pine Belt Pale

Carla was visiting her family in Conroe, Texas a few weeks ago -- for those of you who aren't familiar with Conroe, it's in the southeast part of the state, just five miles from Cut and Shoot. Happily enough, one of Texas' newest microbreweries is located in Conroe: Southern Star. She was able to sample their first release, Pine Belt Pale Ale, and -- attentive wife that she is -- she brought me a 16-ounce can so I could try it myself.

It's a solid first effort: quite malty with a good dose of hops. Pine Belt is unfiltered, so it's a little cloudy, and mine even seemed to have some flecks of yeast in it. The hops are not so floral but nicely bitter. Carla picked up what she called an interesting oily flavor -- in a good way -- but try as I might I couldn't taste that. The 16-ounce cans are a great idea -- as more breweries start to can their beer, I hope they go the tall-boy route like this. They still take up less space than a 12-ounce bottle. Hey, how about 20-ounce cans?

The obvious Oregon beer to compare Pine Belt to is Caldera Pale Ale, also sold in cans. The Caldera is definitely a few shades lighter in color, but almost as malty in flavor. Crystal clear -- must be filtered -- and with a little more flowery hops. In my opinion, Caldera's is a little better offering, but there's no shame in that, they've been at it a lot longer than Southern Star, and they get to brew with pure Oregon water. Our correspondent in Texas calls Southern Star the Rookie of the Year. For now Pine Belt Pale is their only brew; I'll be interested to hear what other styles they work up.

Something about the name Southern Star had a familiar ring to it. I finally realized that the beautiful picture of a table laden with Tex-Mex food that takes up the whole gatefold of ZZ Top's Tres Hombres LP shows a glass of beer with a Southern Select bottle next to it. Apparently that was a Houston-area brewery from the 1930's to the 1950's. Given that Southern Star is producing craft ales instead of factory lagers, the naming similarity is probably only coincidental.