Mighty Mites 2011

The Mighty Mites small beer festival that was held Saturday at Coalition Brewing was a phenomenal success, at least from the perspective of the festival-goers. There could have been a little more shade, but the beers were fantastic, they didn't give you a hangover, and there were no lines to speak of. I expected a bigger attendance than there was -- hopefully Coalition at least broke even for their effort.

The collection of 18 beers, half of which clocked in at under 4% ABV, was curated by Beervana's Jeff Alworth. Note that 4% ABV is 3.2% ABW -- yes, that 3.2%, the reviled number that is still the limit for grocery store beer sales in several states.  The Mighty Mites beers were a far cry from those blander-than-usual industrial lagers.  I restricted my sampling to the sub-4% brews on the list -- with one exception for the lovely 4.4% Stone Levitation Ale -- and there wasn't a bad one in the lot.  Some favorites:

• Brewers Union Local 180 Little Sir John Ordinary Bitter: smooth, light roasted malt flavor, pretty hoppy
• Hair of the Dog Little Dog (Fred and non-smoked Adam) Small Beers: light body but plenty of flavor, and tons of hops
• Lompoc Brewing Voodoo Mild: perfectly dark and bitter
• Beetje Brewing The Knoll American Pale Ale: light body, very nice bitterness
• Block 15 Berliner Weisse: refreshing and tart, but not too tart

As I said, I didn't have a bad beer at the festival, but those stood out for me.  I was mostly doing one-ticket samples, though I did venture back for a full -- well, almost full -- pint of Little Sir John pulled from Ted Sobel's mobile beer engine.  That was some good drinking.

The atmosphere at Mighty Mites contributed to the good time.  Everything was very casual:  no wristbands, bring your own mug or get handed a compostable cup, generous pours, no lines and no silly festival whooping.  There was no entry fee or penalty, just buy as many or as few tickets as you wanted.  Interestingly, many of the pourers were the brewers themselves, as in the photo at the right where you have (from left) Ted from Brewers Union, Alan from Hair of the Dog, Mike from Beetje, and Krister, one of the brewers from soon-to-open SE Portland brewery Base Camp.  There were three people from Base Camp pouring at once during the early afternoon: Justin and Faye joined Krister.  Nice community service, guys.

It's worth talking about the Little Dogs.  As you may already know, they are small beers made from the second runnings of the malt used in Hair of the Dog's giant flagship beers.  Great way to reuse and recycle, and it lets Alan squeeze another dollar out of his malt bill.  They're also very tasty beers, thanks in part to the lavish dose of hops administered to them.  The two on tap at Mighty Mites were Little Fred -- made from a batch of Fred, of course -- and Little Adam, but not the smoky Little Adam that has been served in the past at the HotD tasting room.  Alan explained that his runs of Adam consist of five parts smoked malt to one part dark (not smoked) malt.  The Little Adam at Mighty Mites -- also currently on tap at the tasting room -- is a small beer made with the unsmoked part.  I love the smoked version, but there was also something special about this unsmoked one -- you got more of the beer and hops flavor instead of the smoke gimmick.

There were a few breweries that I was surprised were not represented at the fest.  Hopworks has a wonderful hoppy session ale called Cool Grand that would have fit in perfectly; the Lucky Lab has been known to dabble in the light arts also.  Surely big boys like Deschutes, Widmer, and Laurelwood would also jump at the chance to do something special for a fest like this.  Not that there wasn't enough good beer, but if small is beautiful, the more the merrier.

With all the recent attention on "session beers", it's high time Portland had a festival of this kind.  It's fitting that Jeff had a hand in it: he first evidenced a desire to throw a small beer fest in Portland over two years ago at the bottom of this post.  By that time Lew Bryson had already instigated session beer festivals in Philadelphia in 2007 and 2009.  Of course Lew has been a vocal proponent of lower-alcohol beers for a long time, but it's nice to see that Portland has now jumped on the bandwagon in a serious way.  Kudos to Jeff and Coalition for making Mighty Mites happen, and let's hope it will become an annual event.

Driftwood Old Cellar Dweller

Way back in February I was the undeserving recipient of some amazing Canadian generosity when Ryan O'Connor, who edits the CAMRA Vancouver newsletter, bestowed on me a tasty assortment of some of his favorite British Columbia craft beers.  He recommended that I not sit for too long on the two bottles of Old Cellar Dweller barleywine from Victoria's Driftwood Brewery, as part of the attraction was the "big, sticky, resinous hop nose", which he said goes away with just a little age.

It was a good call.  When I opened a bottle of Cellar Dweller at a neighborhood poker game a couple weeks after Ryan gave it to me, it was a big hit.  We also tried another barleywine that he brought with him, the Old Bad Cat from Fat Cat Brewery in Nanaimo, BC.  The Cellar Dweller's tons of malt and hops blew away the Bad Cat, which was merely syrupy in comparison.

Last week I opened the other bottle of Cellar Dweller so I could give a slightly more descriptive report than "tons of malt and hops".  The bottle was at room temperature, and the hop aromas may have faded a bit, because strong alcohol was the main component in the nose this time.  Flavorwise, it has lots of everything, all balanced well against one another:  brown-sugar (or even burnt-sugar) malt, lots of bitter, orangey hops, and a little alcohol sting (it is 12%).  It was pleasantly viscous, with a hoppy/roasty finish that didn't overstay its welcome.  This time Dave, Carla, and I compared it with a year-old bottle of Sierra Nevada Bigfoot, and the fresh Old Cellar Dweller won hands down.  The hops in the Bigfoot were bitter but losing their floral qualities, and the body just wasn't as full as the Driftwood.

Ryan also brought some cans of Red Racer IPA from Central City Brewing in Surrey.  It was a very nice, big IPA, plenty of hops but not over the top.  He also dropped some off with Ezra, who describes it in more detail in this review, as well as comparing it to Bear Republic's Racer 5.  Ezra also reports that Bear Republic has sued Central City, claiming that Red Racer infringes their Racer 5 trademark.  Don't you think the world would be a better place with fewer lawyers in it?

Anyway, many thanks to Ryan for the unexpected beer delivery.  And definitely seek out some Old Cellar Dweller or other Driftwood beers if you find yourself in the Great White North.

Support Your Local Beermapping

If you're traveling, one of the most useful tools to help you find good beer away from home is the Beer Mapping Project. The maintainer -- Jonathan Surratt, aka Beerinator -- has put together a database of breweries, beer bars, and beer stores with a nice interface to Google Maps, and is very responsive to contributors who send in new locations.



There's a way that you can help with beermapping.com. Every location on the map has a review page, like this one for Belmont Station. If you look at the project's city map for Portland, you'll notice that locations in our town are rather sparsely reviewed. And that's the gist of my appeal to you today: please get out there and add some reviews! Here are some Portland favorites that have not yet been reviewed:

• 5th Quadrant
• Bagdad
• Barley Mill
• Beermongers
• Bridgeport Ale House
• Hedge House
• Laurelwood Pizza
• Lucky Lab SW
• Moon and Sixpence
• Produce Row 
• Upright

That's just a sampling of places that it seems like we should explain to out-of-towners.  Don't limit yourself to those places; in fact, even the Portland locations that have been reviewed could benefit from more reviews, or from pictures if you have a mind to share.  Look at it as an easy way to be a Portland beer ambassador.  By the way, Google is now picking up beermapping.com reviews in Google Maps searches, like this one.  All you have to do is register on the beermapping forums, and you can start adding reviews to the site.  Tell 'em ItsPubNight sent you.

First Impressions of Migration Brewing

A handful of the Pub Night gang headed over to Migration Brewing yesterday for its opening night. There are only guest taps for now, but next Wednesday they will put on their Migration Pale Ale. The fine folks at Lompoc Brewing are doing a great community service by letting brewer Michael Branes brew on their system until Migration's rig is ready. That's Michael on the left in the picture, next to co-founder Colin Rath at last night's opening.

The space is nicely done, with high ceilings open to the rafters, lots of unfinished wooden tables, and a couple of nooks with couches in them. Last night we sat at about the spot where a pile of dirt sat next to the kegerator on my exploratory visit a few months ago -- you can see how much work went into getting the place ready. It's not a huge space, but with the open feel, the garage door in front, and the wooden bowls of peanuts in the shell, it's kind of like a Lucky Lab with a nice paint job. I hope that doesn't sound snarky in either direction -- I love hanging out at the Lucky Lab and I think Migration will have a nice hangout vibe also.

There is a square cove to the right of the bar which will soon become the home of a couple of dartboards.  Hooray!  It's a good setup, there will be a "lean bar" about chest height along the dart room wall, a place to set your beer and darts.  It's tucked away nicely, there shouldn't be any traffic issues there.

One quibble: I wish Migration had hit the ground running with honest pints instead of the ubiquitous shaker pints. Given all the similarities with the Lucky Lab, I'm surprised they didn't break out imperial pint glasses.  Or, being a new operation, why not start out on the right foot and have glassware marked with a 16-ounce or half-liter line?  More and more places are doing that these days.

Some more general observations:

• Kids are allowed until 8 PM
• Good bike racks out front
• Food is simple (sandwiches, sausages), but pretty reasonably priced.  Most things seemed to be about $7.50.
• The patio will be a great place to hang out in good weather

For further reading: eyewitness reports from Jason and Angelo.

Lucky Lab Harvest 2009

Yesterday afternoon was a reminder of how great it is to live in Southeast Portland -- the center of the universe. An assortment of beer lovers came out to help the Lucky Lab pick fresh hop cones off of donated vines, for inclusion in the Lab's fresh-hop seasonal, The Mutt. I had a blast the short time I was able to participate last year, so I scheduled a little extra time to hang out this year.

Angelo already has a good writeup of the event at Brewpublic -- including the fact that the Lab ended up with 215 pounds of hops from the shucking bee -- so I'll content myself with presenting a slideshow of pictures from the day. [Update: John also has a nice article at The Beer Here.]

Upright Brewing's First Firkin

Tuesday evening Belmont Station offered a special treat: the first public tasting of a beer from Portland's newest brewery, Upright Brewing. Upright, located just north of the Rose Garden on the tiny piece of Broadway that lies in the 5th Quadrant, is one of the growing number of Oregon breweries that are avoiding the restaurant business, choosing instead to distribute kegs and do a little bottling. The owner-brewer, Alex Ganum, is on the left in this picture, next to ex-Lompoc brewer Lem and Pub Night stalwart Charles.

The Upright brew served up Tuesday night on Belmont's cask engine was Studebacher Hoch Strong Ale, a dark, malty confection with some extra hops in the firkin. Put it in the "dangerous" category -- its smooth roastiness completely disguised its 8% strength. Alex intends to focus on more session-style beers at Upright -- 4% to 5% -- so he was dubious about debuting with the strong ale, not wanting to give people the wrong idea. The Studebacher was brewed to be aged in barrels until winter, but after his barrels were full he had exactly one keg's worth left. A friend had an extra firkin lying around, and convinced Alex to fill it and sell it to Belmont Station. It was meant to be.

The first thing you notice about the Studebacher is its maltiness. I think the beer it reminded me the most of is Eel River's Triple Exultation, but with less alcohol and hops. I fancied that there was a yeasty flavor there also, not a flowery Abbey yeast, but a little fresh-dough vapor. That might just be my imagination, suggested by Alex's open-fermentation methods -- something no one else in Portland is doing. At any rate, it was quite tasty; I'll be interested to try the barrel-aged version in a few months.

Alex said the first Upright beer we'll see around town will probably be a wheat beer made with a saison yeast. Talking about his goal of high-flavor, low-alcohol beers, he said he enjoys tweaking the noses of Portland beer geeks by saying that the beer he would most like to emulate is Widmer Hefeweizen. It's no joke: Alex says one of the best bets in town is to sit down at the Gasthaus and have a fresh, unfiltered Hef -- tasty, balanced, and not too strong -- poured right at its birthplace. He has a point. The supermarket bottles of Hef are quite dull, but fresh on tap -- with, say, your favorite Lebanese dinner -- it's another animal entirely. It will be a big win for Portland if Upright comes up with similarly food-friendly, drinkable beers like that.

The Belmont Station Biercafe has really been whipping it lately with interesting beers from smaller Oregon breweries. Even though it's just part of their priestly mission, I have to award them community service points for offering us this early preview of Upright.

For further reading, Angelo has a nice backgrounder on Alex with a short interview.

Philadelphia's Steaks and Hoagies

My thinking got confused a couple weeks ago when I was writing about the Portland Democrats who want to raise the excise tax on beer by 2000% -- or tax kegs at 50% of wholesale, if you want to look at it that way. The stress of thinking that my state senator would sign on as a sponsor of such a Satanic piece of legislation had me all worked up, so that when I tried to enumerate the five small breweries in her district, I mentioned "Milwaukie's" as one of them. An alert reader -- thankfully there's one -- drew my attention to the fact that there is no such establishment in Portland.

Of course what I meant was Philadelphia's on Milwaukie Avenue. One reason for my unfamiliarity was that I had never been there. Carla and I rectified that one evening recently by walking over there while our name slowly drifted to the top of the waiting list at Saburo's Sushi House around the corner on Bybee.

As you'd guess by the "Steaks and Hoagies", Philadelphia's is primarily a sandwich shop, and most of the clientele is there for the Philly cheesesteaks. But they also sell half a dozen kinds of beer they brew themselves on a small system. This is another piece of evidence that we do indeed live in Beervana: a mom-and-pop sandwich shop decides to quietly brew their own beer on the side. They've been doing so for fourteen years.

Since we had an eye on the clock that night and were saving our appetite for Saburo's, we took the rare action of ordering samplers. For the $4.25 price of a pint, they'll serve you three little 6-ounce tasters. Our favorites tended to be the darker beers: the Ben Franklin Brown was the best beer in the house. The Mummers Imperial Stout was Carla's favorite, and the William Penn Porter wasn't bad. We weren't impressed with the Independence IPA or the Spectrum Amber.

They also have a few rotating guest taps, which had a southern Oregon bias during our visit -- Mia and Pia's Double Chocolate Stout and Klamath Basin's Drop Dead Red were joined by Laurelwood Tree-Hugger Porter and Cascade's Defroster. It seems like Klamath Basin beers are appearing at more and more places since I originally rewarded community service points for KB beers to SuperDog -- for instance, Claudia's was serving Klamath's Brown a couple weeks ago. But it's been a few years since I've seen Mia and Pia's on a smaller taplist like this, so I'll give CSPs to Philly's for that.

The laid-back atmosphere was also very appealing. We weren't in a position to try the sandwiches -- or the Tastykakes -- but the grill area behind the counter was meticulously clean, and the diners looked happy. If you're down in Sellwood, it would be a great place to stop in for a sandwich and a pint.

East Burn

On Tuesday, Pub Night was at East Burn, a relatively new bar/restaurant at 18th and East Burnside, in the former Nocturnal location. It's been open a few months already, but it was the first visit for a lot of us. The enticement that finally lured me in there was Tuesday's special: $2 pints.

The 20 or so beer taps rotate pretty frequently -- follow @eastburn on Twitter to get updates. The selection seemed just right to me, lots of good choices from around the region. Some of the beers that came to our table were: Cascade Imperial Red, Walking Man Homo Erectus, Bear Republic Red Rocket, and Double Mountain Irish Stout. Did someone have the Mia and Pia's IPA? On top of that, they were pouring Schwindel Alt from Vertigo Brewing, a brewery that just started a couple months ago in Hillsboro. Vertigo is beginning to be seen around town -- Bailey's Taproom has had a couple kegs -- but I'm awarding community service points to East Burn since it was my first chance to sample Vertigo's wares. (The alt was a little homebrewy, and didn't have the right bitter finish, but let's give Vertigo some time to get their feet on the ground.)

In the basement is the "tap room", laid out with tall bar tables and a couple of sofas. It was a little too loud in there for our purposes, owing to the Skee-Ball(!), pinball machines, and music blaring out of a giant speaker attached to the ceiling. We did better in the restaurant area on the ground floor (top picture) -- though somehow we got off on the wrong foot with our waitress and she was all rolling eyes and exasperation with each round of beer we ordered. The ground floor has its own bar area -- the taps are split about evenly between upstairs and down -- and there is also a heated outdoor patio where smoking is allowed. At three of the indoor tables for two, the seats are wicker swings hanging from the ceiling; some of the patio seats are porch swings.

East Burn is a welcome addition to the neighborhood. An interesting tap list, funky setting, and good prices -- especially on Tuesday -- will continue to draw a crowd.

Nick's Coney Island

Yesterday, Carla and the girls and I trudged up Hawthorne in the snow and had lunch at Nick's Famous Coney Island. It was the kids' first time there, and they liked the old-timey atmosphere -- even our family vegetarian, who survived happily on an order of nachos.

We were really aiming for the Bridgeport Ale House, since we had spent a very cozy lunch there Saturday, watching the falling snow and the strolling shoppers, enjoying imperial pints of root beer and Raven Mad barrel-aged porter. We were dismayed that the weather kept Bridgeport from opening yesterday -- Angelo ran into the same problem, though his solution was more ambitious than ours.

The gut-bomb chili, excellent french fries, and friendly service and surroundings are the reasons to go to Nick's. Sometimes you just gotta have a hot dog smothered with chili, cheese, and onions. It's not really a beer destination: the beer of choice there is Bud, though to their credit they throw a bone to the Portland beer snobs:

• Southern Oregon Brewing porter
• Nick's TKO Amber
• various Coney Island bottles from Schmaltz

I'll give Nick's community-service points for pouring the S.O.B. porter. I've seen it a couple times at the Green Dragon, but it's an interesting choice for a small diner like Nick's to serve (leave a comment if you know other good places in Portland where Southern Oregon beer is served). I didn't notice the 22 oz. Coney Island bottles until we were leaving, otherwise I probably would have tried one of them -- Schmaltz is the brewery that makes the He'Brew beers, which are gaining a little following.

The TKO Amber is brewed on contract for Nick's by RedHook (WARNING: noisy website). I wasn't impressed; it had a dark color, but the light head and macro-lager flavor gave it away as a beer made for people who don't like beer yet. It is cheaper: $3 a pint vs. $3.75 for the S.O.B. or Widmer Hef. In the picture above, TKO is on the right, the Southern porter on the left.

An Easy Bicycle Pub Crawl

This week we had a house full of old Texas friends. In honor of Lee's upcoming 40th birthday, Bret, Todd, and I took him on a bicycling pub crawl accompanied by his Portland friend Eric. No, not a 78-beer decathlon, just a little loop Wednesday evening through Southeast. Since Todd moved away shortly after Lee's visit last summer, I wanted to show off by including a couple of great pubs that have opened in the short time since then: Hopworks and Green Dragon. Bret was having a little trouble with his helmet by the end of the ride.

It probably shows a lack of good judgment that I led us across Powell Blvd. to Hopworks right at the five-o'clock rush hour. We were able to turn left from 26th onto the Powell sidewalk just as the light turned green for the cross traffic. For future reference, I have since found a better way -- especially if you're in a group -- to bicycle to Hopworks. Continue across Powell on 26th and turn left on Rhone. That dead-ends into 28th Place; bike back up the hill to Powell and walk the last block on the sidewalk. The left turn on Rhone has you battling much less traffic in all directions, and you get to enjoy a few blocks more of the Texas-sized bike lane on 26th. You may have heard that everything is bigger in Texas, but when referring to a bike lane, "Texas-sized" means it's about half the width of the Portland standard -- really it's just a little strip of pavement used to keep all the broken glass and roofing nails out of the automobile lanes.

After Hopworks, we went around the corner to a place I'd never been before, the Pub at the End of the Universe at 28th and Gladstone. You'd be forgiven for looking at the outside of the pub and thinking it was out of business, but inside it's a funky, comfortable dive. The mission was to try the Ozzy Osbourne-themed beers from Off the Rail, since the P.E.U. is one of the few places nearby that serves them. They had a bunch of them:

• Mad Man IPA: smooth, a little hop edge, malty
• War Pigs Wheat: mild banana flavor, nice
• Sweet Leaf Amber: caramelly, not bad
• Over the Mountain Stout: chocolate stout, didn't try it
• Coal Porter: didn't try it; someone please explain to me the Ozzy connection in the name

I was impressed by the Off the Rail beers, the ones we had were well done. Oddly, there were posters up using Ozzy's picture not to sell Off the Rail products, but Coors' Blue Moon Wheat. We were disappointed by the jukebox: absolutely nothing by Black Sabbath or Ozzy. Zero.

The P.E.U. had an interesting beer selection, they are clearly trying to be original. No Widmer, no Bridgeport, only one Deschutes; but they did have Mac and Jack's Amber, a couple of Pike ales, and Lazy Boy IPA -- I've seen bottles of Lazy Boy around town, but that's the first tap. Community service points for that one! It's a little smoky in there, but definitely worth a visit for the offbeat selection and the laid-back atmosphere. They have a few pool tables and two soft-tip dart machines -- another unusual choice.

We rolled back up 26th and ended up stopping at Clinton Street Brewing. The Wit was a better batch on this visit than the last couple times I tried it, and our crowd generally liked the Amber and the IPA. We had the place pretty much to ourselves, it was a good time. They're still brewing in the tiny back room, but you can understand why the brewmaster wants to head for more capacious digs in Northwest.

Continuing up 26th, we went left on Harrison so that we could take the bikes-only crossing of 20th and bike past the east rose garden in Ladd's Addition. On summer evenings there's always some kind of activity in Ladd's center circle -- there were some jugglers this time -- so I made us do 1 and 3/8ths laps of the circle, turning right on Ladd Avenue. I think it's fun to stop in at all four of the rose gardens, but by this time we needed to get some food.

We took the bikes-only left turn onto Clay, and headed up 9th to the Green Dragon for the best pub food in the neighborhood. Todd and Lee were thoroughly excited by the recently-installed shuffleboard table at the Dragon. Yee Haw!

Then it's just four blocks down 9th to the back porch of the Lucky Lab. A cool summer evening on the Lab's patio with imperial pints and a bowl of peanuts in the shell: it doesn't get any Portlander than that. Roots beckoned from around the corner, so close that we just left the bikes at the Lucky Lab and walked over. When Jim turned off the lights, we realized it was time to call it a night and roll back up Main Street. Happy 40th, Lee!

The Little Boat that Could

Hands down, the most unusual brewpub in Portland is Tugboat Brewing Company, hidden away on a downtown alleyway which is actually a disconnected stretch of Ankeny between Broadway and Park. It's a small 4-barrel operation that's been there since 1992, but it's a well-kept secret. When I ask people if they've ever been there, the few who have usually add, "Is it still there?".

It's a quiet existence: they don't advertise or participate in beer festivals, the website appears to be at least 5 years out of date, and their ales are only available at the pub. Their opening hours are pretty limited, basically 4 PM to midnight every day. In a state where all the brewers seem to know each other -- and many have reputations spanning multiple breweries -- Tugboat isn't even on the Oregon beer family tree. That's not at all to imply that the owners are arrogant or unfriendly -- in fact if the brewer or his wife isn't behind the bar, they're probably having a beer at one of the tables.

The obscurity is part of the charm of the Tugboat, and it's definitely worth a visit. It's a comfortable, cozy place. The walls are lined with used books, and you'll usually see the people at one or more of the tables enjoying a quiet game of cards or board game. Smoking is allowed, but the ventilation seems pretty good. I always smell the smoke when I'm there, but it's not thick enough to stick to my clothes.

Ales at the Tugboat all have a pleasantly yeasty character, there's usually a selection on cask, and none of the beer is served too cold. The price is right: $3.50 a pint, or $3 during the 4-7 PM happy hour -- cash only. Here are the house beers they were pouring last night:

• Lighthouse Pale Ale: light, floral hops, nice
• Amber Ale: yeasty and nicely bitter
• Crimson Red Ale (cask): cloudy, fresh, and tasty; very flat
  
• Coffee Brown Ale: toasty and good, chocolaty flavor
• Blond Ale: oops, forgot to try this one
  
• Chernobyl Russian Imperial Stout: flat and strong

"Coffee Brown" is just named for the dark-roasted color, there's no coffee in it. Chernobyl is definitely the most distinctive beer, the one I seek out every time I'm there. It's a big one -- over 10% ABV, only served in half-pints -- tasty and black, though last night it seemed a little too flat. None of the other ales seemed like they were terribly strong, you could comfortably have a few of them.

They also had eight guest taps last night, plus a cider. Three of the guest taps stood out as being pretty rarely sighted in these parts: Klamath Basin 8 Second Ale, Leavenworth Blind Pig Dunkel Weizen, and Off the Rail (no website?) Over the Mountain Stout. I like to award imaginary community service points to places that have obscure guest taps, like when I found Klamath Basin beers at SuperDog. Tugboat gets double points, for supporting Klamath Basin and Off the Rail, the brewery with the excellent Ozzy/Black Sabbath beer names. Guest pints are $4.50 ($4 happy hour).

Tugboat might get a little more exposure to beer fans now that Bailey's Taproom -- the westside's attempt at Green Dragon coolness -- has opened across the street. It chugged along before that for many years, and hopefully will for many more. If you're downtown of an evening, stop in for a pint or a nuclear stout.

The Other Super Dog

It would be great to have lunch every day at Higgins... get the lunch special or the burger, and have a cask-conditioned pint. But in these troubled times, when the "fiscal conservatives" who added $5 trillion to the national debt are overdrawn on their own bank accounts, some cheaper options are needed. Luckily, right around the corner from Higgins is SuperDog, a hole-in-the-wall hot dog stand that will pour you an Oregon pint for $3.75.

There's a little bit of local-food action happening, with a couple of Zenner's sausages on the list, a different homemade soup each day, and a condiment table laden with an assortment of Beaver mustards. The number of sausage/topping options is truly bewildering, but most of them ring up to $5 or less. The people are friendly, they'll wait patiently while you figure it all out.

On the other hand, the beer list isn't bewildering at all. They only have four taps, but they're good ones, again with a local emphasis. On my first visit, when I saw the Lucky Lab tap handle and asked which beer it was, I was given a classic "Well, duh" look. "Super Dog, what else?" Good choice. Super Dog is one of my favorite Lab beers right now, a nice big IPA. Besides that, they always pour Laurelwood Free Range Red and -- representing the world outside of Oregon -- Anchor Steam.

The fourth tap is dedicated to Klamath Basin Brewing -- whoa, that's obscure. Extra community service points for that! For a long time SuperDog had Klamath's Cabin Fever Stout, which I kept meaning to try but somehow always ended up with a Super Dog. Last week the Klamath selection was Drop Dead Red, which is a smooth and easy red ale, more like a less-hoppy version of the Laurelwood than bigger reds like Roots or Lagunitas.

That's the story of the other Super Dog: it's a friendly place for a quick cheap bite if you're near the South Park Blocks, and you can't go wrong with any of the drafts. If you need to save an additional dollar, after 4 PM you get $1 off your beer when you also order a dog.