All Ninkasi, All the Time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cascade Brewing Beer Belly

Following on the heels of the Fred Fest report, here's another opportunity for you to rub shoulders with local beer luminaries, enjoy special beers with good food, and benefit a good cause. You don't even have to wait a year to do it: the EastBurn hosts a new Beer Belly Dinner every month on the 2nd Thursday. It's hard to beat a $35 four-course meal, paired with five beers presented by the brewers themselves. And proceeds go to Ride On, the local non-profit that helps drivers get home with their cars when they shouldn't be behind the wheel themselves.

Thursday's Beer Belly with Cascade Brewing found Carla and I -- and probably some of the other attendees -- slightly out of our comfort zone, in the world of sour and fruit beers.  But if your comfort zone has to be breached, this is the way to do it. Ron Gansberg and Curtis Bain brought along a brilliant set of beers to show off their talents at brewing wild things, then aging and blending them to near perfection.  The weather was perfect on the patio, we had interesting and affable table mates, and chefs Jeff Pagel and Joe Dougherty served up a delicious menu.

The beers on hand were:

• Spring Gose: German wheat beer with salt and coriander
• 2009 The Vine: Belgian Abbey ale barrel-aged with wine grapes
• Busta Nut Brown: mild brown ale
• 2009 Cascade Kriek: Flanders Red aged with cherries
• Noyeaux: Belgian blonde with raspberries and apricot pits (!)
• 2009 Apricot Ale: another Belgian ale, with apricots

The sample of  Noyeaux was an unannounced bonus at the dinner.  Ron introduced it by saying he thinks it's the first truly world-class beer that Cascade has produced.  I think others would disagree that it is the first, as the accolades for their sour beers are starting to pile up, and it really took some chutzpah to make that statement right as the diners were finishing their glasses of the show-stopping Kriek.  Noyeaux was a fine beer with a kind of mingled raspberry/apricot flavor, and the apricot pit adjunct makes it an interesting conversation piece as well as adding almond notes to the smell and taste of the beer.  When I first heard that Gansberg made a beer with the meat from apricot pits, my first reaction was, "Is he trying to poison people?".  Turns out that roasting the pits detoxifies them and leaves you a little almond-like nut (there's a trace of cyanide left, so you wouldn't want to eat a pound of them).  I was glad to get a taste at the dinner, though I did watch Ron take a drink before I tried mine.

Finer palates than mine may pronounce Noyeaux the top of the Cascade line, but for me the highlight of the evening was definitely the Kriek.  I had never tried it, because the 750 ml bottles seemed out of my price range for something I suspected I might not like.  But it was an astonishing beer, rich and lush with dark cherry flavors, and went especially well with the lamb entree.  What is it about cherries that makes them work so well with beer?  I hardly ever think I want to eat a cherry or a cherry pie, but the cherry beers that have come to my attention lately have been wonderful -- Hair of the Dog Cherry Adam, Bridgeport's 2009 Stumptown Tart, Upright's Four Play, and now Cascade's Kriek.  Whereas the lighter Tart and Four Play had more of a pie-cherry flavor, the Kriek was reminiscent of darker bing cherries.  It was an eye-opener for me; I'll be looking for more of this.

There wasn't a bad beer there that evening.  Even Carla liked the Gose, and she didn't like the Goses I plied her with before.  It was my second dose of The Vine that week, though I had to wait for my glass to warm up before it reminded me of how much I had liked it at Fred Fest.

Cheers to Cascade and EastBurn for putting together a wonderful meal.  Definitely keep an eye on the Beer Belly calendar -- they're great events.

Gilgamesh Brewing

John Foyston's column today reminds us that among the many beer-related things to do this weekend, EastBurn offers you the opportunity to try three interesting brews from new Salem-area brewers Gilgamesh. Their hop-free Black Mamba, flavored with black tea, deservedly won the People's Choice Award at the Spring Beer and Wine Fest, and was also a hit with the critics.  That's Black Mamba in the pitcher in the picture -- doesn't it look chunky and nutritious?  It's definitely off the beaten path, and a well-done beer -- malty flavor with a light body, and a hint of tea and bergamot in the palate.

Gilgamesh was also pouring their IPA at the SBWF.  It was interesting to discuss it with some of the other Portland beer snobs at the fest -- opinion was pretty evenly split between those who thought it was a nice, balanced alternative to mega-IBU hop bombs and those who thought it was muddled and boring.  Put me in the latter camp.  It reminded me of a beginner's homebrew:  nice try, not infected, but not much flavor.  Try it yourself at EastBurn and see what you think.  They're also bringing a lightly-hopped 8% Scotch Ale.

Besides the Black Mamba, Gilgamesh does some other offbeat beers, specifically a Chocolate Mint Stout and a Cranberry Saison.  Chocolate is not an unusual stout adjunct, but mint isn't so common -- Beer Advocate lists 15 beers with mint in the name, a third of which also have chocolate.  I often find that dry stouts have an illusion of mint in the flavor, so this might be a winner.  Still, hearing about Chocolate and Cranberry beer makes me think of the eccentric Shallon Winery in Astoria -- warning, ugly website -- that makes Monty Pythonesque wines with flavors like cranberry-whey (sic) and chocolate-orange.  Hopefully Gilgamesh's experiments are more palatable.  (Here's the transcript of the "Australian Table Wines" sketch, from Monty Python's Previous Record.)

The EastBurn event starts at 6 PM Saturday, April 17, and will feature Black Mamba, the IPA, and the Scotch Ale.  Should be interesting, if you're not beered out after the Firkin Fest and/or Migration grand opening.