Donnie the Elder Muskmelon Gose Withdrawn

You're used to seeing announcements on social media about new beers, or this year's release of an old favorite.  Here's a new one, a beer cancellation.  Usually breweries don't need to specifically note that they will no longer make a certain beer, they just stop making it.  So I was surprised to see a local brewery — you can figure out which one — announce on Facebook that they will no longer be brewing their love-it-or-hate-it Donnie the Elder double gose flavored with muskmelon.

Muskmelon — another word for cantaloupe — gave the beer its distinctive orange color, but the taste wasn't for everyone.  The double gose (sometimes abbreviated "doge" on the blackboard) had a small but vocal minority who liked it, but wasn't popular enough to keep in the rotation.  The brewers had briefly experimented with a lighter-bodied version that wasn't as sharp, and not as pungent or orange-colored, that was called Donnie the Younger.  But it turned out no one liked that one, not even fans of Donnie the Elder.

The first time I saw Donnie the Elder on tap at the brewery, I asked where the name came from.  I mean, obviously it is an homage to Russian River Pliny the Elder, but I wondered who Donnie was.  The head brewer happened to be standing behind the bar, and he laughed when he heard the question.  "That's a good story!" he said.  Here's a paraphrase of what he told me:

Donnie was this scruffy orange cat that used to hang around the brewery parking lot.  The first time we saw how orange the cantaloupe made our gose, we knew we would name the beer after the cat.  Come to think of it, almost no one liked Donnie the cat either — terrible personality, fur sticking up in bizarre ways, peeing on everything.  There was this one weird and unpleasant assistant brewer named Leon that was here for a while, and one of the weird things about him was, he actually liked the cat.  He's the one who named it.  I think he named it after Donnie Darko, but maybe it was Donnie from the Big Lebowski.  Anyway, Leon got Donnie neutered and deflead, but he was still a terrible cat.  We weren't too sad when Leon left with Donnie.  I wonder where Leon is now?

Upcoming Portland Beer Festivals

As the days grow longer and the weekends start filling up with Portland beer festivals, I thought it would be a good time to highlight some changes that are planned for a few upcoming festivals.


Spring Beer Fest

For some years now the spring festival held in the fluorescent glory of the Oregon Convention Center has been called the "Spring Beer and Wine Fest", but in 2014 the organizers have recognized that they have a much more diverse festival than just beer and wine.  This year the festival has been rechristened the "Spring Beer Wine Mead Cider Braggot Vodka Gin Snack Condiment Tattoo Piercing and Home Improvement Festival" (italics theirs) to more accurately represent the range of exhibitors at the festival.  I'm not sure why they left commas out of the name -- "Condiment Tattoo Piercing" all runs together for me -- but I guess saving 10 characters might help out on Twitter (hashtag: #SBWMCBVGSCTPHIF2014).

Beer-loving Portland Catholics have often complained about the festival's perennial Easter weekend scheduling.  In an attempt to reach out to that demographic, this year's fest will add a Thursday night session featuring a screening of Mel Gibson's 2004 movie The Passion of the Christ with live Mystery Science Theater 3000-style commentary by a trio of comics who bill themselves as Cathloholics Anonymous. Not sure how well that will go over.

Spring Beer Wine [etc.] Fest:  April 18-19, 2014, noon to 10 PM.

__________________________________________________

Portland Fruit Beer Festival

Photo credit: Draft Magazine

You've heard of a Kissing Booth, but how about a Rimming Booth?  That's an exciting addition this June to the Portland Fruit Beer Festival:  a special area of the festival where attendees can accessorize their pretty, hop-free beers by decorating the rims of their beer glasses with colorful slices of fruit or various sprinkles and additions that you'd be more likely to find in an ice cream shop than a taproom.

Festival founder (and Pub Night friend) Ezra Johnson-Greenough has never hesitated to take beer in unexpected new directions, whether brewing a chocolate and peanut butter stout, crafting beer cocktails, or in this case updating the "lemon your Widmer" idea.  Rimming is a practice I first read about in this Draft Magazine article, and it sounds a little perverse at first, but I've heard it can be a very pleasurable experience.  Apparently it is something young people do a lot of these days, especially as a way to add even more cookie and pie flavors to pumpkin beers.  The Fruit Beer Fest's Rimming Booth will be set up between the dedicated cider taps and the children's face-painting station.

Portland Fruit Beer Festival:  June 7-8, 2014.  11 AM to 9 PM Saturday, 11 to 6 Sunday.

__________________________________________________

Hopworks DriveToBeerFest

Although the date for Hopworks Brewery's fall festival hasn't been set in stone yet, some major changes in the theme are in store for the 6th annual event.  Instead of the bicycle-centric BikeToBeerFest of the last several years, this year Hopworks is holding a DriveToBeerFest.  It sounds like an off note to the Portland ear, but it makes sense on at least two levels.  For one thing, in a more competitive craft beer market, suburban beer lovers are a market that Hopworks wants to cater to by demonstrating that driving to a beer festival is just as cool as biking to one.

On a more practical level, you may have noticed how crowded BikeToBeerFest has been the last couple of years.  The more the merrier, up to a point, but lately the crowds have been so large at the festival that Hopworks is ready to dial it down a little.  One very natural way to limit attendance is to encourage less efficient modes of transportation, so that fewer people are able to attend.  With that in mind, instead of setting up hundreds of bike racks for people to park at, attendees will be encouraged to drive their cars to the festival, preferably with each person arriving in their own car (they call it "designated driving").  In a partly symbolic, partly utilitarian measure, the dozen or so bike racks in front of the pub will be removed during the weekend of the festival to make room for a single parking space.  Watch this space for more information on the dates and times for this exciting festival.

__________________________________________________

Of course, there are a couple of other minor festivals happening between all these events, but I wanted to keep you abreast of the exciting innovations that are coming up.

Protip: Sierra Nevada Ovila Quad is on the Shelves

I have been one to bash Sierra Nevada Brewing, for their recent corporate tax dodge, and for shamelessly passing off all-dried-hop beers as "Fresh Hop Ales" (again and again and again).  That doesn't prevent me from being a huge fan of many of their beers.  And as an inveterate cheapskate, I find that some of their high-end beers are sold at very sensible prices compared to their peers.

Case in point, Sierra Nevada Ovila Quad brewed with plums, on the shelf now in corked 375ml bottles for about $4.  I picked up a couple last year in a grocery store almost by accident, and then was heartsick a couple days later when I couldn't find any more for sale anywhere in town.  But I saw them on the shelf today, grabbed six of them, and then decided to share the love with you, dear readers.

If you like a good Belgian quad, you'll want to try this beer, it hits all the bases (flowery Belgian yeasts, dark plummy richness, and a nice alcohol burn).  The corked bottle argues against cellaring, but if this year's vintage is anything like last year's, it's good to go right now.  Act fast, it's an occasional seasonal, and they'll go fast at that price.

Bridgeport Stumptown Tart 2013

This year's Stumptown Tart is being released tomorrow (Thursday, April 18, 2013) at the Bridgeport Brewpub, 5:30-8:30 PM.  This year's brew highlights blueberries for the first time in the 6-year run of the series, but also has raspberries and blackberries.  All told, there are 15 pounds of fruit per barrel; the fruit was the most expensive ingredient in the brew -- 150% of the cost of the malt.

I got to taste this year's batch yesterday just as the first bottles were rolling off Bridgeport's line.  It's a good one.  Forget about the "Tart" in the name, this isn't a sour beer.  As usual, there is a little bit of Belgian tripel character -- half of the batch is brewed with Bridgeport's house ale yeast, half with a Belgian strain -- and the blueberries come through nicely.  This might be the best batch since the Cherry Stumptown Tart in 2009.  The beer is pretty, and the blueberries give a nice cotton-candy pink tinge to the head.   There is live yeast in the bottle, but it's not really a beer designed for aging -- drink it fresh.

The pinup model for the label, Bernie Dexter, will be on hand at the release party tomorrow, and she will even be manning a kissing booth.  This year's label has her dressed a little more modestly than years past, so I guess they had to kick it up a notch by allowing actual physical contact. You'll also get another chance to try it this weekend at the Cheers to Belgian Beers festival: Friday, April 19th from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. and Saturday, April 20th from noon to 8 p.m. at Metalcraft Fabrication (723 N. Tillamook).

Preview: Portland Fruit Beer Festival 2012

Last year's "first annual" Portland Fruit Beer Festival had about twice the attendance that organizer Ezra Johnson-Greenough expected it to have -- with most of that coming on the busy Saturday opening despite parking and traffic disruptions by the Portland Rose Festival parade a few blocks away.  There were some shortages of the mostly one-off beers, but for the most part the festival went off pretty smoothly.  The preponderance of beers brewed specifically for the festival made for a very enjoyable time; to jog your memory, read my recap of last year's festival.

This year's festival should be even better, with:

• More space (NE 7th Ave. closed off)
• More beer in stock
• Draft trucks for faster keg replacement
• Four rare taps on at once, instead of last year's two
• Several ciders on tap for your beer-challenged loved ones

On the down side, the entry price is a little higher this year:  in order to get a wristband for drinking, you must purchase a $20 package that includes a nice glass and 12 tickets for samples (the glass was only $6 last year).  Additional tickets are $1.  Minors and other non-drinkers get in free.

It's always fun to look over a festival's beer list before you get there, to make a plan for what you're going to attack first.  Here is the PFBF's main list; there is also a rotating rare tap list.  I have a few recommendations for you, some of which I have tried, others that caught my eye on the list for one reason or another (alphabetical by brewery):

• Alameda Huckleberry Hound IPA: Not my favorite, but one of the quickest to run out last year, so get it fast.
• Bend Brewing Ching Ching Berliner Weisse: A GABF medal winner from the talented Tonya Cornett.
• Breakside Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Golden Ale: Made with whole pies!
• Burnside Red Light District Imperial Stout: A little sweet, and over 10%, but one of the few beers I've had where strawberries make a good addition.
• Gigantic Hot Town, Summer in the City Imperial Black Saison: Gigantic's already tasty IBS, with Ben Love's sarcastic addition of the fruit of the chile pepper plant.
• Laurelwood Cascara Obscura Belgian Dubbel: A delicious abbey ale, with a slight rose-hip tartness from the addition of the coffee berries -- excellent off-the-wall fruit choice.
• Ninkasi Cherry Bourbon Renewale Porter: Last year the Cherry Oatis was my unexpected favorite of the festival, so I have to check this one out.
• Upright Levinator Bock: The picture above doesn't do justice to the pretty beet-juice color that black currants add to this full-bodied, slightly tart bock.  Delicious.
• Widmer Marionberry Hibiscus Gose: Last year I was underwhelmed by Widmer's very pretty Raspberry Hibiscus Gose, though lots of people loved it.  I like this year's much better, it seems a little maltier and a little saltier.  Check it out.

I'm not even going to go into the rare beers list, but do keep an eye out for Burnside's International Incident, a news-making strong wheat ale with mangos, hot peppers, and Indian spices.  There are also rare kegs from breweries seldom or never seen in Portland:  Short Snout Brewing, a new Kickstarter-funded nanobrewery in town; California's Almanac (founded by a beer blogger!); and Naked City and Schooner Exact from Washington.

Some things to keep in mind for the festival:

• Where: 701 E. Burnside (Note: The Burnside Bridge is closed Saturday morning for the Rose Parade.)
• When:
  
  • Saturday June 9, 2012, 11 AM - 9 PM
  • Sunday June 10, 2012, 11 AM - 6 PM
• Cost: free entry; 16-ounce tasting glass plus 12 tastes $20; 4-ounce taste $1
• All ages are admitted.
• Car parking: good luck. The Rose Parade will further complicate matters early Saturday.  Bike or take the bus.
• Bike parking:  not much at the festival.  There are big bike corrals just off East Burnside at 6th, 8th, and 9th, and there's another one at 9th and Ash.

2011 Portland Fruit Beer Festival

By most accounts this weekend's Portland Fruit Beer Festival was a raging success -- I'll address some of the gripes later in the post. Hats off to beer impresario Ezra Johnson-Greenough and the Burnside Brewing crew for hitting the ground running. I've been referring to this year's festival as the "first ever", since there was no telling whether it would succeed well enough to be repeated next year, but I guess I was too timid, because even the T-shirts at the festival proclaimed it to be the First Annual, and the tasting glasses staked out the territory of the 2nd weekend in June. Plans for next year involve closing the stretch of NE 7th adjacent to Burnside, doubling the square footage of the festival.

The beer highlights for me were:

• Ninkasi Pinot Barrel-Aged Oatis with Cherries: beautiful taste of cherries, chocolate, and oak
• Lompoc Cherry Fechter: classic cherry pie taste in a light ale; reminded me of Bridgeport's cherry Stumptown Tart or Upright's 2009 Four Play, high praise for me
• Laurelwood Mango Mint Pale Ale: nicely balanced with a tiny hint of mint and a little whiff of mango
• Hopworks Chupacabra Chile Stout: an instant classic, rich coffee stout with dark dried-chile notes but not too much heat
• Breakside Brewer's Bramble: uniquely flavored amber ale, an homage to the gin cocktail called the Bramble
• Block 15 Psidium Guava Farmhouse Ale: I went on and on about this tasty little number in my festival preview; brewer Nick Arzner was pouring his own brew Saturday afternoon

There were plenty of other enjoyable beers at the fest.  Probably my biggest disappointment was the Widmer Raspberry-Hibiscus Gose.  It wasn't bad -- and it was hands down the prettiest beer served -- but it wasn't quite what I wanted.  I was thinking along the lines of the tarter Goses from Upright and Cascade, and I would have liked a little more grain backing up the giant dose of raspberries.  Several people told me it was one of their favorites though, so take my review with a grain of salt.

The PFBF was also my first experience with pouring beer at a festival since I got my OLCC card a couple months ago.  I had a great time pouring at the rare beer taps on Saturday during the quiet early hours, before passing the torch to Angelo and Margaret when the going got tough.

Some people who arrived late Saturday afternoon had a few complaints about the festival.  It was very crowded by that time, and several of the beers had already run out: Alameda, Ninkasi, Breakside, Upright, and Fort George were early casualties.  There was also some confusion about the rare-beer taps; the system was explained in the festival program, but apparently it could have been explained more clearly, or in bold-faced type or with better signage.  Many people didn't understand that the beers rolled out two or three at a time, some on Saturday and some on Sunday, in a particular order but with no set schedule.

But these were minor hitches, and things were surprisingly well-organized -- including alphabetical order at the beer taps and a nice pint glass for samples -- for a first-time festival.  It was better for the festival to run out of some beers than for it to lose a ton of money on its first outing, which was by no means an impossibility.  Saturday's attendance of 2,600 people was higher than what the organizers expected for the entire weekend; Sunday's 1,200 people were just icing on the cake.  Even though the lines got a little long the first day, it was nothing like, say, OBF lines, and they flowed pretty quickly, especially in the rare beer area.  While I'm comparing the PFBF to other beer festivals, consider that all but one of the rare beers went for only $2 a sample -- compare that to the Portland International Brewfest, where you have a tough time finding something interesting for $2, and $5-$7 samples is not uncommon.

All in all, it was a very promising start for an exciting new festival.  Check it out next year.

Further reading:

• Sanjay's followup
• Angelo's recap
• Matt's photos
• Kris's review
• Aaron's complaints

Why You Should Attend the Portland Fruit Beer Festival

This picture gives you a glimpse of what's behind the scenes at the upcoming Portland Fruit Beer Festival: barrels, kegs, canisters of compressed gas, jockey boxes, Jason McAdam.  But the real reason you should head over to this first-ever festival at Burnside Brewing this weekend (June 11 and 12) is the beer.  In the main festival area in the Burnside parking lot, there will be 15 different fruit beers available for $1 per sample, and inside the brewery there will be two special taps with a rotating selection of special fruity rarities priced at $2-$3 a sample.

Put aside any preconceptions you might have about light, fruit-flavored beers designed to appease people who don't like beer.  Ezra has put together a program of outstanding and highly creative beers, most of which were brewed just for this event and haven't been seen before.  Paradoxically, there are more beers on the "rare beer" list that you might already have tasted than than there are on the "standard" list.  If you want to do some homework before the festival, descriptions of all the beers -- standards and rarities -- are on this list.  Here are a few that I recommend trying:

Standards:

• Block 15 Psidium Guava Farmhouse Ale: one of my favorites from a festival preview the other day: tropical fruit and funky yeast aromas and flavors, pleasantly fizzy and yeasty with a bitter hop finish.  Typically hyperactive creation from Block 15: the citra-hopped (!) guava (!) farmhouse ale (!) is mixed with 25% golden ale barrel aged (!) for 20 months with brettanomyces (!) and lactobacillus (!).
• Fort George Badda Boom Cherry Stout: nice cherry and coffee notes (no coffee added), very bitter and a little astringent.  Brewed with the Westmalle yeast that was used at this year's Cheers to Belgian Beers.
• Ninkasi Pinot barrel-aged Cherry Oatis Stout: can't wait to try this.
• Breakside Mango IPA: We gotta have some hops.  Sounds tasty.
• Widmer Himbeere Gose mit dem Eibisch: Yet another Portland Gose, with raspberries and hibiscus.  I like goses, and this should be a pretty one.

Rarities:

• Widmer 2009 Cherry Oak Doppelbock: I was just talking to Brian the other day about this first Brother's Reserve beer, hoping to see it again.  Well, here it is.
• Hopworks Chupacabra Chile Stout: Hopworks decided to be that guy that says "Well, technically peppers are fruits, not vegetables.  Did you know okra is a fruit?"  But the result of this smart-assery was the most polished beer at the preview:  the chiles go very well with the coffee in this variant of their Survival Stout.
• Burnside Marionberry Berliner Weisse: a beautiful dark-pink beer, very light and refreshing, not as tart as you'd expect, with a lovely berry flavor.
• New Belgium Peach Love Flanders Brown: La Folie aged on peaches.  This could be really good or an insane challenge, but I want to try it for myself.
• Block 15 La Ferme de Demons 2010: the winning entry from last year's Cheers to Belgian Beers; I didn't care much for it last year, but I'd like to taste it a year older.

If none of those sound appealing to you, there are other intriguing choices from Alameda, Beetje, Dogfish Head, Laurelwood, Lompoc, Oakshire, and Upright.

All but two of the festival "standards" are unique to PFBF -- only the selections from out-of-town big boys New Belgium (Ooh La La) and Dogfish Head (Festina Peche) are something you might have had before.  As I said above, the rarities list actually has several beers that you may well have tried already:  Widmer doppelbock, He'Brew Origin, Cascade Apricot and Kriek, and Double Mountain Devil's Kriek.  Still, those are some interesting offerings, so you'll want to keep checking the board to see what's on tap, or better yet, follow PFBF on Twitter or Facebook for instant updates.

Now for some festival details:

• Where: 701 E. Burnside (Note: The Burnside Bridge  is closed Saturday morning for the Rose Parade.)
• When:
  
  • Saturday June 11, 2011, 11 AM - 9 PM
  • Sunday June 12, 2011, 11 AM - 6 PM
• Cost: free entry; 16-ounce tasting glass $6; 4-ounce taste $1
• All ages are admitted.
• Car parking: good luck. The Rose Parade will further complicate matters early Saturday.  Bike or take the bus.
• Bike parking:  not much at the festival.  There are big bike corrals just off East Burnside at 6th, 8th, and 9th, and there's another one at 9th and Ash.

Make some time this weekend to come on out to the Portland Fruit Beer Festival, even if you haven't been a big fruit beer fan in the past.  There will be some unique beers that are really worth a try and may never be seen again.

Cherry Beers

We interrupt the barrage of fresh-hop posts with a question that's been on my mind for a while. What is it that makes cherries work so well in beer?

The first fruit beers I became aware of years ago were made with raspberries -- I'm sure Celis Raspberry is the first I tried, and from that I learned that there existed this "frambozen" category of Belgian beers. Raspberries are still the most common fruit adjunct -- an unscientific search for raspberry on Beer Advocate came up with 357 matches -- but cherries seem to be the second-most common, and for my money they're the best.

Last night I took a couple of cherry beers over to the neighbors' house: Upright's Four Play and Bridgeport's 2009 Stumptown Tart. It seemed a little risky keeping that bottle of Tart in the basement for a year, but that's what Karl Ockert told me to do, so I did it. It held up very well -- it is about 7% ABV -- and even a fruit-beer skeptic like Dave was impressed. Of the three years of Stumptown Tart, the cherry one is my favorite, hands down. Not really sour, with a nice cherry-pie flavor over the mild Belgian ale.

Very similar in flavor was the Upright Four Play that's been sitting in my fridge for about six months. It's not as strong at 5%, but had the same level of cherry taste, and I liked it even more than the Bridgeport. It was just slightly tarter, and had a more interesting balance of flavors. That's the Four Play in the glass in the picture; really the two beers looked remarkably alike in the glass.

The other cherry beers that have been on my mind are the Cascade Kriek and Hair of the Dog Cherry Adam. I'm glad to be able to get the Kriek in $6 doses now that the Barrel House is open, instead of having to plunk down $16 for a bottle of it. Sours are definitely an acquired taste, but I've acquired a taste for that one. It's a work of art. As for the Cherry Adam, I had a fabulous bottle of it about a year ago; more recently there was a less inspiring undercarbonated version on tap at the new Hair of the Dog bistro. I love the smoky taste of Adam, and the cherries bring a beautiful new dimension to that, so I'm going to keep hoping for a repeat of that first batch I tried.

What else is out there? Got any cherry beers I should try? [Update 2010/12/20: Oh yeah, also the Hopworks Piledriver that was at BikeToBeerFest. Awesome!] [Update 2011/04/15: Widmer Cherry Doppelbock from 2009 is another good example. Wouldn't mind if they brought that back.]

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.

Bridgeport Stumptown Tart 2009

Don't be afraid of the "Tart" label on Bridgeport's latest "Big Brew", this year's Stumptown Tart. A wheat beer flavored with fresh cherries, it certainly has a little citric tang that lingers briefly on the tongue, but it is not oppressively sour. The 2008 marionberry incarnation of Stumptown Tart -- itself on the tame end of the tart-beer spectrum -- was far more sour.

In fact, I didn't much care for last year's Tart, but the 2009 cherry Tart is a lovely, refreshing beer. Its earthy cherry-pie flavor blends perfectly with a base that is quite dry but not at all astringent. Even though the flavor really will remind you of cherry pie, it's not cloying -- really it's not noticeably sweet at all. Another nearly undetectable ingredient is the alcohol. This is a big beer -- 8.3% ABV -- but there's no boozy flavor at all. The 2009 Stumptown Tart is a real gem.

In the past, I've gone off on the sour beer craze. I'm not totally opposed to tart or funky flavors in beer, but when there's no other notable flavor, or when the sourness steals the attention from everything else in the beer, count me out. Hence, I'm unable to enjoy beer-snob darlings such as Russian River Supplication or the Duchesse de Bourgogne. A little farmhouse funkiness is OK with me, and I even found some love in my heart for Dogfish Head's very tart Festina Peche.

But the "tart" in this year's Stumptown Tart is a red herring. It's definitely worth a try even if you shy away from sour beers or fruit beers. Bridgeport's brewmaster, Karl Ockert, thinks it will age well for a year or two. Since I like the fresh article so well, it's not obvious to me how aging would improve it, but I did hide one bottle in my basement out of curiosity. The 22 oz. bombers have been selling for around $5, a pretty good deal ($16.36 SPE) for a beer this big. Get it while it lasts.