Full Sail Imperial Porter

I've stashed my case in the basement, so now I'm going to share with you one of the best beer bargains in Oregon at this time of year:  Full Sail's Imperial Porter (on the right in the photo -- I'll talk about the beer on the left in a minute).  It's under $5 a bomber ($4.25 at Beermongers), and a nice hearty beer to drink right now, but cellar it for a year or so, and you'll have a great beer for any occasion.  It's on the shelves now -- I highly recommend it.  Fresh, there's an angular bitterness to it; it's pretty dry, with very roasty malts and 60 IBUs of hops.  After mellowing out for a year, it gets a little smoother, the flavors meld together, and the chocolate/coffee flavors of the double porter come to the fore.  $4.25 + 365 days = delicious.

The beer in the glass in the photo is actually not the 2011 Imperial Porter I'm praising in this post.  It's the 2010 Top Sail, which is the 2009 Imperial Porter, aged in bourbon barrels for a year before bottling.  Tonight I cracked open a bottle I had in the basement, and it's a boozy, vanilla-y thing of beauty.  I recall it being ready to drink as soon as it was bottled last year, and I can't say that I think its time in my cellar added anything, though it hasn't suffered either.  Here's the thing: when you buy the foil-topped barrel-aged bottle, it's more than twice the price of the fresh porter -- usually at least $11.  It is a fair amount stronger in alcohol at 9.9% ABV vs. 7.5% -- is that due to evaporation/fermentation in the barrel? added bourbon? -- and definitely gains some interest from the bourbon flavors.  Also recommended, but not twice as recommended as the un-barreled one, especially if you give the cheap one a year to age.

As you may know, Full Sail alternates years between releases of the Brewer's Reserve Imperial Porter and the Imperial Stout.  This allows them to barrel-age part of the batch for a year, so in even-numbered years a barrel-aged porter and fresh stout are bottled; in odd-numbered years a barrel-aged stout and fresh porter are bottled.  When I was buying my case at Beermongers, Josh pointed out to me that's another good reason to stock up on this year's porter -- so you can compare it to the barrel-aged version next year.  The barrel-aged ones get special names:  Top Sail (porter) and Black Gold (stout), though apparently in 2007 (and before?) the unaged porter may have also been called Top Sail, judging from this old Beer Advocate page.

For some reason, Full Sail's Imperial Stout -- aged or no -- doesn't grab me like the porter does.  Oh, it's good, but the porter always seems rounder and more chocolatey to me.  Look for it now, and stock up.

Full Sail Beer Belly

Carla and I had a great time at East Burn's Beer Belly Dinner last night. It was the one-year anniversary of the dinners, so they brought back Full Sail's John Harris as the guest brewer, since he did the first such dinner.  A new beer was previewed, Hop Pursuit Extra Pale Ale,  and I got to try the Pilsner Room exclusive Slainte Stout for the first time.  The appetizer courses matched up well with the two lagers of the evening: Session Black and LTD 1, and of course any night is a good night if the dessert is served with barrel-aged Top Sail Imperial Porter.

Hop Pursuit is a nice biscuity pale that John said was his way of getting back to his brewing roots, with the "old-school hops" that were all he had to work with early in his brewing career:  Willamettes, Mt. Hoods, and Cascades.  It will be out in 22-ounce bottles in a few months as part of the Brewmaster's Reserve series.  There are lots of flowery hops in there, but it's not overly bitter.  Nice stuff.

These Beer Belly dinners are a great deal, $35 a head for five wonderful courses paired with beer.  The setting on the East Burn's patio is pleasant and relaxing, especially if you get one of the tables with porch-swing seats. Best of all, the proceeds from the dinners benefit a worthy cause: Ride On, the non-profit organization that will drive you and your car home for a small fee if you've had too much to drink.

I foolishly forgot to bring a camera, so all I got were some blurry cellphone pictures.  Blurry and dark -- it wasn't until the cheese course that I figured out the night-photo feature of my new phone.  I wish I could show you the massive pork chops we were served, or the delicious pork-belly skewers candied and dusted with Indian spices.  [Update: A generous reader is willing to share her pictures of the dinner. Check out those courses.] Last night's menu was very pork-o-centric, but I noticed that a diner at the next table was provided with vegetarian replacements, so I suppose if you call ahead they'll accommodate you.

Next month's dinner features San Francisco's 21st Amendment Brewery.  Good food, good beer, good deal, all for a good cause.

Full Sail 2010 Top Sail Release

Every February something special happens at the Full Sail Pilsner Room at the Portland harbor. In even-numbered years Full Sail rolls out a barrel-aged version of their Top Sail Imperial Porter; the odd-numbered years see the release of barrel-aged Black Gold Imperial Stout (though for some reason 2006 also got the stout and not the porter). Last night I sat at a table full of beer bloggers -- Charles (in the photo), Derek, Ezra and SNOB poster boy Ritch -- to sample this year's batch.

Usually the release party includes a vertical tasting of previous vintages. Brewmaster John Harris said that they've drained so many of those earlier kegs, that there wasn't enough old beer available for this year's release. So they hit on a wonderful idea: instead of a vertical tasting, have a horizontal tasting of single-barrel versions of this year's Top Sail, alongside the final product, which is a blend of beer aged in Maker's Mark, Stranahan's, and Four Roses barrels. Most of us at the table agreed that the blend was the best of all, capturing just the right balance between beer, wood, and bourbon. But it was wonderful to try the individual constituents side-by-side. Great idea.

I'm not a bourbon expert at all, and it would have been nice to have some experience of the three whiskeys to orient myself.  Nevertheless, it was interesting to note the differences in the individual barrels.  The Maker's Mark version seemed to contribute the strongest vanilla and alcohol flavors to the chocolatey porter.  That barrel seemed to most closely resemble the final blend.  The vanilla notes were much more subdued in the other two barrel; I'm guessing that the Stranahan's version was closest to the original brew, and the Four Roses barrel added what to me was a dry and dusty character -- Derek described it as "spicy".  The blend is a delicious strong porter with a drinkable non-syrupy consistency; it has a satisfying chocolate malt flavor, with bourbon and vanilla highlights added by the barrels.  Everything is very well-balanced -- you get a taste of the bourbon, but it doesn't overwhelm as it does in some bourbon porters and stouts.

Even though there were no kegs of older vintages available, John opened one bottle each of the 2004 and 2008 barrel-aged Top Sail.  He passed small glasses of each around our table.  The 2004 was still drinkable but is starting to lose its way (not surprising after 6 years).  The 2008 was lovely, quite similar to this year's, but a little mellower.  It's interesting, when I wrote up the 2008 Top Sail release, I found the 2008 a little disappointing compared to the 2004 -- age seemed to help out.  But last night I decided the 2010 is plenty good enough to drink right now, easily a match for the cellared-two-years 2008.  Who knows, maybe a year or two in the cellar will make it even more brilliant, but you won't be disappointed if you crack open a fresh bottle of it.

A Keg of Cask Ale

Last week I was asking for your opinions on the state of cask ale in Portland. Here's some evidence in support of Ted Sobel's gripe about "cask-conditioned" beer: a pony keg of cask Wreck the Halls that Dave picked up for the Main Street solstice gathering. Definitely just a regular-'ol keg, of a very burly Full Sail beer that wasn't brewed with cask ale as the first thought.

Over the weekend I wasn't tsk-tsking it, I was glug-glugging it, because it was mighty tasty, even if it wasn't culturally authentic. The biggest problem Dave had was, how do you get the beer out of the keg? It didn't have a blowhole like a firkin does, so he couldn't just somehow tap it and drain it. On the other hand, forcing it out with a keg tap or CO2 seemed risky.

Dave is always up for some kind of project, so he made his own cask engine, using some kind of RV water-pump gadget and the fitting from a regular keg pump. By unscrewing the central cylinder of the keg pump, the keg was able to breathe in air to make up for the lost volume of ale. It wasn't as eye-catching as English pub-style cask handles, but it got the job done for the party. And, yes, that's too much ice cooling it off -- we had to let the beer warm up after dispensing it.

On the earlier post about cask ales, I was hoping people would name more names of places with good or bad cask ale. There wasn't much response, but here's what I got, plus I'll add a bit of my own opinion.

Good places for cask ale:

• Deschutes - even Ted approves
• Moon and Sixpence
• County Cork
  
• Rock Bottom - from firkins at the right temperature
• Bridgeport - especially the Pearl location

Places where you might avoid the cask ale:

• New Old Lompoc - one commenter reports multiple fails
• Horse Brass - same commenter says "hit or miss"; I agree
• Lucky Lab - pains me to say it, but that two-week old Black Lab Stout has its tongue hanging out.
  

Hoppy Holiday Ales

Last week Jeff wrote about blindly tasting three Northwest winter-warmer type ales. I don't know if I'd really count it as a blind tasting, since he was able to identify all three, and while he had good things to say about all of them, he preferred Deschutes Jubelale over Full Sail Wassail and Laurelwood Vinter Varmer.

Now, Jubelale is a special obsession at my house, but this year I find myself drawn more towards hoppy holiday ales instead of the darker spiced winter warmers. Some representatives from the hoppy holiday side of the beer family tree are:

• Widmer Brrr
• Full Sail Wreck the Halls
• Double Mountain Fa La La
• Lompoc C-Son's Greetings
  
• Lagunitas Imperial Red Ale
• Sierra Nevada Celebration
• Bridgeport Ebenezer

That list is more or less in my order of preference. Widmer Brrr is just so darn good. It takes the idea originally set forth by Celebration, and kind of dials up the crispness or the distinctness of the flavors. It's not that it's a hop bomb -- like Fa La La and C-Son's Greetings -- but the hops are much more floral and obvious than in Celebration, without obscuring the nice malt base.

Wreck the Halls is fabulous this year, a burly, heavily-hopped ale, with a strong bitter finish. Fa La La is also a marvel, a solid strong ale, with a big Double Mountain dose of hops. You won't find it in bottles, so if you see it on tap somewhere, you better have a pint. For some reason, the Lagunitas Red Ale isn't grabbing me this year as it has in years past. I almost want to say that it's too balanced -- the caramel malts give it a real heft that keeps the hops in check. Maybe it's just that Brrr has changed my idea of how the hops should be in a holiday ale.

C-Son's greetings, a kind of double C-Note, is a regular New Old Lompoc winter seasonal. This year for the first time, it's available in 22-ounce bottles. If you like C-Note, or big IPAs of any kind, you'll enjoy this malted-up version. Bridgeport's Ebenezer is not as hoppy as most of these holiday ales, but it seems to belong more in this category than the winter warmer one. It's not unpleasant, but it's not really very exciting.

I like this idea of a holiday-ale family tree. I'd say that winter warmers like Jubel are on a branch typified by Anchor's Christmas Ale -- think porters with winter spices. Then there's the Celebration branch of hoppy strong ales, and the closely-related winter barleywine branch, whose archetype is Bigfoot -- another Sierra Nevada brew -- emulated now by bruisers like Hair of the Dog Doggie Claws and Lagunitas Brown Shugga. I can think of one more category: the crazy European big brews -- Samichlaus, Scaldis, and various Belgian Noel beers. Can every holiday beer fit on one of those branches, or does the category need splintering some more?

Session Premium Lager

For this first Friday of March, The Beer Nut in Dublin is choreographing the world's beer bloggers in the synchronized blogging experiment known as The Session. The Nut decreed that we write about "cold, fizzy, yellow" light lagers -- challenging us loudmouths who go on and on about the latest Imperial This or Double That to "return to our roots as beer drinkers".

The Lager Session... think, think, think... I've got it! I'll write about Session Lager, the cheaper beer that Full Sail markets to those who refuse to drink craft beer. As part of my research, I picked up a twelve-pack of 11-ounce stubbies for $11. What qualifies for cheap sure has changed over the years: in the mid-90's in Austin my cheap stubbies of choice were $2 six-packs of Pearl. That's not really my roots as a beer drinker -- I consider Shiner Bock to be my early muse -- but it was a reasonable way to stretch the budget at the time.

What can I say about Session Premium Lager? Well, it's cold, fizzy, and yellow. Tastes to me like Pearl or Miller High Life. In the narrow range of lawnmower beers, it's at the more flavorful end. If you absolutely must down something cold, cheap, and mildly alcoholic, you may as well make it a Session, especially if you're here in Oregon and want to drink local.

The little bottles of Pearl back then had entertaining rebus puzzles under the bottle caps; Session's caps have rock-paper-scissors drawings on them. What are those for? It wouldn't make a good drinking game, because both players have to open their bottle to play. Maybe you could use it to decide who buys the next round, but who wins a three- or four-person game?

Even though Session won't be a common choice for me, I'm glad Full Sail took this direction. It gives the cheap beer crowd a local choice, and it might also entice some of them to branch out to better beers. One suggestion to Full Sail: you should make Session even more versatile by selling it in cans.

Thumbs Up for Lupulin No. 3

I'm sitting here in the Pilsner Room with a pint of the third batch of Full Sail's 2008 Lupulin Ale, this one made with Nugget hops. Lighter in color than batch number one, the flavor reminds me much more of last year's awesome brew, more vegetably and less bitter than the batch made with Mt. Rainier hops.

Get it while it lasts -- it looks like the second batch (Cascade hops) went on while I was out of town, and it's already gone (though I hope to catch it at a Tastival).

Set Sail for the Pilsner Room

Since the Hawthorne Bridge is the center of the Pub Night universe, it's about time I got around to writing about the Pilsner Room, the taproom for Full Sail's Portland brewery. After all, you can see the bridge from there, and it's a nice destination if you're on a bicycle, with easy access from Waterfront Park (which also means it's within stumbling distance of the Oregon Brewers Festival). I practically lived there last October because of brewer John Harris' magnificent Lupulin Fresh Hop Ale. So I'll take advantage of writing up Thursday night's tasting of barrel-aged porters and stouts to extol the virtues of the Pilsner Room.

The McCormick and Schmick's restaurant attached to the Pilsner Room provides a menu that's better than the usual pub fare, with good prices at lunch and super-cheap ones at happy hour. There are lots of 2- and 4-seat dining tables -- even more outside in good weather -- and plenty of room at the bar if you're on a solo mission or you just need to be close to the beer. The selection is fabulous: about 10 house brews, 3 cask engines, and another 10 guest taps. Besides the mainstream Full Sail repertoire -- and excellent seasonals like the Slipknot IPA -- there are always three or four rarities from the adjoining brewery, like the doppelbock, or the delicious Belgian dubbel. The guest taps are nicely done, with an interesting variety of quality beers. It always makes me happy to see an out-of-the-ordinary Hale's on tap -- it's the Wee Heavy right now. It's also sporting of them to always keep one of the engines stocked with a guest cask: a Double Mountain Red Ale was on cask Thursday, and I've seen Hopworks and (I think) Ninkasi casks.

Now, about those dark beers. Each year, the brewery takes a portion of their Top Sail Imperial Porter or Black Gold Imperial Stout, whichever they brewed that year, and ages it in bourbon barrels for nine or ten months. Thursday evening they trotted out three different examples: this year's aged Top Sail, a Black Gold from 2006, and a pre-Top Sail Imperial Porter from 2004. The year refers to when they were taken out of the oak, they were brewed the year before.

I don't know who started this scheme of aging stouts in bourbon casks, but it seems to be growing in popularity. My first encounter with it was a bourbon-aged KGB Stout that I had at Widmer's Gasthaus sometime in 2004. This year they're breaking out all over. John Foyston, the beer writer at the Oregonian, pointed out four different barrel-aged releases -- some stouts, some barleywines, some in whiskey barrels, some in wine -- in the space of a couple of weeks. And of course there's Epic and the infamous Abyss. Many of these are blends of aged and fresh beer. As far as I can tell from the Full Sail propaganda, the ones we had Thursday are just the straight-up aged item.

The usual Pub Nighters couldn't make the Full Sail matinee, so I was left on my own for this tasting. Fortunately, there was a friendly and sophisticated crowd sitting at the bar to ooh and ahh over the beers with. These were luscious, tasty brews. The 2004 porter tasted strongly of bourbon -- which could have turned out badly, but didn't. It also had a very strong chocolate taste, again, in a good way. The literature says it's 7.4% ABV; it tasted stronger than that to me, comparable to the 10% of the other two beers. I was pretty sure this was my favorite of the three, but the 2006 stout kept growing on me until I thought maybe that was my favorite. The 2006 was smooth and delicious, with that hint of minty flavor that so many good stouts have. Though the bourbon flavor wasn't as pronounced as with the 2004, it did add a nice touch to a very well-rounded beer. You can't really fault the 2008 porter for coming in third place to its accomplished older siblings. The flavor seemed milder than that of the 2004, and its lighter body made me think "cola". Still a mighty fine porter; I'm going to leave my bottle of it in the fridge for a while to see how it develops.

Hop Harvest Beers 2007

My humble blogging start was a maneuver called "guest blogging" on my buddy Lee's blog. He was kind enough to let me write not one, not two, not three, but four posts about this year's fresh-hop beers around Portland.

It seems pretty lame to me to blog under someone else's marquee (though others have proposed that it's the best way to blog), so I'll start putting my beer scribblings on my own blog.

[Update: 2008/05/23]: Here are the original posts, in reading order, not backwards-blog-time order. I've added a little linkage and changed punctuation and formatting just a little.

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Friday, September 28, 2007

Well, it's starting to rain again, so I guess we'll see less sun for the next, oh, nine months.

But this time of year has its reward: fresh hop beers. I hadn't heard of such a thing when we first got here, but now I await it eagerly every fall. The idea is, the brewer goes out to some farmer's place and gets some hops right after they're harvested, and throws them into the beer the very same day. It's a distinctively different taste, you get the nice bitter hop flavor, but also something herbal or vegetable-y on top of that.

I got caught off guard this year, Roots was the first place I saw it, Tuesday night when Dave and I headed over there for some darts. Their Hop-o-pottamus (what a name) was very much in character, it was one of their hearty, strong ales, it might remind you of Roots Red. Good stuff.

The next day Bridgeport was scheduled to release their Hop Harvest, so I took a chance and walked over there for lunch. They weren't going to serve it until 4, but luckily I overheard one of the employees talking about it to someone, and when I pestered him about it he took me upstairs and gave me a small sample. From that sample, my impression was that it was very competently done, but maybe not quite as tasty as what they had last year. They took a chance this year, and made a stronger (7%) ale, almost an Imperial IPA. I'll give it another chance and see if it tastes better in a bigger glass. Lee, you might look around Austin for this, they're selling some in 22 oz. bottles for the first time.

Well, since I had two days in a row of fresh hop beers, I went to Laurelwood's NW location yesterday (Thursday) to see if they had their version yet, but was disappointed. Apparently they do have it on the eastside.

Today I headed over to the Rogue brewpub for lunch, and they had just tapped their Hop Heaven. This was much more classic than Bridgeport's, and I'll probably try to soak up more of it while it lasts. Maybe you can even get bottles of this outside Oregon?

So, to paraphrase Meatloaf, 3 out of 4 ain't bad. Next week I'll pop into the New Old Lompoc to check theirs out (that's the same brewery as Hedge House), and Lucky Lab should have theirs pretty soon. I may even break down and go to Rock Bottom, since they have one on tap right now. Next month there is a mini-festival of fresh hop beers at the McMenamin's in Troutdale, I'll see if I can scare up a posse for that. Deschutes (Bend, OR) makes one called Hop Trip every year, with any luck I'll find that on tap somewhere.

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Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Saturday evening the missus and I were downtown and happened into the bar at Higgins, and found that their cask beer was Full Sail's fresh hop ale -- guessing it's the one they calll Lupulin Ale. Perfect. This is the flavor I was looking for: a little sweet, hoppy and flowery with a little extra green flavor. A little flat and not-too-cold from the cask, just beautiful. The best one I've had this year, and I'll have to hit it a few more times before I'm satisfied.

Sunday I convinced the neighbors to join me at the Lucky Lab, where they have The Mutt on tap, named after the 4 different varieties of fresh hops. It was interesting, a little bit tart like a rye or even some wheat beers, but we found it disappointing. Not much flavor, so you had to concentrate really hard to pick up the fresh hop aroma. I notice they have a couple other varieties they will show at the festival, so I'm holding out hope that one of those will redeem the Lab.

Monday I pounced on the New Old Lompoc and was surprised to find that they were pouring two different fresh hop beers. The Star of India IPA was a winner -- strong hops, but with that nice grassy flavor. The other one was a dark, strong (7.8%) beer called Harvest Man, which they described as an Alt. It was delicious, especially after it warmed up a little, but I felt like the fresh hops were wasted on such a big beer. There was just so much to it, that you wouldn't notice the herbal notes unless you already knew they were there. As Joe Walsh said, I can't complain but sometimes I still do.

Tuesday we went for lunch to the Laurelwood on the east side, and tried their fresh hop Extra Pale. Good stuff, but didn't have the green herbal flavor I was looking for. Might have been because it had a ton of hops in it; if you're a hop-head you won't be disappointed to drink one. It seemed similar to Bridgeport's offering -- high quality but lacking a little pizazz.

Speaking of Bridgeport, I really have to sit down with a pint of theirs, since my small sample didn't do it justice. But I was thwarted Friday evening when I tried to pick up a half-gallon of the Bridgeport fresh hop ale at the Bridgeport pub on Hawthorne. A gal who looked like she might be the pub manager said their "policy" is to only fill their own growlers (I had an unmarked mason jar). Stupid policy -- here's a guy who wants to spend $10 and tip the bartender, and you don't even have to wash a glass or wipe a table. They lost more than $10 business on that one, because I'll skip a few lunches after that.

I'll see if I can keep my streak going a little longer -- that's 8 different fresh-hop beers in 7 days. If I run out of new ones to try, I can always drink up more Full Sail.

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Monday, October 8, 2007

My fresh hop streak is continuing, a new one each day, though I did have to resort to bottled beer a couple of times. That's OK, one of the bottles was a big winner, my second-favorite harvest beer this year.

Wednesday I boldly ventured into the chain brewpub, Rock Bottom. The Hop Harvest beer there was drinkable, within the range of what I'm looking for. I almost had to report that their Hop Harvest was way off the mark, just a normal IPA, because when I asked for the fresh-hop beer, I was served just a normal IPA. I guess there aren't enough beer geeks to fill all the wait-staff positions at big corporate operations.

Thursday I finally broke down and had to experiment with a bottle from Hale's Brewing in Seattle, their O'Brien's Harvest Ale. Hale's usually has great stuff, and this was no exception. Lots of flavor -- what do I taste there, charbroiled steak? No, I guess it's just a pretty dark, caramely malt, maybe some yeast flavor, and there just on top is the flowery fresh-hop. Very tasty, and I'll have it again, but this time of year I like the green hops to be the star of the show, not a supporting actor.

Friday I grabbed a Geschwills Golden Ale at the Widmer Gasthaus. Uh oh, "golden ale", isn't that secret code for "if you don't like beer, you'll be able to choke this one down"? This was pretty bland, I didn't really get much of the fresh hop aroma. I was hoping for better.

Saturday was Sierra Nevada Harvest Ale. It's in 6-packs, but I tried it on tap. A little bit of hop bitterness, but none of the exciting greenness I wanted. Put it in the same category as Widmer.

Hmmm.... Sounds like things are tapering off, have I already been through all the good ones? Luckily, Sunday's experiment restored my faith in the fresh-hop spirits. A bottle again, but a good one, 22 ounces of Deschutes' Hop Trip. Of everything so far, this is second only to Full Sail in my opinion for nailing the style. Honey sweet, fresh flowery hops, Hop Trip was what I was looking for.

I'm going to try desperately to keep the streak going for 5 more days, then Saturday there is a "Fresh Hop Tastival" that will be the icing on the cake.

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Monday, October 15, 2007

Well, it looked like my mission had finally petered out. Monday was rather lame, I tried different presentations of beers I had already had. The Full Sail Lupulin on CO2 instead of cask; finally a reasonable quantity of Bridgeport Hop Harvest, from a bottle. Full Sail: excellent, though not as much so as the cask variety; Bridgeport: a fine beer, but doesn't quench my thirst for that grassy fresh-hop flavor.

Tuesday, fighting the smoke at the Horsebrass, got to taste Ninkasi's Ceridwen Harvest Lager. Now, Ninkasi beers are usually musclebound bruisers that make you beg for more punishment. A light lager is a little out of character for them. The waitress tried to steer me away from it, she said, "It's like the best Budweiser you ever had". Simile is a great way to describe things, and I think she nailed it. Very well done, but why the hell would you waste your freshly harvested hops on a light lager?

Wednesday, I can't even claim to be on track any more. The best I could do was a few cask Lupulins at Higgins before the George Jones concert.

Thursday, it looks like Monday all over again. The Full Sail Pilsener Room, trying beers on tap that I already had in bottles: Deschutes Hop Trip and Hales O'Brien's Harvest Ale (the menu calls it a Fresh Hop ESB). I was prepared to gloss over Monday's lapse, and pretend like Wednesday never happened, but this looks like the final nail in the coffin. Fortunately, the bartender asked me which one was better, and when I pointed at the Lupulin cask handle, he told me that the Lupulin cask had been replaced with a Harvest beer from Hopworks.

Hark, are those angels singing to me? The quest is alive for one more day! Hopworks is a Southeast brewpub that hasn't even opened yet; a few places have their IPA, but I couldn't believe it when he pumped out a reddish-orange pint of their fresh hop beer. This is an awesome beer -- I'd say it bridges the gap between the sweeter, lighter beers I crave each year, and the people who try to make a strong, bitter harvest ale. It's got the flavor, it's got the color, plus a little bit of extra bitterness. [Update: 2008/05/23]: A couple days later, there was a label on that Hopworks cask that just said "Hopworks IPA", which does have a grassy, "fresh" flavor. So I'm not 100% sure that this was truly a fresh-hop offering.

Then, as the icing on the cake, he gave me a tiny taste of Bridgeport's "firkin-style" Harvest Ale. The night before the Bridgeport people had been in and served it out of a barrel just by sticking a nozzle in and letting gravity do the work, no pumping or pressure. The bartender saved a pint overnight, so it was pretty flat, but it was awesome. I don't know if the firkins are from a different batch than the rest of Bridgeport's Hop Harvest, but this was sweeter and with more fresh flavor than what I tried on tap or from a bottle.

Friday I was able to try Killer Green from a new Hood River brewery, Double Mountain. This was an awesome beer in the same vein as the Hopworks from Thursday, with the fresh flavor but on the bitter side. Smooth and almost creamy.

Saturday I crossed the finish line for my marathon, by attending the Fresh Hop Tastival at McMenamin's Edgefield. Sadly, a number of the beers that were listed on OregonLive were not at the festival: nothing from Ninkasi, Amnesia, Standing Stone, Mia and Pia's, Raccoon Lodge, or Calapooia; none of the alternate beers from Deschutes or Lucky Lab. What the hell, that's a lot of gaps! Still, I got to try 6 or 7 beers that I hadn't had yet. Golden Valley's beer was in the acceptable range. Pelican's Elemental Ale was really good, but the fresh hop flavor got submerged by all the other flavor and nutrition -- the beer was thick and a completely opaque light-gold color. The only one I hadn't tried that lit a fire under me was from Mt. Hood Brewing, they had the style down.

Final verdict: My three favorites this year are Full Sail's Lupulin Ale, Deschutes Hop Trip, and whatever Hopworks calls theirs. Runners up are Double Mountain, Rogue Hop Heaven, and Mt. Hood. Excellent beers that I fault a little for lacking or hiding the green hop taste: New Old Lompoc's Harvest Man, Hale's O'Brien's Harvest Ale, Bridgeport's Hop Harvest, Pelican's Elemental Ale.