Fremont Brewing Company, Seattle

A couple of weekends ago when I went up to Seattle for the Fresh Hop Throwdown, I spent Friday evening running around with Chris, a Seattle beer friend once known as The Beer Retard, who has moved up in the world by getting out of the beer blogging hobby.  My Seattle beer credentials are so weak that it was easy to think of crucial places that I hadn't been to before.  We were on our way from Elysian Fields near the train station to Bottleworks in Wallingford when Chris suggested that we stop at the Fremont Brewing Company tasting room, despite the possibility of having to dodge the unattended ankle-biters of our fellow imbibers.

There only ended up being a couple of toddlers in attendance, sliding around in a small spill of beer next to a neighboring table as their oblivious parents rolled their toys into it again and again.  The warehouse space -- I called it a tasting room, but Fremont calls it the Urban Beer Garden -- consists of a long communal table with kegs for seats, a padded bench lining one wall, and a few small tables with custom upholstered booths backed up against the brewery's fermenters.  The tables were nearly full, but we found room to sit on the bench.  Since we were on a fresh hop mission, it was good to see Fremont's Cowiche Canyon Fresh Hop Pale on tap, though if had arrived half an hour later we would have missed it.  It was decent, growing so much on me as it warmed that later at Bottleworks I bought a bomber of it to take back to Portland.

Besides the fresh hop, there Fremont was pouring a standard lineup of the usual beer styles, plus a gravity-poured cask of the week -- when we were there it was a stout flavored with chocolate mint.  We were on our way elsewhere, but I haven't had good luck with mint beers recently so I didn't even consider a glass of that. 

The Urban Beer Garden hours are pretty sparse: it's open Thursday and Friday from 4 PM to 8 PM, Saturday 12 to 8, and Sunday from noon to 6.  You can bring your own food, or cleanse your palate with free pretzels.  Kids and dogs are allowed.  Relaxed, friendly neighborhood vibe -- I will definitely visit again if I'm in the area during opening hours.

Fremont also opens at 10 AM every weekday for retail sales:  bombers are $3.75 and up, or swap out your empty growler for a full one for $8.  That's a refreshing growler price, $9 six-pack equivalent.  I would take home more growlers at that price: with most Portland growlers starting at $10, it's been at least a year since I got one filled.

Cheap Growler Tip

Two years ago a chief obsession of It's Pub Night was where to get growlers filled cheaply. The price that pubs -- especially brewpubs -- charge to fill growlers is just nonsensical, when you consider the price of bottled beer. From this obsession sprung the Portland Growler Map, and also the Six-Pack Equivalent Calculator.

The Growler Map doesn't seem to get updated all that frequently these days, but John Foyston's column today in the Boregonian starts off with a place that has a great growler fill price on good northwestern beer: Plew's Brews in St. Johns fills growlers for $7. That's an SPE of $7.88 -- 25 cents below the current PBPI 6-pack sale price of $8.13. Good show, Plew's! I've added you to the map, and I'll try to make it up there with an empty growler soon.

This reminds me of another good deal, also in a less-traveled part of town. MacTarnahan's Taproom has always had cheap growler fills -- $6 was the price a couple years ago -- and now they occasionally offer a buy-one-get-one-free deal on growler fills. Follow their twitter account and watch for the BOGO announcements.

The price at Plew's makes good sense -- filling a growler should be like buying a good six-pack. Part of the reason I haven't been going on about growlers lately is that I simply don't buy them anymore, now that I've done the math and seen what a shabby deal they are. I'd rather sit and have a beer or two at a bar; if I'm taking beer home, more often than not it's a sale-price six-pack from the supermarket. If more places went with Plew's formula, growlers would take off.

Upright Brewing Tasting Room

If I had written this up the day after my visit to the Upright Brewing tasting room, I could have made John Foyston look like a copy-cat. Instead, I get to ride the coattails of the excellent article he wrote for the Oregonian a few days ago. Fortunately, John left out a few of the dry details -- like prices for tastes and growlers -- so I get to look like I'm adding something to the conversation.

Make no mistake, the tasting room isn't a pub. It's only open from 1 to 6 on Saturdays and Sundays -- plus special hours starting at 6 PM every night that there's a home Blazers game around the corner at the Rose Garden. There's no kitchen, but on some days there might be a small charcuterie plate available to snack on -- a couple weeks ago it featured some of Alex's homemade blood sausage. It's more like hanging out in the basement of your most hardcore homebrewing friend -- a couple of street-level windows at the top of a cinderblock wall, a half-dozen beer taps sticking out of another wall, and maybe a special rare bottle open on the table. OK, your friend's basement probably doesn't have a dozen oak barrels stacked up aging beer, but you get the idea.

It's a good deal: most 12-ounce samples are $2; some special brews cost $3. The special beers are often one of the everyday Upright beers like Four or Seven, spiked with some homegrown fruit or vegetable, like Fatali peppers or baby kiwi. You can buy the various Upright bottled beers at the tasting room, or get growlers filled for $10 ($15 for some special beers).

You'll likely get a chance to chat with brewer/owner Alex Ganum; most days your bartender will be Portland beer expert Ezra Johnson-Greenough -- SamuraiArtist on Twitter. Speaking of social networking, Upright now has a blog with interesting entries so far -- keep it up, guys -- and you can follow them on Twitter or Facebook.

Six-Pack Equivalent Calculator

In my frequent tirades against high growler prices, I make the claim that the cost of filling a growler with beer should be in the ballpark of the price of a six-pack of similar quality. They serve the same end, namely taking some beer home. Thus was born the six-pack equivalent, or SPE: a way to wrap your mind around the cost of filling a growler.

Even though no one would expect beer consumed at the point of sale to be priced similarly to a retail six-pack, the six-pack equivalent is still a useful way to compare prices in a situation where the volumes offered are different. For example, in writing up PGE Park, I compared the SPE of PGE's 12 and 20 ounce cups ($45 and $29.70 respectively). Or you could compare the price of imperial pints at Bailey's Taproom with that of cheater pints nearby at Henry's, and see who gives you a better deal.

To that end, here is a six-pack equivalent calculator (below). [Update 2011/01/01: My neighbor Lindsey has now turned this into an Android phone app! Fitting, because he originally inspired the SPE by comparing growler prices with single-bottle prices. Further update: Now there are also two iPhone SPE apps.]

  Someone is selling beer in

64 ounce growlers
750 ml bottles
22 ounce bottles
0.5 liter (16.9 ounce) bottles
12 ounce bottles or cans
33 cl bottles
7 ounce bottles

glasses with 20 ounce fill line (Brewers Union Local 180)
glasses with 0.5 liter fill line (Deschutes)
glasses with 16 ounce fill line (Belmont Station)
glasses with 0.4 liter fill line (Hopworks)
20 ounce glasses (19 oz. of liquid)
16 ounce glasses (15 oz. of liquid)
cheater pints (13 oz. of liquid)

servings of   ounces
servings of     liters

15.5 gallon kegs (1/2 barrel)
7.75 gallon pony kegs (1/4 barrel)
5.16 gallon (1/6 barrel) kegs
5 gallon Cornelius kegs
5 liter mini-keg
1 gallon container

---

singly
in quantities of

---

  for the price of

$

---

  

  The six-pack equivalent (SPE) price is:

It helps put a lot of things into perspective. For instance, I was surprised to find that my $11 bombers of Mirror Mirror cost me an SPE of $36. Compare Sierra Nevada Bigfoot for about $11/six-pack at the 7-11. Or consider that Full Sail Session -- because of the 11-ounce bottles -- has an SPE of $6 for an $11 12-pack. Not as good as the $5.50 if the bottles held 12 ounces.I was just guessing about how much actual beer is in 20- or 16-ounce glasses, figuring you lose about an ounce for the head on the beer. Anyone have any scientific data?

Also, let's have a round of applause for those establishments with a fill line marked on the glass: Brewers Union, Deschutes, Belmont Station, and Hopworks.

Give the calculator a whirl. Find any interesting bargains or rip-offs?

New Stuff at the Green Dragon

It's always a shame when a pub takes down their dartboard. Dave and I were planning to throw some darts at the Green Dragon last night during the New Old Lompoc meet-the-brewer, but the board was gone. I was astonished by what took its place: a row of 30 gleaming beer taps! No, it won't be a self-service area. At some point a second bar will be installed there, and the new taps will serve up the house-made brews and others from around the Rogue Empire.

Now that I look at my pictures from the Firkin Fest last weekend, I see the taps were there. I didn't notice them at the time; maybe they've been there for a while? It's a nice development, but I hope the Dragon will find a new place for the dartboard. They should move the little-used shuffleboard and put three or four dartboards up along that wall.

A few more Green Dragon innovations to report:

• A cask-conditioned offering
• Growlers filled again
• A selection of bottled beer
• Beer souvenirs for sale

The first cask to go on the new beer engine is Hopworks IPA. The growler refill price is complete madness: $17-$18 depending on the beer (six-pack equivalent: $19.12-20.25). No thank you. I didn't pay much attention to the bottles in the cooler, but I think they had a few Rogue offerings and some spendy Belgians. It looked like they had a to-go price and a drink-here price.

The souvenir stand is interesting: you can get the hat and t-shirt not only for Rogue places, but for a few other Oregon breweries -- I seem to recall seeing Amnesia merchandise as well as Full Sail. That's team spirit! As far as I can tell, merchandise is the only discount that you can get at the Green Dragon by flashing your Rogue Nation identity papers.

Just a quick note about the Lompoc tasting. The braggot they brought was interesting, but not something I'd reach for very often. There was an antiseptic smell and taste to it that might have been intentional or might not. For me the highlight of the evening was the 2007 Fresh Hop Red. I didn't expect a beer that old to keep much of the fresh-hop goodness, but it did and it was beautiful. It was a little maltier than the 2008 version they also brought. 2007 was the year of my most manic fresh-hop mission, but somehow I missed Lompoc's fresh-hop red that year. I asked the brewer Brian if it was the same beer as their Harvest Man, but he said no, that's a different brew, and the fresh hops in Harvest Man are actually ones that had already been used in another of the fresh-hop beers -- interesting concept. Mmm... fresh hop beer. Only six months to wait.

Cheap Growlers at Hopworks

When I complain about the price difference between six-packs and draft growlers in Portland, I always get comments pointing out that pubs have a different cost structure than bottling breweries. The commenters patiently explain that the only fair comparison is between growler prices and the price of pints or pitchers served at the bar.

That makes sense from the business perspective, but at some point the business perspective has to take into account the customer perspective, which just checks the price of beer to-go. In my original rant, I mused that cheaper growlers "could even be a way to boost pub business: sit down for a pint and get a discount on your growler fill".

Hopworks has a similar sensible idea. Get some food to go, and get a growler discount. Here's how they describe it in their latest email newsletters:

Greenspand-er To-Go Deal! Order a large pizza and growler to-go and get $5 off! In these uncertain economic times it’s nice to know you can still fill up on tasty organic beer and pizza for less than it costs to fill your gas tank.

(Gas tank? What kind of talk is that from the bikiest brewpub in town? Oops, sorry, wrong rant.) That $5 off is the kind of deal I've been looking for. Let's do some creative accounting, and knock all the savings off of the beer rather than credit some to the pizza. That gives you a $10 Hopworks growler for $5 -- a six-pack equivalent price of $5.63. That's a good deal these days.

I haven't taken advantage of the Greenspander yet, but I love the idea. It's that kind of thinking that can help brewpubs get more of the beer-at-home market.

Beer Martini

The other day we had some guests over and I shook up some martinis. If you're a stickler for correctness, you know that James Bond has it wrong: the classic martini is stirred, not shaken. However, I consider shaking an improvement on my usual technique, which is to just put everything into a martini glass and stir it with my finger.

After the guests had left and I was cleaning up the kitchen, I remembered that I had a few ounces of Laurelwood Hop Bale Pale in a growler in the fridge. It was totally flat, almost a week old. Hmm... can it be put any good use? Yes, of course. Here's my beer martini recipe:

Stale Pale Ale Martini

• 2 oz. pale ale
• 4 - 6 oz. gin
  
• 3 olives
• 3 ice cubes

Put everything into a glass. Stir with finger.

Keep your gin in the freezer so the drink will be nice and cold. Use good olives, also -- I find that garlic-stuffed olives are a good choice, or a mix of garlic- and jalapeno-stuffed. Important: for those of you arriving here from Google searches: use good beer (Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Sam Adams Boston Ale -- not Boston Lager). Note that a "single" at a bar uses about 1.5 oz. of gin, so the recipe above is a big drink. Scale it to fit your glassware/tolerance.

The beer martini was mighty tasty with some 95-proof Cascade Mountain Gin. It's a little sweeter than a normal martini, and the beer complements gin's aromatics very nicely. Don't be afraid of using a hoppy beer -- this also worked well with Sierra Nevada's Chico Estate. In an interesting bit of synchronicity, a couple days after my first beer martini, the Oregonian reported that the official Oregon cocktail was a concoction made with Terminal Gravity IPA. Are you ready for beer cocktails?

By the way, if you want to make a killer regular martini, simply substitute cheap white wine or leftover champagne for the pale ale. That's a trick I learned long ago from that culinary classic, Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices. The inimitable George Herter points out that vermouth is nothing but wine that was so bad that it could only be sold by flavoring it with bitter herbs. Instead of paying a premium for vermouth, go buy the second-cheapest Chardonnay at Safeway, and have yourself a decent martini.

Portland Growler Prices

A couple weeks ago I was grousing about the high price to get beer growlers filled in Portland. With that in mind, I give you the Portland Growler Price Map, which lists the growler price at pubs around Portland, as well as the Six-Pack Equivalent price:


View Larger Map

Click on the individual thumbtacks on the map, to get details for that location. A lot of the information on this map was stolen from the Champagne of Blogs' growler index, augmented with a few things I investigated on my own.

You Can Help

A lot of the prices on the map were a year or more out of date on Day One. And many worthy establishments are not yet listed. I'll volunteer to keep this updated for the Portland metro area (say, a 20 mile radius), but I need all of you to send me current information. Use the email address in the sidebar: for each pub that you want to update me about, please send the following data:

• Price to fill 64 ounce growler.
• Price to buy the growler itself (if available).
• Whether they'll fill competitor growlers.
• Whether they'll fill 2-quart mason jars.
• The date of your information.

They Should be Cheaper!

About those prices. My feeling is that it's silly to have to pay a premium for something that doesn't have to be packaged, distributed, and retailed. Commenters on the Growler Math post pointed out that pubs have a different business model than beer bottlers, and that economies of scale apply.

Nevertheless, beer drinkers spend some of their money in pubs, and some money on bottled beer -- let's leave our brave homebrewers out of the equation for now. Wouldn't brewpubs like to take away some of that bottled beer market? They should be able to do so if they can offer a growler price that corresponds roughly to the price of a good 6-pack.

Given the price of a 64-ounce growler, multiply it by 1.125 to get the price of 72 ounces of beer, so that you can compare the price with that of a 6-pack. So a $12 growler is like a $13.50 six-pack -- ouch! Canadian prices! On the other hand, an $8 growler is like a $9 six-pack -- not cheap, but increasingly common. I would divert a lot of my 6-pack budget to growlers if the price at places I frequent was $8 or less.

I've just been talking about the dollars-and-cents of beer growlers, but there's also the environmental aspect of reusing the beer container, and cutting down on some of the transportation and refrigeration. Beer writer Stan Hieronymous recently blogged about New Belgium Brewing's report on their carbon footprint. Stan clipped a graphic from the report that shows that 60% of the footprint is from packaging (glass and paper), distribution, and retailing. So you've cut more than half of your environmental impact from your beer drinking if you fill up locally!

Growler Math

How ridiculous is it that there are no longer returnable beer bottles? (Or pop bottles, for that matter.) In this day and age where we're worried about energy and the environment, every bottle of beer you drink is manufactured for a single use, then -- best case -- crushed into dust; worst case, tossed in a landfill.

Two-quart growlers provide you, the eco-friendly Portlander, a way to reuse a bottle, instead of sending it off to be melted and made into a different bottle. Plus you get some good, fresh local beer.

But there's a catch: in general, you get to pay more for the privilege of not using a bottle. For example, the new Deschutes pub in Portland charges $15 for a 64-ounce growler fill, about 23 cents an ounce, quite a premium over the price of a 72-ounce six-pack. Given that good Oregon beers are selling for something like $7-$9 a six-pack -- even good beers from out-of-state are in the same range -- the bottle price is somewhere between 10 and 13 cents an ounce.

Granted, $15 is on the high end of growler prices. But even the more usual price of $11 is about 17 cents an ounce. Why does it cost less to buy a six-pack, with a cut going to middlemen in the form of distributors and retailers, than to buy unpackaged beer directly from the producer?

[Update 2008/08/17]: Lindsey points out that it's confusing to talk about the price per ounce. Instead, consider that a growler holds eight-ninths the volume of a six-pack. So if you would pay $9 a six-pack, you should get a growler filled for no more than $8. An $8 six-pack equates with a $7.10 growler; $7 with $6.20. And that gives the brewer all the extra margin that used to go to packaging, distribution, and retailing. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it seems to show that growler prices could be even lower and still be a winner for the brewery.

According to the excellent growler index on the Champagne of Blogs, there are some deals to be had: $6.95 at Rock Bottom, or $4.95 at Portland Brewing -- oops, now it's $5.95 according to a comment below. If more places had growler fills that were in that six-pack price range, it would be a big boost to environmentally sound beer-drinking. Maybe it could even be a way to boost pub business: sit down for a pint and get a discount on your growler fill.

By the way, that growler index would be a great thing to put on the Portland Beer Wiki. Pubs open and prices change all the time, so it's just the thing that you want feet on the street to update. I would also be interested in growler prices at non-brewpubs: I think that any bar with a beer license could fill growlers if they wanted to.

Bridgeport Repeals Prohibition

The Bridgeport Ale House on Hawthorne will now fill growlers from other establishments! A few days ago I got this email from the restaurant manager:

I want to thank you for your input.

After you posited the growler idea on the portlandbeer.org blog last week, I did indeed research the issue.

What follows is our revised policy (I can't speak for the Pub downtown, so this is representative of the Ale House on Hawthorne.):

Starting immediately, we will fill other brewery’s growlers as well as our own. We will charge the price of our growler refill ($11.00). We will not fill mason jars, and the price is subject to change at any time.

I’m really excited that our policy is expanding--thanks in large part to your input--so please come in and fill those growlers!

That's right, I was whining in a blog comment about their Bridgeport-growler-only policy. It wasn't the first time: I complained on Lee's blog last year during fresh hop season when they wouldn't fill my mason jar with Hop Harvest. I even fussed about it a few weeks ago to a poor Bridgeport brewer at a Green Dragon meet-the-brewer, knowing full well that he had no idea who made rules like that, and even less of an interest in getting involved in it. But this time I bounced it off the right person, and she took care of it.

I wouldn't mind if they filled mason jars also -- those wide mouths are easier to fill -- and for the sake of the west-siders I hope the Bridgeport Mothership will also lighten up. But personally, I'm all set now. I can just take my Roots growler down the street and get the fresh stuff from the Ale House.