My New Local

At the beginning of the year I got excited when Caps and Corks opened within sleepwalking distance of the office I was renting. Alas, after a few months I changed offices.  Homebody that I am, I rarely make it by C&C these days.

There are definitely some good watering holes near my new digs:  I'm just a few blocks from the Deschutes pub; Bailey's is only about five blocks away and plausibly on the way home; and the new brewpub Pints is just across the park.

But one place that I was surprised to find myself returning to for a beer at least once a week is the Pizza Schmizza at 11th and Glisan.  The thing that keeps me coming back is that happy hour starts at Schmizza at 2 PM, which is often about when I get around to eating lunch.  Happy hour means $1 off beers and slices priced from $2.50 to $3.  The beer list is not geeky, but it has as its basis a simple three-beer spectrum that works well at lunch: Widmer Hef, Ninkasi Total Domination IPA, and Oakshire's fabulous Overcast Espresso Stout.  One of those will work with whatever mood I'm in on a given day.

I mentioned happy hour.  The picture above doesn't do justice to the "Mighty Mug" of Hef sitting there.  I haven't measured its volume, but I've been obsessing about glassware lately so I feel pretty confident in guessing that it holds at least 24 ounces of beer, and goes for just $5 at happy hour.  If I'm right about that, it's an SPE of $15 -- not the best happy hour SPE in town, but pretty good, especially if you consider that you might be saving money and tips by just having one giant beer instead of two smaller ones.  Regular-sized pints are $4 at happy hour.

Big beers, quick service, cheap prices.  Fine qualities to find in a new local.

My New Glassware

It all started in May, when Carla and I finally visited the Brewers Union 180 Pub in Oakridge.  Oregon's only 100% Real Ale pub also serves tactlessly honest pints.  A beer glass at Brewers Union is not only shaped like an English pint glass, it doesn't only hold an imperial 20-ounce pint of beer, it is marked with a 20-ounce fill line that also leaves room for a head.  The pub sells them for 10 bucks each, so even though I have been instructed to reduce the number of logo-bearing beer glasses on our shelves at home, I just had to bring one of these beauties home with me.  As you can see from the picture, if you're careful and slurp off some of the head, you can fit a 22-ounce bottle of beer into a gigantic BU180 glass.  Brilliant.

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Then I transgressed further.  For a long time, I have admired the hefty goblets that Rogue pubs use to serve some of their bigger beers.  At one of Rogue's "garage sales" this summer I finally treated myself to a pair of them so I could feel kingly when drinking beer at home.  I really enjoy these goblets, but they don't hold much -- 10 ounces at best.  That can often be a good thing, though it would be nice if a whole 12-ounce bottle could fit in one.

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Then I got goblet envy once more in early August when I was at the Black Star Co-op Pub and Brewery in Austin.  They were serving some beers in giant fishbowl goblets that weigh about two and a half pounds and hold at least 16 ounces.  They didn't bear any logo, and they weren't for sale as souvenirs, but my friend Brady took note of my excitement over this Holy Grail-shaped vessel.  When he saw several of them for sale at an estate sale shortly thereafter, he bought them up and was kind enough to give me one.  This is the glass I reach for first nowadays, though the huge surface area and heavy weight means I tend to slosh a bit of beer on my feet if I'm walking back to my house after filling it up at Dave's kegerator next door.

Cheers!

Honest Pints... of Pabst

Well, they didn't use the term Honest Pint, but I like the anti-cheater pint sentiment, even if it is just to make sure you get a full pint of PBR.  I was a little surprised to see this sign up outside a neighborhood bar, but I'm glad news of the cheater pint menace has gone mainstream.

Here's an old post with photographic evidence that a cheater pint plus a reasonable amount of head on the beer is really just a 12-ounce pour.

Join your Pabst-drinking hipster brethren in saying "no" to cheater pints!

Oakland Beer Getaway

Last month I had to spend a week in the Silicon Valley on business.  I took the opportunity to spend the preceding weekend in Oakland and check out the growing beer scene there.  It's a good way to have a cheap Bay Area getaway -- I pricelined a hotel right downtown for $42 a night -- and San Francisco is just a $6 round-trip away on BART.

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My first stop was a couple of blocks from the hotel, a Belgian-heavy place called The Trappist.  A cozy, narrow space that they call The Front Bar calls to mind Dutch or Belgian beer bars, but opens onto a back patio that is perfect for sunny California days.  There are fifteen taps at the front bar, and ten more in a bigger room called The Back Bar -- an assortment of off-the-beaten track Belgian and Belgian-inspired beers, some nice California offerings, and some surprises from Mikkeller and Evil Twin, including an Evil Twin coffee porter specially brewed for The Trappist.

The food is reasonably-priced and not too fancy, and there is a good assortment of special bottled beers if you need to show off.  Compared to the similarly-named and -themed La Trappe across the bay in North Beach, there are more taps here, though La Trappe seems to have a longer bottle list.  Both are fine establishments, but The Trappist is less crowded, less expensive, and seems a little more laidback than its counterpart in the City.

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A few blocks toward the bay from The Trappist is the new beer-geek darling of Oakland:  Beer Revolution.  It's easy to see why people are so enamored of Beer Revolution:  over 40 taps of well-chosen beer, plus several coolers full of bottles for takeaway or drinking there ($1 corkage fee), and the easy-going taproom/bottleshop system of bringing in your own food.  It's like a less crowded, less expensive, more laidback version of SF's City Beer Store (a theme is developing here).  There's even a small but sunny patio area out front.  I had a great time at Beer Revolution, enjoyed a delicious glass of barrel-aged stout from Drake's before wading in to the LA brewery tap takeover that was going on that weekend.

One big gripe about Beer Revolution:  the pint glasses there are cheater pints, those big-booted bastardizations that only hold about 13 ounces of beer.  It wasn't just one that slipped into the mix -- after I noticed that I was served one, I started watching and all the pint glasses that came across the bar were cheaters.  C'mon guys, it's the year 2012, please get with the Honest Pint program.  Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I'll still say that the selection and atmosphere make Beer Rev a must-stop in Oakland despite the glassware, and many of the big beers they'll tempt you with will be in smaller glasses anyway.

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On the advice of Beer Revolution's co-owner Rebecca, I went from there right down to the waterfront to check out Heinhold's First and Last Chance. Something of a tourist trap which claims an association to Call of the Wild author Jack London, it is nevertheless worth a visit.  They have a couple of sessionable local beers on tap, and they also serve -- another hat tip to Rebecca -- a very nutritious and delicious Bloody Mary.  The floor and bar slope noticeably downward towards the back of the building -- a little remodeling done by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.  Heinhold's cleverly straddles the line between cheesy and authentic, and it would be better to say you'd been there than to say you'd missed it.

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There are a couple of breweries in downtown Oakland:  Linden Street Brewery, which I didn't get around to visiting but which had some tasty beers on tap at Heinhold's; and Pacific Coast Brewing around the corner from the Trappist, which is friendly and comfortable enough but doesn't make very good beer (luckily they have about a dozen guest taps). If you're looking for a good meal with good beer to accompany it, head up Broadway away from the bay to Luka's Taproom. The 16-tap beer list won't blow you away, but it's serviceable enough, and it's fun to watch the hip locals come and go while you fill up on good food.

Oakland has a lot going on beer-wise, and offers easy access to San Francisco while being much cheaper, quieter, and easier to navigate. Next time you're headed to the Bay Area, consider setting up camp in Oakland.

Nice Lady Beer

If you've spent any time at all at Portland's 4-4-2 Soccer Bar, you've heard the Bosnian proprietor say "What can I get for nice lady?".  I've been flattered with the label "nice man" a few times when accompanied by my wife, and "nice people" gets a little bit of play, but you can be sure that every night is nice ladies' night at 4-4-2.

Thus it is both appropriate and amusing that 4-4-2 will soon have a house brew called Nice Lady Beer.  It's a pale ale brewed by Lompoc Brewing, and like everything in the place it will be served at a reasonable price in a marked half-liter mug.  The ceremonial first tapping is happening at the Soccer Bar this coming Saturday, November 19, 2011, at 7 PM.  You're invited, as long as you're nice.

Here are the details on Nice Lady Ale, from Lompoc brewer Zach Beckwith's blog:

Jerry is a regular at 4-4-2 and conceptualized a beer for them using 4 malts and 4 hop varieties then dry hopped with 2 more hop varieties, representing the typical alignment of a soccer team. Jerry and I decided on a hybrid between a pilsner and an American pale ale using our house yeast fermented at a lower temperature (similar to the process we used for PilzIPA last summer). I brewed the beer on Monday using NW pale, Vienna, Munich and light crystal malt and Perle, Saaz, Tettnang, and Cascade hops in the boil. The goal is to have a crisp and quaffable beer with spicy hop character and a big American hop aroma.

Dry-hopped lagered pale. Sounds tasty. Strong enough for a man, but... OK, I won't go there.

On a related note, since I've heard a few negative comments about the name of Boneyard's very tasty Girl Beer, I want to throw out a pre-emptive "lighten up" to anyone that might quibble with the name Nice Lady.  This isn't about trying to give something separate and less equal to the fairer sex, and it certainly isn't objectification.  I order a Girl Beer every time I see it on tap.  It's a very satisfying and delicious brew that could appeal to anyone, and I expect the same will be true of Nice Lady.  In this case, it's just a bit of self-deprecating humor on the part of the bar's owner.

The Girl Beer joke cuts both ways.  Someone told me a story recently about a customer that went up to the bar at Bailey's Taproom and asked what he should order, seeing as how he didn't usually care for microbrews.  Whoever was tending bar that night very helpfully and sincerely recommended Girl Beer to him. The guy thought his masculinity was being called into question and made an angry scene.  Not nice.

Session Beers? Or Smaller Pours?

On the plane back from Belgium last week, I read Andy Crouch's opinion piece in Beer Advocate entitled Thinking Small. In it, he discusses America's "Session Beer" movement -- the push for tasty, well-made beers that are nonetheless low enough in alcohol to allow drinking quite a few in a row.  The word "session" comes from the English custom of drinking many rounds of big pints of not-so-strong beer over many hours at a pub.

While Andy doesn't quibble with the worthy goal of having some good-tasting lighter beers available, he thinks that the Session label might be misleading, since most of us don't have the same pub-drinking culture as exists in the British Isles.  In his own words:

In adopting the session moniker as opposed to simply calling their efforts a campaign for lower-alcohol beers, these brewers face target consumers who are not given to long stints in the pub or hours of uninterrupted drinking. Our drinking culture is goal oriented: have a beer to accompany a meal or fill a short window of time after work and before a commute.

His article is a good read, check it out.

Reading it as I returned from vacation in Europe, it made me reflect on the beer-drinking culture I'd seen in Amsterdam and Belgium.  The beers were not low-alcohol -- that's a 10% Westvleteren in the picture above -- but serving sizes were generally very small:  often 25 cl (less than 8.5 ounces) or 33 cl (less than 11.25 ounces).  Instead of simply beating the drum for lower ABV beers, maybe we need to start calling for lower alcohol servings.  If it's a lighter beer, the serving can be larger; if it's a higher-gravity beer, serve it in an appropriate volume.

Now, I've been known to scream for Honest Pints almost as loudly as anyone.  In Portland, that started off more or less as a push for bigger glassware -- the 20-ounce glasses popular at several of the finer pubs in town.  In my mind, though, the emphasis should be on Honest, not Pint, which to me means draft beer is served in glassware with marked volume lines, as it is everywhere in Europe.  That way you know that you received exactly what you paid for.  So "smaller serving" does not contradict "honest pint" -- it just requires marked glassware.

What do you think?  Is it worth calling for smaller beers?  Or just smaller glasses?

4-4-2 Soccer Bar

Another place that has opened recently in SE is the 4-4-2 Soccer Bar at 18th and Hawthorne. Okay, okay, it's not a Portland beer geek paradise and probably never will be, but there are a few qualities that immediately endear it to me. First off, no Bud/Miller/Coors is served at the place -- the furthest down the ladder you can get is the Heineken tap. I asked the proprietor what he would say if a thirsty soccer fan demanded a Budweiser. "Not in my bar, some other place," he said. When I was in there the other day, the taps were Heineken, Spaten Pils, Paulaner Oktoberfest, Caldera Pale Ale, and Ninkasi Total Domination. A third tap reserved for Oregon beers was empty, but kegs from Deschutes, Lompoc, and Laurelwood were in the cooler waiting to be hooked up. There is also a decent selection of mostly German bottled beers -- Aventinus and Paulaner Salvator are what I remember from the top of my head.

Another thing that 4-4-2 has got right from the very beginning is Honest Pints. My Ninkasi came to me in a Spaten mug with a 0.5-liter line that left plenty of room for a head on the beer. Bravo! Remember folks, every time a new brewpub or taproom opens in Portland serving beer in shaker pints, a unicorn loses its horn. And yet here is a simple sports bar that gets it, and not only serves a full portion, but uses marked glassware. "I'm not stingy," says the owner.

The third reason you might stop in even if you're not a soccer fan is the delicious Bosnian food on the menu. I used to occasionally have lunch here before the remodel, when it was the European Market grocery store. There are an assortment of sandwiches, including a few vegetarian models, but I never get past the Ćevapi -- seasoned grilled ground beef -- served simply with onions and ajvar (red pepper relish) on homemade bread.

The three TVs are loaded up with every soccer channel the satellites can shower down upon us, and the pub regularly opens at 6:30 or 7 in the morning for important games -- where important has a meaning that I am not enough of a soccer fan to fully understand. It's not a very large space -- probably a half-dozen large tables and about the same number of small ones, plus space at the bar -- but I think a bar dedicated entirely to soccer is an idea that should succeed in Portland. Another welcome addition to the neighborhood.

Cheater Pints Must Die

This picture illustrates what a menace cheater pints are, though I wish it had a better view of the glass bottoms.  These are two sibling 12-ounce bottles of Deschutes Red Chair, one poured into the cheater pint glass on the left, the other poured into the 16-ounce pint glass on the right.

For some reason the pint glass pour didn't get a head on it, either because there was water (soap?) on the glass, or because I instinctively used the no-head pour I learned in college instead of the modern beer-geek style.  But look at Dave's cheater glass.  If you get a cheater pint with a one-finger head that reaches the rim, you've been served a 12-ounce beer.  Cheater pint + head = 12 ounce beer.

Cheater pints must die.

In related Honest Pint news:

• Jeff has local news video from my dear home state of Oklahoma, where some local ladies sporting pink Honest Pint Project T-shirts are patrolling the bars of OKC.
• Alan ran across an article in PMQ Pizza Magazine -- too much free time, Alan? -- advising pizzeria owners to take advantage of the "evolution of the 14-ounce pint glass".
• The purveyor of the most honest pints in Oregon, Ted Sobel of Brewers Union 180, is in Portland for rare appearances tonight (Thursday, May 27) at the Green Dragon, and tomorrow at Belmont Station.

Since Ted's cask beer is only available in Portland when he himself delivers and serves it (!), you should try and get out to one of these tastings if you can.  Too bad the Green Dragon doesn't serve honest pints -- at Ted's pub in Oakridge the English pint glasses have a fill-line marked at 20 ounces -- but at least you're guaranteed 16 at Belmont Station.

Beulahland Strikes Out

During the fall I became infatuated with Beulahland, the "Coffee and Alehouse" at 28th and Couch. I biked my daughter to soccer practice Thursdays at DaVinci Middle School, and noticed that I could take refuge at the happy hour just down the street. On my first visit I was impressed by the beer choices -- one of the ten taps was a Lompoc fresh-hop ale, and the place even had a nitro tap and a cask engine. They also have about a dozen house-infused vodkas and bourbons; I've yet to try any of them, but they have some interesting-sounding flavors like habanero whiskey and watermelon vodka.

But I have to say, when our Pub Night crawled over there this week after a visit to Spints Alehouse, Beulahland struck out:

• Strike one: The cask engine is gone.
• Strike two: The chalkboard and bartender both concealed the best beer tap from me.
  
• Strike three: My beer was served in a cheater pint glass!

It wasn't until our second round that we noticed the telltale Terminal Gravity tap handle and found out that the delicious TG Festivale was on tap. It wasn't on the chalkboard, and the bartender didn't bother to point it out to a crowd of obvious beer geeks. That's the kind of action I expect from Henry's, not from the divey local.

Those first two strikes are no big deal. But cheater pints? Now you're adding injury to insult. Check out the picture above, and you'll see the giant boot in the bottom of the glass of Festivale on the left. That's as thick as the glasses I wore in fifth grade! I'm glad that the Honest Pint Project is starting to move the finer pubs to use glassware with fill lines on them. Cheater pints are a fraud that must be stopped.

On the plus side, the city has installed one of the new bike-parking corrals on 28th right by Beulahland, so there's plenty of two-wheeled parking. And the jukebox has a brilliant variety: Black Sabbath's first album, Duke Ellington's Money Jungle, and -- stroke of genius -- Hasil Adkins.

I still enjoy the atmosphere at Beulahland, and I would like to check out those infused boozes. This last visit cooled my ardor somewhat, but I still consider it a little-known gem in that area.

Honest Pints

I was tickled today to notice that the Portland Deschutes Pub now has a 0.5 liter fill line -- 16.9 ounces -- on their Irish-style pint glasses. Not only that, but their skinny half-serving glasses have a 0.3 l marker, and their tulip-shaped snifters have a line at 0.4 l. Admittedly, it's been a few weeks since I've been to the pub, but this seems like a new development. Thank you, Deschutes! You join the elite ranks of Belmont Station (0.5 l marker), Hopworks (0.4 l marker), and Brewers Union (20 oz. marker) who have a fill line marked on their glassware. Anyone else out there?

Marked glassware is really the way to go. I'm a big fan of Jeff Alworth's Honest Pint Project -- I even bought the T-shirt -- but Jeff doesn't require the glass to be marked, just that it have room for 16 ounces of beer:

The criteria for certification is simple: the pub must serve at least 16 fluid ounces for beers it labels “pints.” If the glass holds more than 16 ounces, fantastic. For certification, though, it must serve at least 16 ounces. You have to confirm this by measuring.

I get Jeff's honest pint point: if it's called a "pint", it should be 16 ounces. But that scheme goes too far, and not far enough. What I mean is, you'll rarely get 16 ounces of beer in a serving at Hopworks, but you'll know that you got at least 0.4 liters (13.5 ounces) if the beer is up to the fill line. On the other hand, a place might get certified by the HPP based on a picture of one instance of 16 ounces of beer, but how can you know how much you got in the glass you just ordered?

It's a minor quibble. The real villains are those establishments who serve "pints" in 14-ounce shaker glasses. Then you think you've got a pint of beer, but you're probably somewhere around 12 ounces. There's a one-syllable word for such a business practice: fraud. There's no enforcement against such short-changing, even though it's clearly proscribed by Oregon's Weights and Measures law:

618.096 Prohibited acts involving commercial weights and measures. No person shall:
...
(5) Sell, offer or expose for sale, less than the quantity the person represents of any commodity, thing or service.

Kudos to Deschutes for their new transparency. Support your local pub, and support the Honest Pint Project.

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?

County Cork

A visit from one of my years-ago Austin Pub Night buddies gave me an opportunity to check out an eastside pub I hadn't been to before. Brady was in town with his girlfriend Sarah, so on Saturday we dragged Dave along and met Brady's friend Brian at the County Cork Public House after he finished his kitchen shift there. In the middle of a surprisingly tavern-free stretch of Fremont, County Cork is an oasis just west of NE 15th.

It's a comfortable place, with a pubby feel but with big windows giving lots of light. Despite the Irish theme, the 22 beer taps are skewed more toward the Northwest than the Emerald Isle. Some of the standout beers when we were there were Full Sail Keelhauler, Avery Maharaja, Stone Arrogant Bastard, Mac and Jack's Amber, Elysian ESB, and Russian River Damnation and Pliny the Elder. Dave and I swore that the Pliny was actually RR's Blind Pig -- lighter in color, body, and punch than Pliny -- but we were assured that the keg said otherwise. There are also two cask engines, though both were unoccupied Saturday -- we just missed the Lagunitas Undercover Ale on cask. Another plus: they serve Honest Pints in imperial glasses.

Two dartboards are set up nicely in stalls that prevent escaping darts, but are still visible from the rest of the pub. There's also an outdoor patio in the back -- it was too cold to sit there Saturday but as I'm writing this I'm kicking myself for not at least taking a look. The food is better-than-usual pub fare, made from scratch, with British-Isle stuff like shepherd's pie and bangers and mash taking center stage.

All in all, it's a comfortable neighborhood pub. Stop in for some darts and a pint if you're in the area.

Click here for the Beer Mapping Project's page on County Cork Public House

County Cork Public House

Information provided by Beer Mapping

Bailey's Taproom

Bailey's Taproom had been open for more than a year when I finally made my first visit there this past January. For evenings out I tend to stay on my side of the river; I sometimes branch out a little further at lunchtime or on weekend days, but the Taproom is closed Sundays and never opens until 4 PM. If it fit my schedule better I'd be there a lot more often, because Bailey's hit its stride very quickly to become one of the best beer bars in Portland. So when Geoff -- the proprietor -- put out the word that he was going to open at noon last Friday, I knew I had to show up.

The atmosphere is hip but comfortable, with a great selection of 20 rotating taps, one cask beer engine, and a few elite bottles. What's surprising is how inexpensive an outing to Bailey's can be. Most beers are served in imperial pints at lower prices than smaller servings at places like Henry's or the Green Dragon -- that snifter Geoff is filling is for a 9% old ale. But the real economy is because you can bring food in to Bailey's, now that the cheese and chocolate snack menu has been scrapped-- frankly, that menu was a ridiculous idea anyway. At most pubs in town you'd be looking at a $9 hamburger or $12 fish and chips; around the corner from Bailey's you have your pick of international street food at the $5 food carts at SW 5th and Oak. Heck, you can bring your own food from home if you want.

When you go to Bailey's you'll likely see Geoff behind the counter. He's a little on the quiet side, but he'll discuss any of the beers with you. The couple of times I've been there, he's been amazingly candid about what's on tap: if he thinks one of the beers isn't so great, he tells you straight out, or gives you a sample to let you make that decision yourself. That kind of personal touch bodes well for the business. By the way, his last name isn't Bailey -- I'm not sure how the bar got its name.

That beer in the snifter was a delicious dessert on Friday. It was Pappy's Dark from Block 15 in Corvallis. It was a heavenly, dense, malty elixir... wait, let me see if my review generator can do better. Here we go: Intense maple aroma, punctuated with toffee and strawberry. Sexy boozy flavor, accompanied by vanilla and raisin. Well, if you don't believe that, just believe me when I say it was awesome. And check out the lacing that Ninkasi Spring Reign left on Dave's glass in the background!

Like a lot of places, Bailey's keeps their online taplist current almost daily. For up-to-the-minute info, follow Geoff on Twitter: he tweets the change whenever one keg is switched with another.

Click here for the Beer Mapping Project's page on Bailey's Taproom.

Bailey's Taproom

Information provided by Beer Mapping