Portland Pub Crawls

There's something I have to get off my chest: I invented the Portland Pub Crawl.



Jeff's helpful series on Portland Pub Crawls -- so far he's done part 1 (downtown) and part 2 (SE) -- is what set me off on this rant. Can you believe it? His downtown pub crawl only visits Deschutes one time. And skips Tugboat. That's not crawling, that's limping. Well, or whatever is less than crawling.

Angelo and Margaret have done a smashing job the last couple years with Brewpublic's Division Street Pub Crawl. But who invented that pub crawl? I did, here in 2009.

I would be remiss in my egotism if I didn't also take credit for Ezra and Lisa's Night of the Living Ales, which I invented a year earlier in this post about the not-yet-open Migration Brewing, just as an offhand mention of an alphabetical pub crawl along NE 28th. A freebie.

Now word comes from Nicole of a moving bicycle bar, making the rounds in NW Portland, in a watered-down version of the Biking Pub Marathon Dave and I did a few years ago. The rolling pub is a pretty cool idea, I hope an army of cloven-hoofed blood-sucking lawyers doesn't descend to make this kind of fun impossible in Portland. Also, watch out for those streetcar tracks, guys.

Here are a few more Portland pub crawl ideas for you:

• Portland Airport Pub Crawl
• Easy Bicycle Pub Crawl (unfortunately includes two pubs that are no longer around)
• Belmont Dive Crawl
• Planning Your Portland Bicycle Pub Crawl

Next week:  How I Invented the Beer Cocktail.

Get It in the Can on East Burnside

I'm volunteering to pour beer tomorrow evening (Saturday, July 8), at the Guild Public House's Cans Fest.  In honor of that:

Hat tip to Lee, who posted the Get It in the Can video a couple years ago.  I'm not above juvenile humor; I would normally be above linking to a Bud Lime ad, but Lee said his readership went through the roof after he posted it.  Sold!

Now, about the Cans Fest.  Put aside your fears that the BPA liners in beer cans will kill you faster than your beer and greasy food habits.  There are beers from several breweries pouring at this festival that are not generally available in Portland:

• Central City (British Columbia)
• Kenai River (Alaska)
• SanTan (Arizona)
• Ska (Colorado)
• Two Beers (Seattle)
• Uncommon Brewers (Santa Cruz)

I think the Avery selections at the festival are not usually seen in these parts, and the festival will debut cans from Portland nano Natian Brewing.  If you haven't yet been to the Guild -- a comfortable little pub located at 11th and East Burnside -- the Cans Fest is a good opportunity to check it out.  And a good opportunity to get it in the can.

No Relation

The Fred Meyers on Hawthorne seems to think that Blue Dot and Blue Moon have something in common. They shelved them right next to each other. I'm as big a fan of alphabetical order as anyone, but this is taking it too far.

At the top level, Fred's beer taxonomy is:

• Organic
• Foreign
• U.S. Micro
• Industrial Lager

I suppose those are somewhat interesting categories -- I can't think of another store that separates the organic beers -- but within those categories there doesn't seem to be any order.

So you end up with Blue Dot next to Blue Moon (no relation).

Blast from the Past

When I was 7 years old, the big excitement was to bike over to the Quik Trip or the Git-N-Go to buy a pack of Topps Wacky Packages -- stickers that lampooned various national brands of consumer products. The baseball-card company sold these hilarious stickers with pink rectangles of their brittle, tasteless chewing gum. The bad attitude was right on the money for television-addled kids our age.

A couple months ago I found a picture book at Counter Media showing all seven series of Wacky Packages stickers published in 1973 and 1974. Turns out that the instigator of the Wacky Package project at Topps was Art Spiegelman, who went on to more intellectual glory as the author of the graphic novel Maus. In the preface to the Wacky Packages book, Spiegelman reveals that he recruited other comics authors to make up gags for the stickers, including Bill Griffith, the author of Zippy the Pinhead.

The only beer Wacky Package that came out in the 70s was the Blast Blew Ribbon sticker pictured here. Today it would be surprising if collectors cards for kids had even one joke about alcohol, but the reason I'm surprised there is only one is that there were no fewer than nineteen stickers mocking brands of cigarettes or cigars -- not to mention a breakfast cereal called Super Cigar Crisp, with a cartoon bear puffing away on the box. It looks like Topps has been selling Wacky Packages again the last few years, but I'll bet the alcohol and tobacco references are now taboo. The book does come with a Schmutz Beer sticker from back in the day that was never released, as well as a variant of the Blast Blew Ribbon one shown here.

It's one of the ironies of Portland that Pabst is so popular here. Do you suppose the sticker is correct, that the original flavor used to taste different?

Beer Review Generator

I tend to recite the caption of this James Thurber cartoon whenever someone asks me if the wine is good. It's a stale joke; wine criticism has come a long way in the last 70 years or so. Good beer snobs have now adopted some of the modern wine-snob vocabulary, and have settled into a typical phrasing that lends itself easily to mockery. That's where I come in. Presenting the It's Pub Night Beer Review Generator:

The beer I'm reviewing is:

GoodBadEither

It has a:

Big headSmall head

Its color is:

LightAmberDarkAny

If the button doesn't work, click over to It's Pub Night, it works there!

Please forgive me, Beer Advocates and Ratebeerians. The Beer Review Generator is obviously my way of lampooning your subculture. Don't take it the wrong way -- I'm glad that you're taking beer so seriously. You're inspiring brewers to greater heights, and creating an important part of the beer culture. The Beer Retard may call you "beer douches" -- his Thurber-meets-MS Paint cartoons are pretty funny -- but the truth is I could read beer ratings all day long. In fact, as simplistic as the Generator is, I could keep pushing the button and reading its reviews all day long, and I wrote the stupid thing. The vocabulary and cadence of these stereotypical beer poems has its own brain-candy deliciousness.

Which brings me back to skepticism. How useful are these wine-talk screeds about beer? It's exciting to read about a beer's "Sexy full-bodied palate, with just a hint of plum and orange", but does that really tell me whether I'd like it or not? I doubt it, and that conviction grows stronger as I idly amuse myself by reading one artificially-generated review after another. What I would like to see more of in beer criticism -- including my own -- is analogy. Something like "This beer is like an over-hopped Young's ESB", or "It reminded me of a cross between Sierra Nevada Celebration and Duvel". Describe a new, rare, or regional beer in terms of other beers that aficionados have been exposed to or have ready access to.

Play around some with the generator. I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

The Sour Wine Craze

There's a new trend in the wine world that might interest you beer drinkers out there. Cutting-edge American vintners are experimenting with ways to overcome the natural sweetness of the grape and produce wines of intense sourness. The inspiration for these sour wines lies in some obscure European styles, but the Americans are adding their own innovations, such as using yogurt bacilli as part of the fermentation process.

Sour wines are admittedly an acquired taste, but sophisticated oenophiles are increasingly willing to pay premium prices for them. Sours are some of the most expensive wines among recent vintages, because of the great technical skill and attention it takes to produce them, and the unpredictable and sometimes lengthy fermentation process.

Only joking. There is no Sour Wine Craze, it's just something I dreamed up as I pondered the sour beer craze. Some tartness is not unusual in a wine, but no one would buy a wine whose sourness stood out over all its other flavors. Can you imagine wine snobs paying, say, $75-$100 -- my attempt to translate $10-$20 beer -- for sour wine? Can you imagine Mt. Tabor Fine Wines holding an event like Puckerfest? I guess those things are imaginable, but in light of the fact that fine wines have a bigger audience to date than fine beers, if it hasn't happened yet it probably won't.

Then why have sour beers caught on? One guess is that a lot of beer connoisseurs are themselves homebrewers, who appreciate the technical finesse and cultural background that goes into sour beers. Or maybe it's simpler to just say there's no accounting for taste -- after all, not everyone shares my enthusiasm for bitter medicinal liqueurs, and I did just recommend that people try the drinking vinegars at Pok Pok.

About a week ago I dutifully went out and tried Deschutes' The Dissident and Roots' Flanders Red on consecutive days. They both are very big beers, 9% or so, and lovely to look at. As you've guessed, I don't particularly like sour beers; that said, I give the edge to Roots, maybe because it was less sour than the Dissident. On the other hand, both breweries have so many beers that are to my liking, that their sour ales are just a curiosity to me.

Really Not Intended for Consumption

It happened before April Fool's Day, but someone out there came up with another prank to make fun of the Ebay beer auctions: a wax-dipped Pabst Blue Ribbon longneck for sale. When I wanted to sell my collectible Abyss bottle, I had to drink its contents to comply with Ebay rules; this guy decided instead to sell something where he could credibly claim that the bottle was worth more than the beer. Photo credit: the picture here is brazenly lifted from the auction post.

It looks like he'll fare a little better than I did on the money end of things, with $9.50 plus $20 shipping. He's got the ALL CAPS auction idiom down, with flashing sirens, dancing babies, dancing bananas, and waving U.S. and Iraqi flags -- buy this bottle or the terrorists win. He notes that PBR won the GABF 2006 Gold Medal for American Lager, but must not have noticed that just a couple of weeks ago Pabst took the gold at Portland's 2008 Spring Beer and Wine Festival. Maybe they should start holding the SBWF on April Fool's Day.

Incidental Contents Are Not Intended for Consumption

When I conceived my prank, it came with a good blog-post title: "Nobody Wants My Collectible Bottle". But then someone out-pranked me and actually bid on the empty bottle of Abyss that I listed on Ebay for $15 plus $10 shipping and handling.

Like many other beer mavens, I was not pleased to see people scalping bottles of the Abyss on Ebay or craigslist. The scalper hasn't done anything of value, he's just rushed out and bought up something that would be valuable to someone else, but isn't to him. Then, because Ebay doesn't want people selling alcohol, the scalper adds insult to injury with the following boilerplate required by Ebay:

The value of the item is in the collectible container, not its contents.

The container has not been opened and any incidental contents are not intended for consumption.

The item is not available at any retail outlet, and the container has a value that substantially exceeds the current retail price of the alcohol in the container.

There's no way you could believe that was true, especially since the Ebay sellers all proclaim the excellence of the top-ranked Imperial Stout in their descriptions of the bottles for sale. It's a measure of the malaise we've fallen into, that people will tell any lie for convenience, no matter how obviously false it is. As a beer fan, I'm annoyed by beer scalping; you can understand why brewer Tomme Arthur takes it more personally when someone says his beer is worth less than its bottle and is not intended for consumption.

Anyway, when I saw bottles of the Abyss going for $40-$45 under the premise that it was the bottle that was valuable, I decided I would auction the empty bottle pictured above, just to point out the ludicrousness of the "incidental contents" claims. Here's the text of the auction:

You are bidding on an EMPTY bottle!!!

Since Ebay does not permit the sale of alcoholic beverages, I drank the contents of this collectible 2007 Abyss bottle before listing it for auction. If you win the auction, I will ship you the empty collectible bottle, plus the collectible wax-covered bottlecap, plus a couple bits of collectible wax that broke off when I removed the bottlecap.

Other collectible Abyss bottles have sold this year for as much as $45 apiece!!! Of course, those were unopened collectible bottles that contained an alcoholic beverage. When you buy this EMPTY collectible Abyss bottle, you can buy with the confidence that you're buying from someone who plays by the rules, and you get the satisfaction of knowing how much I enjoyed drinking this delicious Imperial Stout.

Good Luck!

I thought it would be good for a laugh, and that I would get a blog article out of it with the title I mentioned. Late Thursday evening, I noticed that the auction had caught someone's eye, because the number of people who had viewed the auction suddenly jumped into the hundreds. Turns out someone had pointed it out in a ratebeer forum, and someone else on Beer Advocate. I started to get questions about the item:

Q: How many bits of wax will you be including? I'm trying to decide if it's really worth it. :) - Bob

A: Hi Bob! There are a two little chunks that broke off when I opened the bottle. One is about the size of a toenail clipping, the other is smaller, maybe fingernail clipping size. Don't forget that there is still a scab-sized chunk of wax adhering to the bottle cap. Enjoy :-)

---

Q: Hi- I'm excited about this item!!! This is less than half price from those other items. My question: It's nice to see someone that plays by the rules, but isn't the S&H a bit over priced as the weight won't include the contents?:-( cheers, john

A: Good point. I just put what Ebay said UPS ground would cost. I'll negotiate something reasonable with the winner.

---

Q: Can you guarantee there's no beer - no bits of yeast sticking to the bottom, no sludgy stuff up the sides? I'd hate for there to be any yukky beer stuff ruining a good looking bottle ;-)

A: Oh, I drank every single drop. Even when the bottle looked empty, I laid down with it on the couch for a couple of hours to make sure every bit went into my mouth.

---

Q: Hi there, I was wondering if you could post a picture of the wax shards. Are all shards still intact or are a few missing? What is the condition of the bottle cap? Did you use a quarter on top while prying it off it ensure it stays in M10+ condition?

A: I understand your concern, since the wax on this bottle was rated the best bottle wax in the world by the Men's Journal. I tried to preserve it all, but there could be some missing molecules. Sadly, I didn't do the quarter trick when opening the bottle. I was in a big hurry to pour myself a glass. So I can't guarantee the excellence of the bottlecap.

Then, horror of horrors, someone actually bid on it. Now I really have to rinse the bottle out, and find a box, and, and -- please, no! -- go to the post office and mail it! My interest was piqued a little to see that the bidder's Ebay ID was "ftommearthur". Wow! It looks like Tomme Arthur liked my little joke and decided to throw some fuel on the fire. Hey, maybe instead of cash, he'll pay me with some "incidental liquids" from his brewery. But what's the "F" for? Is his legal name F. Tomme Arthur? Or is this someone else, the Female Tomme Arthur perhaps? Ah, probably someone just pranking me back -- with no intention of paying -- and yanking Tomme's chain at the same time.

That would be great, I wouldn't have to journey into the scary UPS office. But, no such luck. Paypal "You've got cash!"-ed me the morning after the auction closed. Aha! Some guy in Vermont, definitely not the California brewer. Oh well, the "ftommearthur" moniker at least indicated he was in on the joke, and wasn't some poor sap who thought he was -- wink, wink, nudge, nudge -- bidding on a full bottle. Here's how he explained himself in an email:

Thanks Bill. Just trying to further the entertainment / discussion from the BA "*&^% eBay" thread. Didn't work. In any case I thought your auction deserved a bid for its satirical / comedy value. You made a good point. For the record I too detest the eBay beer profiteering. Looking forward to my wax shards...

/Cedar

Luckily, I had been careful to safely stash away the promised bottlecap and bits of wax, otherwise I'd have to drink another bottle of incidental non-collectible stout.

I don't think I'm cut out for this Ebay thing. UPS charged me $13.59 for shipping (including $2.70 "Rural Surcharge", for the Vermont end), and Ebay invoiced me $1.39. My laziness caused me to pay another $5.65 to UPS to pack it all up for me. Suddenly $15 + $10 shipping looks like quite a bargain! There go my hopes for getting rich by drinking beer... unless... maybe someone wants to buy a set of 3 collectible bottles. Empty, of course.