Beer Advocate Loves Portland

First the New York Times got a huge crush on us, and now Beer Advocate.  Have you noticed that three of the last four BA magazine covers feature Portland beer people?

• #56: Ryan Schmiege (Deschutes Portland Pub)
• #57: Geoff Phillips and the gang at Bailey's Taproom
• #59: Eric Bottero (Bazi Bierbrasserie)

The picture of Ryan was taken when he was working in Bend, but he's been brewing in Portland for more than a year.

The New York Times has been all over Portland for a few years now, especially for our food carts and restaurants.  But when they published a gushing review of Portland barbershops -- including Bart's Barbershop, where I get shorn every few months -- I knew their infatuation had crossed the line into weird obsession.  The picture of Bazi manager Bottero mixing a beer cocktail creeps me out in a similar way.  I don't mean any offense to Bazi by that -- it's an interesting new place -- but it doesn't seem to me to be at the forefront of beer cocktails, or even of the Portland beer scene.

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it:  Find a Portland connection in the picture on the cover of Beer Advocate #58.  One of the bottles?  One of the people wandering around?

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.

Your Thoughts on Beer Publications

Here you are reading a beer blog. It's unlikely that It's Pub Night is your only Internet source for beer information, so I assume you read other blogs, maybe online forums, or maybe you even subscribe to an antiquated email discussion group.

But what about printed media? Do you find any of these worth your time:

• Beer Advocate
• Draft Magazine
• All About Beer
• Brewing News
• Beer Northwest

I'm sure I left off some important publications.  There, I've admitted my own ignorance, you don't have to bring it up again in the comments, but please do fill in the blanks if there's another magazine or tabloid out there that you enjoy reading.

What got me thinking about this question was a comment on my San Francisco vs. Portland post.  The Bay Area correspondent for the Northwest Brewing News recommended the February/March 2010 issue of the paper, which had a cover story called Bay Area Alehouses.  As it happens, I had indeed read that article before my trip to San Francisco, but had not found it useful or memorable.  Why not?  For starters, it only mentioned a handful of places in downtown San Francisco, and I had no plans for going further afield.  Moreover, as I read the article, I noticed that it didn't mention any specific beers served at any of the bars, but it did mention the name of the owner or manager of every single place.  That must be fascinating information for a local insider, but for a tourist or dabbler it was useless and actually quite annoying to read such a tour de force of name-dropping.  So annoying that I put down the article and never gave it another thought until Mario brought it up.

It put me in the mood to write a blog post lambasting the NWBN for being such a lame publication.  Scanning the Feb/Mar edition I found another annoyance:  an article on beer pricing with a section headed "Let there be Honest Pints!", which didn't mention Jeff Alworth's Honest Pint Project.  But even though I was in a nasty mood, I couldn't find much else to complain about in that issue or the subsequent April/May issue (well, the Beer Bitch column is a joke that stopped being funny a long time ago).  Instead, I'm going to make a point of picking up the NWBN whenever I see a new issue; there's plenty of good information in there, especially about other areas I'm less up-to-date on.

This train of though also got me thinking that I need to put my money where my mouth is and subscribe to Beer Advocate.  The magazine itself never knocks me off my feet, but the BA website is an invaluable part of the community and I want to pitch my dollar into their tip jar.

So I ask you, gentle readers.  What are your thoughts on dead-tree beer publications?