Alphabet of New Oregon Breweries

The other day Dave invited me over to help out with a growler of delicious Omegatex IPA he'd brought back from a visit to Fort George.  "We also checked out this new brewpub in Astoria called Buoy."  In my Omegatex-addled bliss I was hearing that as "Bowie", like how Texans pronounce "Bowie knife", or how George Clinton pronounces "David Bowie" at about 3:00 in Make My Funk the P. Funk, until he showed me the logo with an ocean buoy on it.  I used to be so good at keeping up with new breweries, but I had never heard of this one.

A couple days later I was reading about the OBG's Malt Ball, which included a beer from another Oregon brewery I had never heard of:  Claim 52 in Eugene.  It made me think that there is almost an A-Z of Oregon breweries that are so new that I haven't tried their beer yet.  That's a bit of a stretch, but let's try and come up with an alphabet of Oregon breweries that have opened in... oh, the last three years (so that we can at least get through the letter G).

I'll get it started, please help me out with the rest, since I'm obviously no longer keeping up with current events, or even past events [Thanks to commenters for J-O, R-U.  And for telling us that apparently Yachats and Zigzag are on the way!]:

• Agrarian
• Buoy
• Claim 52
• de Garde
• Ecliptic
• Falling Sky
• Gigantic
• Humble
• I ???
• Juniper
• Kells
• Logsdon
• Mazama
• North Rim
• Oblivion
• Plank Town
• Q ???
• Rat Hole 
• Solera
• Thunder Island
• Uptown Market
• Viking Braggot Company
• Worthy
• X ???
• Y ???
• Z ???

Wow, that list is very Eugene-heavy.  Is Eugene the next Bend?  Is Ninkasi the beer that made Eugene famous?

One-day only special:  If you happen to be reading this today, March 13, 2014, you can meet the brewers from letters A and P tonight at the White Owl Social Club (SE 8th and Main Street, just down the street from my house).

Six-Pack Equivalent Android App

Despite the fact that I make a living writing electrical engineering software, I am not a gadget guy or early adopter of technology. Thus, when a commenter on the Six-Pack Equivalent Calculator post requested an Android phone version of the SPE tool, I filed it away as something I might pursue sometime, but since I don't have a smart phone myself, it never got very high on my list of priorities.

As luck would have it, my neighbor Lindsey -- who is a gadget guy, but a fellow cheapskate -- was recently gifted an old Android by a merciful friend. So he took it upon himself to create an Android Beer Cost Calculator that gives you the SPE of any quantity of beer. Right now the app is free and shows an advertisement; later Lindsey may offer a 99-cent ad-free version. Under the terms of our agreement, I'll get 10% of any money over $50,000 that he makes off of this. (For those of you with limited sarcasm-detection or math skills, that means that Lindsey will make a few dollars more than the $0 I will make. Which is fitting, since he actually inspired the SPE idea in the first place, as a way to understand growler prices.)

In case you're unfamiliar with the SPE, it is the legal tender of It's Pub Night. When trying to compare the relative price of differently-sized bottles, kegs, or glasses of beer, it helps to convert them into a unit we're all familiar with -- the beloved six-pack. Before anyone goes on a rant, let me clarify that I wouldn't expect snifters of rare Belgian monk nectar to cost the same as a six-pack of Miller High Life. This is just a tool for normalizing prices so you can understand what kind of value you're getting for your money, or compare two similar beers of unequal volume.

Of course an iPhone SPE App would be more popular. If someone has an idea of how to develop iPhone apps without an iPhone or a Mac, let me know.  [Update: you now have a choice of two iPhone SPE apps.]

Barley Brown's Brewpub

On our way back from Yellowstone last week, we spent Saturday night in Baker City. It was a family vacation, not a beer vacation, but the Baker City stop was a concession to dear old Dad, so that I could visit Barley Brown's, a prize-winning pub whose beers only rarely show up in Portland.

In fact, the only time I've seen BB's beers here was at Belmont Station's meet-the-brewer last May. The burly Barley Brown brews at that event convinced me that I needed to stop in and try more of their offerings. Between Carla and me, we got around to:

• Turmoil Cascadian Dark Ale: very satisfying balance of malt and hops
• Tankslapper IIPA: Carla's favorite, strong, thick, with citrusy floral hops
• Tumble Off Pale Ale: cloudy orange ale with bracing hops
  
• WFO IPA: classic Northwest IPA
  

I could have plotted out our sampling a little better by swapping the WFO -- which I'd tried in Portland -- for the Whiskey Malt Ale, which I thought I'd tried, though what I'd had at Belmont was the Double Whiskey Malt Ale. I was also intrigued by their Hot Blonde Ale, a chilli pepper beer, but they were out of it Saturday night.

Barley Brown's was doing a whopping business Saturday night -- we waited about 20 minutes for a table on the restaurant side. While we waited we strolled down Main Street. There wasn't much else in the way of entertainment: a dive bar was empty except for a lone barkeep; the saloon at the Grand Hotel was humming pretty well; I don't recall any other family restaurants open at that time.

We were really pleased with the Barley Brown's food. After a long day on the road and in the motel pool, everyone was hungry for some good eats. We ordered fairly sensibly -- splitting two entrees between the three omnivores in the family, and getting an order of nachos for our vegetarian daughter. The servings were very generous: look at the hunk of pork ribs they served to a 10-year-old girl. The chicken-fried steak that Carla and I split was not all that huge, but that let us help out with the ribs. All the food was tasty -- even the nachos appeared to use decent-quality cheese -- but a special mention goes to the side vegetables. They were steamed exactly the right amount, until they were tender but they hadn't lost any color or flavor. Garnished with some fresh garlic, they were a wholesome and delicious way to round out the meal.

Baker City is a cute little town, with lovely views of the Blue Mountains, even if it didn't have a fantastic brewpub. Barley Brown's (open 4-10 PM daily) makes it a must stop if you're on a long drive out I-84.

New Deal Vodka

Saturday we marched our out-of-town guests Michael and Ana down to the open house at New Deal Distillery. That's Tom, one of the founders, manning the bar. New Deal started up a few years ago with a mission of providing Portland with quality local vodka at an affordable price. At first they worked out of a cheap office in the ActiveSpace building at SE 9th and Main Street. At some point they moved across the street into more spacious digs, which gave them room for better equipment, more experimentation, and Saturday afternoon open houses (noon to 5 PM).

It's been a while since I had New Deal's eponymous 80-proof vodka, and it was even nicer than I remember it -- perhaps a testament to the new equipment. It is distilled with a few secret botanicals to add a little aromatic flavor, but not enough to push it out of neutral vodka range. I'm not a spirits expert, but that was news to me: I always thought vodka was just pure distilled hooch with no fancy additives. Next time you need some vodka, buy local! It's good stuff.

We also sampled their other wares: Portland 88, stronger and less aromatic than the flagship vodka; Hot Monkey, a pepper vodka made with five secret chiles; and a chocolate vodka that hasn't hit the store shelves yet. I didn't expect to like the chocolate vodka, and I didn't for a couple seconds, but it grew on me quickly. It wasn't half bad. The Hot Monkey was more to my liking. Carla and I argued over which pepper types are in it -- ancho was the flavor I picked up, but she claimed chipotle. More research is needed, so I bought a bottle to take home.

Distilleries have taken off in that neighborhood in a big way. We wanted to make another stop at Integrity Spirits, but no one was there Saturday afternoon. Just a few blocks south on 7th is House Spirits, and distillers Sub Rosa and Artisan Spirits are somewhere nearby.

New Deal is also producing a line of organically-grown liqueurs for a Bay Area company called Loft Liqueurs. We tried three of the Loft flavors: lavender, ginger, and lemongrass. Pretty fancy. I liked the ginger best, but I'm especially impressed at how good the lemongrass liqueur was. I love the flavor of lemongrass, but when I tried to infuse some into vodka a few years ago, it was a disaster -- an alarming chemical-solvent flavor was what I ended up with. Not so with Loft's lemongrass: its delicate herbal lemon flavor was right on. Certified organic and repels mosquitoes, should be a big seller.

If you find yourself at the Lucky Lab or the Green Dragon some Saturday afternoon, walk over to New Deal and take advantage of the open house.

Meet the Champion Brewmaster

Tuesday night's Meet-the-Brewer at the Green Dragon was extra-special. The meetee was Bend Brewing's Tonya Cornett, who won the Champion Brewmaster award in the "small brewpub" category at the 2008 World Beer Cup. She brought along her trophy and some excellent beers: Hop Head IIPA, Axe Head Red Ale, Paulina Pale Ale, and Blackjack bourbon-aged Porter.

The Hop Head was the clear winner with our crowd -- a thick, hazy, hoppy treat. The Red Ale was very good, less dangerous to drink than the big IIPA. Speaking of dangerous, that's a good description for the strong, dark Porter, which was tasty but very bourbony, so watch out if you don't like that.

It's not just Tonya's recent award that made the session special; it's the fact that you can rarely find any of her beers in Portland. And that's not likely to change: there are no plans to start distributing them. She said that occasionally someone from the Green Dragon or Bailey's will be passing through Bend and stop in to buy a keg. But that's it.

A few years ago Dave and I stopped in to Acme at SE 8th and Main Street (it's since been aptly renamed "Plan B"). They had a couple of beer taps named after the bar, I don't exactly remember the names, something like Acme Amber and Acme Pale. We knew they weren't brewing there, so we asked what the beer was. It was like "Who's on first?" because neither Dave nor I had heard of Bend Brewing at that point.

• "You make your own beer?"
• 
  
• "No, it's from Bend."
• 
  
• "Which brewery?"
• 
  
• "Bend."
• 
  
• "Yeah, which brewery?"
• 
  
• "BEND!"
  

I'm pretty sure Plan B doesn't still serve them, and given Tonya's comments on distribution, it looks like Bend Brewing ales will be a rare treat for us around here. Take advantage of them when you see them. For further reading on the Champion Brewmaster award, here's an Oregonian article that came out shortly after she received it.

Main Street Station, Las Vegas

My friends -- let's call them Mr. and Mrs. Dangerfield -- chose Feb. 29th for their marriage day, and chose Las Vegas as the venue for such a stunt. Actually, his parents live there, and Elvis did not officiate, so I shouldn't call it a stunt. It was a nice ceremony, and, having introduced the couple to begin with, I got the honor of being the best man.

I had not been to Las Vegas as an adult, so I was looking forward to a first visit, even though it would be a short one. According to Lee, it wasn't going to be much of a beer vacation, but because I made the idiotic mistake of staying downtown instead of on the strip, I actually stumbled upon one of the few brewpubs in town, the Main Street Station next door to my digs at the Plaza. So, even though I was staying in a fleabag hotel, permeated with the twin fragrances of vomit and cigarette smoke, I could still walk down Main Street for a fresh beer. Just like home!

My first night in town, I went over there about 3:30 AM, after dropping $100 on some, ahem, poker lessons at Binion's. Lucky for me, the Main Street casino doesn't have a poker room, but midnight to 7 AM is happy hour of sorts, with $1.50 pints. The picture above is of the tanks on display in the restaurant area. As you might expect with a tourist place, the beer wasn't adventurous, but it was drinkable, so I licked my wounds with a couple of pints of their winter warmer seasonal (not very warm, around 5%). Adding a big bowl of Chinese noodle soup from the breakfast menu brought my bill to a whopping $7.85. I think in Portland we'd probably call their winter warmer a red ale, it had that reddish-malt look and taste to it.

The regular beers on the list are a pale ale, a porter, a "red lager", and a golden. My beer snobbery got in the way of trying the latter two, but I did check out the pale ale and the porter the next night as I dabbled at $5 blackjack. Like the winter warmer, these were tame but drinkable, especially the porter. The other casinos I sat down in -- on the strip and downtown -- didn't seem to offer any beer better than Heineken, so Main Street is guaranteed at least some of my gambling losses next time I'm in Vegas.