Zeus Café

McMenamins really put their back into the rehabilitation of the old Club Portland building into the new Crystal Hotel and its ground-floor Zeus Café.  Perhaps to draw a clear contrast with the run-down gay bathhouse that most recently occupied the location, the Zeus is a lot tonier than the usual McM's place.  It's quirky, for sure, but in a fancier way than even the crown jewels of the chain like Edgefield or the Kennedy School.

In addition to the decor, another place you'll notice the difference is the lunch/brunch menu, a simple half-sheet of paper with no whimsical allusions to the Grateful Dead or other colorful characters, no tater tots, rather dishes (and prices) aimed at a well-heeled clientele.  The dinner menu is even more abbreviated and spendy, and the wine list is far more extensive than all the food menus combined.  At first all this is a little jarring, but it makes sense when you remember that the regular-folks McMenamins atmosphere and menu is available one block down at the Crystal Ballroom.  No need to duplicate that at the Zeus, better instead to compete with nearby grown-up restaurants like Jake's and Henry's.  There is a darker bar in the basement called Al's Den, which opens at 4 PM, but its menu is a subset of the upstairs food.

The beer for the Zeus is brewed, as you might expect, down the street at the Crystal Ballroom (here's a previous post with more details on the McMenamins sister-pub network).  Since I was just musing about wines on tap the other day, I'll note that the McMenamins house white wines at the Zeus are served from CO₂ taps -- they don't do the red wines that way because the wine kegs sit in the same cooler as the beer kegs, which would be too cold for serving the reds.  Another fancy beverage touch that was added was a sweet Victoria Arduino manual lever espresso machine (at right).

The Zeus is a nice place in a great location, it will be interesting to see if they stick with the somewhat upscale hotel-restaurant menu or trend back towards the McMenamins house style.  Further reading:  check out the Portland Mercury's take on the Crystal Hotel remodel.

McMenamins Sister Pub Layout

For a while now, I've been intrigued by McMenamins' "sister pub" arrangement. Since not every pub in the chain has a brewery on site, those without have to be supplied by those that do. There's not a central warehouse that takes care of distribution: instead, each non-brewing pub gets its beer from a particular brewery. That system first came to my attention when our friend Corey was the hotshot at Cornelius Pass Roadhouse. Getting me out to Hillsboro is like pulling teeth, but I was much happier when Corey's seasonals made it to CPR's sister pub at 15th and Broadway. At some point I asked at the Barley Mill where their beer came from, and found that they are supplied by the Hillsdale pub, which seems to me to be a stroke of luck, since Hillsdale's position as the first McM's brewery means it gets a lot of love from within the company.

Say you stumble upon a tasty seasonal at one of the pubs. If you know the sister pub(s), you might be able to find it closer to home, or at one of the other establishments you'd been intending to check out. Since the only connections I knew about were the ones I mentioned above, I emailed Kevin Tillotson, the brewing/distilling/winemaking director at McMenamins, to ask him what the current setup is. Kevin was kind enough to send me this list for Oregon:

• Edgefield Brewery to Bagdad and White Eagle
• Crystal Brewery to Grand Lodge
• Hillsdale Brewery to Barley Mill, Greenway, and Riverwood
• CPR Brewery to Broadway and Rock Creek Tavern
• West Linn Brewery to Oregon City, Sunnyside, and 205 Pub
• Kennedy School Brewery to St. Johns and Chapel Pub
• Fulton Brewery to Market St., Mission, and Blue Moon
• Lighthouse Brewery to Hotel Oregon
• Roseburg Brewery to East 19th
• High Street Brewery to North Bank
• Monroe Brewery to Corvallis 3rd Street
• Thompson Brewery to Boons Treasury
• John Barleycorns Brewery to Sherwood and Raleigh Hills
• Highland Brewery to Ram’s Head, Tavern and Pool, and Rock Creek Tavern

In Washington, the Columbia Brewery supplies the East Vancouver pub, and the other Washington breweries -- Spar, Olympic Club, Six Arms, Queen Anne, Dad Watson’s and Mill Creek -- all share kegs among themselves. Interestingly, beer from the Washington breweries can be sold in Oregon, but the Oregon beer is not approved for Washington. And Kevin points out that within Oregon, McMenamins could distribute beer from any brewery to any of the other pubs. It's just that the list above describes their current distribution. I had assumed there was some OLCC regulation that guided the arrangement, but that's not the case. I also thought each brewery supplied just one other pub, but that turned out to be wrong also. Many thanks to Kevin to clearing up these little mysteries for me.

The scenario I mentioned was wanting to locate a special seasonal at another pub, but in all honesty it might work the other way -- if you found that one particular McMenamins had a problem with its beers, you could also use the list to decide which other pub to avoid. In any case, I'm glad to finally be able to visualize the distribution of a ubiquitous player in the Oregon pub game.

Beermongers Now Open!

Only a couple of months behind schedule, a new bottle shop has opened at the corner of 12th and Division: The Beermongers. Last night they were celebrating the "soft opening" with balloons and a keg of Ninkasi Total Domination. The shop currently has about 185 kinds of beer on the shelf, with room to bump it up to about 250. Beermongers is open 11 AM to 9 PM, seven days a week.

You might ask yourself, what's a success strategy for a smallish beer store in Southeast Portland? They're not far from New Seasons on Division, which has a really good beer selection. And they don't plan to match the 1000-beer selection of Belmont Station. So what is the angle? Surprisingly, Beermongers plans to compete on price, with prices lower than Belmont, New Seasons, convenience stores, or even Fred's or Safeway. I never would have come up with that idea, but it sure warms my penny-pinching heart.

The proprietors are Sean Campbell and Craig Gulla, a couple of longtime McMenamins employees, seen here ringing up a $9 12-pack of Session Lager -- that's an old-timey SPE of $4.91. Craig told me that the plan is to keep the everyday prices low, and not rely on special sale prices. That's a nice price on Session: on my way home I stopped into New Seasons and saw it priced at $12. Some other low prices I noticed were:

• Bridgeport IPA: $6 6-pack
• North Coast Old Rasputin: $7.80 4-pack
• Unibroue 750ml bottles: $6.35
• Paulaner Salvator: $2.05 half-liter

[Update 2009/09/23: Turns out these were extra-low grand-opening prices. Session is now $11-something, Bridgeport $7.20, Paulaner $2.50. Not those original 25% discounts, but still good prices.]

The space itself reminded me a lot of By the Bottle in Vancouver, and the beers are arranged by style similarly to By the Bottle and Belmont Station. Even though there are plenty of snob-worthy beers, Beermongers also stocks Bud-Miller-Coors and Pabst, priced aggressively. They have an on-site license, so future plans include a small bar with three or four local taps, and a little bit of seating if you want to sample a bottle right off the shelf. Craig said they also plan to stock a small selection of reasonably-priced wines to cater to multi-beverage households. It would have saved me a trip to New Seasons last night, so I think their instincts are good.

I've heard two different rumors of pubs that might go in across the street from Beermongers, so this corner of Ladd's Addition might be a happening little beer area in the coming years. Best of luck to The Beermongers in their new venture!

Produce Row Cafe

Tucked away on the wrong side of the tracks on the eastside, close to the river with only a roaring jumble of expressway lanes in between, is a gem of a pub: the Produce Row Cafe. It's also a part of Portland's craft beer scene history: it was the first bar owned by the McMenamin brothers, before they launched their sprawling brewpub/hotel/concert venue empire. Don't worry, there are no garish faces painted on the walls or hour-long Grateful Dead jams on the stereo -- not that there's anything wrong with that -- it hasn't been a McMenamins joint for many years.

Produce Row has that British Isles pub feel about it, with about 20 nicely chosen beers on draft, a decent whiskey collection, and hearty pub food. The beers are mostly Northwest selections. When the Pub Nighters were there Tuesday evening, there was a good selection including a couple beers from each of Laurelwood, Lagunitas, Terminal Gravity, and Anderson Valley, plus Hales Cream Ale and Stout both on nitro. There were five lagers available, one of which was Miller High Life, in case there are some drinkers of wimpy downstream beers in your party. There's also a reasonably-priced menu of beer and whiskey pairs ranging from $6 - $9 -- that gets you a pour of a designer whiskey plus a little 5-ounce glass of beer.

The interior is a very cozy place to hang out, but a lot of people consider the back courtyard to be the best real estate on Produce Row. It's so popular that there were several tables full on Tuesday night, even though it was so rainy that the tables and benches must have been soaking wet and the barmaid refused to venture out onto the slippery planks of the deck.

With a somewhat hidden location, out of sight sometimes leaves Produce Row out of my mind. That's part of its charm: it's not part of any trendy pub district, so it feels kind of like a hideout in among the warehouses and off-ramps. But it's not that hard to get to, and there's even pretty good bike access from most parts of town, since the Water Avenue bike lane dumps you off at Stark just a block away. It's also open for lunch, if you'd rather visit the warehouse district during the daytime. Check it out for a relaxing pint and a taste of local beer history.

Click here for the Beer Mapping Project's page on Produce Row Cafe

Produce Row Cafe

Information provided by Beer Mapping

Corey's off to Bend

Pub Night chum Corey Blodgett is moving on from the McMenamins Cornelius Pass Roadhouse, where he built quite a following for his seasonal and special brews. Since his fiancée Anastasia got a good job in Bend, he's moving out there. He's hired on as the summer-season brewer at McMenamins' St. Francis School.

Wednesday was Corey's final Last Wednesday beer tasting at the CPR, so we had to make the trek out there to help drain some special kegs and send Corey off with a bang. It takes a lot to get me out of my comfortable Southeast Portland beer cocoon, but thankfully Dave was man enough to drive Lindsey and me out there. It's in Scott's neck of the woods, so he met us there also.

Corey brought out some treasures:

• Rose City Til I DiePA: year-old double IPA aged on oak chips
• May Day Mild Ale: cask-conditioned English Mild served by gravity
• Sasquatch Strong Ale: the Glen Falconer recipe, but aged 6 weeks in a whiskey barrel
• Evolution Altbier: easy-drinking amber ale
• Beatnik Saint: delicious Biere de Garde

The Beatnik Saint was the star of the evening. The picture shows Corey handing out a glass of that. It's a beautiful, hearty ale made partly with wheat, just slightly tart with a tiny bit of esthery flavor. The aged Sasquatch was interesting. Corey thinks the barrel might have had some wild yeasties living in it, because it got a little sour in the barrel. It wasn't as good as the pure Sasquatch that he brought to the Green Dragon a few weeks ago, but it was interesting enough for me to bring a small growler home. The huge malty flavor of the beer was enough to balance a little sourness and a little whiskey.

Rose City is always a fine choice, and Evolution is a pleasant session beer. But the real session beer champion Wednesday was the Mild. It was a fabulously flavorful dark mild, coming out of the firkin almost completely flat. If I had a firkin of that at home, I'd give up on water, especially seeing as how the grains were all organically grown. Even with the low alcohol, it didn't seem thin, and even tingled a little on the tongue. My pint was almost gone before I'd even paid for it.

Try a taste of Corey's Zen Lunatic at Cheers for Belgian Beers today and tomorrow. All I can say is, our loss is Bend's gain. Auld lang syne, Corey! We'll take a cup of kindness yet.

Battle for the Belt 2009

Saturday was the 16th annual McMenamins Hillsdale Brewfest, aka the Battle for the Belt. Twenty breweries from around the McMenamins empire each entered a beer in the battle to see who will represent the company at the Oregon Brewer's Festival this year. Attendees sample the beers and vote for their three favorites.

The Hillsdale pub holds a significant home field advantage, so a bunch of us headed over there to throw some support behind Pub Night regular Corey Blodgett, who brews at the Cornelius Pass Roadhouse. That's Corey on the right -- I think he's saying "No more pictures" -- next to Lindsey, Charles, and Scott's hand. Hopworks brewer Ben Love is just out of the picture to the right of Corey -- he'd be in the picture if I was any good at photography or brown-nosing.

CPR's entry this year was Cashed Out Imperial Porter -- a very smooth, hearty porter with just a little hint of bourbon from its barrel-aging. It's not a 10% bruiser like the other imperial porter that comes to mind -- Full Sail's Top Sail; Cashed Out is a more festival-friendly 7.3% ABV. It got the admittedly biased votes at our table. The name is an homage to Johnny Cash -- I don't know if Corey was aware of the Johnny Cash tribute band Cash'd Out, but coincidentally they're playing a Portland gig towards the end of April.

I seem to remember being more impressed with the field of beers at the 2008 brewfest than I was this year, but maybe I just went in with lower expectations last year. Nevertheless, there was some good stuff. These were my favorites:

• Cornelius Pass Roadhouse Cashed Out (Imperial Porter, Corey Blodgett and Chris Oslin): smooth with light bourbon touch
  
• John Barleycorns Brewery Old Shovelhead (Barleywine, Graham Brogan): nice, reminds me of Old Foghorn
• Concordia Brewery Hot For Teacher (IPA, Tim Proctor and Ben Nehrling): nice, mega-hoppy
• Old St. Francis Brewery Reducyble Organic (IPA, Mike White): easy-drinking with long hops
• Hillsdale Brewery Sledgehammer (Strong Ale, Matt Carter): very hoppy; nice cola flavor

Sledgehammer -- a sort of double Hammerhead -- rubbed me the wrong way with the first sip, but it grew on me and in the end it made my top 5. A couple of other beers get an honorable mention: Big Lou's Smoked American Amber from the Queen Anne Brewery (Worth Laflin), and Boysen' the Hood from Roseburg (Tom Johnson). The extra smoked malt and boysenberry flavors were nicely done; but they were beers I'd only have occasionally, and some people would pour them out immediately.

It usually takes a few days before McMenamins reveals the winner of the contest. I'll update this post as soon as I find out -- Corey, help me out with that, would ya? [Update 2009/02/26: Corey reports that Hot for Teacher was 1st, Sledgehammer 2nd, Old Shovelhead 3rd. Congratulations, guys, those were well done.]

The weather was so nice Saturday that I bicycled to the Hillsdale Pub in my shirtsleeves. I had forgotten how steep Capitol Highway is, but at least I worked up a good thirst and got to go downhill on the way home.

Happy 25th, Barley Mill

Every year the Barley Mill celebrates its birthday right around the summer solstice. This year Carla and I finally stumbled the six blocks from our house, figuring the 25th anniversary was special enough to show up for. As befits the Barley Mill, it was a pretty low-key event, at least when we were there around 2 PM, but we did get some birthday cake and pints of this year's version of the wacky Anniversary Ale as we withstood our dose of live Grateful Dead recordings.

McMenamins' pubs operate on a kind of buddy system, each pub with a brewery supplying beer to a single non-brewing pub in the chain. My understanding is that it's done that way to most profitably comply with the helpful regulations the state of Oregon has set up to protect its citizens from drowning in locally-made beer. Although the Barley Mill was the first pub in the ever-expanding McM empire, it opened before on-premises brewing became legal, and it was never a brewery. Instead, it is supplied by the chain's first brewpub, the Hillsdale Pub.

Right on the company website, it says "the pub's the thing". There are excellent brewers working for McMenamins', but the beer itself takes a back seat to real estate and atmosphere in the country of McMen-istan. Thus, the Barley Mill isn't where you go to revel in Oregon beer quality; rather, it's where you can take your kids and their grandparents for lunch and keep everyone happy without breaking the bank. Personal anecdote: my daughter chose to have her sixth birthday party at the Barley Mill. It was our first year in Portland, and as someone who grew up in the Bible Belt it felt a little strange to me that we were inviting a handful of kindergarten girls to have dinner at a bar. But why not? It's non-smoking, serves tater tots, and it's dripping with colorful artwork and crazy things for kids to look at.

The past year has brought a few changes to the Barley Mill. The dartboard is gone! It was in pretty bad shape and poorly lit, way back in a corner, but it occasionally came in handy and I hate to see the demise of any steel-tip dartboard. Also, for some reason they have draped a huge Grateful Dead flag over the excellent back-wall mural of old-fashioned Germans drinking Miller Beer under the protective gaze of a reclining nude woman. Everyone should hate to see the demise of any mural with a nude woman. And the menu seems a little different, though the only change I can put my finger on is that the Triple Play -- soup, salad, and garlic bread -- is gone.

Because the focus isn't really on the beer, the McMenamins' standards aren't of great interest to beer snobs -- though the CAMRA guide to the West Coast puzzlingly singles out Terminator as the best example of a West Coast stout. But it's not all bad. Corey Blodgett has a loyal following out at the Cornelius Pass Roadhouse for his imaginative beers. I was also impressed the other day at Ringler's by the Belgian Trippel and the Decent IPA (which supposedly got its name after one of the weekly papers complained that McMenamins' didn't brew a decent IPA). And for the last couple weeks the Barley Mill was serving an interesting little number called "Hemmerhoeff'd": the Hammerhead recipe brewed with a Belgian yeast.

That brings us to the Starvation Army Pale Ale, the pleasantly fruity pale brewed up for the anniversary. John Foyston has an entertaining article [Confidential to John: who does your spell checking?] about the ritual gathering where each participant adds something -- beer, wine, spirits, herbs, pieces of paper -- into the mash. And you know, it turned out pretty tasty.

The state of Oregon would be a far different place if there were no McMenamins'. That's especially true outside of Portland, where they serve as lifesaving oases for caravaning urbanites. Even here in town, the landscape would be far different with no Kennedy School, no Bagdad, no Crystal Ballroom. And it all began right here in Southeast. Happy Birthday, Barley Mill!

McMenamins' Battle of the Belt 2008

A bunch of the Pub Nighters turned out Saturday to the McMenamins' Hillsdale Pub (photo lifted from McMenamins' website) to cheer on our local boy, Corey Blodgett, in the Battle of the Belt. The Battle of the Belt is an internal competition to decide which brewer will represent McMenamins' at the Oregon Brewers' Festival. Corey is local in the sense that he lives in the neighborhood and runs with the Pub Night crowd, but the Cornelius Pass Roadhouse where he brews is so far from my stomping grounds that I rarely get any of his beers. One saving grace is that the CPR's tied house in town is the McMenamins' on Broadway, not that far away. But they don't always get his very coolest beers, like the oak-aged Double Red Ale that I got to try over the weekend, thanks to Brett, who snagged me a taste from the roadhouse. The Double Red was very nice, compares really well to Ninkasi's Believer. I like that style a lot.

Every year, there's been some conflict that kept me from going to the Battle of the Belt. So I was very happy this year that Carla and I got to hitch a ride with Dave and Jill and little baby Vaughn and cast a vote for Corey, not to mention actually taste some of his beer. Corey and fellow CPR brewer Chris Oslin's entry was "Rose City 'Til I DiePA" -- maybe work on those beer names, guys -- which was a delicious IIPA made with organic malt. Just one kind of malt, does that make it a single malt? Consulting my notes here... "awesome IPA". Well, that's my usual way with words for these things. I can expand a little by saying that it was very well-balanced, hoppy without getting too bitter. Smooth and strong.

You get to vote on three beers at the battle, and my other two votes went to High Street's Schneeflocken (notes: Belgian tripley, good), and Lighthouse ORator (notes: bourbony, good). Hmmm, looking back over the program, those are strange comments on those beers, since the ORator doppelbock didn't have anything to do with bourbon, and the Schneeflocken was a Dunkel Weisse, more Alpine than Low Country. Harry Sanger was the brewer of the ORator and Lane Fricke was the Schneeflocken brewer.

We were impressed at how many good beers were poured at the battle. There were some completely bad ones -- we debated which toilet cleanser one of them tasted most like -- and there were some that were too, well, McMenamins'-flavored. But some of them were really good:

• Dad Watson's Pale Rider (American Pale, by Brian Lawrence): nicely bitter
• Fulton Old 32 (NW Strong, by Chris Haslett): good & strong
• Roseburg Station 'M' (Strong Ale, by Tom Johnson): maltily good
• Hillsdale Madman Jack's (Insane Pale Ale, by Matt Carter): good IPA
• Oak Hills My Favorite Things (NW Pale, by John Keane): good & very hoppy

The name "Pale Rider" brings back old Austin memories. Celis briefly made a Pale Rider Ale in collaboration with Clint Eastwood, with proceeds donated to charity. Hilarious advertising slogan: "You didn't expect Clint Eastwood to make a salad dressing, did you?". The Dad Watson's definitely has a 2008 Northwest flavor instead of a 1998 Texas one.

Another highlight was meeting Corey's dad Walt, who flew in from Milwaukee for the festivities. For whatever reason, the winner of the Battle of the Belt won't be announced for a few more days. A good time was had by all, and I hope to make it back next year.

Update [2008/02/25]: McMenamins' finally announced the winners: Hillsdale 1st place, CPR 2nd place, Fulton 3rd place. Sounds like a home-field advantage to me, but there's no denying that the three winners were excellent ales. Congratulations to the brewers!