Hollywood Beverage: Eastside Liquor + Beer Store

Portland now has a second liquor store which the OLCC allows to sell beer and wine:  Hollywood Beverage at about 30th and NE Sandy.  A couple of years ago I wrote up the other such store: Pearl Specialty Market, which is still your best bet for a good beer selection in the Pearl.

Hollywood Beverage has been open since October -- its previous incarnation as the more run-of-the-mill Hollywood Liquor was further up Sandy just east of the I-84 overpass -- but I didn't make it in for a visit until a couple weeks ago.  I was stunned by how low some of the beer prices were.  Some of them seemed like mistakes until I realized there were too many of them to be in error.  If you thought the prices at Beermongers were the lowest possible, check out these bomber prices:

• Ninkasi Oatis: $3.15
• Lompoc Proletariat Red: $3.25
• Pelican Silverspot IPA: $4.00
• Gigantic IPA: $4.35
• Pelican IPA: $4.40
• Laurelwood Deranger: $7.25

The selection was good but not a home run -- it struck me as kind of a work in progress.  The six-pack prices weren't as startlingly low as the bombers -- most of them could be beat by supermarket sales -- but $8.50 Ninkasi six-packs and $9.50 Caldera sixers were as low as I can remember seeing anywhere.  Imported beers didn't strike me as being so cheap; I think Beermongers may have them beat, and certainly has a better selection.

An employee came up while I was shopping and asked if I had any questions.  "Yeah, why is the beer so cheap?"  He said that the owner is so used to the low margins on liquor set by the OLCC that he thought 20% was a pretty decent markup on beer and wine.  The guy who told me that turned out to be the wine buyer for the store -- "You should see some of the bargains on our wine" -- and he said he's encouraging the owner to either raise the beer and wine prices or start promoting them more to increase sales volume.  So you might want to get in there and snatch up some bargains in case sanity prevails.

Portland Beer Price Index: Summer 2011

Even though we've endured a lot of rain this June, it is indeed the summer solstice, that bittersweet moment when the days are blessedly long, but doomed to grow shorter.  So allow me to present the Summer 2011 installment of the Portland Beer Price Index.  Beer prices are migrating northward this quarter, as you can see by the chart on the left, which shows the average retail shelf price and "on-sale" price of six-packs in the survey.  I've added one retail location, one six-pack, and one bomber to the data; I'll explain the changes in detail below.  As always, I ask you to remember that this is not a rant about how expensive beer is, it's simply a project to watch how prices change over time.  If you're having trouble sleeping, click here for a full explanation of the PBPI.

The Summer 2011 PBPI is as follows:

• 6-packs: $9.03, up 11 cents
• 22-ounce bombers: $5.08, up 8 cents
• 6-packs (sale price): $8.69, up 11 cents
• 22-ounce bombers (sale price): $4.90, up 5 cents
• 16 oz. draft: $4.33, up 4 cents
• 16 oz. draft (happy hour): $3.57, up 5 cents

Everything's going up.  Two pubs raised their draft prices this quarter, and the six-pack and bomber prices are not surprisingly continuing an upward trend.  The reported six-pack price here is actually up more than 11 cents since last time: that is due to the fact that I've added the relatively expensive Ninkasi Total Domination six-packs into the data.  I recorded the Ninkasi price last quarter but left it out of the index at that time since I didn't have any past data on it.  This time it's in for good, and this quarter's numbers reflect the change from last quarter when you include Ninkasi in both numbers.

On the bomber side, I had hoped Beer Valley Leafer Madness would be a more permanently available choice than Pelican IPA, but Fred Meyer has stopped carrying Leafer, and I didn't see it at QFC either.  Reluctantly, I will leave both Pelican and Leafer in for now, since each is available at 3 of the 5 locations I canvass.

One change to the PBPI that I'm excited about is that I added a fifth store to the retail survey:  Pearl Specialty Market.  Despite my efforts to compile a list of beers that are pretty universally available, it's surprisingly difficult to find a store that carries all of them.  I was very happy to notice that Pearl does carry them, so I added the store to the survey.  That addition also helps the bomber sale price numbers, since if you buy 6 bombers at Pearl, you get a 10% discount.

Look for the next PBPI around the fall equinox.

Pearl Specialty Market and Spirits

Pearl Specialty's Beer and Cigar Selection

Since I realized the other day that Bridgeport ESB had been discontinued by the brewery, I've been on a mission to find a few remaining bottles on sale somewhere. One of the bottle shops that I scoured -- to no avail -- was Pearl Specialty Market at 9th and NW Lovejoy. Even though the Pearl Market couldn't fulfill my ESB quest, I realized that the place is a hidden gem that a lot of people might not be aware of, offering a classy selection of micros and imports. It has flown under the radar to become the best bottle shop in NW Portland or downtown -- the only other competition in that part of town are the big grocery stores.

I'd been aware of Pearl Specialty for a while.  It created quite a splash when it opened, because the OLCC granted it one of the few licenses in Oregon to sell beer and wine alongside stronger spirits. More to the point, I realized it was one of the few liquor stores in town to be open until 10 PM -- most of them close at 7.

The liquor selection

I've saved a couple of neighborhood parties with that knowledge.  [As an aside, click here for my trick for scoring bottles of gin and rum even later into the night.] And for a while it was one of the few liquor stores in Portland that opened on Sunday, though the Republican Recession has made that a more commonplace occurrence in the last couple of years.

So I was aware of it as a liquor store, and I knew they sold beer, but I was surprised to see how much the beer selection has improved since my last visit a couple years ago.  According to the owner, Pearl Specialty started adding more beers when the store expanded in September of last year.  They are working towards a goal of stocking 1000 beers.  The picture at the top shows most of the beer section, and there is also another bank of coolers full of bombers and 12-packs outside the frame to the left.  They carry the Oregon standards, plus a high-end selection from beyond our fair borders:  off the top of my head, they seemed to carry pretty complete lineups from places like The Bruery, Dogfish Head, and Trappist breweries like Westmalle, St. Bernardus, and Rochefort.  You won't have a problem finding something to suit your mood if you go in there.

The beer prices are pretty normal -- not Beermongers cheap, but not predatory like you'd expect from a shop in the Pearl District.  I was mighty pleased to snag a bomber of Caldera's Rose Petal Imperial Golden for about $4.50, and stalwarts like Ninkasi and Lompoc ring in at the usual Portland price of $4.  Plus, there is a 5% discount if you buy 3 bottles of beer or wine, and a 10% discount if you buy 6 bottles -- that brings the Ninkasi down to $3.60, which actually is about as cheap as you'll find.

You've got to appreciate Pearl Specialty's motto:  Purveyor to those seeking the finer things in life.  To my mind that starts with good beer and high-end booze, but they also have a decent selection of wine and sake, and a cigar humidor.  Apparently designer bottled water was part of the original plan, but it isn't conspicuously on display there anymore and doesn't show up on the website.  Tough sell in a town were the tap water is as good as it is here.

Bottle shops have been springing up all over Portland in the last couple of years.  Following Belmont Station's lead, the latest fashion is to attach a bar to a bottle shop (Beermongers, Bottles) or vice versa (Saraveza, Hop and Vine [bottle shop opening Saturday]).  Pearl Specialty's angle of bottle shop plus liquor store is another interesting business model.  You could think of it as one-stop shopping for beer cocktails.  Anyway, cool place.  If you need a bottle of booze after the other liquor stores are closed, or if you're in the Pearl and you need to pick up a good bottle of beer, Pearl Specialty is the place to go.