My New Glassware

It all started in May, when Carla and I finally visited the Brewers Union 180 Pub in Oakridge.  Oregon's only 100% Real Ale pub also serves tactlessly honest pints.  A beer glass at Brewers Union is not only shaped like an English pint glass, it doesn't only hold an imperial 20-ounce pint of beer, it is marked with a 20-ounce fill line that also leaves room for a head.  The pub sells them for 10 bucks each, so even though I have been instructed to reduce the number of logo-bearing beer glasses on our shelves at home, I just had to bring one of these beauties home with me.  As you can see from the picture, if you're careful and slurp off some of the head, you can fit a 22-ounce bottle of beer into a gigantic BU180 glass.  Brilliant.

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Then I transgressed further.  For a long time, I have admired the hefty goblets that Rogue pubs use to serve some of their bigger beers.  At one of Rogue's "garage sales" this summer I finally treated myself to a pair of them so I could feel kingly when drinking beer at home.  I really enjoy these goblets, but they don't hold much -- 10 ounces at best.  That can often be a good thing, though it would be nice if a whole 12-ounce bottle could fit in one.

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Then I got goblet envy once more in early August when I was at the Black Star Co-op Pub and Brewery in Austin.  They were serving some beers in giant fishbowl goblets that weigh about two and a half pounds and hold at least 16 ounces.  They didn't bear any logo, and they weren't for sale as souvenirs, but my friend Brady took note of my excitement over this Holy Grail-shaped vessel.  When he saw several of them for sale at an estate sale shortly thereafter, he bought them up and was kind enough to give me one.  This is the glass I reach for first nowadays, though the huge surface area and heavy weight means I tend to slosh a bit of beer on my feet if I'm walking back to my house after filling it up at Dave's kegerator next door.

Cheers!

Recent Raffle Winnings

A couple weeks ago I went to see my daughter's junior roller derby bout at Oaks Park.  I bought some raffle tickets to support... well, not sure what it was supporting, but it must have been the grown-up roller derby and not the kids because the prize was a bag of Pabst swag:  the T-shirt, socks, and mittens (!) in the picture, along with some other junk like koozies and stickers.  Oh yeah, and a tube of New Belgium lip balm.  Classy.

The next weekend when the Beermongers held their charity glassware swap, I bought a raffle ticket, hoping to win the magnum of Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous CDA.  Didn't win that, but I did win the pretty pink bottle of Rogue Voodoo Doughnut Bacon Maple beer.  I had been wanting to try that, but I was unwilling to spring the $13 or $14 bucks it's going for.  So it was nice to win.

I was on such a streak that I could hardly believe it when I didn't win any of the old Celebrations in the raffle at Woodstock Wine and Deli's Celebration vertical last weekend.  Oh well. I did win some money at poker later that evening, so maybe I'll find a way to win something this weekend and keep the streak alive.

Speaking of roller derby, isn't it a shame that such a Portlandish activity is owned by Pabst and New Belgium instead of a hometown brewery?  Those were the only beers for sale at the Oaks Park Derby Barn -- at least the tasty Ranger IPA was one of the choices -- maybe because they're in cans, but surely a keg of something local could be brought in.

Buckman Village Brewery

The Green Dragon saga continues... After three years and two ownership changes, the pub is finally serving its own house-brewed beers, under the somewhat silly name of Buckman Village Brewery.  Last week they debuted three beers: an IPA (natch) and two lighter ales, one flavored with ginger and one with chamomile.

Carla and I made it over there last Thursday to try the beers (the on-street bike corral is a nice addition -- when did that happen?).  The chamomile beer, Chamomellow -- as far as I can tell the only Buckman beer that has its own name -- was fabulous. As Frank James noted on Brewpublic, it has a touch of honey-like sweetness, and a lovely floral flavor that is right up front but doesn't overwhelm. After being underwhelmed by the IPA and displeased by the ginger beer, Carla and I were bowled over by Chamomellow, all the more so because Carla usually doesn't care for chamomile tea. That's it in the picture above, charmingly served to us in a MacTarnahan's glass.

As I said, the IPA was not impressive. It didn't offend, but it's not one of those cases where you say "This beer has balance", because it's not very hard to balance small quantities of flavor. The Buckman Ginger was interesting, but I'm one of the few people I can think of who would persevere to the end of a pint of it. The fresh ginger flavor was nice enough, but there was also a strange, chalky bitterness -- powdered ginger or turmeric? -- in the finish that wasn't very appealing. I'm kind of surprised that Frank referred to it as "surprisingly and enjoyably subtle". I found it to be anything but subtle, and a couple of tweets I read about it also commented on its brashness.

The beers were brewed on the Green Dragon's newly-approved 15-barrel system, not the 1-barrel nano rig that the Oregon Brew Crew was providing cheap labor on. From what I can gather, the brewer was John Couchot, who has been Rogue's chief distiller -- he's the second John on the John-John ales.  Does anyone know if he is going to be the permanent Green Dragon brewer?  That would certainly stoke the paranoia of the Integrity Spirits guys who share the building.

Hopefully Rogue will drop this "Buckman Village" pretense and just call the brewery the Green Dragon.  I do want to point out a previous instance of a Buckman beverage, though.  In 2007, our vineyard-owning friends bottled Buckman wine as a benefit for Buckman Elementary school -- that's the TTB-approved label for the red in the picture.  The label for the white wine was even cooler, with two skulls entwined with a Buckman banner, but I couldn't find a bottle or label in my archives. Anyway, the word "village" sounds phony applied to an edgy tavern in the middle of a warehouse district less than a mile from downtown.  On the other hand, "Green Dragon" does fit the place just right.  Is there a lawyer behind this, or is it just some inscrutable Rogue marketing ploy?

Small Are Beautiful

I'm talking about bottles, of course.

Back in college or shortly thereafter, my friend Bret was contentedly sucking down a can of Milwaukee's Best Light at a party when he was accosted by a preppy kid who told him, "Life's too short to drink cheap beer!" as he waved his 7-ounce Little Kings bottle in Bret's face.  In one of the finest comebacks on record, Bret shot back, "Life's too cheap to drink short beer!".

Setting aside the multiple ironies of that exchange, I want to talk about two beers that have recently been repackaged in smaller bottles than before.  Three cheers to Bridgeport for making Hop Czar cheaper and shorter.  It makes more sense to sell a 7-8% beer in six-packs of 12-ounce bottles than it does to sell it in 22-ounce bottles.  Anyone recall what bombers of Hop Czar sold for?  I'm thinking it was $5, or an SPE of $16.36.  The six-packs have been on sale around town for $7 -- less than half the price.  Hop Czar is now a constant fixture in my fridge.

It's one thing to open a 22-ounce bottle of 8% beer, but Rogue was selling their big beers -- like the 11% Russian Imperial Stout -- in even bigger 750 ml bottles (25 ounces).  The news that Rogue's XS series would now be sold in 7-ounce bottles took the Twitternet by storm a few weeks ago.  It's obviously a much more reasonable size for such big beers.

But instead of halving the price as Bridgeport did, Rogue took advantage of the switcheroo to raise the price about 5%.  At Belmont Station, the big bottle of RIS sold for $16.49, and the new small ones are $4.79; the SPE went from $46.82 to $49.27.  Which is even more surprising when you consider that the big pottery swing-top must be a much more expensive package than the regular-old glass bottles with a cap.  The beer is good -- I bought one of the 7-ouncers and drank it even though the bottle (wisely) recommended aging for a year -- but it's not $50 six-pack good.  That's more than $10 over the SPE for Deschutes Abyss.

Apparently Ninkasi is building a new bottling line that will let them move into six-packs.  When they do, watch out! Total Domination usually has an SPE of $13.09 -- I think their retail sales will go through the roof if they bring out $7-$8 six-packs.

Since I mentioned Abyss above, what do you think about Deschutes putting some of their bruisers like Abyss or Mirror Mirror into smaller bottles?  They could go Rogue and have a little higher margin if they went from $12 bombers to $4 sevens, or they could give us a break and sell them for $3.50 and leave off the wax coating.

Anyone heard of any other breweries moving to smaller formats?  Shorter, or cheaper, or both?

Obligatory Green Dragon Post

More drama from the Green Dragon. The Portland beer-snob community is completely up-in-arms about the proposed sale of the Dragon (or Ed's 2/3 of it, anyway) to Rogue.

Personally, I think it could be a positive thing. Ed was new to the pub business, and he wasn't particularly interested in beer. In my opinion, getting beer people in at the top is not a bad thing -- Ed's a nice guy, but just a few months ago everyone was wringing their hands about the loss of control by Jim Parker and Lolo.

Most people know that Ed had chosen another local brewer to take over the slowly-gestating brewing operation -- a friend of mine, as it happens. He hasn't been officially hired yet, so I'll be a little upset if the sale puts a stop to that. If he does get to become a Rogue brewer, that's a huge feather in his cap, not to mention an excellent catch by Rogue. So I'm looking on the bright side.

Why are so many people upset? There's an undercurrent of animosity towards Rogue -- puzzling to me, because they make some damn good beer -- but there is also a fear of change in three areas:

1. The employees.
2. The food.
3. The taplist.
   

Let's look at these one at a time. Rogue promises to keep the current staff; people eventually change jobs anyway -- you can't freeze the personnel in place no matter how much you like them. There's already been so much turnover there that -- except for Chris -- I feel like I'm still getting used to the current roster.

The food has seen its ups and downs at the Dragon. Currently it's up, though the last time I ate there I bit into a twist-tie that was in my po-boy. That was right about the time that a visiting blogger from California reported her own ewww-gross moment (long post -- see 3rd paragraph from the bottom) at the Dragon. I don't think the sky will fall if Rogue takes over the kitchen.

Finally, I think the taplist will benefit from an infusion of Rogue beers. When Parker and Lolo were first telling people about the pub they were opening, they were very proud of the fact that they would pour beers you couldn't find anywhere else in town. It's a great concept, but my experience has been that the list gets clogged with a mix of mediocre beers and expensive beers, for the simple reason that the awesome normal-priced beers get sold out quickly and everything else languishes waiting for someone to buy it.

Here's some of the brouhaha from blog-land:

• Brewpublic: original scoop and public backlash.
• The Beer Here: Rogue responds.
• The Champagne of Blogs: petition to keep the status quo.
• Beervana: voice of moderation and more reactions.
  

Anyway, time will tell. If Rogue takes the fun out of it -- and I don't see how that could happen -- we'll drift away from the Dragon and that will be that. But I have high hopes.

Rogue Distillery and Public House

Sometime in the past year, the Rogue pub in the Pearl vastly expanded the number of taps they have -- to 36, according to the website. Right before they did that, a bartender told me that they would have a lot more guest taps, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Today they had Guinness, Lindeman's, and something forgettable that I forgot.

Instead of guest taps, what they offer is an awesome selection of Rogue beers, including several of the "Track Town" ales from their Eugene brewery, and a couple from their brewery in Issaquah, Washington. Today they had 4 or 5 of their XS brews on tap -- extra-strong, served in a 10-ounce goblet -- including the Imperial Younger's Special Bitter, the Imperial Red, and a couple of other imperial this and that.

It's a nice place to pop in for lunch -- a little bit pricey, but hey, you're in the Pearl district, and the burgers are made with Kobe beef. There's a choice of seating -- some tables outside if weather permits, a non-smoking restaurant area inside, and a bar area without table service. Even though it allows smoking (until January 2009), I usually end up in the bar to be close to my beer. The smoke has never been too bad when I've been there.

The small distillery currently produces a decent gin and a couple flavors of rum. If you're there around 2 PM on a weekday, you can take a tour of the distillery, which is pretty interesting and includes a couple tastes. By the way, the pub can sell you a bottle of the homemade spirits, and it's open long after the liquor stores have closed in Oregon. Say it's midnight Saturday and you just realized you have to have a beer martini, but you don't have any gin. Well, hurry on down to the Rogue pub, and buy a bottle of gin -- they'll even sell you the beer. I'm not sure about the olives.

My main reason for hitting Rogue today was to try the Independence Fresh Hop Ale, made with hops from Rogue's own farm. Independence was a solid beer, not in the top fresh-hop ranks, but I was quite happy with it at lunch. Speaking of happy, that's how I felt about catching the tail end of a Rogue "garage sale" at the pub: I walked out with a growler of American Amber for $6 (six-pack equivalent price of $6.75, or if you deduct the $2 price of an empty growler, it's like a $4.50 six-pack).

Portland Airport Pub Crawl

Beer options behind security at PDX have improved dramatically in the last few months. I was out there this weekend on my way to a Vegas wedding, and was happy to find that Rogue and Laurelwood have each recently opened new pubs at the airport. They both have a decent selection of their own beers, and a second, larger Laurelwood pub opening next week will bring the joy closer to more airline gates.

The Rogue pub in Terminal D replaces the frumpy old lounge that used to serve the same drab-yet-expensive burger/pizza/nachos as most other frumpy airport lounges. The previous occupant was branded as a Widmer place, but the food had nothing in common with the Gasthaus food, and they never served any unusual beers, just stuff from Widmer's supermarket lines. By contrast, the new Rogue place has some things you'd expect to see on a Rogue menu, like fish and chips, and various configurations of ground Kobe beef. (I always thought it was completely deranged to make hamburgers out of premium beef like that. Then I learned the true meaning of "deranged": Rogue also makes Kobe Hot Dogs, Kobe-Blue Cheese Meatballs, and Kobe Chili.) The permanent beer list is nothing to text message home about, but it's better than the old Big Gulps of Widmer Hefeweizen:

• Dead Guy Ale
• American Amber
• Kell's Irish Lager
• Shakespeare Stout (nitro)
• Mocha Porter
• Brutal Bitter
• Juniper Pale Ale
• Hazelnut Brown Ale
  

The good news is that they always have one of the "John's Locker Stock" bruisers on tap. They sold me a 12 ounce goblet of Charlie for $5, which is kind of nutty since I think the 16 ounce pints of everything else go for the more typical airport price of $6.25 (or $7.25 if you super-size it to 22 ounces). They have one more rotating tap, this weekend it was the Honey Orange Wheat from their Eugene brewery. Puzzlingly, they also serve Bud and Bud Light.

The Laurelwood pub in Terminal A has been open for a few months now, with nearly the same menu and beer selection as the main pub on Sandy. Even better, food and beer prices are the same at the airport as at the pub -- for a 16 ounce pint that's $3.95. There are a couple of drawbacks: the place is very cramped and uninviting, and -- unless you're flying Alaska -- it's far from the rest of the airport in the panhandle of Terminal A. Luckily, these two problems will be solved by a much bigger Laurelwood set to open March 4th in Terminal E. The beer list at Terminal A is:

• Mother Lode Golden
• Piston Pale Ale
• Hooligan ESB
• Free Range Red
• Boss IPA
• Tree Hugger Porter
• Space Stout
• Rotating (currently Vinter Varmer)

What about the part of the airport before the security check? Good things are happening there also. The Rose City Cafe is still there, and its little bar serves four or five different Deschutes ales, Bridgeport IPA, and Mac and Jack's African Amber from Redmond. There used to be a less fancy cafe next to it, which sold gunky airport pizza and had about 10 beer taps, mostly unmemorable, though they also served the Mac and Jack's. This has new been replaced with a Pizzicato Pizza outlet. My jaw hit the floor when I saw their beer taps:

• Double Mountain IRA
• Amnesia IPA (no website?)
  
• Willamette Brewing Amber
• Laurelwood Golden and Porter
• Hopworks IPA

Willamette is so new that I think I've only seen them at the Green Dragon. It's always good to see a new Hopworks tap spring up, and Double Mountain is a truly inspired choice, one of the best new breweries in the area. Nice to see Amnesia there, too.

So, no matter which side of the security cordon you're on at PDX, you won't have to compromise on quality to be able to fortify yourself for the outward journey or wind down after the return trip. The new pubs also give out-of-towners a little better taste of Portland beer culture than they got before. It's a very positive development for the airport.