Ten Years of It's Pub Night

Well, time flies when you're having fun.  This week marks the 10th anniversary of the first post on It's Pub Night -- fittingly, a rundown of fresh hop beers I had tried that year (thanks, Lee!).  It's ridiculous to think this blog has lasted longer than Nirvana; thankfully Beervana: The Blog is still around and in fact something of a global phenomenon these days.  Let us pause briefly to lament the demise of other PDX blogs from the last decade:  The Beer Here, Portland Beer and Music, Beer Around Town, and others, even poor benighted Dr. Wort.  Someone is still paying to keep the lights on at portlandbeer.org and the Champagne of Blogs -- maybe one day they will again grace us with their insights.

If the New School or Brewpublic had existed in 2007 I might never have bothered to start It's Pub Night, since they are filling the role that I thought was missing in Portland at the time, and doing it way better than I would be able to, even in my most perfect fantasy world.  Meanwhile, there are still some plucky citizen bloggers who keep regularly putting out original content year after year, like Dan at A Pint for Dionysus and Kris at Beer Musings PDX, to name only two.

About seven years ago, Jeff commemorated the fifth anniversary of Beervana with a self-published book called the Best of Beervana.  We now know his best was yet to come, but this wacky one-off is one of my prized possessions.  I can't even approximate something like that (though you can get the Six-Pack Equivalent App for either iPhone or Android), but I'd like to mark today's milestone with a list of posts that show off the high points -- so far! -- of It's Pub Night.  Enjoy.

Classics

• Beer Review Generator (2009)
• Six-Pack Equivalent Calculator (2009)
• Portland Beer Price Index (2009-2014)
• Incidental Contents Are Not Intended for Consumption (2008 -- successful Ebay auction of empty Abyss bottle!)
• Portland Growler Price Map (2008)
• Beer Tipping Etiquette (2010)
• Attention! Dried Hops are NOT Fresh Hops (2010)
• Historic Portland Breweries Map (2010)

Actual Drinking

• Jubel Vertical Tasting, 2007
• Portland Sample Tray Marathon (2008, reprise 2017)
• Beer Martini (2008)
• Double Alt Smackdown (2010)
• Jubelale Ten-year Vertical (Plus Jubel 2000) (2013)

 The April Fools Collection

• Russian River Objectification (2011)  
• Beer Licensing Agreements (2012 -- people actually fell for this one)
• Lagunitas Buys Dr. Bronner's Soap Company (2013 -- foretold the Lagunitas San Diego expansion!!!)
• Upcoming Portland Beer Festivals (2014 -- pretty lame actually)

 Did These Things Really Happen?

• Governor of Beervana (2011)
• Where to Find Ninkasi in Portland (2007)
• I Won a Major Award! (2009 -- last place in a photography contest!)
• A New Low in Advertising (2010)
• San Francisco vs. Portland (2010)

It has been a blast getting to know the beer family in Oregon and beyond, and this hobby project has brought me a wonderful group of friends.  I'm going to celebrate 10 years of It's Pub Night this Saturday, December 9, 2017, with an informal SE Portland pub crawl.  If you happen to read this before then, feel free to come join us.  It's not an organized event -- there's no swag, no collaboration beers, no discounts, and not much of a schedule.  On the other hand, there are no wristbands, drink tokens, or entry fees.  Here is the plan:

• 5-6:30 PM gather at Baerlic Brewing, 2235 SE 11th Ave.
• Walk to Pacific Pie at 7th and Hawthorne, in remembrance of Roots, where It's Pub Night became a glimmer in my eye.
• also pay respects to first Commons location
• maybe eat something at Pacific if we want to.
• Lucky Lab from 7-8:30 PM (another original pub night haunt).
• Walk-by taunting of the ex-Green Dragon, which was also an early inspiration.
• We might be tempted to stop in for a beer, maybe taunting is enough.
• Base Camp Brewing from 9 - 9:45 PM
• Burnside Brewing, arrive by 10 PM
• Another homage to Roots.

The schedule is only a guideline; if you're joining us partway, track our progress on Twitter.

Hazy First Impressions of Burnside Brewing

Burnside Brewing has been open for a couple of months now, and the tap list is starting to fill in with house brews.  I haven't been able to go there nearly as much as I'd like, but I've finally sampled enough of their beers to be able to jot down a few impressions.

The space itself is very comfortable.  Compared to most of the recently-opened pubs in Portland, there is a lot of open space, the seating areas are not cramped at all, and the high ceilings in the room add an even more expansive feeling.  Some attention was paid to lighting, to get it cozy but not dim. It's not exactly an open kitchen, but the long bar offers some views into the food preparation area.  The pub opens weekdays at 3 PM and weekends at 2 PM; minors are allowed until 8:30 PM.

No unicorns were harmed in the opening of Burnside Brewing, because the pub started right off serving honest pints.  The $5 regular price isn't the cheapest in town, but it's perfectly reasonable -- its $19 six-pack equivalent (SPE) price beats the most recent Portland Beer Price Index by about 30 cents.  The happy-hour price of $3.50 is a steal, and the $3 Wednesday and Sunday pints are the best deal in town right now (SPE $11.37).  In addition to the house beers, there are about a half-dozen guest taps.

Here are some thoughts on the Burnside Brews I've tried so far:

• Gratzer (smoked wheat beer): Not sure if this will be a regular, since they have to hand-smoke the wheat malt for it, but this was a wonderful beer.  Light but flavorful, with just the right touch of smoke.  It's not like a yeasty hefeweizen -- not that there's anything wrong with that -- but it has more body and flavor than, say, a kolsch.
• IPA: A well-done, middle-of-the-road take on the style, not trying to cram as many hops as possible into the glass.  Put it in the category of northern California IPAs like Union Jack and Racer 5.
• Sweet Heat: Since this sounded so much like Roots 2008 OBF entry Calypso -- a wheat beer brewed with apricots and habanero peppers -- I was very excited to get my hands on it.  As usual, high expectations can set you up for a downfall:  I like this beer a lot, but it didn't stand up to my golden memories of Calypso.  I think Sweet Heat has a little heavier body than Calypso did, and the apricot and habanero flavors seem stronger than I recall.  Calypso was such a perfect summer beer; maybe it's fitting that Sweet Heat is a little more substantial at this time of year, though it's still a very reasonable 4.2% alcohol.  If nothing else, I think Sweet Heat would be better if the apricot was dialed down a little.  Ezra described it as reminiscent of a Caribbean chutney, and that's a great description:  there's fruit, chile, and a dash of vinegar flavor.  Still definitely worth a try.
• Oatmeal Pale Ale: A few years ago when Ft. George made an OPA, I thought it was kind of a goofy joke, a play on oatmeal stouts.  Who knows, maybe it's a normal thing to do.  Back then, I was surprised at the tangy flavor of Ft. George's ale, and Burnside's OPA also seems to have a tangy component that I would not have associated with oatmeal.  Is that typical of beer brewed with oats?  Anyway, this is a nice, moderately hoppy pale ale; the tanginess is an interesting touch; very drinkable.
• Stout: I didn't have my own glass of this, I was just stealing from the wife, but my impressions were of a well-balanced, slightly dry, drinkable stout.

It's notable that Jason has so far taken something of a light touch with the beers, like the balanced IPA and lower-alcohol wheat beers.  When I think of his previous venture, Roots, I think of exuberantly-hopped bruisers like Island Red and Woody IPA, and famously outsized winter beers like Festivus and of course Epic.  Of course Roots also had two lighter, hopless beers -- the Heather and the Gruit -- so maybe that was Jason's bag all along.  It's a good plan: it's nice to have some very flavorful beverages that won't put you under the table.

A whole nother article could be written just about the food at Burnside -- it's really an equal partner to the beer -- for now let me just say that it's a cut above most pub food in town, with prices in the $12-$18 range for most items.

To sum everything up: a very respectable start for Burnside.

RIP Roots Organic Brewing

It's been nearly a month now since John Foyston broke the news that Roots Organic Brewing was closing for good.  Instead of blurting out the first thing that came to mind, I've been gathering up my thoughts and memories, and now I'll blurt out what comes to mind a month late.  I have mixed emotions about Roots closing -- it was for a time my favorite pub in town, but we've been drifting apart for a couple of years now.

When Roots came on the scene in 2005 it was like a breath of fresh air.  As soon as they opened, you could find their beer on tap at nearly a hundred places in Portland.  The hoppy, muscular Woody IPA and Island Red were instant winners, and if you didn't care for those, they had two very good hopless beers -- the Burghead Heather and the Gruit Kolsch.

We soon switched our neighborhood pub night from Mondays at the Lucky Lab to Tuesdays at Roots.  It was more crowded, with little outside seating and terrible feng shui indoors, but the beer was better -- the Lucky Lab was in a slump that it has since recovered from -- and priced to sell at $2.50 for an imperial pint.  The beer seemed to keep getting better and better: the Sharkbite Imperial IPA was smashing, then winter came and the powerful double-red Festivus came out, followed by the eye-popping, smoky, hint-of-cherry, completely insane 14% concoction known as Epic.

What happened?  Sometime in 2007 or 2008 Roots seemed to lose its momentum.  Their tap-handles vanished all over town, apparently because of a feud with their distributor -- note to small breweries: a feud with your distributor is going to go about as well for you as a feud with my wife goes for me.  The quality of the beers went down -- even non-jaded out-of-town guests were puzzled when I insisted on bringing them to Roots.  The bottle of Island Red pictured above -- bought at Belmont Station a day after Roots closed -- was perfectly bland.  There were exceptions: Calypso, their 2008 OBF beer brewed with apricots and habaneros was brilliant; the Flanders Red (released in 2009 but two years in the making) was an impressive feat if you like that sort of thing.

Maybe it was the competition.  Beeronomics guy Patrick Emerson says it's only natural for some beloved businesses to fail, and that it's a sign of a healthy economy.  Remember, when Roots arrived, there was no Ninkasi and no Hopworks.  When those two breweries started up, they brought their own burly IPAs, plus Ninkasi offered a beautiful NW Red and Hopworks offered an entry-level lager to compete with Roots' Heather.  Now Hopworks and Ninkasi tap handles are all over town, following the trail blazed by Roots.

The pub itself had competition also: down the street the Green Dragon opened in 2007, and by 2008 had started regular meet-the-brewer nights on Tuesdays, grabbing some of Roots' pint-night business.  Hopworks probably drew some of the Roots crowd away to its cleaner, fancier digs.  And Roots didn't do itself any favors with its disastrous attempt to be open for lunch -- I was so annoyed by a couple of my lunch visits that it put me off visiting at other times.

It's worth noting Ezra's report of financial shenanigans at the Roots-affiliated NAOBF, though it's hard to say whether this was a symptom of problems at Roots, or two symptoms of the same lack of business acumen.

For better or worse, it's over now.  It was a meteoric rise, a fun ride, and a long decline.  I'll remember the good times.  The cycle continues, let's see what happens next.