Sample Tray Stunt 2017

One of the early hits here on It's Pub Night was 2008's Portland Sample Tray Marathon, where Dave and I got hall passes on Father's Day and sampled 78 or so beers that afternoon by biking around and getting the sample trays at 11 breweries. The goal was to only partake of beers brewed at the very places we visited.

Remember 2008?  That year the Oregon Brewers Guild put out a press release (duly posted by portlandbeer.org -- where ya been, Matt?!?) touting the 32 microbreweries in Portland.  So Dave and I were pretty proud to have visited 1/3 of them in one day.  We didn't skip any along our path (Tugboat was closed), and we went to two Lucky Labs.  Ah, those were the days, when we hadn't yet heard of Facebook.  I had only joined Twitter two months before, and I thought since no one followed me on there I would mostly use it to make a note of times I bumped into things so that later I could figure out where I had gotten this or that bruise.

I've always wanted to repeat some variation of the sample tray stunt ("stunt" is a more fitting description than "marathon", though like a marathon it did require a certain amount of mental toughness).  This year Dave and I finally resolved to take another stab at it.  Like the original ride, it would be on Father's Day and we would only sample beers brewed on premises, but this time we would only visit places which had opened since our last adventure.

It wasn't difficult to pick new breweries, since OBG's 2017 press release counts 70 breweries in Portland, more than double the number in 2008.  In fact, this time we would be skipping over a dozen breweries near the route, only a few of which had been on our original tour.  On the other side of that coin:  two of the original stunt's breweries -- Roots and Clinton Street -- had gone out of business, and the beer served at the Lompoc Tavern on 23rd is no longer brewed there.  Here is a map of this year's route:



The other thing we did differently this time was to invite more people along. In fact, we opened it up to the public at large by adding it to the 2017 Pedalpalooza calendar. That could have gone spectacularly wrong if, say, 50 people showed up and we had to order 10 sample trays at every stop.  As it happens, it's a very small Venn diagram of people who are free on Father's Day and want to take 7 hours to bike 7 miles while sipping beer from 100 tiny glasses.  In the end, no one joined us that we didn't already know, so we could have skipped the Pedalpalooza bit entirely.  You bike people don't know what you missed.

Our core group of six biker/tasters hit 8 breweries on a 10-mile ride over the course of 6 hours, sampling 93 beers, for a velocity of 15.5 Beers per Hour (BPH).  Several of us made it to the 9th brewery to notch our 105th beer.  Of the original 6, Tim and I got in 111 beers in 7.5 hours by tacking on Hair of the Dog, with an assist from Lindsey who had joined us at Baerlic.  And though that sounds like a dangerous amount of drinking, let me say that 111 samples shared by 6 people is much more sensible than the 78 beers shared by Dave and me back in 2008.

Here is a diary of our exploits, including the beer at each place that got the most votes as the group favorite (which was rarely my personal favorite):

1. Ecliptic Brewing: 13 samples. Favorite: Lupulin Nebula IPA.
2. Ex Novo: 12 samples.  Favorite:  Best Budz Hazy Sour Pale (Great Notion collab).
3. Back Pedal: 8 samples.  Favorite:  Kumulus Chamomile IPA (Fat Heads collab).
4. Breakside NW:  7 samples.  Favorite: (tie) Big Ern Texas Pilsner/Precious Snowflake DIPA.
5. PINTS: 10 samples.  Favorite: Single Hop Pale (oops, forgot to note which hop it was).
6. Burnside: 19 samples.  Favorite:  Sweet Heat (!).
7. Commons: 12 samples.  Favorite:  Nocino Brady-barrel aged Pumpernickel Rye Saison.
8. Baerlic: 12 samples.  Favorite:  Fancy Umbrella Drink Guava Gose.
9. Grixsen: 12 samples.  Favorite (difficult to choose something we liked here):  IPA.
10. Hair of the Dog:  6 samples.  Favorite:  Peach Adam from the Wood.

What a thing of beauty, if I do say so myself.  How cool is it that we went from the latest Breakside jam straight to PINTS, whose first head brewer Zach Beckwith conceived of it as the anti-Breakside?  Not to mention the fact that as we sat at Breakside debating whether to hit PINTS or Fat Heads, our server chimed in to say what a hidden treasure he thought PINTS was.  And though the Roots Brewing that we visited in 2008 is justly lamented, it was a delight to sample almost 20 beers at Jason McAdam's Burnside, which shines far brighter than Roots.  Burnside's Sweet Heat -- which was the crowd favorite -- was born as Calypso at Roots, as their 2008 OBF entry.  I can vividly remember the first few times I tried Calypso:  it was so different, wonderful, refreshing, and complete.  Another beautiful connection with the 2008 ride:  the Full Sail beers we had at the harbor that year were brewed by John Harris, who struck out on his own in 2013 to start Ecliptic, which was a brilliant opener for us in 2017.

Thanks to my co-conspirators on this ride!  Stay tuned for more excessive beer adventures.

Lagunitas Buys Dr. Bronner's Soap Company

The last few years have seen explosive growth for beloved California brewer Lagunitas.  This Beerpulse article says production increased by 50% from 2011 to 2012, after a 56% jump in sales the previous year; Lagunitas owner Tony Magee noted on Twitter that January's sales were up 72% from the previous year.  All that growth is before the company's new production facility in Chicago has even been finished.

Now the eccentric beer company is branching out in a completely unexpected direction by acquiring Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, the iconoclastic family-run company that produces the Dr. Bronner's line of soaps that have long been a favorite of campers and hippies everywhere.  As a kind of intramural collaboration/consummation, Lagunitas is paying homage to Dr. Bronner's famous peppermint liquid soap by brewing a special amber ale called 18-in-1 Hemp Peppermint Pure-Castile Ale -- yes, dry-hopped with fresh peppermint.  That's the same name as the soap, except for "ale" of course, and the label lovingly imitates Dr. Bronner's jumbled spiritual exhortations -- which are not all that different from some of the rambling musings on Lagunitas bottles and six-pack holders, come to think of it.  Click on the image to enlarge it and see if you can find the beer-specific verses that have been added to the ale label.

Apart from similar styles of prose, products known as "suds", nonconformist founders, and a shared interest in hemp products, what could possibly have brought these two companies together?  Apparently some of the current generation of Bronner soapmakers wanted to add a hop-infused soap to their product line, and being fans of Lagunitas beers, reached out to the brewers in Petaluma for advice on hop-oil extraction and handling.  A kind of mutual admiration developed, and since absolute cleanliness is 99% of brewing success, Lagunitas popped the question of corporate matrimony.  Dr. Bronner's will keep its name as a wholly-owned subsidiary, and the current management of the soap company will stay on board.  The deep pockets of Lagunitas will help the soapmakers enter into new markets and finance new product development, such as the hop soap mentioned above.

Given the rapid growth of Lagunitas, you could also imagine that Dr. Bronner's location in Southern California was attractive to the brewer.  Once they wrap up the Midwest with their new Chicago brewery, perhaps they'll use their soap factory as a stepping stone towards building a San Diego brewing facility.

I haven't particularly cared for the few mint beers I've tried to date, though I do have a soft spot for peppermint.  As a longtime fan of both Dr. Bronner's and Lagunitas, I am really looking forward to trying the 18-in-1.  Let me know if you try it, and don't forget -- in the immortal words of Dr. Bronner -- KEEP OUT OF EYE!  OK!

(Thanks to @MoralABC for the image.)

Beer Licensing Agreements

In college we used to say, "You don't buy beer, you rent it".  That statement may become more true than ever if a trend that started with some well-known California brewers catches on.  To fight against the black market in rare beers, Stone Brewing Co. has announced it will stop selling its limited release beers, and start licensing them instead, in the same way that computer software is licensed and not sold.  [Editor's note: At Stone's request, I would like to point out that this post is an April Fool's gag.  The folks at Stone enjoyed it on April 1, but the joke wore thin as they continued to get complaints about the new policy from readers who thought it was true.  For maximum effect, be sure to click on the "Stone's BEULA" link below.]

It sounds very peculiar at first, but it is a logical extension of brewers' efforts to prevent unscrupulous scalpers from making obscene profits re-selling highly prized beers.  Several prominent brewers have been vocal about their opposition to beer auctions on Ebay for quite some time.  Lost Abbey's Tomme Arthur penned an article called *&^% Ebay about four years ago, and last year an article in the Washington Post interviewed several brewers about the problem.  Stone's founder Greg Koch was quoted in that article as saying "We have involuntarily been a part of the eBay aftermarket for many years".  Since then, Stone and Lost Abbey have hit on a clever solution to the problem.  Henceforth, their rare beers will be subject to End User License Agreements, similar to those you might be familiar with if you use computer software from companies like Microsoft or Apple.

The first beer of Stone's to be sold under a "Beer End User License Agreement" -- BEULA for short -- is a rich and flavorful triple IPA along the lines of Russian River's vaunted Pliny the Younger, aptly named "Not For Sale Ale".  Whereas the back of a typical Stone bomber is adorned with several paragraphs of whimsically rambling boasts, NFSA's bottle (click on the picture for a closer look) is embossed with a dense legal contract that stipulates -- among other things -- that purchasers "may not lend, sell, auction, redistribute or sublicense" the beer, and that the beer may not be used in "the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons".  Click here for the full text of Stone's BEULA.

As a fan of good beer, I have inveighed against Ebay beer scalpers for quite awhile -- I even auctioned an empty Abyss bottle once to demonstrate what a joke it is for beer auctioneers to skirt Ebay's rules by claiming that the bottle itself is what's valuable, not the beer inside.  Even so, I confess that I'm a little uncomfortable with treating beer as intellectual property in this way.  Aside from the essentially coercive nature of EULAs and BEULAs, the legalese in the contract goes against the convivial spirit of the beer world.  There is also the practical question of how to enforce a BEULA, though I suspect that having the prohibition printed right on the bottle might finally convince Ebay to be more proactive about shutting down beer auctions.

Several more California brewers are rumored to be working with lawyers to prepare BEULAs for future releases, starting with the next offering for Lost Abbey's Saints and Sinners club.  The Bruery and Russian River are likely to be the next breweries to follow suit -- the Bruery's license allegedly goes so far as to prohibit the use of its beers in so-called beer cocktails.  Russian River seems to be taking it a little more slowly -- supposedly they will try out their new BEULA on this year's bottling of Objectification, a lighter beer unlikely to attract much collector interest anyway.

What's your opinion?  Are beer license agreements a legitimate and reasonable way to combat beer profiteering?  Or are they an unwarranted intrusion into our enjoyment of quality fermented beverages?

Russian River Objectification

Last month there was a fair amount of chatter on Beervana, the New School, and even here about Ezra's racy label for Upright's cherry-infused Four Play.  A good number of people saw the label as objectifying women, which seemed to them to be a bad thing, and best left to macro brewers.  A quality small-batch brewer like Upright should stick to more elevating imagery.

In California -- where sexual mores have always been rather more expansive than elsewhere in the country -- I doubt the Four Play labels would have caused much of a stir, despite the sizable feminist population of that state.  As if to illustrate that point, the vaunted Russian River Brewing Co. has decided to make fun of macro lager advertising by giving the name "Objectification" to a new wood-aged session beer they will release this month.  The branding for RR's "-tion" beers doesn't allow the label art to go with the photographic realism of the Upright labels, but it does playfully highlight some parts of a woman's physique which male lager drinkers tend to value more highly than her elbows, her face, or intangibles like her personality or intelligence.

Here's the commercial description of the beer:

Objectification: Aged for 15 days on beechwood chips from the beech forests of Chico, California, this light, approachable beer brewed with rice adjuncts goes down like a power window on a hot day.  Whether you're mowing the lawn, fishing, water skiing -- or just sitting on the couch watching sports -- this is the Russian River lager that you've been waiting for.  Pairs well with hot dogs, potato chips, or hamburgers.
3.75%ABV / 1.001 O.G / 3 IBUs / 36-24-36

Before hitting upon Objectification, Vinnie and crew rejected some other possible "-tion" names for this beer:  Titillation, Fornication, Salivation, and a few others I won't mention.  Keep your eyes open, some of those names might come up on future releases.

I Won a Major Award!

Even though I try to decorate every post on It's Pub Night with a picture of some kind, I have to admit that my photography skills are probably not what keeps this enterprise afloat. Now I have received official recognition of my deficiency -- I was dubbed the Grand Loser of the Yuletide Photo Contest on Alan McLeod's A Good Beer Blog.

It was the picture above -- of a kegerator sitting next to the dug-up floor of the future Migration Brewing pub -- that pushed Alan over the edge and made him create a new prize category for the worst photo submitted. He claims it's the ugliest picture ever to appear on A Good Beer Blog. Gee whiz, it's probably one of the 20 best photos on It's Pub Night -- at least it wasn't taken with the 1.4 kilopixel camera on my old cell phone. Well, different bloggers have different standards.

Speaking of which, you may recall that in past years two other Portland beer bloggers have actually won the real Grand Prize in Alan's contest, Dave Selden (Champagne of Blogs) in 2006, and Matt Wiater (portlandbeer.org) last year. Matt is a photographer by trade: take a look at his collection of Portland beer photography on his Flickr page. Not only are the pictures stunning, but they are a great document of the local beer scene.

BikeToBeerFest 2009

You gotta hand it to Christian Ettinger for taking a chance on BikeToBeerFest. Closing both parking lots at Hopworks Saturday was a bold move, and one that could have blown up in his face. But attendance was good when I was there for a couple of hours in the afternoon, so I suspect that it wasn't a money loser. It was a really good time, and I hope it becomes an annual tradition. By the way, note the spelling -- it's not "Biketoberfest", which was trademarked by a motorcycle event in Florida -- but "bike-to-beer-fest". Nice.

The back parking lot and dead-end street were organized really well for the fest. A couple tents with picnic tables were set up on the east side of the lot, between a snack bar and the music stage. In front of the stage was a dance/bike-trick area, and a little more space in front of the tents where a lot of people sat or stood to take in the acts. After some old guys on BMX bikes showed their stuff, local one-man-band Boy Eats Drum Machine put on an impressive show, followed by bike-scene darlings the Sprockettes. I bailed out pretty soon after that, but there was plenty more entertainment as the evening went on, ending up with the March Fourth Marching Band.

Booths for a few local bicycle frame-builders were set up along the west side of the parking lot, as was the now famous Hopworksfiets pictured at the top. The kegs on the beer bike were dispensing two wonderful beers: a pale ale called Bike Beer, brewed for the occasion, with a dose of fresh hops; and the Ace of Spades, a flavor-packed double IPA. There was plenty of space for milling around between the east and west sides of the festival -- not at all like the fire-hazard conditions at last year's Fresh Hop Festival.

Sounds like a lot of action, but wait! There's more! The back forty of Hopworks' long lot had its own share of attractions. A good supply of porta-potties, a row of beer taps with shorter lines than in the front area, a washer-toss area, and best of all, the playing field for a fabulous new sport: Huffy throwing. It's harder than it sounds -- sorry Steve, looks like you gave up a couple of yards by not getting all the way up to the line -- but some people either had a knack for it, or had practiced beforehand. The furthest throw I saw was probably about 15 yards with a good bounce -- very impressive.

BikeToBeerFest was definitely not your everyday beer festival -- only one brewery, pints instead of samples, no cars allowed. That's a good thing, something new and fun for the whole family. Congratulations to the whole Hopworks crew for pulling it off.

Opening a Twist Off

A few weeks ago when I was writing about Full Sail Session Lager, I had my wife take some pictures of my favorite party trick: opening a twist-off bottle with my forearm.


You'll have to take my word for it that the bottle was open. I wish the cap had stuck to my arm for that last photo, instead of exposing an alarming vortex of puckered skin. Good lord, am I that jowly? Don't worry, you can almost always do this without breaking the skin at all. The Internet supplies us with this unillustrated how-to. My technique is a little different: I hold the bottle in my left hand, and open it by pivoting my right arm counter-clockwise from the elbow.

Of course, there aren't that many West Coast snob-worthy beers that come in screw-tops. Lagunitas is the only one I can think of off the top of my head. [Update 2009/04/30 (and later): Full Sail, Terminal Gravity, Hale's, Alaska Brewing, MacTarnahan's.] Are Bridgeport sixers twist offs? Opening a growler with your forearm isn't very dramatic.

My trick isn't so great when you compare it to this:

The guy sniffs the bottle! Dude, you need to find the bottlecap!

Beer Review Generator

I tend to recite the caption of this James Thurber cartoon whenever someone asks me if the wine is good. It's a stale joke; wine criticism has come a long way in the last 70 years or so. Good beer snobs have now adopted some of the modern wine-snob vocabulary, and have settled into a typical phrasing that lends itself easily to mockery. That's where I come in. Presenting the It's Pub Night Beer Review Generator:

The beer I'm reviewing is:

GoodBadEither

It has a:

Big headSmall head

Its color is:

LightAmberDarkAny

If the button doesn't work, click over to It's Pub Night, it works there!

Please forgive me, Beer Advocates and Ratebeerians. The Beer Review Generator is obviously my way of lampooning your subculture. Don't take it the wrong way -- I'm glad that you're taking beer so seriously. You're inspiring brewers to greater heights, and creating an important part of the beer culture. The Beer Retard may call you "beer douches" -- his Thurber-meets-MS Paint cartoons are pretty funny -- but the truth is I could read beer ratings all day long. In fact, as simplistic as the Generator is, I could keep pushing the button and reading its reviews all day long, and I wrote the stupid thing. The vocabulary and cadence of these stereotypical beer poems has its own brain-candy deliciousness.

Which brings me back to skepticism. How useful are these wine-talk screeds about beer? It's exciting to read about a beer's "Sexy full-bodied palate, with just a hint of plum and orange", but does that really tell me whether I'd like it or not? I doubt it, and that conviction grows stronger as I idly amuse myself by reading one artificially-generated review after another. What I would like to see more of in beer criticism -- including my own -- is analogy. Something like "This beer is like an over-hopped Young's ESB", or "It reminded me of a cross between Sierra Nevada Celebration and Duvel". Describe a new, rare, or regional beer in terms of other beers that aficionados have been exposed to or have ready access to.

Play around some with the generator. I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

Beer We Can Believe In

Back before the election, Brett sent me this picture of a bottle of Ommegang that his friend in New York bought at some kind of Obama fundraiser. I didn't blog the Obamagang bottle at the time because I figured there would be hundreds of posts about it everywhere. That turned out not to be the case: the brewery doesn't mention it, and I couldn't find anything about it on Google or Beer Advocate, so here it is. It must be a homemade thing, not a brewery release. [Update 2009/01/17: The brewery wanted to do it, but the label ran afoul of the feds. Credit for the photo here: Kim Jastremski. If you repost this photo, at least give a tip of the hat to Kim and me.]

Jay Brooks wrote a few weeks ago about a "HOPE"-style poster from Oskar Blues brewery in Colorado, and some of the Obama-themed beers brewed out there, like Obamanator doppelbock. And in other election news, Lee reports that Obama won the pint-glass election at the Flying Saucer pub chain: 56% to 44%. Now that's a mandate.

Lucky Lab Hop Harvest

What a blast! I got submerged in work yesterday and almost forgot to go help the Lucky Lab pick the cones off the hop vines for this year's fresh hop beer. Not to worry, there were still plenty of vines to work on by the time I got there.

In contrast to John Harris' experiment this year with different single-hop versions of Full Sail Lupulin Ale, the Lab's harvest ale -- aptly named "The Mutt" -- is made with whatever hops wandered into the yard. Some of them are grown on premises, but most of them were donations brought in from gardens all over town.

The Lucky Lab is special to me in many ways, one of which is the fact that it's where I first tasted fresh-hop ale a few years ago, but I was unimpressed by the 2007 Mutt. The 2008 will use the same grain recipe, but it should pack more of a hop punch. Last year they put 74 pounds of fresh hops into the Mutt -- yesterday's bumper crop weighed in at 125 pounds, almost twice as much.

It was great fun to stand around pulling the hops off the vine. I was only there for an hour or so, but a number of the hop pickers were there the whole time from noon until around 6 PM. It wasn't just the usual Portland beer suspects -- although they were certainly there -- and that was part of the beauty of it. Anyone with a love of beer and a willingness to get sticky fingers could walk right up and pitch in. It was another true Portland experience.

Sample Stunt Follow-up

I'm always willing to blog a dead horse, so I'll write a little more about the brewed-on-premises marathon that Dave and I put ourselves through last Sunday. That's partly out of necessity: I don't have any new beer experiences to blog about. I was so tired of beer by the end of the marathon, that I didn't even consider having one for the next three days.


View Larger Map

Clarifications

The duration of our pub sprint was 6 hours, first pub to last, but we were out of the house for 6 hours and 35 minutes -- sorry Jill, it took me 4 minutes longer than Dave to get ready. According to Google Maps, the route between pubs was 6.7 miles, not 6 as I reported. But remember, I rounded down the number of samples we had in front of us. I counted 78, but we also sampled:

• 1 Bend-brewed beer at Deschutes
• 6 Hood-River-brewed beers at Full Sail
• 1 mix of Ruby and Hammerhead at Ringlers
• 2 duplicates at the Lucky Lab
• 3 cask/nitro/keg overlaps here and there
• 1 cider at New Old Lompoc -- there oughta be a law against that.
  

That makes 91 beer samples -- forget the cider, which they added as the 8th sample because they had no seasonals on. So depending on how you look at it, our velocity in beers-per-hour was between 78/6.5 = 12 BPH and 91/6 = 15 BPH.

Highlights

I actually wrote down some kind of comment about every single beer we tried, though by the end my notes get a little confusing -- at Hopworks I wrote that the Original Organic Red was "stiffly OK" and that the 78 Steam was "as dribbly as Anchor", whatever that means. Since Jeff asked what beers stood out, I'll recap the highlights:

• New Old Lompoc: We were surprised at how good Fool's Golden Ale is -- Dave called it "Kolschy" -- though of course the classics are still tops: C-Note and Lompoc Strong Draft.
• Lucky Lab Quimby: Amazing variety: the 5-Ton Lager was dark, delicious, and 8.5 ABV. Black Sheep was a smoky black IPA which I liked almost as much as the Mai Bock. Dave liked the Baltic Porter, but I found it too syrupy.
• Bridgeport: Their beers are so much better on tap than bottled. ESB and IPA were the faves.
• Ringlers: The Belgian Tripel was sweet and nice. The Decent IPA was underwhelming at first, but grew on me as it warmed up.
• Rock Bottom: My comment on the cask IPA was "Whoa", and I stand by that. Delicious, hoppy, and rich. American Dream IPA was very nice also.
• Full Sail: The Nut Brown was just the right temperature from the cask, chocolaty and good. Everything else was good, too, especially the excellent Prodigal Sun IPA. Cheeseburgers for $1.95 at happy hour will give you the strength to go on.
• Hopworks: Isn't it cool that we tried 78 different Portland beers, and at the last brewery they have a beer called "78 Steam"? And 78 is divisible by either 6 hours or 6.5 hours.
  

A word about Rock Bottom. One evening when we were first in Portland, Carla and I decided to try out Rock Bottom, but we were shooed away from the outside tables by a snooty hostess. That led to a years-long boycott until my fresh hop quest last year. On that visit, my waiter didn't know what I meant by "fresh hop" or "harvest" beer, even though it was one of the seasonals, and he went so far as to bring me the wrong beer at first. Of course I had heard that Van Havig -- the head brewer at the Portland RB -- is one of the most respected brewers in town, but those two chain-pub experiences kept me away. Sunday was only my second time there, but it won't be my last -- Havig is brewing some seriously good beer there. Just avoid the restaurant side and go straight to the bar -- the beer guys will take good care of you.

Alternate Realities

A sub-stunt that I wanted to pull, was to save a tiny amount of each sample, all mixed together in a growler. That was unlikely to taste good, but it would be an interesting conversation piece. Unfortunately I got slapped down at the very first stop: the New Old Lompoc bartender enlightened me about the OLCC beer-to-go rules. Beer to-go containers have to be filled to the top, by the establishment. Rather than bring the law down on the 12 breweries nearest my house, I let that little project go.

Maybe we could have gone for bigger numbers. When I told Dave we had actually sampled 91 beers, he was a little bit angry with me. "Why didn't we go for 100?" The short answer is because we had families to get back to, and we were already over our time limit. But more to the point, it was a long way from Hopworks to someplace new that brewed on site. We had paused for food about halfway through, and we were very diligent about keeping hydrated -- we drank about twice as much water as beer. We might have been able to make it up to Laurelwood, but I don't think we could have safely made it home from there.

Originally I had the route starting at MacTarnahans, about a mile from New Old Lompoc, but decided that a mile was too far between stops. Maybe if we had started at Mac's, and if we had tried more Bend beers at Deschutes, we would have cracked 100. Or we could have picked up various other Portland brews at Bailey's, Henry's, or the Green Dragon.

Whatever the case, I'm content with the 15 BPH pub sprint. If you try it yourself, be careful, drink lots of water, and be prepared to forsake beer for a few days afterward.

Portland Sample Tray Marathon

Since Portland has so many breweries in a concentrated area, I got it into my mind to see how many beers one could taste in a small amount of time, bicycling from pub to pub. Yesterday, after weeks of scheming, Dave and I cut a swath through 11 breweries in a 6-mile stretch, using the technology of the sample tray to sip 78 beers brewed on premises. It was like a private Oregon Brewers Festival, and we did it all in six hours. It's tempting to call it a bicycle pub crawl, but it was more like a pub sprint.

Obviously, this isn't a way to do any meaningful tasting or comparison -- we even took the unprecedented measure of leaving beer in the glass. But the goal wasn't to do something meaningful -- it was to do something senseless, but something that's only possible right here in Portland.

Here's our itinerary:

• New Old Lompoc: 2:38 to 2:51. $7.50 for 8 samples.
1. Fool's Golden Ale
2. Condor Pale Ale
3. Centennial IPA
4. C-Note IPA
5. Proletarian Red
6. Lompoc Strong Draft
   
• Lucky Lab Quimby: 2:56 to 3:15. $1.25 per sample.
7. Mai Bock
8. Baltic Porter
9. 5-ton Lager
10. Black Sheep IPA
11. Organic Brown Brown
12. Organic Red
    
• Bridgeport: 3:22 to 3:36. $7 for 9 samples.
13. Old Knucklehead Barley Wine
14. Black Strap Stout
15. Porter
16. Beertown Brown
17. ESB
18. Haymaker Extra Pale Ale
19. Blue Heron Pale Ale
20. Ropewalk Amber Ale
21. IPA
    
• Deschutes: 3:46 to 4:06. $6.50 for 6 samples.
22. Mirror Pond Pale Ale
23. Fleet Week Red Ale
24. Rose Peddler Pale Ale
25. Inversion IPA
26. Black Butte Porter
    
• Ringlers: 4:13 to 4:37. $6.95 for 9 samples.
27. Belgian Trippel
28. Liquid Friend (light lager)
29. Decent IPA
30. Copper Moon Copper Ale
31. Ruby
32. Hammerhead
33. Porter
34. Terminator Stout
    
• Tugboat: oops, closed on Sunday. No sample trays anyway.
• Rock Bottom: 4:48 to 5:07. $6.80 for 10 samples.
35. Swan Island Lager
36. Volksweizen Wheat
37. Sunny Day IPA
38. Oregonic Amber
39. Multnomah Porter
40. Morrison Street Stout
41. Blond Ale
42. American Dream IPA
43. Hoppy Days
    
• Full Sail Pilsner Room: 5:19 to 6:10 (had dinner). $7.50 for 6 samples.
44. Prodigal Sun IPA
45. Dubbel
46. Nut Brown Ale
    
47. Brewer's Share ESB
48. Topsail Porter
49. Stout
• Roots: 6:24 to 6:41. $8 for 8 samples.
50. Suds Lager
51. Belgian Golden Ale
52. Barley Jule ESB
53. Island Red
54. Burghead Heather
55. Exxxcalibur Stout
56. Woody IPA
57. Nevermined Pale Ale
    
• Lucky Lab Hawthorne: 6:45 to 7:30. $1.25 per sample.
58. Steam Lager
59. Malt Bomb Lager
60. Quality Rye
61. No Pity Organic Pale
62. Black Lab Stout
63. Blue Dog Amber (formerly Extra Pale)
64. Triple Threat IPA
65. Crazy Ludwig's Alt
66. Open Bridge Brown
67. Stumptown Porter
    
• Clinton Street: 7:45 to 7:50. No sample tray: $4 for 2 half-pints.
68. Amber
69. Wit
    
• Hopworks: 7:56 to 8:32 (toured brewery). $8 for 10 samples.
70. Baltic Crude Porter
71. Original Organic Red
72. 78 Steam
73. Survival Stout
74. Deluxe Organic Ale
75. IPA
76. Organic Velvet ESB
77. Organic Crosstown Pale
78. Organic HUB Lager
    

Whew! that's 13 beers per hour. Not surprisingly, the first hour was the fastest, clocking in at 21 BPH. It was tough going at the end, but we did what we had to do. We were originally hoping for 100 different beers in 5 hours, but it's not a bad thing that we only got to 78.

Some of the lists above don't add up to the number of samples, because of duplicates, or beers not really brewed where we were at. For instance, we also got an Irish Red at Deschutes, but it was brewed in Bend instead of the Portland brewery, so I didn't count it. We also had two sample trays at Full Sail, but I only counted the beers brewed here in Portland. On the other hand, it's possible that some of the beers we had at the eastside Lucky Lab were brewed at Quimby, but since we were at both, I didn't get too fussy.

Many other variations of this stunt are possible. A marathon starting in Northeast with Alameda and Laurelwood would hit a bunch of pubs that we missed; or you could remove our "brewed on premises" restriction and include Rogue and Laurlewood in the dash through Northwest. But count me out -- once was enough. Many thanks to Dave for being sporting enough to go on such a mission.

Further reading: the follow-up.

Really Not Intended for Consumption

It happened before April Fool's Day, but someone out there came up with another prank to make fun of the Ebay beer auctions: a wax-dipped Pabst Blue Ribbon longneck for sale. When I wanted to sell my collectible Abyss bottle, I had to drink its contents to comply with Ebay rules; this guy decided instead to sell something where he could credibly claim that the bottle was worth more than the beer. Photo credit: the picture here is brazenly lifted from the auction post.

It looks like he'll fare a little better than I did on the money end of things, with $9.50 plus $20 shipping. He's got the ALL CAPS auction idiom down, with flashing sirens, dancing babies, dancing bananas, and waving U.S. and Iraqi flags -- buy this bottle or the terrorists win. He notes that PBR won the GABF 2006 Gold Medal for American Lager, but must not have noticed that just a couple of weeks ago Pabst took the gold at Portland's 2008 Spring Beer and Wine Festival. Maybe they should start holding the SBWF on April Fool's Day.

Incidental Contents Are Not Intended for Consumption

When I conceived my prank, it came with a good blog-post title: "Nobody Wants My Collectible Bottle". But then someone out-pranked me and actually bid on the empty bottle of Abyss that I listed on Ebay for $15 plus $10 shipping and handling.

Like many other beer mavens, I was not pleased to see people scalping bottles of the Abyss on Ebay or craigslist. The scalper hasn't done anything of value, he's just rushed out and bought up something that would be valuable to someone else, but isn't to him. Then, because Ebay doesn't want people selling alcohol, the scalper adds insult to injury with the following boilerplate required by Ebay:

The value of the item is in the collectible container, not its contents.

The container has not been opened and any incidental contents are not intended for consumption.

The item is not available at any retail outlet, and the container has a value that substantially exceeds the current retail price of the alcohol in the container.

There's no way you could believe that was true, especially since the Ebay sellers all proclaim the excellence of the top-ranked Imperial Stout in their descriptions of the bottles for sale. It's a measure of the malaise we've fallen into, that people will tell any lie for convenience, no matter how obviously false it is. As a beer fan, I'm annoyed by beer scalping; you can understand why brewer Tomme Arthur takes it more personally when someone says his beer is worth less than its bottle and is not intended for consumption.

Anyway, when I saw bottles of the Abyss going for $40-$45 under the premise that it was the bottle that was valuable, I decided I would auction the empty bottle pictured above, just to point out the ludicrousness of the "incidental contents" claims. Here's the text of the auction:

You are bidding on an EMPTY bottle!!!

Since Ebay does not permit the sale of alcoholic beverages, I drank the contents of this collectible 2007 Abyss bottle before listing it for auction. If you win the auction, I will ship you the empty collectible bottle, plus the collectible wax-covered bottlecap, plus a couple bits of collectible wax that broke off when I removed the bottlecap.

Other collectible Abyss bottles have sold this year for as much as $45 apiece!!! Of course, those were unopened collectible bottles that contained an alcoholic beverage. When you buy this EMPTY collectible Abyss bottle, you can buy with the confidence that you're buying from someone who plays by the rules, and you get the satisfaction of knowing how much I enjoyed drinking this delicious Imperial Stout.

Good Luck!

I thought it would be good for a laugh, and that I would get a blog article out of it with the title I mentioned. Late Thursday evening, I noticed that the auction had caught someone's eye, because the number of people who had viewed the auction suddenly jumped into the hundreds. Turns out someone had pointed it out in a ratebeer forum, and someone else on Beer Advocate. I started to get questions about the item:

Q: How many bits of wax will you be including? I'm trying to decide if it's really worth it. :) - Bob

A: Hi Bob! There are a two little chunks that broke off when I opened the bottle. One is about the size of a toenail clipping, the other is smaller, maybe fingernail clipping size. Don't forget that there is still a scab-sized chunk of wax adhering to the bottle cap. Enjoy :-)

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Q: Hi- I'm excited about this item!!! This is less than half price from those other items. My question: It's nice to see someone that plays by the rules, but isn't the S&H a bit over priced as the weight won't include the contents?:-( cheers, john

A: Good point. I just put what Ebay said UPS ground would cost. I'll negotiate something reasonable with the winner.

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Q: Can you guarantee there's no beer - no bits of yeast sticking to the bottom, no sludgy stuff up the sides? I'd hate for there to be any yukky beer stuff ruining a good looking bottle ;-)

A: Oh, I drank every single drop. Even when the bottle looked empty, I laid down with it on the couch for a couple of hours to make sure every bit went into my mouth.

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Q: Hi there, I was wondering if you could post a picture of the wax shards. Are all shards still intact or are a few missing? What is the condition of the bottle cap? Did you use a quarter on top while prying it off it ensure it stays in M10+ condition?

A: I understand your concern, since the wax on this bottle was rated the best bottle wax in the world by the Men's Journal. I tried to preserve it all, but there could be some missing molecules. Sadly, I didn't do the quarter trick when opening the bottle. I was in a big hurry to pour myself a glass. So I can't guarantee the excellence of the bottlecap.

Then, horror of horrors, someone actually bid on it. Now I really have to rinse the bottle out, and find a box, and, and -- please, no! -- go to the post office and mail it! My interest was piqued a little to see that the bidder's Ebay ID was "ftommearthur". Wow! It looks like Tomme Arthur liked my little joke and decided to throw some fuel on the fire. Hey, maybe instead of cash, he'll pay me with some "incidental liquids" from his brewery. But what's the "F" for? Is his legal name F. Tomme Arthur? Or is this someone else, the Female Tomme Arthur perhaps? Ah, probably someone just pranking me back -- with no intention of paying -- and yanking Tomme's chain at the same time.

That would be great, I wouldn't have to journey into the scary UPS office. But, no such luck. Paypal "You've got cash!"-ed me the morning after the auction closed. Aha! Some guy in Vermont, definitely not the California brewer. Oh well, the "ftommearthur" moniker at least indicated he was in on the joke, and wasn't some poor sap who thought he was -- wink, wink, nudge, nudge -- bidding on a full bottle. Here's how he explained himself in an email:

Thanks Bill. Just trying to further the entertainment / discussion from the BA "*&^% eBay" thread. Didn't work. In any case I thought your auction deserved a bid for its satirical / comedy value. You made a good point. For the record I too detest the eBay beer profiteering. Looking forward to my wax shards...

/Cedar

Luckily, I had been careful to safely stash away the promised bottlecap and bits of wax, otherwise I'd have to drink another bottle of incidental non-collectible stout.

I don't think I'm cut out for this Ebay thing. UPS charged me $13.59 for shipping (including $2.70 "Rural Surcharge", for the Vermont end), and Ebay invoiced me $1.39. My laziness caused me to pay another $5.65 to UPS to pack it all up for me. Suddenly $15 + $10 shipping looks like quite a bargain! There go my hopes for getting rich by drinking beer... unless... maybe someone wants to buy a set of 3 collectible bottles. Empty, of course.