Session Premium Lager

For this first Friday of March, The Beer Nut in Dublin is choreographing the world's beer bloggers in the synchronized blogging experiment known as The Session. The Nut decreed that we write about "cold, fizzy, yellow" light lagers -- challenging us loudmouths who go on and on about the latest Imperial This or Double That to "return to our roots as beer drinkers".

The Lager Session... think, think, think... I've got it! I'll write about Session Lager, the cheaper beer that Full Sail markets to those who refuse to drink craft beer. As part of my research, I picked up a twelve-pack of 11-ounce stubbies for $11. What qualifies for cheap sure has changed over the years: in the mid-90's in Austin my cheap stubbies of choice were $2 six-packs of Pearl. That's not really my roots as a beer drinker -- I consider Shiner Bock to be my early muse -- but it was a reasonable way to stretch the budget at the time.

What can I say about Session Premium Lager? Well, it's cold, fizzy, and yellow. Tastes to me like Pearl or Miller High Life. In the narrow range of lawnmower beers, it's at the more flavorful end. If you absolutely must down something cold, cheap, and mildly alcoholic, you may as well make it a Session, especially if you're here in Oregon and want to drink local.

The little bottles of Pearl back then had entertaining rebus puzzles under the bottle caps; Session's caps have rock-paper-scissors drawings on them. What are those for? It wouldn't make a good drinking game, because both players have to open their bottle to play. Maybe you could use it to decide who buys the next round, but who wins a three- or four-person game?

Even though Session won't be a common choice for me, I'm glad Full Sail took this direction. It gives the cheap beer crowd a local choice, and it might also entice some of them to branch out to better beers. One suggestion to Full Sail: you should make Session even more versatile by selling it in cans.

Oregon Brewers Festival and Nearby Attractions

Synchronized blogging! It's The Session. This month's topic is beer festivals, so I feel obliged to write something about the Oregon Brewers Festival. The 2008 festival is July 24-July 27 -- it's always the last weekend in July, a highlight of the Portland beer calendar. What I have to say is probably old hat for locals, but I wanted to take advantage of The Session to introduce the OBF and Portland to out-of-towners.

Each of the 70-or-so breweries represented at the festival brings a single beer. The brewers seem to take one of three strategies in choosing which beer to exhibit:

1. Light and easy-drinking: for warm weather and neophytes.
2. Wild, one-off experiment: to keep the geeks interested.
3. Tried-and-true slam-dunk: to show off your brewing dominance.
   

The first category is exemplified by 21st Amendment, and the ridiculous Watermelon Wheat they show up with year in and year out. Category 2 experimenters include Stone and Widmer, cranking out something special or unusual for the festival each year, which can be hit or miss. For example, I loved Widmer's Imperial Wit last year (many people disagreed), but their sorghum/tapioca beer in 2006 was lame. Finally, a few brewers take the chest-thumping approach, like Russian River, bringing Pliny the Elder every time, which ratebeer says is in the 100th percentile. It's better than 100% of all beers -- it's even better than itself!

Because of strategies 1 and 2, not every beer is going to bowl you over. That's OK, because what makes the OBF special is not so much all the different beers, but rather the mellow, friendly vibe. Maybe the beer has something to do with that. The crowd also tends to have more women than you would expect at a beer festival -- I remember being struck by it when I first went in 2003, thinking "Hey, it's not just a bunch of old, fat guys". We even bring kids to the festival -- draft root beer is one of the bribes that makes that possible.

That pretty much sums it up about the OBF: relaxed atmosphere, lotsa beers. So for the rest of this article, I'd like to give you some ideas for Portland points of interest within walking distance of the festival. After all, you may want to get out of the chain-link fence for a bit, either to pace yourself, or to do some more in-depth beer research.

The Journey is the Destination

The OBF's location at Tom McCall Waterfront Park makes for a nice 2.5 mile loop along the east and west banks of the Willamette River, walking over or under four of Portland's drawbridges. Go south along the river, beneath the Morrison Bridge, and cross the Willamette (rhymes with "dammit", by the way) on the beautiful Hawthorne Bridge (1910). Pedestrians should keep toward the bridge railing -- bicycles get the part of the sidewalk nearest the cars. Follow the curving sidewalk down to the path on the east side of the river, the Eastbank Esplanade.


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Heading north along the river, accompanied by the automotive roar of I-5 overhead, you'll cross under the Morrison and Burnside Bridges before coming to a stretch of the sidewalk which actually floats in the Willamette. You'll cross the river back to Waterfront Park on the Steel Bridge (1914). There are other double-deck drawbridges in the world, but the Steel Bridge is the only one that telescopes: the lower deck can be raised while the upper deck remains open to traffic.

For Kids of All Ages

If you brought your kids to the festival and need to give them a break, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) is a science museum on the east side of the river, just south of the Hawthorne Bridge, easily accessible from the Esplanade. There is also an IMAX theater and planetarium at OMSI.

Another interesting eastside youth attraction is the skateboard park hidden under the Burnside Bridge. Originally a do-it-yourself project that was later embraced by the city, you can't get to it directly from the pedestrian loop described above -- you can't even see it from there. You have to get onto the south sidewalk of the Burnside Bridge, either on the west side at Saturday Market, or by taking the stairs labeled "Burnside" from the Esplanade. Follow the Burnside sidewalk to MLK, turn right and go a block to Ankeny, turn right and go two blocks to 2nd (the sidewalk runs out), and turn right again to go under the bridge. You probably shouldn't go down there at night, but it's a cool thing to see during the day.

More Beer!

There are several interesting brewpub options you can walk to from the festival.

The Full Sail Pilsner Room [review] is about 3/4 mile south of the festival. Go underneath the Hawthorne Bridge and follow the sidewalk down towards the sailboat harbor.

Tugboat Brewing Company [review] is about 1/2 mile west of the festival. Follow Oak St. across Broadway, Tugboat is one block to your right.

The Oregon outpost of Rock Bottom is about 1/4 mile southwest of the festival at 2nd and Morrison.

If you took the stroll to the east side of the river, you're only about a half-mile from Roots [review] at 7th and Hawthorne, the Lucky Labrador [review] at 9th and Hawthorne, and the Green Dragon [review] at 9th and Yamhill.

Further Afield

This article is too long already, so I'll briefly list a few more attractions that you should see while you're in Portland.

• Portland Aerial Tram: our answer to the monorail.
• Horse Brass Pub [review]: a national treasure.
• International Rose Test Garden: flowers and vistas.
• Ladd's Addition Rose Gardens: short walk from the Lucky Lab.
  

The Horse Brass would be quite a long walk: take bus #15 (to Parkrose) and get off near SE 45th. The Tram is not too long of a walk if you're already at the Pilsner Room, but it's not a very pleasant one; you could also take the streetcar.

That's my take on the Oregon Brewers Festival, and some things to do nearby if you're a tourist. Thanks to Thomas for hosting this Session!

Old Yeller

Since I had some free time this evening, I decided to participate in The Session, which is a kind of synchronized blogging where a bunch of beer bloggers write on the same subject. This month's topic is barleywines, so naturally I strolled down to the Lucky Labrador for a sample of Old Yeller.

When Carla and I were first married, she sometimes made fun of my habit of sleeping with a pillow between my legs. (It's good for your back.) Her enjoyment only increased when she discovered that it wasn't just any pillow that I needed, but the same old dilapidated pillow every night. At some point that pillow had a yellow pillowcase on it that didn't match any of the rest of our linen, and she began to taunt me: "Where's Old Yeller? I haven't seen Old Yeller tonight."

So I would have a soft spot for the Lucky Lab's barleywine just because of the name, even if it wasn't so delicious. This really is a masterful beer, one of their best. Like most barleywines, you get plenty of the strong alcohol bite. Also true to form, it is very sweet, in this case with a serious brown sugar flavor. But it's so chewy, extremely well-balanced, and so long, that it's really something special. You usually want to drink big beers like this pretty close to room temperature to get the most flavor, but even cold out of the tap Old Yeller doesn't disappoint.

To make this session more scientific, I headed over to the Green Dragon to see if they had a barleywine on tap. Turns out they had two of them, Mad River's John Barleycorn, and the classic American barleywine, Anchor's Old Foghorn. These were both strong, tasty, sweet brews, but tonight they lost out to Old Yeller. Neither of them had the complexity of malt flavor that Old Yeller had. I'd say the John Barleycorn was the more flavorful of the two, but the Old Foghorn was a smooth, very well done beer.

That was also a trip down memory lane for me. There was a time when you could go into Austin's Dog and Duck pub on pint night, and they would pour you an imperial pint of Old Foghorn for $2. I'm not sure if it was only some of the bartenders that would do that for you, or if they decided whether a patron could handle it on a case-by-case basis, but I do know I wasn't the only poor slacker to take advantage of that largesse. It's nice to see that the pioneering done by Anchor long ago has inspired a new generation of brewers to come up with their own take on barleywines.

On a final note, it's ironic that I'm writing for the barleywine session on the first Friday in February. The first Friday in March, there will be a Barleywine Festival at the Lucky Lab's Quimby Street location.