Get It in the Can on East Burnside

I'm volunteering to pour beer tomorrow evening (Saturday, July 8), at the Guild Public House's Cans Fest.  In honor of that:

Hat tip to Lee, who posted the Get It in the Can video a couple years ago.  I'm not above juvenile humor; I would normally be above linking to a Bud Lime ad, but Lee said his readership went through the roof after he posted it.  Sold!

Now, about the Cans Fest.  Put aside your fears that the BPA liners in beer cans will kill you faster than your beer and greasy food habits.  There are beers from several breweries pouring at this festival that are not generally available in Portland:

• Central City (British Columbia)
• Kenai River (Alaska)
• SanTan (Arizona)
• Ska (Colorado)
• Two Beers (Seattle)
• Uncommon Brewers (Santa Cruz)

I think the Avery selections at the festival are not usually seen in these parts, and the festival will debut cans from Portland nano Natian Brewing.  If you haven't yet been to the Guild -- a comfortable little pub located at 11th and East Burnside -- the Cans Fest is a good opportunity to check it out.  And a good opportunity to get it in the can.

Beetje Brewery

Apparently there is another small brewery about to open in Portland: Beetje Brewery has been approved by the TTB to start brewing on its one-barrel garage system. Oh, you haven't heard of Beetje? Neither had I, until I noticed a comment that Jeff left on the New School a few weeks ago. "Beetje" is Flemish for small -- sounds like we have a Belgian-oriented brewery here. Here's a cartoon that explains how it got rolling:



The owner, Mike Wright, says that he hopes to be running by late summer or early fall, but he has a family and a day job, so the schedule might vary. Here's his plan:

I will definitely self-distribute and hope to get into a couple of local SE bars/restaurants. There's no money in kegs at my scale so, I am interested in exploring bottles. Not only from a financial perspective. But I like bottle conditioning some of my beers.

That's kind of the opposite of other nano-brewery strategies: Vertigo, Mt. Tabor, and Natian are strictly keg sales. But it makes sense -- if you can only brew 4 pony kegs at a time, you could have a wider distribution with a higher margin by bottling. I'm guessing it makes your startup costs a little more manageable as well: you don't invest in big kegs at the outset, just a bunch of little bottles that you add into your price.

The two beer styles Mike lists so far on his website are "a straightforward ale with a Flemish kiss", and a barrel-aged sour brown. Should be an interesting addition to the Portland scene.

The Cheese Bar

Friday evening Carla and I made an accidental stop at the Cheese Bar, a new, uh, cheese bar at about 60th and Belmont. I had heard about the place, and we happened to pass it after two different moviegoing plans fell through.  It filled the bill perfectly for us: we needed a light dinner, and I needed another taste of Upright's Oyster Stout since I had given away the first bottle I bought and Beermongers was sold out when I checked there. Actually, that's kind of funny: in addition to beer bars and cheesemongers, Portland also has a cheese bar and a beermonger.

As the name indicates, the main attraction of the Cheese Bar is its dairy case, with a hand-picked selection of artisan cheeses from around the world.  You can buy cheese to go, or sit at the bar or one of the five or six tables and enjoy a small snack.  But the Cheese Bar also has a nice selection of beers -- 6 taps and about 30 bottles.  The space is nice, it's a comfortable place to hang out in, especially if you can get a table (it's a little hectic to sit at the bar).  After our oyster stout, we split a pint of the nice Chinook Single-Hopped IPA from Terminal Gravity.  There's a lower "take-home" price on the beer bottles, though I'm pretty sure the prices are higher than those at most bottle shops and groceries in the area.

Let's talk about those prices.  Some of them are a little high -- $4.30 for a 12-ounce Terminal Gravity ESG?!? -- but some of them are almost charitable: $2.70 for a Firestone Walker Pale Ale.  Hold on a second, on further reflection the problem is that the beer prices are just weird.  Take a look at the "here" prices on the menu below.  There are 25 beers on that side of the menu, and 19 different prices!  That's pretty delicate bookkeeping.  The take-home discount also varies from beer to beer, it's either $1, $1.50, or $2; that doesn't make a damn bit of sense.  Some order to the listing would be nice also, if not by style, then good old American alphabetical order.

The food prices are on the high side, for example $8 for the daily cheese plate with three small tranches of cheese, or $9 for the charcuterie sampler, but those are kind of typical for Portland, and not unreasonable considering the quality and uniqueness of the meats and cheeses.  On the other hand, the menu also has a $6 sandwich and a $4 salad (exact ingredients change day by day), so there is a way to economize.  That is, unless you're an unfortunate wine drinker: wine bottles are mostly about $35, within a range from $20 to $80.  And the only by-the-glass price on the printed menu is $10, though maybe they have some daily specials.

I have two gripes about the food at the Cheese Bar.  First, the sample plates come with 4 little coins of dried-up bread -- excuse me, crostini -- which is not really enough to do the job.  Each additional order of 4 crostini is $1, which is quite simply a laughable price for something so small, hard, and flavorless.  A better option would be to offer a couple of choices of baguette or roll; heck, if you want people to buy more $30/pound cheese or meat snacks, just give them some bread for free, and don't bother drying it out first.

My second issue with the food sounds a little silly, but it will be familiar to beer fans: the cheese is served too cold.  Like good beer, you want to taste the flavors in your good cheese, but that means it can't be right out of the fridge.  You could sit there a while and let it warm up, but that kind of goes against the owner's stated goal of a place to have a quick bite, shop for some cheese, and be on your way.  I don't know if there's really a solution to that problem: of course they need to keep their perishable wares cold.  Maybe some portions of the daily special could be kept out at room temperature during busy times, or the cheese could be served on a warm plate.

The place is pretty new, so maybe some of the pricing issues will get tweaked as they go.  It is a nice place, and definitely worth a visit, especially if you get a hankering for some cheesy comestibles.  By the way, I was hoping to be the first to report the factoid that it's a favorite hangout of Oregon Brewers Guild CEO Brian Butenschoen, but Portland Monthly stole my scoop in their review.

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!

Defeat Extra Beer Taxes: HB 2461

When I was inveighing against Oregon's smoking ban, I pointed out that "public health" is the new good-luck charm that neo-Puritans use to get otherwise progressive people on board with their efforts to legislate morality. Now they're at it again, with Oregon House Bill 2461: a proposal to increase the excise tax on beer by 2008%, to the highest in the nation.

Be very afraid of these people: they love the power of regulating individual behavior, and they love it when everyone lets them get away with claims that it's for our own good. They're comfortable with big lies, like the claim that "untreated substance abuse" costs Oregon $5 billion a year -- nicely refuted on Beervana. Or take this statement by one of the bill's sponsors, Rep. Ben Cannon of Portland -- "We know that this works, and it pays for itself many times over in reduced incarceration, reduced crime." -- at about 1:32 in this KGW video. Liar, liar, pants on fire! (Thanks, Steve Novick.) You do not know that a punitive tax on beer production results in reduced crime. Be a man, and admit that you want to tax activities that seem sinful, because you are afraid to increase state revenues with taxes that make more sense.



It may be possible to excuse Cannon for sponsoring this sin tax -- his Portland district seems to have been gerrymandered to exclude any of our city's fine breweries -- but my own State Senator Diane Rosenbaum is also listed as a sponsor of this bill. Her district includes six small, locally-owned breweries that would be severely impacted by this bill:

• Hair of the Dog
  
• Lucky Labrador
• Roots
• Hopworks
• Clinton Street
• Philadelphia's

To give you an example of the impact this would have, Jim Parker estimates that Hopworks' tax bill would increase by $150,000 per year. That's a mom-and-pop establishment, beloved by the community, started from scratch by local entrepreneurs, whose business practices are very "green". And you're going to increase their taxes by an amount that is about 3 or 4 full-time salaries? Sen. Rosenbaum should be extremely embarrassed to have her name on this bill.

Notes:

• Drop what you're doing right now, and write your state legislators.
• As usual, Jeff Alworth has a very level-headed analysis (even though he fell for the smoking ban).
• This comes up every two years. Let's go nuclear. The Oregon Brewers Guild should write an initiative that amends the Oregon Constitution to require a unanimous vote of the legislature to raise beer taxes.
• "Defeat Extra Beer Taxes" can be typed just with the left hand on a QWERTY keyboard.
  

Oregon's Smoking Ban Sucks

The smoking ban sucks, just like bicycle -- and motorcycle -- helmet laws suck.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a smoker and I hate the smell. Pubs and bars are not going to go out of business because of the ban. I'm looking forward to spending more time at the Horse Brass after January 1st (assuming it really adheres to the ban).

So why am I against the ban? Because this is a free country, and we put up with nuisances caused by other people so that they will put up with ours. Want to live a tranquil, nuisance-free life? Move to Singapore, or Saudi Arabia, or some other country where morality is legislated, so that you don't have to be inconvenienced by gum chewing, loud music, embarrassing jokes, or women drivers. I would rather chew gum, listen to music, tell jokes, and let the wife drive.



Beer lovers should be especially alarmed, because the neo-Puritans are coming after us next. Some people smoke in bars because it brings them pleasure. They can have their vices and I can have mine. But there are other people out there who think the world can and should be rid of all vices.

They have found a fetching shade of lipstick to put on their morality-legislating pig: public health. It's how the smoking ban got sold, it's how helmet laws get sold, and -- as Jay Brooks regularly reminds us -- it's how they're attacking alcoholic beverages. There was a letter to the editor in the Oregonian today that said beer and wine should be taxed more heavily to fund health care (can't find a link -- websites as terrible as the Oregonian's should be against the law).

The thing is, there are some things that are fun to do that carry a certain element of risk. Any of these things can be hazardous to your health: smoking, drinking, riding a bike, driving a car, swimming in a river, climbing a mountain, shooting guns. Sure, smoking also has a negative health impact on other people, but so does driving a car -- really, that has an even bigger impact. Are you ready to ban private automobiles? (I am, but that's just the Puritan in me talking.)

Choose freedom. Oppose helmet laws, smoking bans, sin taxes, drug wars, and encroachments on the Second Amendment. Outlawing fun things to do only decreases the amount of fun in the world, and punishes law-abiding people. Like Graham Chapman says in the video above, the only way to bring the crime figures down is to reduce the number of offenses!

Sierra Nevada's Southern Hemisphere Harvest

Every September I get all antsy waiting for the fresh hop beers to come out. I go from pub to pub pestering the people behind the bar: "Is the harvest beer out yet?" Fresh hop ale was a great revelation the first time I tasted it at the Lucky Lab during my first autumn in Portland -- it was something I had never heard of before. A flyer on the bar at the Lab described how the brewers had driven out to a hop farm to get the fresh cones at harvest time so they could throw them into a batch of pale ale without drying them. Quite a wholesome idea, but the real proof is in the drinking. The herbal, or vegetal, or green flavor imparted by the fresh hops makes fresh hop beer truly special.

This past autumn I really went crazy, with a goal of trying a new fresh hop beer every day. I didn't exactly succeed, but I enjoyed every day of the marathon, especially that fabulous Lupulin Ale from Full Sail. There were some misses also -- the Lucky Lab and Bridgeport really disappointed this year. I wish the Lucky Lab would go back to that golden ale that first hooked me, instead of the drab concoction they call the Mutt; Bridgeport's Hop Harvest is a lovely hop bomb, but so hoppy that the fresh flavor has gone missing. I prefer the lighter ale they brewed in years past.

Being such a fresh-hop fiend, it definitely caught my eye when Jay Brooks' blog mentioned that Sierra Nevada was coming out with "two new fresh hop beers". Their new Southern Hemisphere Harvest Ale would be made with hops harvested in New Zealand, while it's still spring here in the US. That is some clever strategizing there, taking advantage of the spherical shape of the earth to get a second harvest ale out, six months before the West Coast hop harvest. It sounds too good to be true, and indeed it is too good to be true. From the description of the beer on Sierra's website: "the fresh hops in this beer are dried right after being picked". Uh oh.

Have you seen the Fawlty Towers episode where the hotel guest insists on fresh peas for his omelet (at 9:30 in this YouTube clip)? Basil Fawlty tells him "I assure you they were absolutely fresh when they were frozen". When it comes to fresh hops, I'm that hotel guest guy -- the overly fastidious, impossible-to-please customer with the florid turns of speech. I don't care what hemisphere you're in, dried hops are not fresh hops. "Might I suggest that in future you avail yourself of sufficient quantities of the fresh article?"

Even so, when I saw Southern Hemisphere Harvest at Belmont Station, I had to grab a bottle to try. Sadly, it was as I suspected: none of the great green fresh hop flavor. I even sprang it on Dave next door without telling him what it was, and he was as underwhelmed as I was. Not a huge surprise, really, the Sierra Nevada Harvest that came out last fall was also a dud. Neither of these beers even really had any hop-floral flavor -- like for instance Bridgeport's Hop Harvest does -- and the Southern Hemisphere has an unusual extra-bitter aftertaste that comes out several seconds after swallowing the beer. Not a totally bad bitterness, but definitely not what I want in a harvest ale.

We're spoiled here in Oregon with our proximity to the hop fields -- getting the hops into the beer the day they're picked is an integral part of the flavor. In the case of the Southern Hemisphere Harvest, it sounds like it takes them about a week to get the dried-fresh hops into the kettle; even Sierra's regular Harvest has hops that were trucked across two state lines. But here's the good news: Sierra Nevada has started growing their own hops for use in a limited edition Chico Estate Harvest Ale. I can vouch for Chico Estate's potential: at Portland's Holiday Ale Festival last year there was a keg of Sierra Nevada made with their estate hops -- it was called 20th Street Ale then, not Chico Estate -- and sure enough, it had that special something that the wet hops provide. It sounds like distribution will be fairly limited, but I hope we get some kegs or bottles of Chico Estate up here.