My New Beers

Tuesday I wrote about my new glassware, and since each glass in the fashion show was being worn by a different lovely beer, I thought I'd say a few words about each.

The brutally honest Brewers Union 180 22-ounce pint glass got filled up with Gigantic IPA.  Perhaps it's not the style of beer the glass was intended for, but I liked the idea of putting a Gigantic beer in a gigantic glass.  The IPA is an instant Portland classic: big, full-bodied, with orangey hops.  I fancy that it tastes better on tap, but in a pinch the bombers are available wherever fine beers are sold.

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The stalwart Rogue goblet was shown off by the lovely and talented Widmer Marionberry Hibiscus Gose.  At the 2011 Fruit Beer Festival I declared Widmer's Raspberry Hibiscus Gose my biggest disappointment, despite being easily the prettiest beer served that day.  On the other hand, I really like the 2012 marionberry version, which is probably still out there on the shelves in 12-ounce bottles.  It's not as visually stunning, but it seems maltier and a touch saltier than I remember the raspberry one being.  I didn't get much hibiscus flavor from either of them, which is probably a good thing.  Hibiscus strikes me as a very strong, distinctive flavor which is interesting on its own but doesn't play well with others, though I'm sure it contributes to the gose's beautiful color.

Oddly, one of my complaints about the 2011 was that it wasn't as tart as Cascade's Goses -- which is a surprising thing for me to complain about in the first place -- but one thing I like about the 2012 is that it is less tart than the 2011.  Go figure.  Meanwhile Widmer brewer Ben Dobler told me he liked the tarter raspberry version better.  Isn't beer wonderful?   (Thanks to Widmer for the free bottle.)

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Last but not least, that nutritious-looking potion in the giant grail my Austin friend Brady gave me is a treat that Dave recently stocked in his kegerator next door:  Migration's Luscious Lupulin IPA.  Even though Migration is not more than a mile from my house, I rarely seem to make it over there.  Luckily, they're doing a booming business without me, and a couple years in they seem to be hitting their stride with the beers.  Luscious Lupulin is cloudy, dank, and delicious.  It's bitter for sure, but really it's the floral qualities of the hops that shine through, balanced with enough malt.  I know I've had it in the past, but it seems better to me than it used to, a very well done NW IPA.  I'll be filling my chalice with it as often as I can.

Widmer Brothers Sow Their Bro Oats

 [Editor's Note:  Another nice guest post from Brian (msubulldog25).  Keep up the good work, Brian!]

On a recent mid-week evening, Sharon and I attended a release party at Irving Street Kitchen for Oatmeal Porter, the latest from ‘Series 924’ by Widmer Brothers. The event was an unveiling of sorts for this new recipe; it also was a chance for us to meet representatives from the brewery and sample beers both new and familiar (Pitch Black IPA and Nelson Imperial IPA also graced the menu).

Though the Oatmeal Porter was the stated focal point of this night, the spiel by brewer Doug Rehberg was short and to the point. The new seasonal (available March – May) weighs in at 6%, with a modest 27 IBUs, and is crafted using a liberal dose of custom-toasted oats (made exclusively for Widmer Brothers by the folks at Briess Malting and dubiously dubbed ‘Bro Oats’). I enjoyed the beer quite a bit; its feel is smooth and creamy and its nutty and sweeter flavors evoke cocoa powder, brown sugared oatmeal, vanilla and toasted coconut flakes. In early sips, I found ‘bourbon’ and, thus, could have sworn that some barrel-aging was behind it. There is none. Whether this dessert-y porter finds a home in the market remains to be seen, but I found it satisfying for my malt-loving leanings and a good complement to the hoppier things in the brewery’s current lineup.

Once the brief speech ended and the noshing and sipping resumed, a familiar-looking gentleman approached me, shook my hand and introduced himself as ‘Kurt’. After some awkward chit-chat about the food pairings and -facepalm- the rainy weather, we settled on topics more near and dear to Widmer. We discussed upcoming beers, such as the ‘Series 924’ summer release Marionberry Gose (fans, like me, who recall a similar beer at last year’s Fruit Beer Fest will note the switch from raspberries) and the imminent release of the Raspberry Imperial Stout (‘Babushka’s Secret’ without the fancy name).

Among other Widmer tidbits:

• Upstairs remodeling in the building where the Gasthaus is located has (finally) been completed.
• Several small tanks will soon move from the original brewery to the test facility at the Rose Quarter – meaning more opportunities for smaller/experimental batches.
• Several huge fermentation tanks (I forget the volume, but it’s a lot!) will be added to the main brewery, filling the void in the N. Mississippi/Russell St. corner. This will require the roof to be temporarily removed, an endeavor which the architect in me finds fascinating. Can’t wait to watch.
• In business news: the annual shareholder meeting (which Bill blogged about last spring) will NOT be held in Portland this year (but it’ll be just a daytrip away, up at the Redhook brewery in Woodinville, WA). Bummer for us Portlanders, but great for longtime HOOK shareholders who’ve asked for it in recent years.

The window is short on the Oatmeal Porter -- check it out before it gets replaced in May.

Oregon IPA Blind Tasting

This is kind of a slow follow-through, but a couple of weekends ago I helped judge Blitz Ladd's blind tasting competition of Oregon IPAs.  Earlier in the year I went on a kick of blind-tasting Double IPAs three or four at a time with friends and neighbors, in March, April, and May.  The Blitz tasting was on a different level: the good news is that I was seated amongst far more experienced beer judges; the bad news is we had a roster of 13 IPAs to get through.

We were surprisingly unanimous in choosing our top three:

• Hopworks HUB IPA
• Widmer Falconer IPA
• Lucky Lab Super Dog IPA

Sometimes you forget how good old favorites can be -- well, four-year-old favorites anyway.  HUB IPA is the burly but drinkable IPA that launched Hopworks to nearly instant success, but I rarely seem to drink it these days.  When I'm at Hopworks, I usually geek out and try whatever seasonal beer they have; when I'm somewhere else I rarely go for the IPA.  I guess I'll have to rethink my strategy now. 

It also surprised me how much we liked the new Rotator from Widmer.  I had tasted it for the first time the day before, and liked it pretty well -- especially the long bitter finish -- but I wouldn't have thought it was one of my two favorites in town.  It's brewed with the Falconer's Flight hop blend from Hop Union that breweries are starting to experiment with.  Fans of Walking Man beers should pick up a six-pack of it: the recipe was devised by Jacob Leonard, who left his head brewer position at Walking Man earlier this year to join Widmer.  He's still new enough that he has to work the night shift, but his beer has already made it to a national audience.  Pretty cool.

The Blitz folks stressed to us over and over that these were not Double or Imperial IPAs, but I couldn't shake doubles out of my mind and I was sure I had several of the competitors pegged for this or that Double IPA -- even to the point of insisting aloud that #9 was Caldera's Hopportunity Knocks, Super Dog was Ninkasi's Tricerahops, and the Widmer was Hopworks' Ace of Spades.  Goofy.  I'm a little embarrassed to think of it now.  Well, it was a long weekend and I had been up late the night before sampling beers from around the country at the Beer Bloggers Conference.

I also thought I had Gilgamesh's IPA pegged for Bridgeport Hop Czar, another imperial.  I mean that in a good way: it would have been my choice for 4th place.  Except for the strange and wonderful tea-hopped Black Mamba, Gilgamesh's beers have left me cold, but this IPA had a very nice grapefruity hop profile, and I'll be keeping an eye out for it now.  Other pleasant surprises were McTarnahan's Grifter -- very nicely balanced -- and Vertigo's Friar Mike's IPA.  I've had both in the past, but wouldn't have expected them to surpass much more established IPAs.  That goes to show the power of blind tasting.

Speaking of blind tasting:  if you're not already reading the Southern Oregon-based blog Bottle Battle, add it to your list.  Each post is a blind tasting between two or more similar beers, a nice twist on beer reviews.

Craft Brewers Alliance 2011 Shareholders Meeting

About a year ago I noted a crazy run-up in the stock price of Craft Brewers Alliance, the parent company of Widmer Brothers, headquartered at Widmer's North Portland facility.  At the time, I was amazed that the stock price (ticker: HOOK) was climbing toward $4.  Fast-forward a year, and in recent weeks it's been hovering around $9.  Somewhere in between, I made a small investment in 115 shares of HOOK, ignoring my own advice about the risks involved.

And so it was that yesterday I wandered over to Russell Street to attend the 2011 CBA Shareholders Meeting.  It was a pretty civilized affair:  Widmer Pitch Black IPA (formerly W'10) and Kona Longboard Lager were on tap, and chilled bottles of Red Hook Pilsner and Copper Hook were available.  Shareholders were given a Widmer grocery sack and invited to pick up a nice "dividend" for attending the meeting:  six-packs of the three CBA brands.  Kurt Widmer ran the meeting with a glass of Pitch Black in hand, and Prosted us with it after the brief formal business portion of the meeting.

There followed a Power Point presentation on the current marketing focus of the company.  Widmer, Kona, and Red Hook -- the three brands that remain in CBA after the sale of Goose Island to InBev -- each fulfill a different goal for the company.  Kona has great summer seasonal sales as beachgoers try to recapture that island feeling from past Hawaiian vacations (marketing speak: Liquid Aloha).  The Widmer brand aims to provide the variety that the modern beer geek demands:  this was the point of this year's rebranding, replacing Broken Halo with the Rotator IPA series, the yearly "W" releases with the more flexible Series 924 four-packs, and continuing the occasional Brothers Reserve bombers.  Red Hook is the part of the portfolio I feel a little sorry for.  This is its 30-year anniversary, and while it was a big fish in a small pond decades ago, the company has all but relegated it to downmarket status.  In Marketingese, Red Hook is sold on its "unique big personality":  the company describes it as "edgy" and "approachable", not as delicious and high-quality.

One interesting thing I learned at the meeting is that CBA really is paying attention to the blogosphere.  The Power Point slides had no fewer than three quotes from Brady's analysis of the Widmer makeover, and one quote from Sanjay's review of Red Hook Pilsner.  No quotes from It's Pub Night, but I was surprised that the Director of Investor Relations -- whom I hadn't met before yesterday -- called me by name on the street before the meeting as I wandered toward the wrong entrance.  Guess I'm not as incognito as I thought I was.

In terms of the stock, this has been a good year.  The price has nearly tripled in the last twelve months.  The sale of CBA's stake in Goose Island brought in a nice cash windfall for the company.  And the business page editors at the Oregonian have been roused from their four-year slumber and finally added HOOK to their table of Stocks of Local Interest.

Last June I listed several risks you might consider if you were thinking about buying stock in the CBA (if you are thinking of such an investment, do read that article).  I received a first-hand lesson in those risks when I took the plunge.  Here's how it happened.  Last August, with the share price threatening $5, I decided to take a gamble in an IRA account and buy 100 shares.  Because so few shares are traded, and because I placed my order late on a Friday, the brokerage only filled part of my order that day.  I was the proud owner of a mere 15 shares, meaning the $9 commission had effectively added 60¢ to the $4.93 share price.  Dammit!  That's like losing 12% on your investment immediately.  The following Monday I was able to get a full 100 shares for $4.95 apiece, though there were some tense moments as I watched the purchase get pieced together in chunks of 4 shares, 6 more, 7 more, wondering if I had just bought another expensive 17 shares, until the final 83 came through.  Moral for the small investor: bid at or above the ask price, and buy early in the day.

New Brews from Widmer

You've probably already heard about the Widmer product shakeup:

• Broken Halo IPA has been retired.
• W'10 is now year-round in $9 4-packs as Pitch Black IPA.
• Deadlift IIPA is now called Nelson IIPA (still in $9 4-packs).
• Broken Halo's 6-pack slot will be filled by various IPAs labeled Rotator.
• The latest Brothers Reserve is out: Galaxy Hopped Barleywine.
• The summer seasonal that was called Sunburn last year, is now called Citra Blonde.

Let's have a brief moment of silence for Broken Halo.  Born into the world as W'05, it was a satisfying, clean, middle-of-the-road Northwest IPA, made more attractive by the fact that you could often find it on sale at the supermarket for $7 or less per six-pack.  I'll miss it a little, but I think Widmer made a very astute move by recognizing that tastes have moved on since Broken Halo came out, and they can stay on top of the game by releasing a different recipe of IPA every so often.  It would never have occurred to me to do something like that, but once you hear it, you realize it's a smart idea.

The loss of Broken Halo is amply compensated for by the first Rotator IPA, called X-114, named after the experimental hop variety that is now called Citra.  An IPA by that name has been on and off at the Widmer Gasthaus for a couple years now, and I even remember seeing it on tap at Belmont Station once, but odds are that the recipe has been changing during that time.  The version that's out on tap and in bottles right now is very nice.  It has that beautiful orange-blossom aroma that Widmer's Drifter Pale Ale has, even though the aroma hops are different for the two beers (Drifter uses Summit and Nelson-Sauvin instead of Citra).  But X-114's sturdy backbone keeps the flavor up right to the end, whereas Drifter's flavor falls disappointingly flat.  X-114 isn't a barn-burner, but it's a solid IPA that I'll be indulging in regularly while it lasts.

The Galaxy Hopped Barleywine that's out right now is also a treat, and well worth seeking out.  It's darker than what you might be used to in barleywines (see the picture above), and has a comparatively light mouthfeel.  The Galaxy hops give it a nice tropical fruit aroma; in your mouth it takes a second for the hops to kick in.  They provide a kind of guava or tangerine flavor, followed by a moderately long, bitter finish.  It's very smooth and drinkable: I don't get the Old Foghorn maple/alcohol kick that I usually find (and appreciate) in barleywines.  It might age OK, but it seems better to drink it now while the hops are in full bloom.

In the interests of disclosure, I'll note that Widmer sent me samples of the X-114 and Barleywine, though I bought some of my own X-114 both before and after receiving the freebies.  Both beers are only available for a short time -- the Barleywine is a one-and-done; the brewery says the X-114 is due to be replaced by the next Rotator sometime during the summer -- and I recommend both of them, especially the cheap and plentiful IPA.

Strike It Rich in Beer

Occasionally I'll check the stock price of the Craft Brewers Alliance, the company formed by the merger of Widmer and Redhook.   It surprised me this morning, not so much with its 6-7% rise today, but by the fact that it has risen about 50% since I last checked the price a few weeks ago.  The price got up to about $3.95 this morning, but looks to close a little below that [Update: wow, closed at the high of $3.95].  Compare that to the $2.62 closing price three Fridays ago (May 14).

Wouldn't it have been nice to put some money on that last month?  Or last summer when the share price was below $2?  On the other hand, I don't feel too badly for missing the boat -- there are a lot of high-risk factors on this stock if you're an individual investor:

• Thinly traded: most days fewer than 10,000 shares are traded
• Controlled by insiders: 57% of shares are owned by insiders
• Not followed by analysts: no one is researching the company and publishing earnings estimates 
• Price/book ratio: below 1.0, which could mean it's undervalued, but could mean some nasty writedowns are on the horizon
• Been through a couple years of red ink, showing losses instead of profits

In fact, this recent run-up is itself a good illustration of the risks you or I would face investing in CBA.  The stock went up by 13% on Monday, May 17, a day before the conference call that told the world about the company's quarterly results.  The day of the conference call (which was during the trading day), it went up another 17%.  By the time the results were published by a news source on Wednesday May 19, the price had stabilized at the new levels.  That looks like a fun ride, but imagine if you were an investor and the price had moved in the other direction: you would have to be watching it like a hawk not to lose 30% over a couple of days.

I'm a big fan of Widmer's line, and it's interesting to watch the company grow their business.  Someday I may get up the nerve to invest a little of my savings in the CBA, but for now I'm just a spectator, occasionally dreaming of what could have been.

[Update:  I did take the plunge and buy some HOOK at about $5.  And the "thinly traded" warning up there is true:  my first order of 100 shares only found 15 shares at the limit price, so instead of a 10¢ per share commission, I effectively paid 60¢ per share. Further reading: my account of the 2011 CBA shareholders meeting.]

Double Alt Smackdown

A couple years ago I became obsessed with Alts. I was confused by the wide variation of different beers called "alt" -- the bland industrial alts I remembered from a trip to Germany had nothing in common with the Lucky Lab's Crazy Ludwig's Alt, which was a far cry from Alaskan Amber. Then I brought home a Pinkus Muenster Alt from Belmont Station, and I didn't know which way was up. It took samplings of Uerige Alt and Widmer Alt to set me on the right path.

Uerige also makes a double alt -- called Doppelsticke Alt -- which is nearly twice as strong. Double alts are catching on around Portland as well: Dave Fleming did one at the Lucky Lab before he left there a couple years ago; Hopworks did one a year or so ago; Widmer -- whose (single) Alt was their original flagship -- released 84/09 Double Alt to commemorate their 25th anniversary last year; and Ninkasi's somewhat counter-intuitive choice for a winter seasonal is a double alt called Sleigh'r.

Back in December I picked up a bottle each of the Sleigh'r, Uerige Doppelsticke, and 84/09, intending to corral some friends to help me blind-taste and compare the three. With one thing and another, I never got around to it, but I finally got motivated last week when my friend Brett ordered a glass of the Green Dragon/Oregon Brew Crew double alt -- yes, another Portland version of the style -- and gave me a taste of it.  That was the final straw: I dragged Brett and Lindsey over to my house to finally do the comparison.

My feelings about these double alts are contradictory.  The couple of times I've had the Uerige in the past, I found it too syrupy.  I recognize that someone could make the same complaint about the Widmer, and yet something about it grabs me: it was one of my favorite new beers last year.  On the other hand, Sleigh'r is a drier, more restrained version, but for some reason it doesn't grab me.

So, going into the blind tasting, I expected to like Widmer the best, Uerige next, and Ninkasi third.  Interestingly, when we compared notes later, that was what the other guys expected their preferences would be, too.  Lindsey won the contest, because he correctly identified all three.  I was able to spot the Ninkasi, but I confused Widmer and Uerige.  Brett amazed us by getting all the beers wrong: he thought Ninkasi was Widmer, Uerige was Ninkasi, and Widmer was Uerige.  I assume it was his first time to try Sleigh'r and -- like Jeff Alworth -- he wouldn't have imagined Ninkasi using a lighter touch than Widmer. With that bit of background, he might have made the same guesses as I did.

The Doppelsticke was my favorite of the three, which surprised me since it had rubbed me the wrong way in the past.  Lindsey said he couldn't pick a favorite between Widmer and Uerige.  Sleigh'r was Brett's favorite.  That's two first-place votes for Uerige, one for Ninkasi.  Widmer seemed to have all-around appeal:  it got Brett's and my second-place votes, and Lindsey's tie-for-first.  Brett and I also agreed that the Green Dragon's version was most like the Uerige, so kudos to the Brew Crew for nailing it.

Too bad I didn't get this tasting done while 84/09 and Sleigh'r were still widely available, but if you're interested in double alts, you still might find a few bottles of them at the usual places.

Widmer Deadlift and Bridgeport Hop Czar

Two big Imperial IPAs are out now in 12-ounce bottles: old friend Bridgeport Hop Czar, and a new offering from Widmer, Deadlift IPA. Hop Czar is a beautiful hop bomb that used to go for about $5 a bomber -- $16.36 SPE -- that is now available in $7-$8 six-packs. We must be living right. Deadlift continues Widmer's romance with the Nelson-Sauvin hop variety; the big imperial gained early notoriety when Widmer had to dump a batch of 62,000 pints of it because of a power outage.

After I tried a bottle of Deadlift the other day, I imagined writing up a head-to-head between Deadlift and Hop Czar, with Hop Czar being declared the hoptastic winner. But when I opened a bottle of each at the same time, I was really surprised by how nice Deadlift is. If you're a hop-head, there's a place for both of these beers in your diet.

Let's start by describing the Hop Czar. It's got a surprisingly light body, dosed with tons of grapefruit-flavored hops. Grapefruit and grapefruit rind. The hop finish is oily -- like citrus rind -- and very, very long. My wife pointed out that the aroma of this beer is not as good as the taste -- she described it as smelling like beans cooking -- not in a bad way -- and I'll stand by her on that. Doesn't matter; the taste is wonderful if you like hops. Statistically, it's a 7.5% beer with 87 IBUs (though earlier releases claimed something like 100 IBUs). This is likely to be my new everyday six-pack beer; when it first came out in 2008 it made such an impression on me that I named it as one of the best beers of the year in Brewpublic's year-end poll.

On to the Deadlift. I mentioned above that this beer uses flowery Nelson-Sauvin hops, which are also used as aroma hops in Drifter, although Summit is the main hop variety in Drifter. Nelson-Sauvin has a big detractor here in Portland, Beervana's Jeff Alworth -- read his diplomatic panning of Drifter here. Drifter doesn't do much for me either beyond its beautiful aroma, but I remember liking Widmer's Full Nelson at the 2008 OBF. Whatever might be the impact of the Nelsons, I do find that Deadlift has a beautiful hop aroma on top of a very malty, full-bodied ale. The hops don't dominate, they harmonize wonderfully with the malt. It's a strong 8.6% beer, but I feel like it hits the flavor target that Drifter missed. This is a wonderful beer, I'm glad it is going to be a year-round offering from Widmer.

Here are some recent reviews of Deadlift: Dave Selden was impressed; Bulls & Brew was not, nor was Jason at Portland Beer and Music. Poor Jeff can't decide whether he likes it or not.

Too bad about the batch of Deadlift that had to be dumped because of the power outage. In case you hadn't noticed, every Widmer bottlecap has a toast -- a Prost, as they say -- printed on the underside, most of them submitted by fans of the brewery. Things like "To sleeping in!", or "To spooning!". A couple of summers ago I submitted my own, and I was kind of miffed that it didn't make it onto a bottlecap. See, my friends Lee and Bret were in town, and a surprise power outage meant I had to stop working on a beautiful sunny day and instead join them for a couple of beers at Deschutes. It sounded like a good Widmer Prost to me: "To power outages on a sunny day!". But now I understand why that might not sound so good to the owners of a brewery. [Update 2010/02/15: Today is a sunny workday for me, but now the power is out at my company's California office that I telecommute to! Best of both worlds: no wasted Oregon beer or Oregon sunshine.]

Speaking of which, when I was at Upright Brewing a couple weeks ago I asked Alex about that power outage, since he's in the same neighborhood as Widmer. He said that the power never went out that day at Upright. Interestingly, he mentioned that one time he did lose power overnight, but because he uses open fermentation, the rise in temperature in his fermenter was just a couple of degrees -- not enough to cause any damage. He figures that a closed fermenter that lost cooling for that long would have ruined a batch of beer.

Cheapskate that I am, I can't help but discuss the pricing of these beers. The more economical price on Hop Czar is very welcome. The price on Deadlift is a little higher: I think it was about $2 a bottle at Beermongers, and about $8.80 a four-pack at Belmont Station. The Oregonian article about the power outage described Deadlift as Widmer's "most expensive beer". Deadlift's $12-$13 SPE is pretty high for Widmer, but the Brothers' Reserve Doppelbock sells for about $10 per 22-ounce bottle -- a much higher SPE of $32.73. (Are the Brothers ripping us off on the doppelbock? No, more likely it's due to mathematically-challenged reporting at the Oregonian. After all, the O recently described Portland's 20-year bike plan as too expensive, even though it aims to serve 25% of the city's transportation needs for less than 5% of the transportation budget.)

Conclusion: Want a delicious tongue-scraper at a nice price? Pick up a six of Hop Czar. Want a little more aroma and balance? Snatch up some Deadlift. You won't go wrong either way.

Collaborator CXI

The current edition of the Oregon Brew Crew/Widmer Collaborator Project is called CXI Pumpernickel Ale. It's brewed with an interesting adjunct: 60 pounds of pumpernickel bread from La Petite Provence bakery. I had a pint with lunch today at It's a Beautiful Pizza next door to Stumptown Coffee on Belmont.

CXI is a nice big beer for winter. It's a beautiful mahogany color with a yeasty, bready nose; the flavor is boozy on top of a nice dark roasted malt. There's a kind of herbal aromatic thing that creeps into your nose as you drink it -- it might be largely due to the alcohol, but you can also imagine the rye bread contributing to it. The beer has a long malty finish, with lots of bitter hops; not at all floral, just kind of a coffee bitterness. Despite the big booze -- it's 8.5% -- and the malty flavor, it's not a sweet-tasting beer. It's good stuff -- try it while it's available at Beautiful Pizza, the Widmer Gasthaus, and eventually the usual beer-snob taverns. I can't think of a beer to compare it to; the closest category I can shoe-horn it into is "winter warmer".

It's a Beautiful Pizza has a respectable set of 10 beer taps, plus a Blackthorn Cider tap. Today a couple of taps were off, but in addition to the Collaborator, they had Eel River Amber, Lagunitas IPA, Victory Prima Pils, and a few other Oregon beers. In the past I've always seen a Lucky Lab tap there, but maybe it was one of the blown kegs today. Plenty of bike parking in the corral on Belmont, and they've recently added a no-minors section with some vid-poker, if you want to get away from the ankle-biters.

For a firsthand report on the making of CXI, listen to Lisa Morrison's Beer O'Clock show from last week. Lisa has an interview with Widmer brewer Ike Manchester and OBC member Noel Blake.

Beer at PGE Park

PGE Park is a cute little ballpark. It's handy to have the home of Beavers baseball and Timbers soccer right downtown, in a place you could bike to, or possibly walk to, with a MAX line running right past it. It's completely ludicrous that anyone would think of 1. Moving the town's baseball team out of downtown, or 2. Spending millions of dollars to "renovate" a stadium whose last renovation isn't paid off, and which is actually pretty nice the way it is right now. By the way, some of those millions are tax dollars.

Speaking of high prices, let's talk about having a beer at the ballgame. Your best bet is Thirsty Thursdays, when a 12-ounce cup of Widmer or the like is half-price: $3.75. Here at It's Pub Night, our unit of currency is the six-pack equivalent (SPE), so your Thirsty Thursday SPE is $22.50. On non-thirsty days of the week, let them supersize your beer to 20 ounces for $8.25 -- SPE $29.70 -- instead of submitting to the 12-ounce SPE of $45.

The concession stands in the park are stocked mostly with Miller Lite, with taps of Widmer Hef or Drop Top interspersed. Beer snobs need to be aware of the two locations in the ballpark with better beer selections: the beer garden, and the Beer Here stand between Sections G and H.

Widmer's beer garden, located at playing field level along the right-field line, serves Broken Halo and Drifter in addition to the aforementioned Hef and Drop Top. They also serve some wine and cocktails. The beer garden is a great trick for cheapskates: buy a general admission ticket, show up early, and get a front-row seat in the beer garden. For the price of the bleacher seats with no back, you get cast-iron lawnchairs and a table to set your drinks and nachos on. It's not the ideal location for watching baseball, but for soccer it's almost at the same spot as the premium seats, only closer. Kids are allowed there except on Thursdays.

If you simply must have a non-Widmer beer, then you'll need to check out the Beer Here stand. Wait a minute! That's the name of Mr. Foyston's blog, The Beer Here. That's a nice homage -- I might drop my resistance to the stadium boondoggle if the new ballpark in Lents were to be called It's Pub Night Field. Anyway, the little beer stand between sections G & H has six non-Widmer taps:

• Deschutes Green Lakes Organic Ale
• Diamond Knot IPA
• Mac and Jack's African Amber
• Pyramid Slim Chance
• Heineken
• Tecate

Well, it's not as good a selection as at PDX airport, but it gives you something to work with. I have a soft spot for the Mac and Jack's, a tasty, satisfying beer; Diamond Knot IPA rates a whopping 98 on Beer Advocate, and Green Lakes is quite nice as well. There's not even a slim chance that I'd have the other three, but who knows, maybe someone will like them. The Beer Here also has a few 12-ounce bottles for sale -- there were some Deschutes bottles like Black Butte, and I believe I saw a bottle of Guinness, but nothing really noteworthy. They should stock some 22's of Ninkasi, or the new bottles from Hopworks and New Old Lompoc.

The schedule of Timbers and Beavers home games is here. If you're in the mood to try out a Thirsty Thursday, there's a Beavers game tonight. Play ball!

Drifter vs. Grifter

Isn't it strange for MacTarnahan's to come out with a beer called "Grifter" a couple months after Widmer came out with one called "Drifter"? I couldn't find a snifter for my Drifter and Grifter picture, so I photographed them in the pint glasses my brother-in-law gave me.

I'm a big Widmer booster, but Drifter Pale Ale is not going to be a regular for me. It starts off nice: a pretty copper-colored beer, with a beautiful -- really amazing -- smell. The smell is a combination of floral and citrus -- something like grapefruit peel and orange blossom. Unfortunately, it's downhill from there. The taste is a little bit of a letdown after the wonderful aroma. Still, it's not bad... at first. What bugs me is that the taste suffers as the beer warms up, which is not how good ale is supposed to be. By the time it gets to room temperature, the hop aromas and bitterness are all gone, and there's not enough heft to take up the slack.

That's my opinion, but a lot of people seem to really like it. The reaction on Twitter has been mostly positive, on the excited side. The Beer Advocate average grade is B+, which I guess is pretty good. But most of my friends are as underwhelmed as I am. Charles said he's been adding the remnants of his six-pack to pots of beans as he cooks them. Over at Beervana, Jeff panned it very diplomatically, blaming the "catty" flavor of the Nelson hops used in the brew. I did like it a little better on tap than from a bottle, but that's not surprising. Final verdict: Drifter is not a terrible beer, but drink it cold. Maybe they should sell it in 7-ounce bottles.

On the other hand, the curiously-named Grifter exceeds expectations. You won't switch from your favorite IPA, but give it a shot if it's served at a sporting event or you see it on sale -- I couldn't resist when I saw it for $7 a six-pack. It's a respectable Northwestern IPA: nicely hoppy and bitter with a decent body to back it up. And the flavor holds up as it warms. MacTarnahan's hasn't impressed me during my 6 years as a Portlander, so it's nice to see them come out with something solid. They're calling it a summer seasonal, but hopefully they'll make it a regular.

Widmer W'09 Belgian Golden

Widmer is out with this year's entry in the "W" series -- the trial balloon they send up once a year to see how people like it. This time it's a Belgian Golden Ale, and I think they've got a solid entry after a couple of forgettable years.

Not everyone likes the Belgian-beer combination of flowery and sweet, and those who do are often hard to please because they've gotten used to the divinely-inspired output of Belgium's many monastery-breweries. For those of us who like the style, and are willing to drink a beer that's 80% as good as the original but costs only 33% as much, W'09 is right on the money. A beer you could compare it to is New Belgium's Trippel. Years ago in Austin I turned to New Belgium Trippel as my inexpensive big beer of choice after Miller shut down the Celis Brewery and deprived me of the wonderful Celis Grand Cru. If you like NB Trippel, I think you'll like W'09.

Widmer had a few batches of the Belgian Golden out last year, and I was underwhelmed when I tried it at Cheers for Belgian Beers and at a meet-the-brewer event at Green Dragon. Jeff Alworth disagreed with me at the time: he rated it "fantastic" in his write-up of C4BB. I don't know if they've tweaked the recipe a little, or if I'm less snobbish about a six-pack from the supermarket, but my third impression is better than my first two. Jeff's review has a clue that they may have worked on the recipe -- he said its alcohol content was 6.1% at the festival at Roots, whereas the label puts it at 6.5%.

I bought a bottle of Duvel so I could see how the W'09 stacked up with the prototypical Belgian Golden. Interestingly, the Duvel was much lighter in color, as you can see in picture -- it was even lighter than my recollection of it. As you might expect, Duvel had a bigger, bolder flavor. I don't think hops played much of a role in the difference, they were pretty low in both beers. Part of Duvel's big flavor is our beloved alcohol -- it weighs in at 8.5% (for comparison, New Belgium Trippel is 7.8%). But the price difference will have me voting for Widmer more often -- it's really about a third of the price.

It will be interesting to see if the Belgian Golden becomes a permanent part of the Widmer repertoire. After all, the popular Broken Halo IPA was W'05, and this year's delicious winter brew Brrr was W'06. The Pale Ale that was W'07 was so unremarkable that I can't remember anything about it, and the "crimson wheat" W'08 was an interesting idea that just wasn't very good. I think W'09 might make the grade. What's your opinion?

[Correction, 2009/01/14]: Some people -- Jeff, for example -- liked W'07. It is now going to be a year-round Widmer offering, named Drifter.

Uerige Alt

It has been awhile since I made it across the hill to John's Market, but Clark was interested to see it while he was in town, so we went. I was finally able to procure a couple bottles of Uerige Alt and Uerige Doppelsticke -- true Dusseldorf Altbiers -- which I had been wanting to do for some time. They weren't cheap -- about $4.50 for a little 11 oz. bottle -- but the bottle is kind of cool looking, with a stopper cap. Maybe someone will fill it with homebrew for me.

My ragged German-English dictionary doesn't have the word "sticke", and neither does Google Translate. So we turn to the Uerige website itself, which says it means "whispering" in an older dialect. I think they're implying that Uerige Sticke is a seasonal that people talk about a lot; or maybe you can interpret it as a secret beer, and hence the Doppelsticke is a double-secret beer. Despite the exciting prospect of a double-secret Alt, I prefered the 4.5% regular Alt to the 8.5% Doppelsticke, which I found to be too syrupy.

The regular Alt was pretty nice: richer than the Widmer Alt available at the Gasthaus. It has a very long and agreeable bitterness -- I'd say the Widmers mimicked that bitterness very well. You want to drink this pretty cold. The flavor did not improve as the beer warmed up towards room temperature. My guest tasters had some good insights:

• Dave: malty but dry; not as sweet as it tastes
• Clark: taste reminiscent of limburger cheese
• Carla: chalky
• Milena: malty
• Tammy: likes the long bitter finish

When I recently rediscovered my notes from the 2007 PIB on Lee's blog, I noticed that I had tried the Doppelsticke and been disappointed in it, describing it as "sweet, not long". I had forgotten all about it by the time I got obsessed with alts this spring. If I have another Uerige it will be the regular Alt, not the double. In Portland it's probably wiser to go with the fresh local stuff at Widmer.

Man, it was fun to go to John's Market. I love the selection at Belmont Station, but John's Market turns it up to eleven.

It Must Be Widmer Week

Last weekend I wrote up my ode to the Widmer Gasthaus, not knowing that more news was on the way from John and Jeff about Widmer's brewery expansion and next winter's seasonal. It also came out that Widmer took two golds in the World Beer Cup, for their Hefeweizen and for their Pale Ale -- is that the W'07? Then there was Widmer meet-the-brewer at the Green Dragon on Tuesday, but before I could turn that experience into blogging gold, the Widmer brothers popped up again, announcing that they'll help promote the start of National Bike Month May 1 by racing one another across Portland, Kurt in a car and Rob on a bike. I guess this is just Widmer Week.

The meet-the-brewer was interesting as always. Here's a picture of one of the Widmer brewers, Doug Rehberg (second from left). To his left is Kerry Finsand, a Portland beer writer who's developing the Portland Beer Wiki; on the right are my buddies Corey -- himself a recent meet-the-brewer brewer -- and Matias. Doug told us he's been with the company for fourteen years -- that's job satisfaction for you.

Judging from the color of the beers, I think Doug has Widmer's Belgian Golden, Corey has the KGB Russian Imperial Stout, and Matias has an Old Embalmer Barleywine. It wasn't the barrel-aged KGB that they sometimes have, but it stood on its own and really didn't need the bells and whistles. It was a delicious chewy stout. The Embalmer was fantastic also, not the wildest barleywine at 9.5%, but it had the classic American hoppy barleywine flavor. A fourth keg was on tap also, the Broken Halo IPA. I wish they'd brought a keg of Hefeweizen so that people like me could stop boasting that the Green Dragon had never served it.

Since Lee had asked whether Broken Halo was endangered by the hop shortage, I went ahead and posed that question to Doug. The answer was pretty much what I expected -- they keep everything lined up ahead of time and they're not sweating it. Doug had another tidbit of information for us -- the promotion of the W'06 NW Red to winter seasonal means that Snow Plow won't be bottled this year. It's logical enough, but sometimes you have to hit me over the head with these things. Every now and then I was in just the right mood to enjoy a Snow Plow, but I like the Red better. If you can't wait for winter, the NW Red is on tap at the Gasthaus right now -- so is the Old Embalmer, by the way.

Side note: the Green Dragon never fails to amuse. There was no way I was leaving without trying Fort George's Oatmeal Pale Ale. It was drinkable, kind of tangy with quite a bit of hops on top. They probably aren't going to add OPA to the beer-judging categories, but I'm glad to see brewers push the boundaries like that.

The Widmer Gasthaus

We have an embarrassment of riches in Portland. There's so much excellent beer here, that we get to look down our nose a little bit at any brewery that gets too big, like Widmer, the 11th largest brewery in the U.S. by sales last year. Widmer Hefeweizen is ubiquitous, available in every convenience store, pizza joint and tavern in town. Well, not the Green Dragon -- case in point! -- though Widmer will be featured at this Tuesday's Meet the Brewer.

There are many reasons to rise above our beer snobbishness and open our hearts to Widmer -- not least of which is the fact that the beer they sell in such vast quantities is actually good beer. Furthermore, the Widmer brothers were there at the beginning of the craft brew revolution in Oregon, long before hangers-on such as myself, and they still support the grassroots by offering homebrewers access to their brewing facility through the Collaborator project. Finally, there's the Gasthaus: the restaurant attached to the brewery, where Widmer serves a number of interesting beers that are unavailable anywhere else. Good food, too.

I dropped into the Gasthaus a couple days ago as part of my Alt quest. Turns out that a Dusseldorf Alt was one of the first beers the Widmers brewed, and it is apparently always on tap at the Gasthaus, but nowhere else. The Widmer Alt is a well-done beer, and matches the style guidelines very well: a dark, dry beer, with a bitter edge but almost a nutty flavor to the malt underneath. Compared to other local Alts I've had recently, it's more polished and flavorful than the Collaborator Alt I had at Belmont Station; it's less fruity and more bitter than Corey's Evolution Amber; and it's not a wacky hop-bomb like the Lucky Lab's Crazy Ludwig's Alt. It's not a style I love enough to have every day, but I'll certainly revisit it on future trips to the Gasthaus. I still need to track down a real Dusseldorf Alt to compare these all to.

Of course the restaurant has taps that represent Widmer's bottled-beer lines, but in addition to the Alt they had eight more taps that you can only get there. The Belgian Golden didn't impress me much at the Cheers to Belgian Beers festival, and I wasn't in the mood for a lager or barleywine, but I was happy to see that they had the NW Red on tap. This was the "W '06" special yearly bottling from a couple years ago, a tasty brew indeed. The W '08 Crimson Wheat, while drinkable, is nowhere near as interesting as the previous W's.

Speaking of W's, the first one -- the W '05 IPA -- was so good, that it became a regular offering: Broken Halo. This is what I'm talking about when I say that Widmer's mass quantities of consumables are still really good. Broken Halo's renown has spread across the country, to the point where it was a favorite of my buddy Lee before he even visited Portland. Just last month, another less-beer-obsessed friend in Austin told me -- without being able to remember the brewery name -- that it's the only beer he buys these days. And here's an excellent stunt from the blogosphere: a blind-tasting "tournament" of 32 IPAs, seeded by their ratebeer ranking. Broken Halo won, even though it was ranked 24th by the master beer-raters.

Other delights that the Gasthaus has offered in the past are the KGB Imperial Stout, aged in bourbon barrels; and Noggin Grog, Widmer's entry in last year's Oregon Brewer's Festival. A lot of beer snobs dissed Noggin Grog -- a so-called Imperial Wit -- but I loved it. Sure there's no such thing as an Imperial Wit, but it was a big, tasty beer.

The Gasthaus location, with a nice view of the Fremont Bridge, is right on the edge of a gritty industrial area, though its near neighbors are the trendy 820/Mint and the retro-chic McMenamins' White Eagle. Despite the fact that it's walled in by massive freeway overpasses, a trip to the Gasthaus makes a nice little bike excursion -- the Interstate bike lane connects with the Eastbank Esplanade right by the Steel bridge. You probably wouldn't bicycle the kids there, though -- the car traffic moves fast on Interstate, and the other route along Russell Street is kid-friendly enough on the way down, but will have them cursing you on the way back up the hill, if you're not already cursing yourself.