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.

No Thanks, I'm Drinking

Do you drive every morning, every evening, and sometimes during the day? Do you drive alone? Does your driving take up more of your time and money each year? Has your driving ever caused trouble at home? Is it hard for you to socialize without driving? Then you probably have a driving problem.

If you suffer from automobile addiction, please don't let it interfere with your drinking. At least on weekend nights, there's a new outfit in Portland that will help you out. RideOn Portland is a non-profit organization that will send a sober driver to your location, to drive you and your car home safely. According to their website, the drivers arrive on folding scooters, so they can load them into your car and be on their way after dropping you off.

The $10 price makes RideOn a no-brainer if you know you shouldn't be driving. That's $10 per car, no extra charge for your passengers -- you did carpool to the pub, right? The service area is fairly limited right now: the website says they'll drive you anywhere in the Portland metro, but they'll only pick you up in SE Portland within the rectangle bordered by Grand, Burnside, 82nd, and Powell. Still, there's some good drinking to be done within that rectangle.

Hours of operation are pretty narrow -- 11 PM to 3 AM, Friday and Saturday only -- but those happen to be the drunkenest eight hours of the week. Bad public transit hours also, with little or no service in some parts of town. I like their strategy: break off a manageable chunk of spacetime to get the ball rolling. The phone number to call is 503-235-7433 -- put it in your cellphone right now if you think you're going to need it. If you really did that, go ahead and put Radio Cab in there too, in case you lose your cool outside the RideOn area: 503-227-1212.

I haven't used RideOn myself. If you have any experience with it, feel free to leave a comment. And work on that driving problem.

Another Clinton Administration

[Update 2009/11/03: Clinton Street Brewing is no more.] The smallest commercial brewery in Oregon -- Clinton Street Brewing (warning: noisy website) -- stands just a few blocks away from new Portland heartthrob Hopworks. The brewery is an offshoot of the Clinton Street movie theater, a small art house cinema at the corner of SE 26th and Clinton. You can enjoy a Clinton Street brew while watching your movie, or have a pint in the tiny pub. There are 4 or 5 tables inside, seating about 15 people, plus a couple of outside tables and about 5 seats at the bar. No smoking inside.

It had been a while since I'd been there, so I stopped in the other day to check it out. It turns out there is a new brewmaster at the Clinton, Dylan Goldsmith, and his beers are beginning to turn up around town branded as Captured By Porches -- which I'll call by the less-embarrassing acronym "CBP". At the time of my visit, there were 3 CBP beers on tap: a Belgian Wit, an IPA, and an Amber. Now, none of these beers is going to become your new favorite, but sometimes you go out on a limb to experience something off the beaten path. The Wit was interesting, but quite a bit more bitter than I think it should have been. The IPA was a little funky. I think the best bet was the Amber, despite having a little bit of a homebrewy flavor (that's Dave's adjective).

The theater owner, Seth, told me that it was quite a feat to brew enough for CBP's 30 accounts at Clinton Street's little two-barrel brewhouse. So Dylan is setting up a new brewery in industrial NW Portland. A decision will be made soon as to whether to continue to brew on Clinton Street or not. Moving the brewing equipment out might make sense for the theater/pub, since it would give them more kitchen space and allow for expanded food options -- currently the menu is anchored by pizza slices from Hammy's Pizza down the street.

There is a concert this weekend to raise funds for the CBP brewery -- see this blurb on the Beer Northwest blog. I've also seen flyers for this on lampposts around 20th and Hawthorne. It's interesting that Beer Northwest talks about CBP as a St. John's brewpub. For one thing, I'm not sure if the NW St. Helens Road address they give qualifies as St. John's, being across the river and a mile or so south. And it would be surprising if there was really going to be a pub in such an armpit location. I suspect that Clinton Street will continue to be the tied house for CBP, with brewing -- but no pub -- out in NW. Or perhaps there's a missing piece of information here: a pub-worthy address that really is in St. John's.

At Clinton Street, pints of CBP are $4, or they'll fill your half-gallon growler for $9. They have a few other taps also -- when I was there it was Ninkasi Believer (yes!), Lompoc Strong Draft, and Bud Light. Meanwhile, keep an eye out for CBP around town. I had a near miss last weekend at Big Daddy's Barbecue on Hawthorne. The bizarre happy-hour posters at Big Daddy's included a subliminal CBP logo along with logos for Bud, Widmer, and Laughing Dog -- any relation to Laughing Cow? -- but they weren't actually serving any CBP.