Fresh Hop Tastival 2008

There are a couple other eyewitness reports on Saturday's Fresh Hop festival at Hopworks, so I'm a little late getting my opinion out there. Angelo is really ticked off that most of the taps were dry by the time he arrived at the exact midpoint of the event. The scan of his program with the empty kegs marked is hilarious.

The consolation for those who arrived late is the fact that Hopworks rolled out for them the barrel-aged version of their fresh-hop Parsec Pale -- pumped through a filter of fresh hops(!), as seen in some of John Foyston's excellent photos of the festival. Those of us that arrived on time were told that the barrel-aged Parsec would not be served.

Despite the large crowd -- which actually wasn't so bad if you got there early -- there were several ways that this year's Tastival was better than the 2007 one at Edgefield:

• Alphabetical order!
• Location near my house.
  
• Nicer looking pint glasses.
• All advertised beers were served, at least for a while.

Since I had already scoured Portland for about half of the beers at the Tastival, I got almost everything covered. My favorite of the year is still the Nugget-hop variant of Full Sail's Lupulin, and there were certainly some failures at the festival, but here are some of the ones I hadn't yet tried that made a good impression:

• Deschutes Fresh Hop Mirror Pond: mmm...
• Ninkasi Mt. Hops: bitter, funky, and yum
• Hopworks Parsec Pale: nice, similar to Laurelwood Hop Bale
• Deschutes Fairweather: light and tasty, right on

Foyston reports that the Portland Deschutes pub is still serving that Fresh Hop Mirror Pond -- and two more fresh-hop ales not at the festival. It's worth checking out. You might find the Ninkasi around town also, it's far better than the fresh-hop light lager they made last year.

Hopworks Tastival Preview

I'm very excited about the Fresh Hop Tastival coming up Saturday at Hopworks. Although I didn't go quite as overboard this year as last, I have been running around trying to taste some of the 2008 fresh hop beers. Here's what I got around to, roughly in order of favorite to least favorite:

• Full Sail: Lupulin with Nugget Hops
• Full Sail: Lupulin with Cascade Hops
• Laurelwood: Hop Bale Pale
• Bridgeport: Hop Harvest
• Laurelwood: Fresh Nugs
• Lucky Lab: The Mutt
  
• New Old Lompoc: Fresh Hop Red
• Deschutes: Hop Trip
• Widmer: TEAser
• Full Sail: Lupulin with Mt. Rainier Hops
• Rock Bottom: Hop Harvest
• Hopworks: Fest of Fury
• Rogue: Independence Fresh Hop Ale
• McMenamins CPR: India Pale Ale
• Roots: Hoppopotamus
• New Old Lompoc: Hop Press

Even though I tried to put them mostly in order, I have to say that I didn't dislike a single one of the beers on that list. Even the ones near the bottom were really good; one reason I might have ranked them lower was if they missed the green flavor I wanted. A good example is the Fest of Fury, which is a delicious malty brew -- really stellar, but with only a hint of the fresh hop aroma.

After my disappointment with the first batch of Lupulin to come out, I was really happy to try the other two batches and find that they almost got me back to that happy place I was last year with the Amarillo-hopped Lupulin. Hop Trip fell a little in my estimation this year, mainly because the rest of the competition was so good. For example, I really slammed Bridgeport in 2007 because the hoppiness drowned out the freshness, but I feel like they got it right this year.

The Lucky Lab also got it right with the Mutt this year: it tastes much better than last year's. It's an amazingly mild 3.2% ABV -- that's even lower than Oklahoma/Utah 3.2%, which is ABW (about 4% ABV) -- but the fresh flavor shines through. The flyer describing it at the bar mentions that it was brewed with 45 pounds of fresh hops, but the hop-gleaning party supposedly yielded 125 pounds. Hopefully that means that there are three batches of it made up and ready to drink.

The Widmer and Laurelwood 2008 offerings tasted better to me also. Widmer's uses an experimental new hop with supposedly 0% bitter alpha acids, though I thought it was nicely bitter. New Old Lompoc didn't brew Star of India -- which I thought was really good last year -- but they did a great job with the Fresh Hop Red. It's very similar to last year's Harvest Man -- I think they're both based on their Proletariat Red -- but with a more prominent fresh hop flavor.

Even with that head start, there are a lot of beers on the list that I can't wait to try, like Ninkasi, Double Mountain, Pelican, and the fresh-hopped pale from Hopworks. The Tastival will be a great time, don't miss it!

Rogue Distillery and Public House

Sometime in the past year, the Rogue pub in the Pearl vastly expanded the number of taps they have -- to 36, according to the website. Right before they did that, a bartender told me that they would have a lot more guest taps, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Today they had Guinness, Lindeman's, and something forgettable that I forgot.

Instead of guest taps, what they offer is an awesome selection of Rogue beers, including several of the "Track Town" ales from their Eugene brewery, and a couple from their brewery in Issaquah, Washington. Today they had 4 or 5 of their XS brews on tap -- extra-strong, served in a 10-ounce goblet -- including the Imperial Younger's Special Bitter, the Imperial Red, and a couple of other imperial this and that.

It's a nice place to pop in for lunch -- a little bit pricey, but hey, you're in the Pearl district, and the burgers are made with Kobe beef. There's a choice of seating -- some tables outside if weather permits, a non-smoking restaurant area inside, and a bar area without table service. Even though it allows smoking (until January 2009), I usually end up in the bar to be close to my beer. The smoke has never been too bad when I've been there.

The small distillery currently produces a decent gin and a couple flavors of rum. If you're there around 2 PM on a weekday, you can take a tour of the distillery, which is pretty interesting and includes a couple tastes. By the way, the pub can sell you a bottle of the homemade spirits, and it's open long after the liquor stores have closed in Oregon. Say it's midnight Saturday and you just realized you have to have a beer martini, but you don't have any gin. Well, hurry on down to the Rogue pub, and buy a bottle of gin -- they'll even sell you the beer. I'm not sure about the olives.

My main reason for hitting Rogue today was to try the Independence Fresh Hop Ale, made with hops from Rogue's own farm. Independence was a solid beer, not in the top fresh-hop ranks, but I was quite happy with it at lunch. Speaking of happy, that's how I felt about catching the tail end of a Rogue "garage sale" at the pub: I walked out with a growler of American Amber for $6 (six-pack equivalent price of $6.75, or if you deduct the $2 price of an empty growler, it's like a $4.50 six-pack).