Getting Ready for the Fresh Hop Tastival

The Portland edition of the Fresh Hop Tastival is this Saturday at Oaks Park. Despite its goofy name -- can we call it a "Wastival" next year? -- I'm really looking forward to it, a frenzied climax to the fresh-hop season. To get you even more excited, the OBG has published the tentative list for the Portland fest.

Last year's festival in the small Hopworks parking lot was way too crowded. Holding it at Oaks Park is a great idea -- a pleasant bike ride down the Springwater Corridor and you're there. There's another excellent beer event Saturday night: Brewpublic's first anniversary party at Bailey's Taproom. Angelo has lined up a bunch of possibly once-in-a-lifetime beers -- including six fresh-hop ales -- so pace yourself at Oaks Park and save some room for Bailey's.

Carla asked me yesterday morning how many fresh hop beers I've tried so far this year. I came up with 13, but I'm not a morning person, so there were 7 more that I forgot about until later. Then I applied myself at Belmont Station last night to bring the total up a little more, to 25. That's without the aid of a Fresh Hop Tastival -- I didn't go to the Hood River Hops Fest last weekend. Here's what I've tried so far:

• Deschutes Fresh-hopped Mirror Pond
• Full Sail Lupulin (Crystal)
• Laurelwood Hop Bale Pale
• Walking Man Fresh Hop IPA
  
• Bridgeport Hop Harvest
• Deschutes Fresh-hopped Hop Henge
• Full Sail Lupulin (Cascade)
• Widmer Hopturnal Emission
• New Old Lompoc Crystal Wheat
• Lucky Lab The Mutt
• Barley Brown's Roadside Fresh Hop
  
• Upright Fresh Hop of Belair
• Double Mountain Killer Green
• Hopworks Bike Beer
• Oakshire Harvest Ale
• New Old Lompoc Crystal Missile
• Deschutes Hop Trip
• Laurelwood Fresh Hop Organic Goodness
• New Old Lompoc Millenium IIPA
• Sierra Nevada Harvest Ale
• Rogue Chatoe Wet Hop
• Deschutes King Cone
• Hopworks Sodbuster Pale Ale
• Hopworks Fest of Fury
• Oakshire Conundrum Cascadian Dark Ale

Not one of those is a bad beer. I suspect that the specialness of doing a fresh-hop beer means that extra care is taken with these batches, which raises the quality level. Still, with such an embarrasment of riches, I can get a little picky, and say that Hop Trip and all the beers above it on the list are the beers that show the most fresh-hop character. The beers at the very top of the list are highly recommended: make every effort to try them before they're gone.

I'm proud of what I've been able to accomplish so far this season, but looking over the list, I see quite a few beers that I will set my sights on this Saturday at Oaks Park:

• Ninkasi Nugg E. Fresh
• Caldera Alpha Beta
  
• Three Creeks Santiam Hop Harvest
• Lucky Lab Das Moot Pilsner
• Fort George Cohoperative Ale
• Rock Bottom Hoodwinked
  
• Astoria Hoptimus Prime 2.0
• Amnesia Fresh Hoppalata
• Cascade Cascadian Fresh Hop
  
• Pelican Elemental Ale
• MacTarnahan's Fresh-hopped Amber (why not?)
  

What, no Roots? I guess I'll have to stumble down to the pub to check out this year's Hoppopotamus. And a couple years ago Mt. Hood Brewing brought a reasonable fresh-hop ale to the Tastival; I wonder why they've dropped out. Hopworks and Double Mountain have a couple more fresh-hop brews -- Crystal Method Pale and Fresh Vienna -- up their sleeve. I hope I have enough stamina to get to those also.

Are there any good fresh-hop beers out there I missed? Anything that really grabbed your attention?

How Good Is Deschutes?

Last week the Pennsylvania-based beer writer Lew Bryson posted a review of Deschutes Hop Trip on his blog. He was underwhelmed by what I consider to be one of the better fresh-hop ales each year, finding the fresh hop flavor to be too subtle. No big deal, everyone has different tastes, and I certainly wouldn't claim to have the most refined palate on the Internet.

What was surprising was the thread of comments following his post, where a few commenters had some really harsh words for Deschutes. It started off with a fellow from our own neighborhood, who said the brewery is a shadow of its former greatness. Another commenter opined that the brewery is now merely competent although it was once great; someone else went so far as to compare Deschutes to Miller High Life.

Since Deschutes is one of my favorite breweries, I want to sound off myself. I'm a little late: Jeff beat me to the punch yesterday by opening a discussion of this "Deschutes Backlash" on Beervana. But here goes...

I only moved to Oregon six years ago, so I don't have the history that some of the Deschutes detractors have. The "shadow of former greatness" commenter has fond memories of John Harris' tenure at Deschutes, and finds everything since that time to be boring. The "High Life" comment guy thinks Deschutes gutted their beers in 2003 -- the year I moved here, what luck. I don't doubt that John did a great job there, just like he's doing at Full Sail's Riverplace brewery right now. Heck, I bet Hammerhead tasted better when John was the first McMenamin's brewer, too.

But surely some good things have come out of Deschutes since the good ol' days, right? What about the superstar imperial stout, the Abyss? The Abyss is so highly prized that I was able to sell my empty Abyss bottle on Ebay last year for $15. Some of their other big beers are anything but boring: Mirror Mirror, Double Black Butte, Hop Henge, and -- for you sour beer sickos out there -- the Dissident.

Big beers in wax-sealed bottles are one thing, but the everyday supermarket beers from Deschutes are also at the head of their class. Inversion IPA has become my default six-pack. Black Butte and Mirror Pond may not be revolutionary, but you can pretty much count on any guest at your house -- beer expert or novice -- being able to enjoy one of them. So I was also shocked by another recent symptom of Deschutes Backlash: when the Beermongers opened last month, they didn't stock a single beer from Deschutes, despite carrying industrial brews like Coors, Bud, and Miller. Ouch!

Jubel Ale, a rich, creamy, roasty winter ale is on the shelves --and taps -- now. That first winter I lived in Portland, my neighbor Dave did a little dance when that year's Jubel came out, and the two of us got a little carried away, chasing from pub to pub in the rain on rumors that the Horse Brass or Rose and Raindrop had Jubel on cask. I still have a couple bottles of 2003 Jubel in the basement.

Chasing down cask Jubel is no longer much of a problem, now that there's a Deschutes pub here in Portland. As Derek pointed out not long ago, the pub always has several creative beers on tap in addition to the usual Deschutes lineup. Since it's fresh-hop season, I highly recommend the fresh-hopped Mirror Pond that's been pouring there. An amazing beer, one you'll remember for years. If it's on, the fresh-hopped Hop Henge is also a stunner.

So if Hop Trip or Black Butte -- or even the Abyss -- doesn't grab you, fine. But look at the range of beers put out by Deschutes, the awesome one-offs in the pubs in Portland and Bend, and the ability to produce mass quantities of high-quality supermarket six-packs. What's not to like about all that? Those pieces weren't all in place 10 years ago, so how could this be a brewery in decline?

Portland Beer Price Index: Autumn 2009

Announcing the results of the first Portland Beer Price Index (drumroll, please...): the average price of a six-pack of Oregon craft beer in Southeast Portland is $8.85. A 22-ounce bomber averages $4.90, and 16 ounces of quality draft beer will typically set you back $4.27. Not very fascinating information, but my real goal is to calculate the PBPI four times a year, so we can watch price trends over time. That might not turn out to be very fascinating, either, but from where I sit in the United States of $9 Six-Packs, I wish I could see the trend that took us here from five dollars or less.

Since the PBPI is based on regular retail and non-happy-hour prices, you can almost always get something a buck or two cheaper. In the future, I might also collect sale prices on the same day that I gather the regular prices, but I didn't want to get in over my head on this first mission. Here is what went into the index:

• Six-packs: Bridgeport IPA, Caldera Pale Ale, Deschutes Black Butte Porter, Full Sail Amber, Terminal Gravity IPA, Widmer Broken Halo
• Bombers: Hopworks IPA, Laurelwood Red, Lompoc C-Note, Ninkasi Total Domination, Pelican IPA, Rogue Shakespeare Stout
• Stores: Beermongers (bombers only), Belmont Station, Fred Meyers, New Seasons, Safeway (six-packs only)
• Bars: Bailey's Taproom, Barley Mill, Belmont Station, Deschutes, Green Dragon, Hopworks, Horse Brass, Lucky Lab, Vincente's Pizza
• SPE: Six-pack equivalent prices: bombers, $16.04; pints, $19.22
• Not included: bottle deposits, bartender tips

The retail beers were chosen to be respectable craft brews from a variety of Oregon breweries. It's a little Portland-heavy, but it does include things from eastern and southern Oregon, Bend, the coast, and the Gorge. I also wanted selections that were likely to be widely available. The brand-new Beermongers surprised me with a curve-ball, though: so far they only carry one of the six-packs on the index. I couldn't even choose substitutes from the same brewery, because they didn't have a single beer from Caldera, Terminal Gravity, or Deschutes (?!), and their only Full Sail was 12-packs of Session. Safeway -- less surprisingly -- also came up a little light, with none of the indexed bombers, and a couple of gaps in the six-pack list.

For the pint prices, I took the most typical price of a pint-like serving at the place, and converted it to an SPE price based on the glassware. The average of all of those is the $19.22 SPE reported above; then to make it intelligible, I converted it back to a price per 16 ounces, since that's the most common way for people to think of a pint (even though most of the time you're served a little more or a little less than that).

Notice that the bomber SPE isn't far from what you'd pay for pints in a bar. And that's the average, so it's really just barely below the most economical imperial-pint establishments: Lucky Lab, Horse Brass, and Bailey's. Tips will increase your costs, but some of the best beer specials around town come in way below the bomber SPE: Tuesdays at Roots ($9.47) or East Burn ($9.60), or Mondays at the Lucky Lab ($12.32). You could tip lavishly on top of that and still spend less than on bombers. Support your local pub!

Next quarter's PBPI will be out right around Christmas.