Portland Airport Pub Crawl

Beer options behind security at PDX have improved dramatically in the last few months. I was out there this weekend on my way to a Vegas wedding, and was happy to find that Rogue and Laurelwood have each recently opened new pubs at the airport. They both have a decent selection of their own beers, and a second, larger Laurelwood pub opening next week will bring the joy closer to more airline gates.

The Rogue pub in Terminal D replaces the frumpy old lounge that used to serve the same drab-yet-expensive burger/pizza/nachos as most other frumpy airport lounges. The previous occupant was branded as a Widmer place, but the food had nothing in common with the Gasthaus food, and they never served any unusual beers, just stuff from Widmer's supermarket lines. By contrast, the new Rogue place has some things you'd expect to see on a Rogue menu, like fish and chips, and various configurations of ground Kobe beef. (I always thought it was completely deranged to make hamburgers out of premium beef like that. Then I learned the true meaning of "deranged": Rogue also makes Kobe Hot Dogs, Kobe-Blue Cheese Meatballs, and Kobe Chili.) The permanent beer list is nothing to text message home about, but it's better than the old Big Gulps of Widmer Hefeweizen:

• Dead Guy Ale
• American Amber
• Kell's Irish Lager
• Shakespeare Stout (nitro)
• Mocha Porter
• Brutal Bitter
• Juniper Pale Ale
• Hazelnut Brown Ale
  

The good news is that they always have one of the "John's Locker Stock" bruisers on tap. They sold me a 12 ounce goblet of Charlie for $5, which is kind of nutty since I think the 16 ounce pints of everything else go for the more typical airport price of $6.25 (or $7.25 if you super-size it to 22 ounces). They have one more rotating tap, this weekend it was the Honey Orange Wheat from their Eugene brewery. Puzzlingly, they also serve Bud and Bud Light.

The Laurelwood pub in Terminal A has been open for a few months now, with nearly the same menu and beer selection as the main pub on Sandy. Even better, food and beer prices are the same at the airport as at the pub -- for a 16 ounce pint that's $3.95. There are a couple of drawbacks: the place is very cramped and uninviting, and -- unless you're flying Alaska -- it's far from the rest of the airport in the panhandle of Terminal A. Luckily, these two problems will be solved by a much bigger Laurelwood set to open March 4th in Terminal E. The beer list at Terminal A is:

• Mother Lode Golden
• Piston Pale Ale
• Hooligan ESB
• Free Range Red
• Boss IPA
• Tree Hugger Porter
• Space Stout
• Rotating (currently Vinter Varmer)

What about the part of the airport before the security check? Good things are happening there also. The Rose City Cafe is still there, and its little bar serves four or five different Deschutes ales, Bridgeport IPA, and Mac and Jack's African Amber from Redmond. There used to be a less fancy cafe next to it, which sold gunky airport pizza and had about 10 beer taps, mostly unmemorable, though they also served the Mac and Jack's. This has new been replaced with a Pizzicato Pizza outlet. My jaw hit the floor when I saw their beer taps:

• Double Mountain IRA
• Amnesia IPA (no website?)
  
• Willamette Brewing Amber
• Laurelwood Golden and Porter
• Hopworks IPA

Willamette is so new that I think I've only seen them at the Green Dragon. It's always good to see a new Hopworks tap spring up, and Double Mountain is a truly inspired choice, one of the best new breweries in the area. Nice to see Amnesia there, too.

So, no matter which side of the security cordon you're on at PDX, you won't have to compromise on quality to be able to fortify yourself for the outward journey or wind down after the return trip. The new pubs also give out-of-towners a little better taste of Portland beer culture than they got before. It's a very positive development for the airport.

The Other Super Dog

It would be great to have lunch every day at Higgins... get the lunch special or the burger, and have a cask-conditioned pint. But in these troubled times, when the "fiscal conservatives" who added $5 trillion to the national debt are overdrawn on their own bank accounts, some cheaper options are needed. Luckily, right around the corner from Higgins is SuperDog, a hole-in-the-wall hot dog stand that will pour you an Oregon pint for $3.75.

There's a little bit of local-food action happening, with a couple of Zenner's sausages on the list, a different homemade soup each day, and a condiment table laden with an assortment of Beaver mustards. The number of sausage/topping options is truly bewildering, but most of them ring up to $5 or less. The people are friendly, they'll wait patiently while you figure it all out.

On the other hand, the beer list isn't bewildering at all. They only have four taps, but they're good ones, again with a local emphasis. On my first visit, when I saw the Lucky Lab tap handle and asked which beer it was, I was given a classic "Well, duh" look. "Super Dog, what else?" Good choice. Super Dog is one of my favorite Lab beers right now, a nice big IPA. Besides that, they always pour Laurelwood Free Range Red and -- representing the world outside of Oregon -- Anchor Steam.

The fourth tap is dedicated to Klamath Basin Brewing -- whoa, that's obscure. Extra community service points for that! For a long time SuperDog had Klamath's Cabin Fever Stout, which I kept meaning to try but somehow always ended up with a Super Dog. Last week the Klamath selection was Drop Dead Red, which is a smooth and easy red ale, more like a less-hoppy version of the Laurelwood than bigger reds like Roots or Lagunitas.

That's the story of the other Super Dog: it's a friendly place for a quick cheap bite if you're near the South Park Blocks, and you can't go wrong with any of the drafts. If you need to save an additional dollar, after 4 PM you get $1 off your beer when you also order a dog.

McMenamins' Battle of the Belt 2008

A bunch of the Pub Nighters turned out Saturday to the McMenamins' Hillsdale Pub (photo lifted from McMenamins' website) to cheer on our local boy, Corey Blodgett, in the Battle of the Belt. The Battle of the Belt is an internal competition to decide which brewer will represent McMenamins' at the Oregon Brewers' Festival. Corey is local in the sense that he lives in the neighborhood and runs with the Pub Night crowd, but the Cornelius Pass Roadhouse where he brews is so far from my stomping grounds that I rarely get any of his beers. One saving grace is that the CPR's tied house in town is the McMenamins' on Broadway, not that far away. But they don't always get his very coolest beers, like the oak-aged Double Red Ale that I got to try over the weekend, thanks to Brett, who snagged me a taste from the roadhouse. The Double Red was very nice, compares really well to Ninkasi's Believer. I like that style a lot.

Every year, there's been some conflict that kept me from going to the Battle of the Belt. So I was very happy this year that Carla and I got to hitch a ride with Dave and Jill and little baby Vaughn and cast a vote for Corey, not to mention actually taste some of his beer. Corey and fellow CPR brewer Chris Oslin's entry was "Rose City 'Til I DiePA" -- maybe work on those beer names, guys -- which was a delicious IIPA made with organic malt. Just one kind of malt, does that make it a single malt? Consulting my notes here... "awesome IPA". Well, that's my usual way with words for these things. I can expand a little by saying that it was very well-balanced, hoppy without getting too bitter. Smooth and strong.

You get to vote on three beers at the battle, and my other two votes went to High Street's Schneeflocken (notes: Belgian tripley, good), and Lighthouse ORator (notes: bourbony, good). Hmmm, looking back over the program, those are strange comments on those beers, since the ORator doppelbock didn't have anything to do with bourbon, and the Schneeflocken was a Dunkel Weisse, more Alpine than Low Country. Harry Sanger was the brewer of the ORator and Lane Fricke was the Schneeflocken brewer.

We were impressed at how many good beers were poured at the battle. There were some completely bad ones -- we debated which toilet cleanser one of them tasted most like -- and there were some that were too, well, McMenamins'-flavored. But some of them were really good:

• Dad Watson's Pale Rider (American Pale, by Brian Lawrence): nicely bitter
• Fulton Old 32 (NW Strong, by Chris Haslett): good & strong
• Roseburg Station 'M' (Strong Ale, by Tom Johnson): maltily good
• Hillsdale Madman Jack's (Insane Pale Ale, by Matt Carter): good IPA
• Oak Hills My Favorite Things (NW Pale, by John Keane): good & very hoppy

The name "Pale Rider" brings back old Austin memories. Celis briefly made a Pale Rider Ale in collaboration with Clint Eastwood, with proceeds donated to charity. Hilarious advertising slogan: "You didn't expect Clint Eastwood to make a salad dressing, did you?". The Dad Watson's definitely has a 2008 Northwest flavor instead of a 1998 Texas one.

Another highlight was meeting Corey's dad Walt, who flew in from Milwaukee for the festivities. For whatever reason, the winner of the Battle of the Belt won't be announced for a few more days. A good time was had by all, and I hope to make it back next year.

Update [2008/02/25]: McMenamins' finally announced the winners: Hillsdale 1st place, CPR 2nd place, Fulton 3rd place. Sounds like a home-field advantage to me, but there's no denying that the three winners were excellent ales. Congratulations to the brewers!