Beer Review Generator

I tend to recite the caption of this James Thurber cartoon whenever someone asks me if the wine is good. It's a stale joke; wine criticism has come a long way in the last 70 years or so. Good beer snobs have now adopted some of the modern wine-snob vocabulary, and have settled into a typical phrasing that lends itself easily to mockery. That's where I come in. Presenting the It's Pub Night Beer Review Generator:

The beer I'm reviewing is:

GoodBadEither

It has a:

Big headSmall head

Its color is:

LightAmberDarkAny

If the button doesn't work, click over to It's Pub Night, it works there!

Please forgive me, Beer Advocates and Ratebeerians. The Beer Review Generator is obviously my way of lampooning your subculture. Don't take it the wrong way -- I'm glad that you're taking beer so seriously. You're inspiring brewers to greater heights, and creating an important part of the beer culture. The Beer Retard may call you "beer douches" -- his Thurber-meets-MS Paint cartoons are pretty funny -- but the truth is I could read beer ratings all day long. In fact, as simplistic as the Generator is, I could keep pushing the button and reading its reviews all day long, and I wrote the stupid thing. The vocabulary and cadence of these stereotypical beer poems has its own brain-candy deliciousness.

Which brings me back to skepticism. How useful are these wine-talk screeds about beer? It's exciting to read about a beer's "Sexy full-bodied palate, with just a hint of plum and orange", but does that really tell me whether I'd like it or not? I doubt it, and that conviction grows stronger as I idly amuse myself by reading one artificially-generated review after another. What I would like to see more of in beer criticism -- including my own -- is analogy. Something like "This beer is like an over-hopped Young's ESB", or "It reminded me of a cross between Sierra Nevada Celebration and Duvel". Describe a new, rare, or regional beer in terms of other beers that aficionados have been exposed to or have ready access to.

Play around some with the generator. I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

New Stuff at the Green Dragon

It's always a shame when a pub takes down their dartboard. Dave and I were planning to throw some darts at the Green Dragon last night during the New Old Lompoc meet-the-brewer, but the board was gone. I was astonished by what took its place: a row of 30 gleaming beer taps! No, it won't be a self-service area. At some point a second bar will be installed there, and the new taps will serve up the house-made brews and others from around the Rogue Empire.

Now that I look at my pictures from the Firkin Fest last weekend, I see the taps were there. I didn't notice them at the time; maybe they've been there for a while? It's a nice development, but I hope the Dragon will find a new place for the dartboard. They should move the little-used shuffleboard and put three or four dartboards up along that wall.

A few more Green Dragon innovations to report:

• A cask-conditioned offering
• Growlers filled again
• A selection of bottled beer
• Beer souvenirs for sale

The first cask to go on the new beer engine is Hopworks IPA. The growler refill price is complete madness: $17-$18 depending on the beer (six-pack equivalent: $19.12-20.25). No thank you. I didn't pay much attention to the bottles in the cooler, but I think they had a few Rogue offerings and some spendy Belgians. It looked like they had a to-go price and a drink-here price.

The souvenir stand is interesting: you can get the hat and t-shirt not only for Rogue places, but for a few other Oregon breweries -- I seem to recall seeing Amnesia merchandise as well as Full Sail. That's team spirit! As far as I can tell, merchandise is the only discount that you can get at the Green Dragon by flashing your Rogue Nation identity papers.

Just a quick note about the Lompoc tasting. The braggot they brought was interesting, but not something I'd reach for very often. There was an antiseptic smell and taste to it that might have been intentional or might not. For me the highlight of the evening was the 2007 Fresh Hop Red. I didn't expect a beer that old to keep much of the fresh-hop goodness, but it did and it was beautiful. It was a little maltier than the 2008 version they also brought. 2007 was the year of my most manic fresh-hop mission, but somehow I missed Lompoc's fresh-hop red that year. I asked the brewer Brian if it was the same beer as their Harvest Man, but he said no, that's a different brew, and the fresh hops in Harvest Man are actually ones that had already been used in another of the fresh-hop beers -- interesting concept. Mmm... fresh hop beer. Only six months to wait.

OBG Firkin Fest 2009

Carla and I had a nice time at the Oregon Brewers Guild Firkin Fest Saturday at the Green Dragon. Thirteen cask-conditioned beers poured by gravity from the keg; two more beers pulled through sparklers on Brewers Union proprietor Ted Sobel's nifty mobile beer engine. I had missed Portland's first firkin fest last year, glad I got in on the second annual this year. We went to the first of the two limited-attendance sessions. It didn't look like all 200 spots in our session were filled, which made for a very relaxing event: no lines, no waiting, no jockeying for tables. What was the second session like?

There wasn't a bad beer in the house, but some of them were positively beautiful. My favorites were the Rock Bottom Maltnomah Porter, the HUB 150 IPA from Hopworks, the Brewers Union North Fork Ordinary Bitter, and the Broken Paddle India Black Ale from Full Sail. It kind of pains me to single those out; as I type the names I keep thinking of others I could add to the list. That's how nice the selection was.

Rock Bottom is a place I rarely go, but I really need to make the effort: Van Havig turns out some brilliant beers. My favorite beer of the fest, Maltnomah Porter is one of the standards at Havig's Portland branch of the chain; this cask version was perfectly smooth, a little sweet but not cloyingly so, dark and satisfying with no burnt flavors and little bitterness. Opinions vary, however, and through the magic of Twitter I got instant feedback from someone who found it was his least favorite.

Brewers Union didn't have to do anything special for the firkin fest. All of the beers Ted brews there are cask-conditioned English-style ales. He's been open in Oakridge, Oregon for over half a year now, but this was my first chance to sample his wares, since I'm such a walking-distance-only pub-goer and Ted doesn't easily let his kegs out of his sight -- "they're like gold to me", he said. A stickler for correct handling of his ales, he set up his two firkins at the Green Dragon a day ahead of time to allow them to settle after the ride to Portland, and he served them at the fest himself. The North Fork bitter was fantastic: malty and a little fruity with an Oklahoma-friendly alcohol content of 3.5%. His molasses stout -- called That Dark Beer -- was delicious also, dark and roasty.

Being an unrepentant meddler, I assured Ted that Geoff at Bailey's Taproom would undoubtedly work with him to offer the beer to Portlanders in the right condition. That backfired later when I introduced the two and questions came up of stillage and how to serve the ale at 50° at Bailey's. Keep your fingers crossed that Geoff or someone in town will jump through the hoops to get BU brews to Portland. Meanwhile, it's definitely worth a detour if you find yourself in that part of the state. You can also check out Ted's entertaining blog about the hazards of peddling real ale in a small town.

Coincidentally, I had tried both the HUB 150 and the Broken Paddle IBA earlier in the week in their non-cask incarnations, which are on tap right now at Hopworks and the Pilsner Room, respectively. Both are very tasty, but the cask versions added a depth of flavor that made them all the more satisfying. In another coincidence, beer writer Abe Goldman-Armstrong was serving the Broken Paddle during the first session. Abe is on a mission to get people to use the term "Cascadian Dark Ale" instead of India Black Ale, since the style originated in the Pacific Northwest and has nothing to do with other ales traditionally called Black Ales, and certainly nothing to do with India. Hail Cascadia!

Big thanks to Brian Butenschoen of the OBG for organizing the firkin fest. And for giving my own petty name crusade a victory by not calling it a Tastival this year.