Honest Pints

I was tickled today to notice that the Portland Deschutes Pub now has a 0.5 liter fill line -- 16.9 ounces -- on their Irish-style pint glasses. Not only that, but their skinny half-serving glasses have a 0.3 l marker, and their tulip-shaped snifters have a line at 0.4 l. Admittedly, it's been a few weeks since I've been to the pub, but this seems like a new development. Thank you, Deschutes! You join the elite ranks of Belmont Station (0.5 l marker), Hopworks (0.4 l marker), and Brewers Union (20 oz. marker) who have a fill line marked on their glassware. Anyone else out there?

Marked glassware is really the way to go. I'm a big fan of Jeff Alworth's Honest Pint Project -- I even bought the T-shirt -- but Jeff doesn't require the glass to be marked, just that it have room for 16 ounces of beer:

The criteria for certification is simple: the pub must serve at least 16 fluid ounces for beers it labels “pints.” If the glass holds more than 16 ounces, fantastic. For certification, though, it must serve at least 16 ounces. You have to confirm this by measuring.

I get Jeff's honest pint point: if it's called a "pint", it should be 16 ounces. But that scheme goes too far, and not far enough. What I mean is, you'll rarely get 16 ounces of beer in a serving at Hopworks, but you'll know that you got at least 0.4 liters (13.5 ounces) if the beer is up to the fill line. On the other hand, a place might get certified by the HPP based on a picture of one instance of 16 ounces of beer, but how can you know how much you got in the glass you just ordered?

It's a minor quibble. The real villains are those establishments who serve "pints" in 14-ounce shaker glasses. Then you think you've got a pint of beer, but you're probably somewhere around 12 ounces. There's a one-syllable word for such a business practice: fraud. There's no enforcement against such short-changing, even though it's clearly proscribed by Oregon's Weights and Measures law:

618.096 Prohibited acts involving commercial weights and measures. No person shall:
...
(5) Sell, offer or expose for sale, less than the quantity the person represents of any commodity, thing or service.

Kudos to Deschutes for their new transparency. Support your local pub, and support the Honest Pint Project.

More Thoughts on 2009 OBF

There's probably not much more I can tell you about this year's Oregon Brewers Festival. I already wrote a bunch of picks and pans based on Thursday and Friday visits. Our houseguests from Austin -- Bobnoxious and family -- didn't arrive until Friday evening, so we made yet another foray into the OBF on Saturday, along with the brave or merely foolhardy faction of the neighborhood beer gang. The heat and the crowds eventually ran us off, though Bob and I stuck it out until almost 5. Despite the crowds, I love the OBF. Get there early and have a great time.

Saturday I tried to sample beers from some of the smaller Oregon and Washington breweries that I had missed on Thursday and Friday. Most of the offerings were disappointing, including several that I simply dumped out after a sip, but a couple of winners were the Kraken Imperial IPA from Old Market, and the Old Man River Oatmeal Stout from Riverport in far eastern Washington. Old Market's IPA was big, oily, and orangey, very well done. I haven't been a fan of their beer in the past, but their website brags about a new 15 barrel brewhouse, so maybe quality is on the rise there. Riverport is a new one on me, but their OBF stout was dark, roasty, and just right.

The other mission on Saturday was the OBF Buzz Tent. The Buzz Tent offered a kind of PlatinumPlus festival experience, where a $20 punch-card offered 8 tastes of special beers curated by beerfest guru Preston Weesner. You had to show your card to get admission to the tent, which offered a shady, grassy respite from the bigger crowds in the main tents. With no lines -- or very short ones -- and some of the brewers on hand to discuss their featured beers, the only thing it lacked was restroom facilities.

Only 1000 Buzz Tent tickets were to be available for noon-4:30 sessions on Friday and Saturday. But the tickets didn't sell out this year, and Saturday afternoon Ron Gansberg was standing at the gate trying to hawk some more of them, and on Sunday no ticket was required, just double tokens for tasters -- hey, that's cheaper than the $2.50/taste with the cards. It was an interesting experiment, and according to Preston it will be back with improvements next year.

Talking about the buzz tent prices, it's interesting to compare the six-pack equivalent prices of the various OBF options. By far the most reasonable SPE is for the single-token 4-ounce taste: $18. That's really not bad, practically like happy-hour pub prices, maybe cheaper when you consider that most servers go a little over the 4-ounce line. On the other hand, the 4-token charge for a full mug is less of a deal. In my unscientific Pyrex experiment, an OBF mug brimming with water was just barely 14 ounces. Let's say that a beer pour is 13 ounces, then the SPE is $22.15. The buzz tent samples were quite a bit more expensive: SPE of $45 -- that's just slightly more than the SPE for strong special beers at the Green Dragon, but a much better deal than 3-4 token samples at the Portland International Beerfest. [Update: Hops and Barley Blog has an ingenious solution to the full-pour problem. Best of all, you can apply it at any festival where the SPE of a taste is less than that of a full pour.]

To sum up, here are some things to keep in mind for future OBFs:

• get there early -- preferably Thursday or Friday -- and beat the crowds
  
• full mugs are not as good a deal as single samples
• buzz tent is a good way to get out of the crowd and taste some special stuff

First Glance at 2009 OBF

This will be a pretty telegraphic post, just to get you some quick information early on in the 22nd Annual Oregon Brewers Festival. I just got back from trying a few beers, here are some thumbs-ups and thumbs-downs:

Thumbs-up:

• Hopworks Rise Up Red: malty red with over-the-top hops
  
• New Belgium The Trip: orange scent with flowery bitter flavor
  
• Grand Teton Bitch Creek ESB: dark and flowery with a bitter edge
• Firestone Walker Union Jack IPA: malt and hops in perfect balance
• Three Creeks Stonefly Rye: mild and smooth but full-bodied
  
• Rock Bottom Eat a Bale o' Hops IPA: orangey and not too bitter
  
• Dogfish Head Festina Peche Berliner Weisse: refreshingly tart, not SweetTart
• Chuckanut Dortmunder Lager: tasty Helles-style beer, nicely crisp
• Vertigo Razz Wheat: very raspberry, nice and full-bodied
  
• Bridgeport Stumptown Tart: not sour, just lovely cherry beer

[Update (Saturday morning):

• Boulevard Tank 7 Farmhouse: dry and fruity with a long bitter finish
• Beer Valley Leafer Madness: big, hairy IPA
• Elysian Loser Pale Ale: nicely balanced strong ale (reminds me of big Rogue ales)
• Stone Cali-Belgique IPA: Belgian-y with nice hops

Second opinion: DoSiR's OBF must-have list.
]

The Trip is a collaboration with Elysian, and is a lovely must-try beer. If you need a lighter beer, the Chuckanut is definitely worth trying -- also it turns out that Green Dragon founder Jim Parker is assisting with the brewing there. Even if fruit beers aren't your thing, go for the Vertigo and the Bridgeport. Tasty stuff. The Vertigo has an amazing watermelon-sunset color, and is very satisfying. Stumptown Tart is much stronger, but also a lovely blend of beer and fruit.

Thumbs-down:

• Green Flash Imperial IPA: (spoiled keg?) rotting vegetation smell/taste
• Great Northern Wheatfish Lager: eh, very bland
  
• Eel River Acai Berry: thin and thin
• Collaborator Saison Cristophe: cloying, esthery, banana-y
• Bear Republic Crazy Ivan Belgian IPA: a little mediciney in the middle
• Cascade Lakes Blonde Bombshell: dull; I dumped mine
  

[Update (Saturday morning):

• Blue Frog Blonde Frog Ale: both medicinal and infected tasting (?!)
  
• Fifty Fifty Manifesto Pale Ale: thin and vegetal
• Lazy Boy Red Head: flat taste and flat carbonation
  

]

There was some consensus at the OBF media preview that our sample of the Green Flash might have been off, especially since some of us tasted it Tuesday at the Green Dragon and found it to be a wholly different and drinkable beer. So, you might choose one volunteer from your posse to get a taste and see if it's OK. The Collaborator Saison was disappointingly sweet; on the other hand, if you like German hefeweizens, it might work for you.

Anyway, that's just a quick first glance -- feel free to comment if you find another must-try beer.