How to Miss Two Beer Festivals

Even though there was some turmoil surrounding the North American Organic Beer Festival last weekend, I'm sure I would have made it over to check it out at some point, if I had been in town. But instead of enjoying the onset of Portland's brief season of beautiful weather, we have landed in the middle of Austin's siege against the upper end of the thermometer. It's not the right timing for a trip to Texas, but we had a wedding to attend, so off we went.

But aha! there was a beer festival in Austin that weekend also -- the GABF. Oh, sorry, not the GABF, just a GABF: the Great Austin Beer Festival. I suppose I would have gone to that as a replacement for the NAOBF, except that Brady and Sarah's wedding was scheduled at the exact same time. Truth be told, the GAusBF didn't sound very appealing. As far as I can tell from looking at the list of breweries, it was a distributor-driven juggernaut with a couple of local breweries thrown in at the end as something of an afterthought. Here's an example of how lackadaisical the festival was: they never contacted my buddy Lee who is the beer writer at the Austin Chronicle to tell him about the festival. [Note to Portlanders: the Chronicle plays an even more important part in peoples' entertainment planning than the Portland weeklies do.] Lee found out in a roundabout way, and wasn't offered any kind of media access to the fest.

There are a couple of reviews that give the festival a thumbs-up, but if you read between the lines, neither review is very enthusiastic, and commenters had some complaints. Sounds like not too bad of a festival to miss.

So that's how you can miss two dodgy beer festivals. First, leave your hometown on a festival weekend; second, have your friends' wedding scheduled at the same time as the beer festival in their town.

Update on the Cheese Bar

Several weeks ago I wrote up the Cheese Bar on Belmont -- a cheese shop that also has a rotating selection of five or six good draft beers and a few dozen nice bottled beers. While I said it was worth a visit, there were a few things I complained about. Since then, I've run into proprietor Steve Jones a couple of times, and also been back for another visit. Some of my issues have been corrected, in other ways I was just off base, so I want to talk a little more about the place.

On our first visit we ended up getting several $1 orders of crostini (4 pieces), to get through the cheese and meat plates we ordered. I complained that it would make more sense to offer baguettes instead of small, expensive toast. Well, it turns out there are baguettes available, and reasonably priced at that: $1 for a smallish "demi" baguette, or $3 for a typical very big baguette. The demi was worth about 4 orders of crostini, and makes a good accompaniment to a cheese plate or an order of house-blended potted cheese.

In the first writeup, I was also puzzled by the prices of bottled beer. Some of them seemed ridiculously cheap, others insanely overpriced, but the real confusion was on the take-home price, which subracted either $1, $1.50, or $2 from the price. Steve explained to me that the $1.50 premiums were a mistake that has now been corrected. The $2 surcharge should only be on big bottles -- those that two people would share at the bar -- and the $1 for single-serving bottles.

Steve also mentioned to me that the cheeses on the daily special are kept out at room temperature. That had been my other quibble -- I felt like the cheese we got on the first visit was served too cold. There's no way around it if you select your own cheeses -- they come straight out of the cooler, as they should. But if you stick to les fromages du jour, they'll be served to you at a tastier temperature. You'll get an explanation of the cheeses when they're served to you, but if you're like me it's so much new information and unfamiliar names that it tends to go in one ear and out the other. Maybe someday the cheese plate will come with a little printout that names and describes the cheeses, so you can remember them afterwards.

So the things that grated on me a few weeks ago turn out to be non-issues. One thing I would reiterate from the original post is that you'll have a much more relaxed time sitting at the tables than at the bar. Four of us sat at a table on this second visit, as opposed to two of us at the bar, and it made all the difference in the world. There's just too much activity on both sides of the bar for it to be very comfortable. I took a look at the back patio also, but I can't really recommend the couple of tables out there right now: they're in a tiny space loomed over by the back parking lot, not a very good atmosphere.

Grab a table, a beer, a baguette, and some cheese, and you'll have a good time at the Cheese Bar.

Portland Beer Price Index: Summer 2010

It's hard to believe that the days are only going to get shorter from here, since the clouds have kept the days from seeming long at all, but it's the summer solstice already. Here's the Summer 2010 Portland Beer Price Index.

• 6-packs: $8.73, up 2 cents
• 22-ounce bombers: $4.95, up 3 cents
• 6-packs (sale price): $8.25, up 12 cents
• 22-ounce bombers (sale price): $4.83, down 3 cents
• 16 oz. draft: $4.21, up 1 cent
• 16 oz. draft (happy hour): $3.51, up 3 cents

Generally, prices are up a tad, though bomber sale prices continue to fall. There's a little bit of restating going on with the retail numbers. At the time of the Spring 2010 PBPI, I complained that Safeway didn't stock enough of the beers in the index, and asked for suggestions for a replacement. Readers Jeff and Rick suggested the QFC at 55th and Burnside. It was a good call -- the fine beer selection at that store covered all the beers. Sometime in April, I recorded the prices at QFC, so the up/down figures quoted above are with respect to the spring numbers once QFC is factored in, which lowered the prices by 2 or 3 cents.

Speaking of restating, it looks like I may have to find a replacement for Pelican IPA. Neither QFC nor Fred Meyers had it this time. The wine guy at Fred Meyers said that Fred's hasn't been able to get it since Pelican moved to self-distribution. At QFC there was one bottle of Pelican Tsunami Stout and one of Kiwanda Cream Ale, both drastically marked down to $5, which leads me to believe that QFC is also discontinuing Pelican. For the index this time, I maintained the previous QFC and Fred's Pelican prices, and used the closeout $5 QFC price as its sale price. Since you guys were so good at finding me a replacement retailer, I'll ask your advice again. What would be a good bomber to replace Pelican? I'd like it to be an Oregon beer from outside of Portland, so the first things that come to mind are Oakshire and Heater Allen, though I'm not sure QFC has the latter. What do you think?

Time flies when you're having fun. Look for the next PBPI -- one year after the first one! -- around September 21.