Mighty Mites 2011

The Mighty Mites small beer festival that was held Saturday at Coalition Brewing was a phenomenal success, at least from the perspective of the festival-goers. There could have been a little more shade, but the beers were fantastic, they didn't give you a hangover, and there were no lines to speak of. I expected a bigger attendance than there was -- hopefully Coalition at least broke even for their effort.

The collection of 18 beers, half of which clocked in at under 4% ABV, was curated by Beervana's Jeff Alworth. Note that 4% ABV is 3.2% ABW -- yes, that 3.2%, the reviled number that is still the limit for grocery store beer sales in several states.  The Mighty Mites beers were a far cry from those blander-than-usual industrial lagers.  I restricted my sampling to the sub-4% brews on the list -- with one exception for the lovely 4.4% Stone Levitation Ale -- and there wasn't a bad one in the lot.  Some favorites:

• Brewers Union Local 180 Little Sir John Ordinary Bitter: smooth, light roasted malt flavor, pretty hoppy
• Hair of the Dog Little Dog (Fred and non-smoked Adam) Small Beers: light body but plenty of flavor, and tons of hops
• Lompoc Brewing Voodoo Mild: perfectly dark and bitter
• Beetje Brewing The Knoll American Pale Ale: light body, very nice bitterness
• Block 15 Berliner Weisse: refreshing and tart, but not too tart

As I said, I didn't have a bad beer at the festival, but those stood out for me.  I was mostly doing one-ticket samples, though I did venture back for a full -- well, almost full -- pint of Little Sir John pulled from Ted Sobel's mobile beer engine.  That was some good drinking.

The atmosphere at Mighty Mites contributed to the good time.  Everything was very casual:  no wristbands, bring your own mug or get handed a compostable cup, generous pours, no lines and no silly festival whooping.  There was no entry fee or penalty, just buy as many or as few tickets as you wanted.  Interestingly, many of the pourers were the brewers themselves, as in the photo at the right where you have (from left) Ted from Brewers Union, Alan from Hair of the Dog, Mike from Beetje, and Krister, one of the brewers from soon-to-open SE Portland brewery Base Camp.  There were three people from Base Camp pouring at once during the early afternoon: Justin and Faye joined Krister.  Nice community service, guys.

It's worth talking about the Little Dogs.  As you may already know, they are small beers made from the second runnings of the malt used in Hair of the Dog's giant flagship beers.  Great way to reuse and recycle, and it lets Alan squeeze another dollar out of his malt bill.  They're also very tasty beers, thanks in part to the lavish dose of hops administered to them.  The two on tap at Mighty Mites were Little Fred -- made from a batch of Fred, of course -- and Little Adam, but not the smoky Little Adam that has been served in the past at the HotD tasting room.  Alan explained that his runs of Adam consist of five parts smoked malt to one part dark (not smoked) malt.  The Little Adam at Mighty Mites -- also currently on tap at the tasting room -- is a small beer made with the unsmoked part.  I love the smoked version, but there was also something special about this unsmoked one -- you got more of the beer and hops flavor instead of the smoke gimmick.

There were a few breweries that I was surprised were not represented at the fest.  Hopworks has a wonderful hoppy session ale called Cool Grand that would have fit in perfectly; the Lucky Lab has been known to dabble in the light arts also.  Surely big boys like Deschutes, Widmer, and Laurelwood would also jump at the chance to do something special for a fest like this.  Not that there wasn't enough good beer, but if small is beautiful, the more the merrier.

With all the recent attention on "session beers", it's high time Portland had a festival of this kind.  It's fitting that Jeff had a hand in it: he first evidenced a desire to throw a small beer fest in Portland over two years ago at the bottom of this post.  By that time Lew Bryson had already instigated session beer festivals in Philadelphia in 2007 and 2009.  Of course Lew has been a vocal proponent of lower-alcohol beers for a long time, but it's nice to see that Portland has now jumped on the bandwagon in a serious way.  Kudos to Jeff and Coalition for making Mighty Mites happen, and let's hope it will become an annual event.

Honest Fresh Hops

The hop harvest season is upon us. This is one of my favorite times of the beer year, and it's the reason I started It's Pub Night in 2007.  The last couple of years, Deschutes' fresh-hopped batches of Mirror Pond have been so good that I can't shake the feeling that it is the best beer anyone in history has ever been privileged to taste.  This year they're actually going to bottle it, so people outside our little lupulin bubble are going to get to try it for themselves.

It doesn't stop with Fresh-Hopped Mirror Pond:  there are plenty of excellent fresh-hopped beers made in the Northwest and elsewhere.  Enjoy them while they're fresh!

Every rose has its thorn, however, and the thorn in fresh hop season are those breweries that label their wares as Fresh Hop beers, when 100% of the hops in those beers have been dried.  Sure, they're the first hops of the season.  Sure, most Fresh Hop beers contain some dried hops as well.  But if all the hops in a beer have been dried, don't call it a fresh hop beer.  Last year I got so worked up about this that I had to follow up my Attention! Dried Hops are NOT Fresh Hops with a second rant about fresh-hop fakery. The breweries that I know faked it last year are:

• Hales
• Hopworks
• Sierra Nevada
• Widmer

I got a hint from Widmer that they might do a true fresh-hop beer this year; let's hope Hopworks will also get it right. Sierra Nevada does make some of their Estate Harvest ale with fresh hops, but most of the Harvest Ale is done with hops that have been dried.  SN pushed it even further last year, labeling Celebration Ale as "A Fresh Hop Beer".  They make a sophistic distinction between "dried hops", "fresh hops", and -- this is clever -- "wet hops".  As I said last year, do you go into the grocery store and ask for "wet parsley", or do you ask for "fresh parsley"?  Wouldn't you be surprised if you asked for "fresh fish", and you were handed a dried cod?  "I'm sorry, I didn't know you wanted wet fish.  This one was freshly dried as soon as it was caught."

Talk to your local brewers, and insist on honest fresh hops.

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Lucky Labrador Hop Harvest

This coming Tuesday, August 30, 2011, you are invited to participate in one of the sweetest and most rewarding events you can attend in Portland: the Lucky Lab Hop Harvest.  It's basically a shucking bee held on the patio of the Hawthorne Lucky Lab.  People donate their homegrown hops for inclusion in the Lab's fresh hop beer -- aptly named "The Mutt" since its hop parentage is completely unknown and very mixed up.  This year's Hop Harvest starts at 5:30 PM, a little later than in previous years, so you don't have to play hooky to join in the fun. If you have hops in your yard that you don't plan to brew with, bring the vines in, preferably within a few hours of cutting them down.

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Hood River Hops Fest

The Oregon Brewers Guild teams up with Oregon Bounty each year to put on a few Fresh Hop Festivals around the state.  The first one is always the Hood River Hops Fest, and the selection in Hood River always seems to be broader than that at the following fests.  It's happening October 1, 2011, noon to 9 PM, between 5th and 7th Streets and Cascade and Columbia Streets in downtown Hood River.  Minors are allowed until 6 PM.  For being such a fresh-hop fiend, it pains me to say I haven't been to the Hood River fest before, but I plan to go this year.

Moeder Lambic Fontainas, Brussels

It was the last night of our European vacation, and we were in Brussels for less than 24 hours.  We took a family stroll around the Grand-Place, and once the girls had been nourished by bland cheap pizza slices, they announced they had no intention of hanging around with Carla and I as we sat around enjoying some Belgian beers on the last night of our trip.

That turned out to be a good thing: with the girls in tow we probably would have just hunkered down at someplace like the Delirium Café in one of the crowded alleys off the main square.  Instead, we dumped them off at the hotel, and wandered over to the stellar beer bar Moeder Lambic Fontainas, around the corner from the famous statue of the little peeing boy.  It's just off a fairly busy boulevard, but separated from it by the sleepy Fontainas square.  The interior was rustic and comforting, but since the weather was finally beautiful for the last day of our trip, we sat outside on the airy patio with most of the other patrons.

As you might have guessed by the name, Moeder Lambic has quite a selection of sour Belgian ales in the Lambic and Gueze categories.  I'm far from expert in those kinds of beers, so it seemed novel and exciting to see on the menu that not only do they have a fair number of those wild ales on tap, they also have several of them served on cask, like the Drie Fonteinen Kriek in the picture here.  If you know what you're after, the bottle list evidently has a lot of good choices also.  A party of serious gueze lovers at the next table from us had a couple of vintage bottles brought out in wicker baskets.

Even if you aren't attracted by the sour selection, there are plenty of taps of other Belgian styles, plus 15 rotating guest taps.  When we were there, the guest taps included a hefeweizen, a rauchbier, and a pilsner all from Germany, a Dutch tripel, an Italian cask ale, and even something from France.  Carla doesn't care for most Belgian beer, and certainly not sour beer, but she lived happily off the rotating taps, first with a Viven Imperial IPA, and then with a Mikkeller Citra single-hop.  Viven is an impressive brewery -- we had really liked the porter when we tried it at Cambrinus in Brugge, and the IIPA was very solid, leaving Carla a little disappointed in her Mikkeller.

Service was very friendly; our waitress replied smoothly to Carla's English, the Flemish of our gueze-drinking neighbors, and my rusty French.  A small bowl of roasted barley appeared on the table as something to crunch on as we drank our beer, but we also ordered a salad and a cheese plate from the menu, and both were excellent and reasonably priced.  Decent portions:  I'm usually a clean plate guy, but I had to leave some cheese behind.

There is obviously a lot more going on in Brussels than just this one place.  I had been hoping to get there early enough to take the fabled self-guided tour of Cantillon, but it didn't work out that way.  There is another, older Moeder Lambic location, but the Beer Advocate reviews seem to favor the Fontainas location we went to.  I recommend it, especially if you're a sour ale fan, but even if you're not.