One of the best things about the maturity of the craft beer scene is the attention to labels that has developed over the past few years.
This list of favorite labels from 2018 is a fantastic example of what I mean: nobody was trying to push designs like this in 2000, and the scene is better for these developments.
But maybe you’d like to vote on some yourself? Well good news! Someone else is taking a poll here.
Sitting at Bailey’s is nice; I remember how much I miss this place. I wish there had been a spot on the rail so I could ask someone what they were drinking, but it’s a fairly lively Sunday, to my surprise. Still, I’m glad I’m here because I still love this environment and drinking here isn’t just a nostalgia fix, Bailey’s is just a pleasant spot to be.
There are times where I don’t have anyone else to blame but me and this is one of them. I picked the Ruben’s Blimey That’s Bitter Triple IPA-a little reward for a long week-and it is…vehemently bitter. Jaded 50-something bitter, except with pine and soap as the aftertaste. I don’t object to it: It’s been so long since I’ve had a proper glass of IPA.
It’s a LOT though, and maybe I should’ve gotten a smaller pour.
On one side is a couple on a date, speaking a language I don’t recognize and on the other, a couple dudes talking about the origin of heavy metal (for the record, it goes: Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Smoke on the Water, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, everyone else.)
I think I need to start coming back here for a bit.
Today’s second pint goes to the ACLU.
Fuz sent me this story, which was brand new to me, unfortunately. Apparently the lawsuit in question goes back to August 22 and got some attention back then, but clearly not nearly what it should have.
And while the first action is pretty easy for me; no more drinking Founders ale, until they’ve cleaned up their act, there is always the next question: What else can the consumer do?
We can share that story. Because I didn’t know about it for six months but if I had, I would’ve stopped drinking their beer long before. Others probably didn’t know about it either; it’s on us to help make these problems visible so that they can be fixed.
My friend Aaron sent me an article on hop seltzer which…I’m not here to tell other people what they should or shouldn’t like.
But I just don’t see hops working by themselves; for me, having that balance of malt and yeast matter. Otherwise it’s just bitter water. However, if brewers like it that means there’s an audience out there so who knows? Maybe we’ll see some commercially soon.
In a stroke of good fortune, I have found myself out at Pelican’s brewpub in Pacific City, and I’m going to try the Brute Lupes. (Which I had to say aloud to really get. I’m like that.)
The next wave of IPAs seem to be using champagne yeast to enhance the fruit notes while imparting a drier quality. The results are usually pretty interesting, though I’m not sure I’m convinced that they are awesome, at least not yet.
And the Brute Lupes isn’t the ale to convince me, either. It isn’t bad, by any means but it has a distinct orange juice flavor to it, as though it was blended together, instead of a distinct beer of its own. Now, since I’m at the Pelican brewpub in Pacific City, I have plenty of other delicious things to try. However, this ale? It’s just an interesting experiment and not one I’d jump on.
This pub is geared to be as cozy as it can be. Everything is in brown tones-even the light seems filtered through sepia. For a spot out in the middle of who knows where (the Oregon Coast) it really wants to make patrons feel warm, especially with the ferocious western coastline outside, clouds always ominous on the horizon at this time of year.
The remote location means that there isn’t anyone to ask-everyone is at a table tonight and there’s gentle disruptions, then there’s outright rude and I don’t want to cross that line.
I like it. I’d come back here en route to anywhere on the coast.
Second pint goes to Trans Lifeline.
Bridgeport brewing is big enough news that even people outside of Portland may have heard about it’s closure.
I can’t say I’m terribly surprised; murmurs get around the scene and Bridgeport had undergone at least two rebranding efforts to make their product more visually appealing. One rebrand isn’t unusual, more than that and one can’t help but wonder if everyething is OK.
The beers were solid though; stable mass market beers that you could bring to a party and not feel bad about, or that you might be excluding someone. They were always good, even if they were rarely great.
But as the Beervana blog pointed out, there seemed to be a lot of “Now that the dog has caught the car, what does it do with it?” Once they were owned by a company that didn’t seem to understand what it had or where to take it, Bridgeport didn’t branch off well; the only beer people talk about is the IPA, even though it is often spoken of in the past tense. “I used to love it,” I read or heard more than once. Yet, I thought they made other good beers too and went out of my way to try some, however one truth remains: The market is brutal and a lot of beer is out there.
I mean, Rogue still exists, FFS. ROGUE. A brewery that these days is known for making beer from the yeast found in the head brewer’s beard, and a shitty attitude towards its employees, than making a good product.
So it’s a bummer to see Bridgeport go, for certain.
This article is definitely a deep dive into the world of hops. It’s worth the read though if you have any interest in how hops affect beer, especially in the longer term. Cool stuff.
I walked to the Zoiglhaus tonight. I’m meeting friends and hoping to get there early so I can write a bit and I have succeeded. But the walk here was akin to wandering through a Mad Max territory, replacing winter for desert.
Portland does not do snow very well. It’s understandable; they haven’t had to until ’12, really, but now it seems like there’s at least one bad winter storm a year and the temps get downright chilly.
It has an effect on my brain, too; I go out walking during these conditions and I start to get very neo-noir detective, a not quite as tough character from a James Ellroy novel. “Empty bottles skidding across the pavement in the wind, the rattle of the skittering plastic sounding like the lost hopes and dreams of once a great city…” That sort of thing.
Fortunately for everyone, rain is expected tomorrow and we should be more or less back to our normal selves then.
There’s only one man at the rail this evening, and he bears more in common with a neo-Viking than with me; military close cropped hair and a blonde beard that goes halfway down to his sternum. He’s got a couple bottles of the schwarzbeir near him and I’m hesitant because smoke beers are hit and miss, but the theme is the theme. Into the breach, my friends!
“I’m having the Doppelsticke.”
Whew. Unfortunately, the concentration I spent on coming up with bad noir metaphors meant that I forgot to take a picture of my beer. It’s a cloudy brown, like overindulgent chocolate milk, served in a snifter style glass. There isn’t much head on it, which I always feel is a dubious sign.
The Doppelsticke is not giving me much in the nose, just faint malt roast, but it’s got some weight to it, sticky, sweet, a blend of coffee and chocolate, it both feels a little hot at 8.9% and finishes with a chalky quality that I can’t get down with.
I don’t hate this but it seems like something went awry here.
Today’s second pint goes to the Portland Rescue Mission.
I found this article on who Thomas Jefferson’s brewer was to be fascinating an illuminating.
Because of course Jefferson had a slave to do that work. I had honestly never thought about it before, which is one reason I liked that article so much. History can’t just be about who won: It also needs to tell us about the people who allowed others to win.
The nose has some of the milk qualities-and this beer has a fine, sustainable head on it that keeps providing some scent long after the pour.
There isn’t much milk in the flavor though, so I definitely needed to add a second pound of lactic sugars to this one.
There is, however, a decent viscosity to this beer; it’s dense but not oily, rich without being too heavy. It clears off the palate nicely, leaving a strong but not sharp flavor of coffee behind.
And this one definitely is drinkable. There’s a harsher element, a hard coffee flavor, that isn’t tempered by any sweetness and I believe it’s this flavor that lingers. It doesn’t spoil the beer in any way, though, it just makes that initial fluffy sweetness work out better.
Brew date: 9/9/18
Fermentables: 7 lb LME
Other: 1 lb Lactose
Hops: 1 oz Nugget @ 60
Yeast: Imperial Barbarian 4th use (d’oh! I really try to only use yeast three times, in order to keep the flavor profile stable)
OG: 1.10
FG: 1.022
Bottled 10/22
ABV: 10.6%
A pint for Dionysus 