The Great Northwest Brewery Tour: Day 2, Corvallis Oregon.

They still have phone booths, what's up with that.

As a University of Oregon alum, Corvallis has always been that 'other city' on the I-5.  A bastion of (what passes for) civilization in the no-man's land between Eugene and Portland.  As such the ins and outs of the city remained very much unexplored for me until now.  It was still in Oregon, so clearly there was a brewing culture at work, but I always kind of assumed it was a couple of Granite City's and a lone nutcase just outside of town with a bag of barley, a bathtub and a dream.

I'm not saying that it was a fair assumption.   I am saying that college rivalries are what they are, it helps sell more college-related swag which helps keep otherwise bitter and unemployable professors tenured, and thus keeps them from interfering with the productive world.  It's not a great system, but it works so don't screw with it.

Now that I've been there, I won't say that I'm ready to take back every bad thing I ever said about the city, but I am prepared to respond with any Corvallis-related badmouthery with a shrug and a cursory comment about the quality of their beer.    You don't have to thank me, people of Corvallis, you've earned it.

Block 15:  Out of all the breweries we visited, (and there were quite a lot) I'm not ready to say that this one was the best, but it was definitely in the top five.  Not only were the beers consistently good, but they do things with the beer that are just kind of cool.  It doesn't always have something to do with novel styles or obscure ingredients (although there is a bit of that), but they just do things that are... well... kinda cool.  And because they are doing things that are kind of cool.  We were also lucky enough to have a server, (I think his name was Alex.  It's hard to journalize while having fun) who was exited to talk about all the kind-of-cool things that the brewery was doing.

Two bitter things.  The One Hop Wonder, and Gary

Okay, so standouts:  Among them was the One Hop Wonder.  This is exactly what it sounds like, and IPA brewed with one hop and, in this case it was the Centennial hop.   It had a light lemon aroma.  The flavor was surprisingly light and lemony that sort of rises and falls on the palate and leaves with almost no aftertaste.  In Oregon the blending of hops rises almost to the level of alchemy.  A pinch of this, a handful of that, a different hop to bitter, a different hop to flavor, a different hop to dry hop a different hop to call that hop and apologize for dry hopping that other hop's hop, and so on.  I don't think anyone does anything like this and just makes a beer featuring a certain hop variety.  And that is, say it with me now, kind of cool.

Also on the highlights reel was the Aborigonale.  It is a free-style ale, and what that means it that it was brewed without any real adherence towards the any particular style.  It's basically the kind of beer that sits in the back of the class, doodles in the margins and flips the bird at the other beers when they are not watching.  The aroma has just a hint of light fruit while the flavor starts sweet with light fruit, malt and caramel and slowly moves to grassy and then some slightly spicy flavors.

Of course the absolute highlight of this brewery is the Belmont Station 15th Anniversary Beer.   Belmont Station in Portland holds a special place in the lore of Pacific Northwest Beer culture.  It was one of the first beer stores and place where many people started to explore the world of brewing.  Even now, it remains one of those places to find beer from all over the world.  It's a widely held belief here that if they don't have it at Belmont station, it probably doesn't exist.  So what's a beer brewed in honor of a beer store in the Land of Beer like?  It doesn't disappoint.  The aroma full of caramel and red wine or port, coffee chocolate and a hint of pepper.  The flavor has distinct sour cherry notes under a wave of sweet chocolate and caramel that ends with woody bourbon flavors. 

I could write more about Block 15, but I won't, at least not today.  Next, we stopped at Flat Tail Brewery.  I was originally disappointed, but as I look back I realized that they had one hell of an act to follow.  While they might not have been doing as many kind-of-cool things as Block 15, they had more then their fair share.  Their amber ale was very nice.  It had a lemony, floral aroma.  A sweet malt  combines with the flowery, almost lavender, notes in the flavor.
The Licentious Goat Herbed Double IPA had a grassy, lemon and minty aroma.  The flavor was on the sweet side with some lemon and a good amount of spiciness.  I found it very drinkable for a beer this size.

Okay, lean in close.  This is one of those 'best kept secret' things.  It's also one of those things that you won't find unless you are looking for it.  The only reason we found it was through directions given to us by our server at Block 15.  To get there you have to find the Old World Deli and then walk through the restaurant into a little shop in the back and you will find Oregon Trail Brewery.   This is a much smaller operation with about four beers on tap at any given time.   Among them was the Oregon Trail Wit, a wheat beer with a slightly spicy aroma along with lots of orange lemon and spices.  They also had a ginseng porter that had quite of bit of body with chocolate and coffee and an earthy finish.

As good as the beer was on this stop, the thing that really captured my imagination was the brewery itself.  It's not the highly-mechanized shiny stainless steel operations they keep behind glass at the local brewpub, nor is it a massive warehouse of fermentation vats and neatly labeled machinery.  Walking through this brewery, I was reminded of micro-brewing pioneers like Ken Grossman or Jack McAuliffe who quite literally built their operations from scratch.   It's a tough sight to describe in such a short space.  It's really one of those things that needs to be seen and experienced.

Our tour guide was Weston who happened to be working the brewery when we showed up.  It is possible that the only thing he likes more than beer is talking to people about beer.  Either way, we did a lot of both and had a blast doing it.  This was one of those stops that really defines a trip.
Weston is one of the gurus of the Brew of O, a student homebrewers club out of my old University.  It might be a good thing as it probably would have delayed my graduation further.  But still, they are doing some fantastic things out there and ensuring that there will be a fresh batch of dreamers, artisans and lunatics that will keep the microbrew revolution moving forward long into the future.   So here's a shout-out to Weston, Jon and everyone else at the Brew of O.   In the words of Hunter S. Thompson, "Good people drink good beer."

Cheers!

The Great Northwest Brewery Tour: Day 1, Bend Oregon

This is going to be a little different from normal.  It has been my custom up until this point, to select a brewery... maybe two if I was getting wild and crazy with the cream cheese, do a nice write-up and spew it forth for your reading pleasure.  I... can't do that this time.  See, here's what happened:

I am getting married in October to a wonderfully patient and loving woman who agreed to marry me despite the fact that I spend most of my time jetting all over hell and creation drinking beer and then coming home only to stink up our small apartment with the smell of mashing barley and fermenting wort.  (Obviously I'm using her opinion of the smell here.  I, on the other hand love it  If they made a scented candle called 'IPA brewpot', I would buy all of them  In fact, someone should make a candle like that.  There you go, there's a million dollar idea from me to you.)

My friends and I decided to mark my transition to married life in a different way.  Instead of the usual tradition that requires gallons of alcohol, a superfluity of strippers (the official group name, by the way and if it isn't it should be), a few illegal drugs and a donkey, my friends and I decided to hop into the car and set out on the Proud Highway on the Great Northwest Berwery tour.


Basically what I am trying to say is that there was a lot of beer, and a lot of drinking of beer.  My normal format would not only double the size of this blog, but probably drive me absolutely mad the process.  The whole trip was kind of a blur while it was happening and I found myself torn between the desire to interact with my friends and enjoy myself and my need to document the experience for posterity, so I some of the details are missing or lost in the haze of the whole experience.  So what I have done instead is kind of a highlights reel of the whole experience.  City by city, day by day this is what happened.

Bend, Oregon:
 It was once a rather quaint little logging town nestled at the base of the Cascade mountains.  Today it's a quaintess-based economy where displaced Portlanders, Seattleites and L.A. - type-humanoids gather to hike up mountains, and then barrel down those mountains balls-first on a bike, a pair of skis, a snowboard, a raft or some combination of the thereof.  After those activities, people like a beer to help sooth their battered egos, strained muscles and bruised genitalia.  Add to that equasion the Oregonian love of all things fermented and you've got one hell of a micro-brew culture.

Silver Moon Taster

We started at an old favorite of mine: Silver Moon Brewing.  The last time I was there it was six or seven years ago and Silver Moon was just a homebrew supply store with a few fermenters in the back and two beers on tap.  It's grown up a bit since.  The Hop Nob stood out here.  It was citrusy (and you're going to be seeing that word a lot over the next few posts), crisp and refreshing.  It was an IPA for someone who doesn't like IPA's.  The Boys in the Wood was also notable for it's berry, cherry caramel and herbal aroma.  "It tastes like a cherry Twizzler" said my friend Garrett, "Ti would go go with sperament gum."

Sweet Potato Fries and Tasters at Deschutes

It was on to Deschutes Brewing.  Fellow Northwesterners will immediatly recognize the name as well as their famous porter that has been cloned by so many breweries that it's almost a style in and of itself.  The brewery in addition has a mind-blowing assortment of additional brews on tap, but none really, really stood out.  The Quick Bane was light bordering on watery, but it had a nice sweet flavor with a slight cinnimon spice to it.  The Hop in the Dark was a dark ale that started off citrusy and became sweeter adding caramel and cholcolate flavors to the palate and finished with an earth, bitter aftertaste.  It is part of a new, and rapidly growing style out here in the northwest, but I'm going to wait until Portland before I dive into that particular snake pit.

Bend Brewing was next.  There was a clear stand-out here, the Elk Lake IPA with it's wonderful pine aroma and flavor, it just tastes like the air smells in this area of Oregon.  The Scottish heart was a close second with it's sweet dark fruit and red wine flavors that make for a wonderful Scotch ale.

10 Barrel is Bend's newest location for some local color.  The S1nistor Black Ale was nice, it was surprisingly light but it had lots of sweet caramel, coffee and mocha flavors going for it.  The Imperial Pray For Snow had some nice complex Belgian flavors to it.  I picked up some champagne, strawberry and white wine flavors.  It finished just slightly bitter with a fizzy mouthfeel.

Goodlife brewing company is a brewery that in every way celebrates the 'outdoor lifestyle' of this town.  (i.e. barreling ball-first down a mountain as discussed earlier).  The Good And Worthy deserves some note because it was one of the few Belgian wheat beers we encountered.  Far from the 'weak-ass lemonade' flavor as described by both of my friends Garrett and Gary, this one had lost of bannana, tropical fruit, clove and citrus peel and/or corriander spice.  The Indian Brown Ale was noteworthy with a sweet coffee, caramel flavor backed with some English hops.  Not as strong as and IPA should be, in my opinion, but pretty good.

Finally, we come to Cascade Lakes.   I was a fan of the River Red. It had a sweet, caramel and red wine aroma and a herbal hoppy, caramel and light fruit flavor.  The 30" was a close second with lots of raisen and dark fruit and malty flavors that finished just slightly bitter.

Brewery count: 6
Beer count: 50

And.... that was a nice warm-up.  Next it's on to Corvallis and then Portland and Seattle.