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.

Off the Beaten Path #2

This is the second stop on my tour took me to the tiny Iowa town of Selma.  And it is small.  I honestly believe that there may be more different types of wine at this winery then there are people in the town.

Crane Winery, specializes in wines, "that grandpa used to make."  After visiting the winery I got the sense that Grandpa was a renegade fermenter.  The kind of man who separates the world into two groups, fermentable and fermentable with some added effort.  In other words, a man after my own heart.  It seems that wines are a kind of ongoing experiment.  At one point I asked the owner who was pouring me samples of wine if one of them was a blend. She smiled and shook her head, "Nope.  I there are no blends here.  If I blended wine, then I would have to remember what I did."  Grandpa would be proud.

So there is quite the selection here, and I'm not about to cover them all.  I don't think I even want to cover all the wines that I sampled.  Suffice to say that most of them tasted about how you would expect.  They were sweet with the heavy fruit flavors of whatever happened to be in the fermenter at the time.  For the most part, they were sweet but not overly-syrupy.  I'm not a fan of the sweeter wines, but most of these were pretty good.

Wickfields Whisper: A dry Norton like the one I found at Whispering Pines. This one was a whole lot better, though.  I'm not sure if it just had more time in the bottle, but the unique character of the Norton grape really came out in this one.  Earthy sweet caramel aroma.  The flavor is woody with cherry and blackberry fruit.  For those that like their wine sweet they have the Lockhouse, which is the same wine with residual sugars that clear the highest bar in street shoes.

Piestegal: Is a German-American word that evolved out of the Amanda colonies in Eastern Iowa for the Rhubarb plant. It comes from the English 'pie' and the German 'stengel' or stalk.  Piestengal is a Rhubarb wine that comes out of a long German heritage in the area.  This particular example had quite a kick to it.  There was a heavy alcohol flavor marking this wine as drink that would render a man horizontal after a couple glasses.  It poured almost clear and had some light tart and earthy flavors.  I'm still not sure whether I liked this or not and I think I would have been unconscious before I figured it out.

Restless Summer: Strawberry wine.  I don't think I have ever had a wine this sweet in my life.  Even the strange alcoholic Kool-Aid hell brews my fiance insists on bringing home have nothing on the residual sugars of this.  More functional as an ice-cream topping than as a drinking wine.   I mention it here because I'm interested to find out what fans of incredibly sweet wine think of this.

Chocolate Covered Cherry: Exactly what it sounds like, a cherry wine with cocoa added.  The cherry flavor hits right off the top, but it slowly melts away leaving a bitter, unsweetened chocolate flavor lingering in the back of the palate. Fun if only for the sheer novelty.

Off the Beaten Path Part 1: Iowa

I've got another wine tour that I've been meaning to write up.  This one takes us through the wilds of Southern Iowa where wine has developed a culture fairly unique to the area.  In the past I have lumped wine tours like this into one long post that took me several hours to finally compile and complete.  So, like the breweries, I've decided to split them up by individual winery and see how I like that format.
First stop on the tour is Whispering Pines Winery.

The Norton: Most of the wines produced by Whispering Pines focus on the sweet side of the palate.  "That's just what people like out here," said Steve Tucker who owns the winery with his wife Becki.  "We are experimenting with some drier wines, but the sweet ones are the ones people really like."
The Norton is one of those experiments.  It is a wine made from the Norton grape that is very popular Iowa and Missouri.  This particular wine was very young when I sampled it at the winery.  The aroma was yeasty, the flavor was very tart.  It gave me the impression of a wine that would be good eventually, but not now.


Village Red: This is a blend of two varietals, the St. Croix (75%) and the Froch (25%).  This is also one of their dry selections.  It is also a little bit tart with some spice notes and some pepper.  Like the Norton, I think it will improve with a little aging, but this was still a pretty good wine as it was.

Autumn Blush:  Moving into the sweeter wines now, this is a semi dry blush that the winery describes as a 'picnic wine,' although a good friend of mine would describe it as a 'breakfast wine.'  It is light in color and flavor and has a nice, refreshing quality.  There is a lot of grapefruit flavor here with some hints of light berry flavors and a crisp finish. 

Lakeside Red:  This is a heavier sweet red wine made with Concorde grapes.  The flavor is big and intensely fruity with some rich caramel notes in there as well.

Backroads Red: Similar to the Lakeside with a french Steuben grape added for it's peppery qualities.  This wine was heavy and sweet bordering on syrupy.  I didn't pick out a lot of spice, mostly I got a lot of dark fruit, cheery, raspberry, plum, etc. with a heavy caramel richness.

As I came to find out during my tour, fruit wines are big in this area. In the next post I will feature a winery who's claim to fame is an extensive collection of fruit wine.  Whispering pines had two:

Ramblin Rose: Tasted like a sweet cranberry juice.  Simple, but delicious.

Blueberry Bliss:  A blueberry wine mixed with a type of chokecherry that adds a lot of peppery spice to sweet, carmelly flavors of the blueberry.

The Pastime: Green Bay, WI

Title town brewery sits in downtown Green Bay in what was once the old train station for the Chicago and Northwestern railroad.  It stands as a relic to days gone by while playing a part in the new craft beer revolution.
I didn't have a lot of time to spend in the area, so my visit was quite brief.  So this will be a rather quick post.  I managed to sample three off their fairly expansive menu.

Johnny Blood Red: Carmel, malty aroma.  The flavor is sweeter and light but carries with it a decent sized body.  It's tastes like pilsner's bigger, fatter brother.

Hopasaurus Rex: Lemony citrus and piny aroma.  The citrus flavor is very light as compared heavy pine and floral notes.

Dark Helmet: This one has a aroma of coffee and roasted barley.  The flavor has a lot of the same characteristics, but with some smoke and some herbal and liquorice flavors.  The flavor ends dry with roasted barley and coffee.                     

The outskirts if not the fringe: Milwuakee, WI

I find myself back in Milwaukee.  Overall not a bad place to end up all things considered.  The last time I was here, I visited one of the downtown breweries.  This time I'm a bit farther out.  Okay a lot farther out.  In retrospect it might not be accurate to label this post as being in Milwaukee.  This is actually in a outlying communities that lie between Milwaukee and Madison.  But what the hell Milwaukee is close enough.

Delafield Brewhaus is kind of a strange place in the world of microbrewing.  The brewpub is located a long ways away from the major urban centers in a huge building.  The bar section off to the right as you enter is larger than most brewpubs I have visited.   Add to that a large section for restaurant seating and an additional space on the second floor for parties and overflow and you've got a pretty massive place.

Overall my experience was very good.  Our waitress was fantastic and fairly knowledgeable about the beer that they brew.  That being said, the beer was kind of average.  I had a tasters flight of three regular beers and two seasonals and none of them really stood out in any way.  With it's being 30 minutes away from either Milwaukee or Madison, it might be worth a trip out here once, but that's about it.

Leisure Beer: This is their version of the light lager.  There's not much to say about it other than it's very clean with a slight bitter bite at the end.

Sommerzeit Hefe Weisen: This one had a very spicy aroma with a lot of tropical fruit and banana.  The flavor profile didn't have many of these esters.  Really the only thing I could pick out was the heavy spice character of clove and coriander.  It was just too much.  I was glad I only had to finish a small glass of this particular beer and not an entire pint.  

Delafield Amber: This is the flagship beer and best-seller in the brewery. It's aroma is extremely light and the flavor has a watered-down taste to it.  It's slightly malty but not much more complex than that.

Pewaukee Porter: This beer starts off with a sweet caramel aroma.  The flavor adds coffee and sharp roasted barley.  It does have a slightly bitter back but it tastes like it comes from the black patent malt as opposed to any hops.

Naga Wicked: At this point we get into the seasonals.  It was at this point I discovered where the brewery had been hiding all their hops.  The aroma was absolutely bursting with citrusy hop character.  There was some additional pine notes in the flavor.  Those that like their beer hoppy should probably just stick to this selection.

Fruhlighzeit Malbock: There was some debate on the subject at the bar, but I am going to come right out and say it.  This beer smelled like feet.  It was one of those beers that I had to really wonder if that was the brewer's intention or if something had gone wrong somewhere.  The flavor however was very good.  It had lots of light berry and fruit flavor along with vinious character.  It finishes dry with no detectable hops.  

 

That was the end of the tasters flight.  As I looked over the beer menu I found a beer they had left off the flight... and for good reason.  It was their 13th Anniversary Rye Whiskey Barrel Aged Barleywine:  The aroma was wonderful.  I picked up port wine, caramel, raisin and chocolate notes.  The flavor adds more of a dark chocolate quality with a lot of nutty, woody flavor from the whiskey barrel along with a slight alcohol note.  This is defiantly a malt bomb, but the flavor complexities make it quite enjoyable.

Hidden Treasures: Ottumwa, Iowa

One might look at the above title and wonder where the hell Ottumwa, Iowa is. It is a valid inquiry, it doesn't readily appear on google maps and a reality show has not been filmed there yet.  For the record it is a small town about two hours south of Des Moines far away from the I 80 corridor.  Right of the main drag through the old downtown area stuck in an old beer distribution warehouse is Appanoose Rapids Brewing Company.   

Before I get too far into this post, I do want to give a little space to the State of Iowa and the Iowa Wine and Beer Promotion board.  They seem to have committed themselves to making information about the state's  breweries and wineries easy to find, and have beer by and large successful.   Brochures and maps are readily available throughout hotels, rest areas and other travel information booths and their website, www.iowawineandbeer.com, is more or less a one stop for all relevant information. 

It took me a few passes to finally fine the building.  The entrance isn't terribly well marked and is kind of stuck in a small corner at the end of the block.  Once I found it, I was impressed.  The interior is really cool, it has an old saloon feel to it.  Near the front door there are two old Aheuser Busch mosaic signs that have apparently been around since the 1800s when the building was a distribution center for the company.
"Nobody knew they were there," the bartender told me, "They were hidden behind a stack of wood when the owners first bought the place.  It was a neat little surprise."

The beer selection here is pretty basic.  At any given time they have three beers on tap, but on the day of my visit they only had two due to some equipment problems.

Appanoose Brown Ale

Appanoose Brown Ale: No detectable aroma.  Flavor is primarily malt with a raisin or dark fruit flavor.  It's very sweet with only the slightest hint of hops in the back of the palate. It's fairly light in body with a fizzy mouthfeel.

Appanoose Stout: The color of this beer looks more like a really dark brown than a pure black.  It has a strange, but very nice aroma that made me think of olives.  The flavor is very sweet and defiantly unique, I picked up notes of raisin, caramel and vanilla.  Nice creamy mouthfeel.