Preserving history, Allagash style

When somebody writes a big ol’ history of small-batch, micro, whatever-you-call it brewing Sierra Nevada will be a chapter and Rhinochasers a footnote. But what’s clear in retrospect isn’t always clear at the time.

So I love it when I see stuff like a photo Rob Tod referred to on Twitter. Here’s the link to the picture of Mike Dixon of the Great Lost Bear in Portland, Maine, with the original handle that poured the first pint of Allagash White at the GLB on July 1, 1995.

Tod was a one-man brewery at the time. I sure as heck hope he knows where that tap handle is.

 

Session #29: 5 essential beer destinations

The SessionThis is my contribution to The Session #29 hosted by Gail and Steve from Beer by BART. The theme is “Will Travel for Beer.” Visit them for the recap of what others have to write on this topic.

Our family loves travel — even in the years we don’t visit 49 states, 9 Canadian provinces and territories, and 15 countries in Europe — and think pretty highly of beer, but there a few times we travel for beer. Because we don’t have to. If a good beer experience isn’t always available right around the corner then it’s usually not too long a drive. This ain’t 1994. Thus my real advice to you is travel a lot, visit national parks, brake for good pie, and the beer will take care of itself.

But that’s a bit short for a Session post, isn’t it? So here are five destinations to consider if you intend to combine travel and beer.

1. Neuhaus in a bit of northern Bavaria known as the Oberfplaz on German Reunification Day, the only day of the year all the Zoigl breweries in town serve their beer. By chance I wrote about this for Session #20.

2. Poperinge in the West Flanders region of Belgium for its Hop Festival, held on the third Sunday of September every three years (next one in 2011). This is not a beer festival (though an afternoon of Poperings Hommel Bier works fine), but you can go beer hunting the rest of your time in Belgium. So get there early to visit the hops museum, then find a place to enjoy the parade.

Parade at Poperinge Hops Festival

Residents from throughout the region, and as far away at Germany, dress up to participate the lengthy celebration that weaves through the town. Including a stunning number of children, such as those in the photo above, many in hop costumes.

3. The English countryside, on foot, “rambling” from town to town, sleeping, eating and drinking in pubs. We did this in 1994 and really need to go back.

4. Pelican Pub & Brewery in Pacific City, Oregon. The most beautiful setting for a brewpub in America. Great beer and food almost seems like a lucky bonus.

5. The National Homebrewers Conference. The June 2010 gathering will be in Minneapolis-St. Paul (the public parks capital of the world). Greg Noonan of Vermont Pub & Brewery said this back in 1998, but it remains true:

“When the homebrewers stop entering the profession, and the backyard breweries are squeezed out, then it will become stagnant. You gotta keep getting the guys who say, ‘Cool, I can sell the beer I make. I can do it.’ ”

The NHC is one look at the future of American beer. You don’t need to be a homebrewer to appreciate the week. Top-flight commercial brewers will be there to share secrets and serve beer.

 

Going dark and taking beer

We’re headed into Yellowstone National Park, then on to Grand Teton, so I’m not expecting to post here the rest of this month.

Don’t worry about us. We’ve got beer from Grand Teton Brewing and Snake River Brewing to get us through the thirsty moments.

See you in July.

 

On leaving Oregon: Thoughts of local beer

It’s hard to spend much time drinking local beer in Oregon and not get excited about what’s in the glass.

Not only in Portland — which was at the center of the recent “best beer city” silliness — but in Pacific City, Enterprise, Eugene, Hood River, Newport, Bend, Parkdale and, gee, the list never seems to end. Although a few breweries ship their beer far from home, and that’s a fair amount of the state’s production, the majority simply sell local beer to local drinkers.

Door to open fermentation room at Upright BrewingThis is not to say every beer was great, but Oregon’s been leading the nation since the mid-90s and somehow there’s still more local beer than there was not long ago, better and a wider variety, with more people drinking this beer in more places. Having visited forty-six states since we left home thirteen months ago I feel pretty confident typing there is no other like Oregon. And although I’m not sure why this makes sense to me, and appreciate it might not to you, leaving Oregon the other day made me stop to appreciate what I’ve seen elsewhere. I wouldn’t say other states are catching up so much as they are in hot pursuit.

In Florida, which has never been known for breweries making particularly frisky beer, suddenly you have Saint Somewhere Brewing and Cigar City Brewing making cutting-edge beers. In Kansas City, Boulevard Brewing recently released Two Fools Double Wit, its latest seasonal in the Smokestack Series, a beer that starts from a “sour mash.” In Pittsburgh, Scott Smith at East End Brewing used 60 loaves of rye bread to brew an old-style Russian beer called Kavass.

I grew up working for newspapers, so skepticism is second nature to me. I find it hard to believe that sales of beer that costs far more than people were paying a few short years ago can continue to be so robust given the current economy, but so far I’m wrong. We’ll discuss why another time. Instead consider something from Mike Kallenberger, Insights Manager at MillerCoors. “One thing I’ve learned is once a trend starts it can keep going longer than you’d expect,” he said. Discussing what’s referred to as the “adoptive curve,” he added, “I don’t think craft beer has begun to reach the tipping point.”

Maybe not even in Portland.

What’s astonishing is that you can have so many pretty big brewing companies and so many small ones in the same city. It’s only about a 15-minute walk from Widmer Brothers, which is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary, to Upright Brewing, which began selling beer in April. Widmer is thoroughly modern, fermenting more of its flagship Hefeweizen in a single unitank than Upright will sell this year. (Widmer’s tanks have a capacity of 1,500 barrels, but are only filled with 1,100 barrels of Hefeweizen.)

Upright is located in the basement of a renovation-in-progress called the Leftbank Project. Founder/brewer Alex Ganum hadn’t even started school when Kurt and Rob Widmer founded their brewery in 1984. He calls Upright a farmhouse brewery and is employing open fermentation; wide open, as in no tops at all on two fermenters in a special-built room. He recently added a Post-it note to the entry that reads, “Don’t sneeze.” (That’s the photo at the top.)

He resists the efforts of others to classify his beers as “Belgian.” “I feel like we are more Northwest than anything,” he said. “We’re big (Frank) Zappa fans here. I think Zappa’s music is a lot like our styles.”

Listening to him I thought of a conversation last summer with Dan Carey, co-founder and working brewmaster at New Glarus Brewing in Wisconsin. He was happily showing off his brand-spanking-new brewery, a $21 million beauty built strictly based on demand within Wisconsin; New Glarus doesn’t ship its beer beyond its home state. “We like to talk about local,” he said. Now the discussion turned to influences and Carey considered the question about if he could describe himself more as a German, Belgian, English, Czech or American brewer.

He couldn’t. “I’m like the Japanese, or like the Australian winemaker,” he said. “I try to learn from everybody and take what I can use.”

The result is better local beer.