Upright Brewing, one of the best new breweries operating today, has an intriguing new beer coming out tonight: Oyster Stout. Made in collaboration with the soon-to-be-open Alchemy Brewing, the new beer is a traditional stout made with oyster liquor and fresh oysters cooked right in the brewing kettle. It sounds crazy, but this style of beer has been enjoying a small revival this year. Brewer Alex Ganum describes it as “a distinctly full-bodied and creamy stout with a touch of brine on the finish.”
The natural pairing with this beer is of course oysters. Oysters and stout go well together, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the brine in this beer matches them even better. If you’re in Portland you’ll have at least two chances to try it. Tonight is Upright’s release party from 4:30-9 in their tasting room at the Left Bank Project. Then on Thursday, March 4 at 7:00 pm, we’re bringing a keg to Branch Whiskey Bar on Alberta St. Branch will have fresh oysters, housemade sausages, and plenty of whiskey to go with the oyster stout. I’ll be working a guest shift behind the bar as well, serving up beer and cocktails for the first time since Carlyle’s closure. Both events should be a lot of fun, so I hope to see many of you there to try this unusual ale.
Previously: Upright’s Flora Rustica Saison made an appearance in a tasty drink at our NovemBEER for Charity cocktail event
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“Regulation of the Day” is actually Ryan’s bag, but alcohol is mine so I’m stealing his title just this once. This regulation is from Alabama, where brewpubs (restaurants that serve beer they make themselves) face many onerous requirements, including these:
Alabama law allows for this special class of breweries, but the legal restrictions on opening and operating these businesses are enormous. This is a large reason why Alabama has only two operating brewpubs while the states surrounding us have dozens.
Let’s take a look at the restrictions on brewpubs in Alabama:
1. Must be located in an historic building
2. Must be located in a wet county that had a brewery prior to 1919
3. You can ONLY sell the beer you brew in the brewpub. You can’t sell to wholesalers or stores
4. Must have a restaurant which seats at least 80
5. Must not brew more than 10,000 barrels of beer annually
There’s no sensible justification for limiting brewpubs to historic buildings in the counties that happened to have breweries operating in 1919. It’s just a very strange law in a state that has a decidedly mixed view of alcohol.
Fortunately Free the Hops, recently successful in bringing higher alcohol beers to Alabama, is on the case pushing the Brewery Modernization Act to improve the state’s beer culture. Read all about it here.
[Via Tom Pearson, aka the Pint Pundit, who will hopefully resume blogging more after getting an enormous flood of two or three new readers from this link back.]
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The Portman Group, an industry-funded alcohol marketing watchdog in Scotland that has a history of attacking craft brewers, is once again going after BrewDog:
The Tokyo* beer sparked a furore when it was launched with an 18.2% alcohol content this summer, with health campaigners condemning the brewery which produces it as “irresponsible”.
Drinks watchdog the Portman Group investigated after complaints about the wording on the label.
The message on the Tokyo* bottle’s label and website reads: “Everything in moderation, including moderation itself. What logically follows is that you must, from time to time, have excess. This beer is for those times.”
The Portman Group’s independent complaints panel agreed this advocated excessive consumption and was “particularly unwise in the context of a product that contained six units of alcohol in a single 330ml bottle”.
Given the price and depth of flavor of the beer, it’s very unlikely that many people are using it to binge. On the other hand, Portman’s doing a great job bringing international attention to BrewDog’s offerings through news articles like this one. Nice work, Portman!
[Via ColdMud.]
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Last weekend’s beer event at Cassidy’s was another successful night for the Oregon Bartenders Guild and Schoolhouse Supplies, with the latter receiving a little over $700 from the proceeds. If there’s a more fun way of raising money for kids than by drinking beer cocktails, I’m not aware of it. I’d like to thank all the brewers who contributed beer to the event, and especially thank McClaskey’s Spirits for providing some excellent products for us to mix with.
There were some interesting cocktails made that night with one of the most unique being Chris Churilla’s crowd-favorite Second Deadly Sin made with Buck bourbon, Maraska maraschino liqueur, Oakshire espresso stout vermouth (pictured above), and Oakshire IPA orange bitters. I didn’t have a chance to taste the vermouth separately, but the cocktail was delicious and proved the versatility of beer as an ingredient.
With my own participation in the event decided so late in the game I didn’t have time to do anything quite so transformative with beer but I still managed to turn out a tasty cocktail. Alex Ganum from Upright Brewing came through big time offering his beer on short notice. On the day before the event I visited Upright for what was supposed to be a brief tasting; however a power outage put Alex’s work to a halt and we ended up spending two hours trying everything on tap and talking beer. It was one of the best, most informative beer tastings I’ve ever had. I left with a case of his Flora Rustica, an aromatic saison brewed with yarrow and calendula flowers. Absolutely delicious on its own, and also quite nice in this simple beer cocktail:
Farigoule rinse
.75 oz Bellringer gin
5-6 oz Flora Rustica
toasted thyme sprig for garnish
The Farigoule thyme liqueur complements the floral notes of the beer, as do the botanicals in the gin. Toasting a thyme sprig over a candle during the drink’s preparation adds even more aroma that drifts across the entire bar.
For more cocktails and photos from the event, go visit Ron’s coverage at PDXplate (the source of the photo above).
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Those of you who read my “guilty pleasures” Mixology Monday post know that I have a soft spot for the Irish car bomb. Sure, it’s got a politically incorrect name, it’s messy, it curdles if you don’t drink it fast enough, and it requires chugging a half-pint of Guinness, but it’s also tasty and fun. Even so, I’m not about to put it on my cocktail menu at a classy place like Carlyle. Well, not exactly…
The photo above shows a new dessert drink we’re calling a Defusion. The bottom layer is a mix of Jameson and Baileys, shaken over ice and strained. The top layer is a Guinness foam garnished with a little grated nutmeg. For obvious reasons we don’t use the words “car bomb” anywhere on the menu, but customers in the know will recognize the inspiration. If they don’t, they can still enjoy the drink on its own merits. (Considering that one of the first guys to order it was visiting from Ireland, I’m very happy with this decision!)
I came across beer foam while flipping through the Alinea cookbook, which describes an ale foam in one of its dishes. This immediately gave me the idea for the drink. Achatz’ foam technique wouldn’t work for me though. It’s fine for the coursed service at Alinea, but behind the bar I needed something I could prepare in advance and keep stable throughout the night.
Luckily I work with a talented chef who was able to help me out. I approached him with the idea and he suggested the following recipe for making Guinness foam:
1 can Guinness
4 oz half-and-half
2 leaves gelatin
Bloom the gelatin in cold water. Simmer the gelatin with a few ounces of Guinness to dissolve. Pour the mixture into a whipped cream dispenser along with the half-and-half and the rest of the Guinness. (Recommended: Reserve some Guinness for the chef.) Charge with one or two CO2 N2O cartridges, shake, and keep chilled.
The resulting foam is perfect for the bar. It keeps easily for several days and comes out with just the right firmness when chilled in an ice water bath. The taste is true to Guinness with just a little cream for sweetness.
To make the the drink you need:
1.5 oz Jameson Irish Whiskey
.75 oz Baileys Irish Cream
Guinness foam
Shake the first two ingredients over ice and strain into a tall shot glass. Top with the foam, grate on nutmeg, and serve immediately with a demitasse spoon.
The drink is stable but the foam will melt, so it’s important to serve this quickly. It doesn’t have to be consumed quickly though, so unlike its rowdy cousin you won’t risk spilling this drink down your shirt while you chug. Take it slow, pinkies out.
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Patrick Emerson takes note of an email from the amazing Portland pub and beer shop Belmont Station:
A FULL 16 ounce PINT EVERY TIME. You asked for it, we’re delivering. We are now using oversize glasses with a 16 ounce line. Be patient. Let it settle a moment. If it’s not 16 ounces we’ll top it up. More beer for you. Less waste!
Meanwhile, in my previous home of Arlington, VA, local music hotspot Iota has implemented a new house policy:
IOTA Club & Café celebrated two milestones in March, with the Arlington venue marking its 15th year in business and also delivering the news that it would be going smoke free. [...] The club went non-smoking on March 15th (its actual anniversary) getting a head start on Virginia’s smoking ban, which doesn’t take effect until December 1st. Co-owner Jane Negrey Inge said the idea had been in the works for a while and the anniversary seemed like a natural time to do it. She added that smokers are still welcomed on the club’s back patio.
Both businesses made the changes to keep their customers happy, no coercion required. Imagine that!
[Thanks to Dan for the Iota tip!]
Previously:
Is there such a thing as a dishonest pint?
Liberty Tavern not so keen on liberty
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The real anti-beer action could be taking place in DC:
Joe Six-Pack may have to hand over nearly $2 more for a case of beer to help provide health insurance for all.
Details of the proposed beer tax are described in a Senate Finance Committee document distributed to lawmakers before a closed-door meeting Wednesday. Senators are focusing on how to pay for expanding health insurance for an estimated 50 million uninsured Americans, a cost that could range to some $1.5 trillion over 10 years. [...]
While many of the revenue raisers involve obscure provisions of federal law, most consumers can relate to a beer tax.
Taxes on wine and hard liquor would also go up.
And there might be a new tax on soda and other sugary drinks blamed for contributing to obesity. A tax of 3 cents per 12-ounce drink would raise about $50 billion over 10 years, according to congressional estimates. Diet drinks, however, wouldn’t be taxed.
Thanks to Jason Kuznicki for the link.
Previously:
The wages of sin taxes
Oregon hates its bar industry
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Which state has the most breweries per capita? I thought it might be Oregon, my new home state, but the honor goes elsewhere [via Rob Kasper]:
The great state of Vermont tops the list of U.S. state breweries per capita based on the Brewers Association’s count of operating breweries and the 2008 population estimates found at www.census.gov. The fortunate citizens of Vermont have a brewery for every 32,698 people. There are 19 breweries and 621,270 citizens in Vermont. Additionally, every Vermont brewery is a craft brewery according the Brewers Association’s craft brewer definition, from small start-up microbrewery Lawson’s Finest Liquids in Warren to the revered Vermont Pub & Brewery in Burlington to regional craft brewer Magic Hat Brewing Co. and Performing Arts Center also in Burlington. The top 5 states in breweries per capita are rounded out by Montana, Oregon, Maine and Colorado.
Well, at least we’re in the top five. But what does this mean for the consumer, anyway? Is this really Beervana?
It certainly seemed to be when I first arrived here. Locally brewed ales were available at every pub I went to. And they were so cheap! $2.50 wouldn’t buy a pint of Bud Light in DC, much less a quality craft brew. Portland seemed like heaven.
But as time went on, the initial euphoria wore off and all the beers started to run together in my memory. They were good, but often failed to stand out from one another.
And that’s when I started getting nostalgic about the DC beer scene. The beer selection at an average DC bar is terrible, the prices are too high, and there are no good local brewers that I’m aware of. But the bars that try a little harder offer some of the best beers from throughout the Eastern US. Dogfish Head in Delaware, Brooklyn in New York, Allagash in Maine, and Bell’s in Michigan stand out particularly as innovative, relatively large craft brewers who make consistently good beer in a wide variety of styles, and they’re all distributed fairly well within the city.
On top of this DC went though a welcome Belgian invasion over the past few years. Newcomers Birreria Paradiso, Brasserie Beck, Granville Moore’s, and Rustico in Alexandria are amazing, offering a wide array of imports and some of the best American craft brews (Marvin too, apparently, though I haven’t been there). DC has become a fantastic city for beer drinkers despite having very little beer culture of its own.
To some extent, I think DC’s poverty of local brewers has been an advantage, freeing local bars to open their taps to the best brewers they can find, no matter where they come from. In this respect it is a surprisingly good beer city and I often miss its best destinations and my favorite eastern brews. (A similar dynamic is at work in New York City’s coffee scene, which in just a few years has gone from dismal to one of the best in the country. In addition to there being a few local players, NYC consumers benefit from competition among Stumptown, Intelligentsia, and Counter Culture to get into the top cafes.)
Oregonians, in contrast, take pride in drinking locally. And while there are many great local brews, my outsider’s impression is that this allows some good but unremarkable beers to skate by. There are benefits from showing tough love and a willingness to abandon the home team that don’t show up in a measure of breweries per capita.
None of which is to say that this isn’t an incredible city for beer drinkers. It’s certainly better than the District; even the place I get my haircut in Portland offers better beer than what’s found in many DC bars. There are more Oregon beers to try than I could possibly handle (though it’s fun to attempt it). So while at the margin I’d like to see a little less local dominance of the taps here, I’m more interested in finding out what I should sample next. Ninkasi and Caldera are especially good breweries that I’d never encountered before moving here, and Belmont Station’s unbelievable retail selection takes care of a lot of hard to find bottles. What else am I missing? What are the Oregon beers I should seek out immediately?
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The Oregon legislature, always on top of the state’s most pressing issues, wants to regulate the size of bars’ pint glasses:
Some Oregon legislators want the state to help ensure that Oregon’s beer drinkers who order a pint get the full 16 ounces.
The “Honest Pint Act” is aimed at the practice of selling “pints” of beer in glasses, sometimes with thick bottoms, that can’t hold the full liquid measure of a pint.
The bill, which got a hearing last week, would have state health inspectors on their regular rounds inspecting beer glasses for capacity. The extra review would entail a fee, the amount of which has yet to been determined, the Register-Guard of Eugene reported.
Barkeeps who pass the test would be rewarded with a decal, to be displayed on a window or door, proclaiming their establishments to be purveyors of an “honest pint.”
The proposal is voluntary for now, thankfully, but it might not remain that way. Local beer blogger and economist Patrick Emerson calls on the state to require officially marked glassware in all Oregon pubs. Before we take that step, it’s worth considering what people mean when they ask for a pint.
Sometimes when we use a measurement we have an expectation of precision. When I buy a gallon of gas, I expect to get a gallon. But I’m writing this post from a coffee shop where I regularly order a “cup” of coffee. I’ve never checked to see if the cup they sell me is exactly 8 oz (or any of the other official definitions of a cup). The volume of coffee I get here varies slightly from the amount I get at other places around town. In this context, a cup is loosely defined as whatever is a customarily acceptable amount of coffee, not as a precise measure.
I suspect that asking for a pint of beer is more like asking for a cup of coffee than a gallon of gasoline. When I say that I’m going to the pub for a pint of ale I don’t mean that I’m going to drink exactly 16 ounces of it. I mean that I’m going to drink some beer in the customarily acceptable range of volumes in which it’s generally served.
In this sense the pint glass has come to mean a glass of the type beer is served in rather than a precise measure of volume, similar to how Martini and Collins glasses have taken on the names of the drinks they’re associated with. “Pint glass” pretty much just means “beer glass” to many consumers.
Note that there is no call for an “Honest Wine Glass” project. The amount of wine served will vary from business to business and bartender to bartender. As long as pours are reasonable, no one seems to mind. Is there any reason that beer is different, except for the fact that beer glasses happen to be called pint glasses? (Contra beer, wine glasses seem to be using the lack of a standard definition to get larger.)
Patrick Emerson correctly notes that there’s an asymmetric information situation here: Bars know how much beer they’re pouring and consumers don’t, making direct price comparisons among bars difficult. But this is only a problem if people really care about the precise volume they are served. And even if it is a real concern, there are alternative solutions to government intervention. Jeff Alworth’s Honest Pint Project is an admirable one: A voluntary, non-governmental certification program designed to increase consumer information and reward bars that participate. Bars voluntarily buying marked glassware is another.
I wish Jeff luck with the project, if for no other reason than that it will lead to more bars serving bigger glasses of beer. I’d be happy to be proven wrong and see demand for 16 oz pints proliferate. But if after raising awareness of pint discrepancies the Honest Pint Project or the Oregon government’s equivalent doesn’t get traction with bars and consumers, that doesn’t necessarily mean that stricter regulations are necessary. At the end of the day certification may be a solution in search of a problem. Voluntary approaches test whether this a legitimate concern among consumers. If their choices reveal that a “pint” doesn’t have to refer to a precise measure, our language and our commerce can survive the ambiguity.
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“Guinness needs your help!” reads the subject line on an email I received from the company today. I went to one of their “Guinness Believer” promotional events a few years ago — totally worth it for the free beer — so I get occasional mail from them. I assumed this was another message about their campaign urging people to petition Congress for official recognition of St. Patrick’s Day. Clever, but I’ve always hated its pernicious message that for an institution to be valuable it must be legitimized by government (cf. debate over same-sex marriage).
Happily, that’s not what the email was about. Here’s what it said:
As someone who enjoys great brands such as Smirnoff, Crown Royal, Captain Morgan, Johnnie Walker, Ketel One, Jose Cuervo, Tanqueray, Guinness, Beaulieu Vineyard or Sterling Vineyards wines, you are a member of the Diageo family. As a member of our family, you need to be aware that in the coming months, lawmakers will be proposing tax increases that will put jobs in your community at risk and raise the cost of your favorite drink.
There’s a real price to pay when elected officials misguidedly try to replenish state budgets with regressive taxes that will hit us at a time when we are already being hit hard enough economically. These taxes will cause people like bartenders, waiters, waitresses and other folks who work hard every day in our community restaurants and hotels to lose their jobs. In fact, the last time they raised taxes on alcohol, $1.3 billion in wages were lost, while 98,000 people found themselves out of work.
Hardly sounds fair, does it? [...]
Together, we can protect our jobs, our livelihoods, and the right to responsibly enjoy a drink.
It’s ballsy, I like it. The link takes you to their handy site where you can find the latest news about tax proposals in your state and contact your representatives to oppose them.
I don’t always approve of Diageo’s lobbying and I can’t vouch for the numbers on their main page, but this is an admirable campaign. For this I’ll lift a Guinness some time soon.
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A recent column from Tim Harford explains how an early Guinness brewer contributed to our understanding of statistics:
The statistical apparatus to check this is a test called Student’s t-test. Student was the pseudonym of William Sealy Gosset, an amiable, rucksack-wearing chemist who – beginning in 1899 – worked all his adult life for Guinness and eventually rose to the rank of head brewer. So nervous was the company about commercial confidentiality that Gosset published surreptitiously under his pseudonym.
From the outset, Gosset’s focus was practical – as the economist and historian Steve Ziliak has discovered through his work in the Guinness archives. To produce beer to a high standard on an industrial scale, Gosset needed to sample and experiment with hops, malt and barley. But experiments are expensive and Gosset developed his small-sample methods because he wanted to understand how many experiments were necessary to be confident of his results. That was a clear trade-off: how much confidence is “enough” depends on the costs of further research and the benefits of extra precision.
The article is interesting throughout. Give it a read and have something to tell your friends about when you have a very large sample of Guinness pints for St. Patrick’s Day later this month.
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The Oregonian ran a couple of good op/eds recently on proposed state tax hikes on beer and tobacco. The Pigouvian case for higher taxes on alcohol is arguably stronger than that for additional taxes on cigarettes, but opposition to the former tax is much more vocal. Elizabeth Hovde notes the hypocrisy:
[...] when it comes to cigarettes, a lot of Oregonians — perhaps many of the same Oregonians fighting a beer tax increase — insist on hefty taxation. They rail on about how smokers’ unhealthy choices need to be charged (paying no attention to the cost savings associated with smokers dying younger than the healthy population). The nonsmoking majority has gone so far as supporting a law that forbids smoking in private businesses, even if people never have to frequent a smoky joint and even if no wait staff ever has to serve a smoke-filled area.
While beer fans have organized vanpools to public hearings in Salem using Facebook and Twitter (the group No New Oregon Beer Tax on Facebook boasted 3,117 members as of Wednesday), Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s idea to put a sizable increase on a pack of cigarettes is sitting pretty well with the public.
Right now the tax on a pack of smokes is $1.18. Kulongoski and other lawmakers want to add on another 60 cents per pack and levy a 25 percent increase in other tobacco taxes. Where is the outrage? Those who belly up to smoke-free bars ought to think about the double standard.
Oregon has a lot more beer drinkers than it does smokers. For that reason alone, piling onto the unpopular smoking minority is more likely to succeed than increasing the state’s beer tax, which is one of the lowest in the nation (not that I’m supporting that tax either, mind you).
The second column is a guest piece by Steve Buckstein, making an additional case against the tobacco tax hike. Read it here.
Cato’s Tom Firey and I wrote about similar tax proposals in 2007 for the Journal-Sentinel.
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Portland is said to have the highest number of breweries per capita in the United States. Oregon also has one of the country’s lowest beer tax rates. Coincidence?
We may soon find out. A bill in the legislature would raise the tax on beer from $2.60 per barrel to nearly $50. According to Tax Foundation data, that would give Oregon by far the highest beer tax in the nation. The money will be used largely to fund drug prevention and recovery programs. It’s a shame we can’t legalize drugs and tax them directly, but why should beer drinkers bear the cost?
Even if you think higher taxes on alcohol are justified on Pigovian grounds, this is a horrible year to impose them. Oregon has one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates right now. This bill would hurt one of the state’s few thriving industries while discouraging consumption at a time when governments are struggling to raise it.
If the state is desperate for money, there’s a very simple way to obtain it and encourage people to spend more: repeal the smoking ban that went into effect last month. Video poker and lottery sales are down $3 million per week compared to January 2008. The ban isn’t the only cause, obviously, but it’s likely a significant one.
Unfortunately, Oregon isn’t the only state using budget woes as an excuse for picking imbibers’ pockets. Nick Gillespie notes that Kentucky is raising taxes too. Expect to see more of this as the year goes on.
[Thanks to Jan and Patrick for bringing this to my attention.]
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Jacob Grier is a freelance writer, barista, mixologist, and magician in Portland, OR. He writes, eats, and drinks a lot. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Reason Online, The Oregonian, and other publications.
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