BAR PILOT

Tappy Days

A bonanza of brew fests

Posted by: John Chandler on Apr 14, 2011 at 03:30PM 4 Comments

You might need two Sharpies to circle all these dates on your quaffing calendar. Yes brew believers, you are indeed living in the best of all possible worlds as the next four weeks brings us enough beer blasts to plaster a platoon of parched frat boys. Needless to say, in a town that prides itself on constant innovation and sudsy style points, average ales are not on the menu.

Firkin Fest On Saturday, Rogue Brewing hosts the fourth annual Firkin Fest, a split-session soiree of beers that are unpasteurized, unfiltered, carbonated in the cask, and served at room temperature. Some 30 Oregon breweries, including Bridgeport, Full Sail, Cascade, Upright, and Natian will be in attendance to pour decidedly distinctive ales. Ticket purchases goes to help Buckman Elementary School, so buy a whole bunch of them,

GermanFest 2011 Get ready to hoist a stein or two as the lads at Bailey’s Tap Room don their leather shorts and Tyrolean hats starting at 4 PM on Saturday afternoon. Here, a cadre of Oregon’s best breweries have created exclusive ales brewed with Old World recipes. Bocks, dopplebocks, Berlinerweisses, goses, and rauchbiers will flow from the likes of Heater Allen, Lompoc, Laurelwood, and Alameda. Ich bin ein beer drinker!

Spring Beer and Wine Festival Every year sipping sophisticates come from miles around to sample the suds, vino, and artisan munchies on display at the Oregon Convention Center. Big-name breweries and regional upstarts like Flat Tail and Calapooia will be jockeying for your tokens. Remember, it’s a two-day event, so no need to hit every single booth in one afternoon. Save a little room for Saturday.

Portland Cheers to Belgian Beers Burned out on IPA? Bid the hops a fond farewell at this celebration of yeasty, malty, Belgian-style ales. Participating brewers from Hopworks, Fort George, Lucky Lab, and Deschutes (to name just a few) actually threw darts at a specially marked board to help them decide if their brews would be light or dark in color, and strong or light in alcohol content. Taste the difference!

Cascade Saison Festival Saison, or farmhouse ales, originate from the 19th century in rural France and Belgium, where impromptu farmhouse breweries would quickly crank out these creamy, crisp, and substantial beers to whet the whistles of their seasonal laborers (saison means “season”, duh!). Rough and tumble brews from Block 15, Breakside, Oakshire, and Double Mountain will be on tap, but keep your eyes on the home team. Cascade brewmaster Ron Gansberg is one of the most skilled and imaginative cats in the business.

That’s a whole lot of beer—and it’s not even summer yet!

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Tags: Beer Festivals, Cascade Brewing, Green Dragon, Belgian Beer, German Beer

Drinking Dates

A few items for your quaffing calendar

Posted by: John Chandler on Jan 25, 2011 at 12:00PM 2 Comments

What’s a brew believer to do? You’ve already dipped your beak in all the winter ales worth wrangling and the warm-weather beer festivals are still oceans of time away. Cheer up drinking buddies! Instead of trying to figure out a hangman’s knot that will bear your weight, you would do well to make note of these upcoming events that should do wonders for restoring your hibernating happy face!

First Annual Scottish Ale Festival No need to stare forlornly at the horizon. The Cascade Brewing Barrel House is hosting a sudsy salute to Scottish Ales this Saturday from 3 to 11. Nine regional breweries, including Cascade, Lucky Lab, Fearless, Rock Bottom, Coalition, and Upright, will have specially brewed ales in the house for your sipping pleasure. There will be some Scottish sustenance available (haggis?), and Cascade brewmaster Ron Gansberg is bringing in his band Stone Porridge to provide some trad Scottish music. Join the cult of the kilt!

Hop & Vine Bottle Shop Opening I’ve sung the praises of this sophisticated North Portland saloon on several occasions, so I’m pleased as a weasel to announce its expansion into the space next door to serve as a bigger bottle shop to house Hop & Vine’s well-curated collection of beer, wine, sake, and mead. Festivities take place Feb 5 from 3 to 7. Reps from Hopworks, Upright, Heater Allen, and Elysian will be on hand to pour some free tastings. And for the vino-centric, folks from Grochau Cellars, Winderlea Wines, Purple Hands, and Trust Cellars are likewise expected to be present. “All well and good, but I like cocktails!” you say to yourself. First of all, you should stop talking to yourself; your reputation is already on shaky ground. Secondly, at the stroke of 7, Metrovino mixologist Jacob Grier will take over with $5 drink specials featuring libations from House Spirits and Ransom Spirits. Name your poison—you’re covered.

Van Havig Night! Havig, the outspoken brewmaster from the local chapter of Rock Bottom Brewing parted company with his corporate overlords earlier this month after 16 years. Havig is certainly one of the most knowledgeable brewers I’ve ever had the pleasure to chat with, and any regional brewery would count itself lucky to hire a man with his skills, taste, and wit. On Feb 8 at the new Grain & Gristle, some of his brewing comrades from Lompoc, Widmer, Barley Brown, and Ninkasi will pay tribute to Havig, with small-batch beers brewed in his honor.

KLCC Microbrew Festival Our sister city to the south gets in on the brewfest action on Feb 11-12 with a benefit blast to help keep Eugene’s public radio station, KLCC, sounding off loud and proud. Some 50 breweries will be represented including local heroes like Ninkasi, Steelhead, Track Town, and Oakshire, not too mention one of my faves, little Wakonda Brewing from Florence.

Zwickelmania 3.0 For the third straight year, the Oregon Brewer’s Guild offers the beer curious the chance to jump on a bus and tour some of the state’s top breweries on Feb 19. Meet your brewing idols (OMG! OMG! OMG! John Harris is such a dreamboat!) and get a taste of what’s cooking in the tank. There are tours taking place in Bend and Hood River, but here in Beervana attendees can swing by Alameda, Amnesia, Breakside, Bridgeport, and many more. And it’s friggin’ free!

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Tags: Beer Festivals, Craft Beers, Widmer Brothers Brewing, Cascade Brewing, Ninkasi Brewing, Hop and Vine, Brewery Tours, Wakonda Brewing

Magic Moments 2010

A few things that made me love my job this year

Posted by: John Chandler on Jan 04, 2011 at 10:00AM 5 Comments

The Bar Pilot Special from Big-Ass Sandwiches

Gads, is it 2011 already? My, how quickly the sands of time swirl away during the pursuit of Happy Hour excellence and bar bounty. Please understand that I’ve had to chew my way through some ghastly grub (the memory of Ash Street Saloon’s evil grilled-cheese sandwich still causes me to wake up screaming) and sample some really underwhelming cocktails in order to bring you, my drinking buddies, the latest intelligence from the front lines. But let’s accentuate the positive, shall we? Here then is a list of particularly noteworthy menu moments from this past year.

Big-Ass Sandwiches A Big-Ass Sandwich is like telling your stomach, “Here! Suck on this!” This is not a food cart that you can hit on a daily basis. The sandwiches are just too extreme. But if you’re having one of those days and you can feel a gnawing hunger in your gut that cries out in primordial fashion to be satisfied, you can do no better.

Cafe Nell The best service in town. Super-efficient waiters who appear as if summoned from a lamp.

Cascade Barrelhouse I adore Ron Gansberg’s sour beers and I greatly look forward to exploring their flavor mystique with an assortment of food pairings.

Hawthorne Hophouse A welcome addition to my neighborhood with exceptional pub grub (the Red Dragon Burger, with ham, spicy mustard, and cheddar atop Angus beef is a new addiction) and a rotating beer selection that pays loving tribute to the region. On Sundays, local brews are only $3!

The sampler tray at Hawthorne Hophouse.

Hop & Vine Really, this modest little shop offers the best of everything. A well-curated wine list, terrific rotating taps, intriguing cocktails, and a sturdy food menu, for starters, but the atmosphere is congenial and cozy. And if you want to stalk local beer celebrities chances are they’re hanging out there—right now!

Jade Lounge’s Banana Fritters On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Jade Lounge offers a cunning array of $3 plates all day. In this case I recommend dessert first. For a fleeting instant, the delicate cornmeal shell rolled in cinnamon, bursting with gooey banana splendor will bring to mind delightful domestic scenes from childhood. Perhaps not yours, but somebody’s.

Metrovino’s Seafood Chowder: True, I first encountered this sensational soup in 2009, but I return periodically to slurp of its goodness and fortify my ravaged soul. Fatty smoked bacon adrift in a sea of oysters, clams, tuna, and halibut for $5. Why aren’t you eating it now?

Metrovino’s Seafood Chowder.

Miho Izakaya For sheer menu audacity, I have to give it up for the little Japanese pub on N Interstate. The ingredients are always cracking fresh, and the 25 or so small-plate offerings ($2-10) are not only uniformly tasty, but extremely interesting to boot. The slow-cooked pork, spicy noodles, and beguiling fish entrees will reel you in and turn you into a homing pigeon for this coop.

Three Doors Down Bartender Matt Stiles is an unsung hero in my book. He’s never served me a drink that was anything less than spectacular. And the quality of the Happy Hour chow, from the habit-forming Tuscan white bean spread to the vodka sausage penne, is incomparable. Happy Hour is available all night on Sundays and Tue-Thur.

Upright Brewing Alex Ganum’s bold and yeasty farmhouse ales provided a welcome respite from the hops arms race.

I’m as human as the next gink and I can’t be everywhere at once. So by all means, if I’ve missed something that deserves a round of applause, please speak up!

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Tags: Happy Hour, Hop and Vine, Three Doors Down, Metrovino, Best of 2010, Hawthorne Hophouse, Miho Izakaya, Upright Brewing, Cascade Brewing, Big Ass Sandwiches, Cafe Nell, Jade Lounge

Roll Out the Barrels!

A modest roundup of short subjects from the Bar Pilot bag

Posted by: John Chandler on Sep 17, 2010 at 11:00AM 6 Comments

At the new Cascade Barrel House, no beer will be served before it’s time.

ITEM: I was lucky enough to sample several of the sour beers created by Cascade Brewing’s Ron Gansberg in advance of the opening of the new Cascade Barrel House at 935 SE Belmont St (which should be any day now). And they are incredible. What Gansberg has done with his mix-and-match, cut-and-paste barrel-aging and ale-blending approach is to produce a whole line of brilliantly nuanced beers whose flavor profiles are much, much narrower than the standard lager, pilsner, amber, porter, and stout designations. By taking fresh cherries, raspberries, blueberries, oranges, and apricots, and introducing them to existing ales and then aging them for six months at a time, Cascade Brewing has embraced chaos theory and is on the threshold of establishing a beer-tasting aesthetic that’s going to be very similar to that of wine. More subtle, more organically unpredictable. My prediction? It’s going to be big.

ITEM: Another edition of MusicFest NW has come and gone. The best show I witnessed was the sensational and soulful Bellrays who were a face-melting epiphany as always. And for variety’s sake, it’s hard to go wrong with the evil speed metal of Toxic Holocaust at the Satyricon and the grimy Black Sabbath grind of Red Fang paired with the more delicate sensibilities of a resourceful troubadour like mbilly segueing into Big Freedia’s super-freaky butt-shaking cavalcade.The diversity angle worked in a big way this year.

ITEM: Just had a divine cocktail over at Santeria, the Mexican restaurant that’s attached to Mary’s Club (formerly El Grillo). It’s called Llorona, and presumably it’s named after the Latin legend of the crying ghost woman who haunts river banks searching for her missing child. The drink itself is a spirited blend of horchata (rice milk with assorted spices), cinnamon, and a hefty pour of Hatian gold rum served on the rocks in a pint glass for $7. Poverty stricken citizens may want to opt for the $6 version with Monarch rum, but that’s not how I roll. It’s simple, sweet, spicy, and satisfying, and the ideal accompaniment to a plate of carnitas.

The Llorona at Santeria. Don’t cry—just drink up.

ITEM: A note from retro hepcat deejay Drew Groove informs me that the SE Morrison space that once housed Maiden in the Mist (later abbreviated to the Maiden) just had a soft-opening shindig for its latest incarnation, the Star Bar. Not sure about the menu, but if they’ve got the good taste to employ Drew Groove, then it will be a certain stop on a near-future ramble.

ITEM: A congratulatory shout-out to my pal Michael Carothers and his Japanese bar/eatery Miho Izakaya on N Interstate Ave. They’ve now been open for one year and it looks like the best is yet to come. A Happy Hour report is in the offing. Keep the saké warm!

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Tags: Bar Openings, Craft Beers, Live, NoPo, Cascade Brewing