Brian Yaeger's Blog, page 6

Six weeks in. Still smitten.

Portland is just so damn great. I've heard of people who move here from San Francisco and then have to move back. Naturally, I'll forever love SF. And we certainly miss our friends. But our plan is to proselytize them into moving up here. Seriously guys, quit your job, buy a food cart on the cheap, and make a go of it. That's the Portlander way. P-town may be called Bridgetown, Beervana, Cartopia, and Rose City, but it's also DIY-ville. Have something you love doing and wanna make it your job? I've seen that everywhere I go here (says the freelance beer writer). Beyond the chefs popping up at food pods, there are co-ops for art galleries, bike shops, music schools, etc. Oh, and more nanobreweries than you can shake a mash paddle at.
I wish I'd jotted down every feel-good encounter I've had in my first two weeks. It started less than 24 hours into being a Portlander when I volunteered at the 15th Annual Holiday Ale Fest. Let's just say the 2nd Annual Holiday Ale Fest I attended my last weekend in the Bay could pick up a trick or two. Nearly 50 breweries--mostly from Oregon and Washington--poured rare treats. Somehow I lucked out and manned the jockey box pouring Hair of the Dog "Jim" 2008 (next to Jim '09).

What's great and scary is that with all the exploring I've done, I feel like just my left pinky has scratched the surface. With thanks to Ezra "Samurai Artist" Johnson-Greenough who blogs at The New School and a rotating beer-obsessed posse as well as Lisa "Beer Goddess" Morrison, and some old-fashioned huffing it around the neighborhoods, I've imbibed at at least 10 beer bars that're worthy of being the best place to drink a beer. Meaning I only have at least 20 more to get to.

To play catch-up at this point would take forever. Because also in this time, we hiked around waterfalls in the rain, marveled that we're living in a place where the water in birdbaths freezes into large pucks of ice, spent a week in Hawaii escaping said ice, find ourselves in escrow on a house(!!!) and I've added 3 new publications to continue obsessing over beer in including the PDX alt-weekly Willamette Week.

So long Beer Area, hello Beervana

It is bittersweet that I no longer find myself a San Francisco resident, tempered by the fact that I'm now a Portlander. The Bay Area is the undisputed birth place of American craft brewing (thanks to Anchor, New Albion, Sierra Nevada, Buffalo Bill's, Triple Rock, and more) but Portland didn't become known as Brewtopia for nothing (thanks to pioneers like Bridgeport and Widmer Brothers and the dozens of brewing brethren such as Hair of the Dog, Cascade, Amnesia, H.U.B., Laurelwood, McMenamins, and on and on).
In truth, because good beer is to be found everywhere these days, what I'll miss most is the community of beer lovers. I didn't go to beerfests and special tappings for the beer so much as the people at them. It's not that I only gravitate to those who appreciate good beer, but, quite the other way around--it's that fun, adventurous people tend to be the ones who appreciate the finer-yet-affordable things in life and beer inhabits exactly that crossroads. "Beer" can be almost anything these days but it's certainly much more than the one-brand-fits-all stuff that most people continue to perceive it as. Maybe that's why only 5% of Americans always call for craft beer, or at least that's what the numbers would suggest since craft beer only constitutes roughly 5% of the total beer market.
Fortuitously, these same beer-lovin' riff-raff populate Portland. I can't wait to meet 'em.
The story of how Half Pint and Dunkel and I arrived here is simple. We love SF but as my wife says, "she's expensive." Between being priced out of the housing market, a job recruitment from a big o'l company up here that she couldn't say no to, the fact that we love PDX and new adventures of all sorts, and sure, toss in all the amazing breweries that are now within walking, biking, and bussing distance, and, well, here we are. The odyssey continues.
I've been a little negligent of this here blog, primarily because I did most of my beer blogging for the SF Weekly's SFoodie blog as well as the SF Craft Beer Examiner. I hope to right this wrong and chime in more often, even if just posting tidbits whenever I seek out any of the 35 breweries in PDX or our plans for "Foodcart Fridays" wherein we intend to kick off each weekend with dinner at a different food cart, pod, truck, or airstream. I should beerify it by offering beer pairing suggestions.
In any event, this is the start of a new, exciting adventure, full of new breweries and beers to explore, new brewers to befriend, and of course to kick work on my next book project about homebrewers into high gear. So look for me and Dunkel at the Lucky Lab hard at work and if you're there at the same time, I'm easily distracted.

Toast to Michael Jackson

Alas, three years after the fact, the beer world still mourns the loss of our Michael Jackson. And while researching odds and ends about the renowned Beer Hunter for a story due this week* and having fun watching lots of videos I've either never seen or haven't watched in ages, I spotted one of the toast that Tom Dalldorf, publisher of Celebrator Beer News, gave at the Toronado when simultaneous toasts to MJ were giving across America.Not being a heavy, heavy drinker, I knew I was there but it's not like I recall hamming it up for the camera which I didn't know was there. But if you watch the video, there I am, doing my part to join the beer lovin' community in raising a glass at our felled hero (1942-2007). OK, so, it'd help if you freeze the clip at the 43 second mark and again at the 3:21 mark. Look at the bar each time, squint, and there I am, glad to be at the Toronado but wishing I wasn't there for that reason.
*Quick question. Someone who's way techier than I, who deals with things like SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for work, suggsisted (half suggested, half insisted) that I post all of my beer stories that are published on this here blog. Happily, that entails a lot of posts as I'm getting a lot of work (even if it means delaying progress on the next book). Is that something anyone would be interested in? For the stuff that appears online, I generally Tweet it. But how about the print stuff? Seems almost, I dunno, tacky to me, but I DO spend a lot of time working on these stories and if you don't subscribe to the magazines and the like, you'll never get the chance to see them. One such story, as I heard from the editor, received much exuberant response and the letters to the editor section in the following issue confirmed it. I don't generally read those, but in this case, it warmed my heart cockles. Shall I repost them?Cheers.

Bell's Brewery coming to California...

Well, okay, I can only hope. But my wishful drinking, to borrow a phrase from Carrie Fisher, didn't come out of thin air. Michigan Live reported that Bell's, makers of my and a million other people's favorite wheat beer Oberon, is embarking on a $52 million expansion. They're in 18 states now including almost the entire eastern US and of course the upper Midwest since they're from Kalamazoo, Mich. But they entered a western-ish state this past year--Arizona--which I know is just testing the ...

The week in heavy drinking. Day 4: Cherry Voodoo chiefs at Alembic Bar

Far from complain-ing, I have a lot of stories on my plate of late. And in this line of work, that means a lot of "meetings over pints." One that's right up my alley is for Draft Magazine's Beer Me column. Without giving it all away, there's a new brewery on the horizon here in SF called Cherry Voodoo Brewing. One of the founding fathers' name is Yuri and he has a big mouth as far as his claims about their guaranteed success, but at the same time, he's not the type to write a check his mouth ...

The week in heavy drinking. Day 3: Bear Republic Pre-GABF party

Praise Beer by Bart'ers Gail & Steve...for driving me up on Sunday to Healds-burg in Sonoma County (why is there no train yet?), home of Bear Republic Brewing. Their best known beer--their flagship--is Racer 5 IPA. It took home a gold medal not for American IPAs but for Strong Pale Ale at last year's Great American Beer Festival. So how many medals are they shooting for this year? 23!
Sunday, founding father-son team Richard and Richard ("Rich" or "Ricardo") Norgrove, along with their crack...

The week in heavy drinking. Day 2: X-mas in August

Some time after the holidays, my friend Chris noticed he had a bunch of holiday beers leftover. I think I suggested he have a "Christmas in July" party. Maybe it was his idea and I just named it. Maybe I'm giving myself credit where none belongs. In any event, July turned to August and he finally got down to it. And he brought it.
The Evite called for winter warmers and holiday beers of every ilk. It also called for guests to don their most hideous Christmas sweaters or outfits, to bring...

The week in heavy drinking. Day 1: Eat Real

I'm a lightweight. I mean, my weight isn't light (due to my beer consumption), but I can't consume all that much beer. So I went on a one-week wagon in preparation for the coming week, which began yesterday in Oakland at Eat Real.
I was interested in all the ice cream carts and fusion taco trucks, but if we're being honest, I was there for the beer shed (over 20 local breweries) and to participate as one of the 10 judges of the first annual homebrew competition. We were given the option of...

Honoring Hosers in Houston

I have been honored with a request to speak at the 27th Annual Dixie Cup Homebrew Competition in Houston, which takes place this year on Oct 14-17. It will be my second year attending, but last year I hit it as part of my "research" trip, my second national beer odyssey. This year they're looking for a preview of the next book I'm working on, which in case you haven't heard or read, is about homebrewers. Basically, if Red, White, & Brew was about the people in the professional brewing industr...

The Session #41: Craft beers inspired by homebrewing

This month, the Wallace bros. from Lug Wrench Brewing Co. ask Sessioners to blogtificate about "how has homebrewing had an affect on the commercial beer we have all come to love?" Talk about open-ended.
It's no stretch at all to say that every single craft beer out there is an extension of a homebrew. Unlike the days of yore in the countries of olde, where brewing fathers begat brewing sons and the trade passed down generationally, 99% or more of today's master brewers began making their own b...