Tuesday & Wednesday: Beer Beer and more Beer

Beer brewing is one of my passions – I don’t think I’m particularly good at it, but I am interested. Part of it is the process; Maxine compares beer making to wine making, with the former more science and the later more art. These are gross generalizations, but I like them and they help to explain why I find beer making appealing. Not too much relying on ‘the gods’, “just follow the recipe” and you’ll have something in a month.

In LA, I’m a member of the oldest homebrew club in the United States, the Maltose Falcons (http://www.maltosefalcons.com/). Figuring that meeting Portlanders who share my interest would give useful insights to life in this city, I’d contacted the Oregon Brew Crew aka OBC (http://www.oregonbrewcrew.com/home.html) to see if I could attend one of their meetings. Their President, Aaron Cohen, graciously said yes.

Beer #1: Tuesday evening’s club meeting was held at Rock Bottom Brewing (http://www.rockbottom.com/) in downtown Portland. The club had roughly 80 attendees at the meeting. The people were all very welcoming, putting up with my questions about life in their city. Aaron couldn’t have been more helpful or informative and I appreciated this chance to do something I’m sure I’d be part of if we moved here. I had their IPA and also a winter Belgian. Both were great. Fred Eckhart, a very long time beer advocate, who’s a member of the OBC, was there (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Eckhardt). In the home brew world, this is a non-trivial thing...

Beer #2: Wednesday’s lunch was another beer opportunity (Portland has more breweries than any other city in the world). Maxine and I went to Hopworks Urban Brewery (http://www.hopworksbeer.com/) for lunch. They’re another organic brewery (see blog entry for “Roots”), but on a much larger scale, probably 5 or 6 times as large. They’ve obviously invested money in their building, which is in a trendy area of Southeast Portland. It was a fine, but somewhat sterile experience. I really enjoyed their IPA, and they had at least 12 of their own beers on tap, giving us many chances to experience what they could brew. But, tons of different logo’d merchandise for sale had me wondering if they weren’t a little too focused on marketing themselves. And, to cap it off, I spotted a folder behind the counter labeled “Employee Self Evaluation”. Just a bit too corporate and planned out for me, especially after comparing it to Roots which was downright rustic.

Oh yeah, we started the day at Stumptown Coffee (http://www.stumptowncoffee.com/). And, just now as I’m typing this, it’s raining. Beer. Coffee. Food. Rain. The PDX themes.

P.S. Beer #3 is tonight, when I’m planning on going to Bridgeport Brewing.

P.P.S. In the house we’re renting, there are no curtains on any of the bedroom windows. All that early morning light puts my slothful tendencies to shame and has me feeling some sort of moral (as in “get up early and go do something healthy”) imperative which I’ve been resisting so far. Have to find another brewpub to help me over the guilt.