About Brian Yaeger

Author of beer books "Red, White, & Brew" & "Oregon Breweries" and, soon, "American Doughnut."

Coin Toss Brewing: “Beer Geek” Talker Turns Brewer

Posted on March 13, 2015 by Brian Yaeger

Coin Toss Brewing Co. is a new brewery from homebrewer Tim Hohl, KPAM Radio’s news director, coming to the Portland suburb of Oregon City, with great assistance from veteran brewer Dave Fleming. That sentence is my attempt at SEO optimization. HT: Ezra Johson-Greenough of The New School.

We all know the proverb, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” but for KPAM radio news director Tim Hohl, host of the Thursday-ly “Beer Geek” segment, it’s never been about beating brewers but championing them. Since 2011, Hohl has interviewed plenty of brewers along with publicans, hop growers and, back in January, yours truly.

“The more time I’ve spent telling stories about the craft beer industry, the more I’ve wanted to be a part of it,” said Hohl. “The people, the creativity, and the collaborative spirit are an inspiration. Plus I love history and the idea of merging it with my love of craft beer.”

Hohl was kind enough to interview me for his show and I’m delighted to get to return the favor now that he has announced his new brewery venture, Coin Toss Brewing. Technically, the brewery’s grand opening is this summer, but I coin-cidentally sampled his first brew, George’s Honest Ale, at Growlers Hawthorne a couple weeks back.

The clever name is homage to pioneers Asa Lovejoy and Francis Pettygrove (y’know, the guys for whom those NW streets four blocks apart in Alphabet City are named after) who, instead of rochambeauing for the right to name our fair city after their own places of origin, decided to go best-out-of-three on a simple coin toss. Lovejoy, from Boston, lost. Pettygrove, from Maine, won. The infamous toss off, incidentally, occurred not in Portland proper but in Oregon City, which is where Coin Toss Brewing will open as a 10-barrel brewery in a 1,400 square foot space at 14210 Fir St, Suite H.

As for George’s Honest Ale, it’s part of Coin Toss’s “Heritage Series.” To learn more about it, I joined Tim and his “beer swami” (Hohl’s quote), Dave Fleming, one of Oregon’s most prolific brewers (whose c.v. includes the Lucky Lab, Lompoc, McMenamins Old St. Francis School (Bend), Three Creeks (Sisters), Coalition, Kells, and probably several more. I found them at Belmont Station enjoying some shift beers, having spent the day gypsy brewing at Coalition.

Brian: On your program, you asked me to prognosticate if brewers may return to “more traditional flavors.” I see you were asking out of self-interest!! What is the Heritage Series and what does returning to traditional flavors mean to you?

Tim: Simple has a lot to do with it. I’ve been a big believer in Simple since this project started. I want to take us back to where we started, see what others have done that was successful—even if that’s 200 years ago—and recreate it.”

Dave: ‘Where we started’ also means ‘We as craft brewers.’ (That’s) 1992 to me. Beer was simple and IPA wasn’t even a thing then. We made it at the Lab in ‘94/95. Didn’t have to put the UK designation on it. [Ed.’s note: here Fleming means that any truly-balanced, moderately-bitter IPA today gets ridiculed as a “UK-style IPA.”] That’s simple, too, but that’s just 20 years ago. Beer was much simpler. It wasn’t Sea Salt Caramel Chocolate Hefeweisse.”

Tim: With our interpretation of the George Washington beer, you look at the ingredients, it’s so simple: molasses, one grain and yeast…(and) we showed the hops the beer basically. Our interpretation is based on his journal entry that leaves room for interpretation. He used ingredients available to them: 6-row barley indigenous to the colonies at that time. Cluster hops. And yeast.

Brian: If we’re talking simple, that was pre Louis Pasteur. Early 1800s versus late 1800s. (The implication being: Washington didn’t pitch yeast.)

Tim: It’s just about inspiration. I’m sure the beer that Henry Weinhard first brewed when he moved to Oregon was awful by today’s standards. So imagining what was beer like then. No specific goal in mind, just a love of history and beer.

Brian: A Rockwellian approach to brewing.

Dave: Exactly. And there were no light beers then. Pale malt wasn’t available at the time. All beers were dark.

Brian: Good segue. Earlier you guys were brewing your planned flagship, Black Hole CDA. A decidedly modern/non-historic beer. How’d that come about?

Tim: I like hops. I like dark beer.

That simple. Here, Tim and Dave went back’n’forth trying to recall the specifics of how Black Hole came about, but the gist is that Tim first homebrewed it circa 2011 and late that year, after having Dave on his Beer Geek show.

Tim: I forced my homebrew on him. He was nice enough to try it.

Dave: It was good.

That led to an invitation to brew it as a pro-am collab at Lompoc early 2012. They take it as a given that the beer’s really named Black Hohl, but they’re hoping Soundgarden sues them for copyright infringement that’d make them famous. No. I just made that up.

Tim: I made it. Dave just over-hopped it.

Here Dave worked in an anecdote about making the first true Cascadian Dark Ale in 2006, inadvertently. He was supposed to be making an IPA at Three Creeks and simply blindly dumped a bag of grain in he thought was placed by the mash tun for him. That “mistake,” his words, turned into Three Creeks’ 8 Seconds India Black Ale.

Tim: That’s how it went from just being a hobby and interest and part of the radio show to thinking, ‘I’d really like to do this.’ Maybe it was a fantasy before then. But it’s more than just making the beer. It’s being part of the craft beer community. I love it and respect it so much. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experience in my competitive day job career. Cutthroat. In beer, it’s collaborative. It’s like Don Younger said, a rising tide raises all ships.

Brian: And you’ll continue to do the radio show?

Tim: “Beer Geek” has been on the air since 2011. I’ve been covering the beer industry for much longer than that but finally had my own weekly segment. As a reporter…it won’t change. There are still countless stories to tell. I like a good story.

And then I had to dart out of Belmont Station and pick up my kid. Tim’s a good guy and speaking of good stories, when we’d talked about the brick’n’mortar tasting room, he explained that he lives in West Linn but, perhaps channeling Sarah Palin, “I can see Oregon City from my house.” Coin Toss’s official launch will coincide with the Spring Beer & Wife Festival over Easter. Hohl expects to have the Coin Toss brewery and taproom open by July. By then, it might be home to five new breweries. Feckin’ and Oregon City Brewing are already open. Bent Shovel and Shattered Oak are also in the works. That got him fantasizing about a Clackamas County Brewers Fest including Fearless, Mt. Hood, Bunsenbrewer, and the forthcoming Drinking Horse. “It’s not Bend overnight,” Tim said, “but it could be a new craft beer destination.”

The Suds of March: 5 New Portland Beer Destinations

Posted on March 3, 2015 by Brian Yaeger

It’s fitting that my latest story for PoMo is basically version 2.015 of the first story I did for them, which was a look at the New Brews of 2012. Herein we meet the newer brewers, places like Ex Novo, BTU, Baerlic, StormBreaker, and Bannon’s in Beaverton. Of course, soon I’ll be able to do a write-up of five even newer players.

Photo of, and courtesy of, Ex Novo, as featured in PoMo.

Over a Pint: Sean Burke of The Commons

Posted on February 25, 2015 by Brian Yaeger

Name: Sean Burke

Brewery: The Commons

Professional brewing experience: Since 2011 (Sean went straight from the Siebel Institute’s Doemens Academy in Germany to The Commons).

As Sean and I both recall, albeit fuzzily, we met at a brand new brewpub called Burnside Brewing in 2011. Sean had just moved back to Portland, having been hired by Mike Wright to be the head brewer at Mike’s brewery he ramped up from a home-based nano to a seven-barreler renamed The Commons. Four years and four GABF medals later, the brewery is prepping to expand again, this time to 15 barrels. The Commons Crew has a lot of work ahead of them. (Sean, an expert in cabinetry, used to put his expertise to work at Powell’s but has doffed his brewer cap for his cabinet-making one at the brewery’s new location a few blocks away on SE Belmont.) But instead of burning the midnight oil I found Sean and the crew at the Oregon Beer Awards, an awards ceremony thrown by Willy Week at the Doug Fir. The beer community was rubbing elbows while up to its ears in the crowded lounge and The Commons, nominees for some six awards, took home the golden tap for Best Belgian Style Ale (Urban Farmhouse).

Afterward, we celebrated with A-listers at Spago’s in the Hollywood Hills. No we didn’t. We huffed a block away to The Wurst where Sean and I got pints of Deschutes’ Fresh Squeezed IPA. Truth be told, I tried to get him to go for some beers a block in the other direction, to Union Jacks, but the dedicated husband wasn’t down. (He may have only gotten married a year and a half ago but they were a couple for 14 years.) No, I don’t think that’s his reason. It has something to do with having gigged there. Not working the pole, sheesh, but playing guitar in a band with his brother, which is how the Burke boys rang in Y2K. True story. He still plays out, but has switched to banjo in old-timey sounding, beer-influenced, Maris Otter.

In lieu of strippers The Wurst’s entertainment comes in the form of arcade consoles, shooting pool, and busted skeeball and pop-a-shots. I know they’re busted because later in the night I thought it was an okay idea to drop my bus fare quarters to play skeeball and only got 3 balls (but still nailed the 100-point hole) and some pop-a-shot, which Josh Grgas, The Commons’ brand manager, showed me basically worked even without paying since the balls aren’t caught by the catch. Not exactly an arcade game, but Occidental’s Dan Engler was there, too, and somehow we discovered we both had majored in Russian and turned speaking choppy Russki into a parlor game. Incidentally, while I know the focus is on Sean and The Commons, not that WW’s Beer of the Year, Upright Engelberg Pils, isn’t great but IMHO Occidental’s Pilsner is the best in town.

Pilsner, and all manner of lagers, are certainly Sean’s passion, his Belgian-influenced brewery’s slant notwithstanding. Remember, he did study brewing in Bavaria after all. I think we got into an interesting conversation about Franconia, but maybe that was someone else. I was onto a pint of Double Mountain Black Irish Stout by that point and I think Sean was on his second pint of Trumer Pils.

Pilsner. “Crisp and clean.” Reinheitsgebot. The irony is that Sean made one of my many favorite Commons beers by pitching actual yogurt to introduce the souring agent, lactobacillus. Yep, Nancy’s Yogurt right in the kettle. And it had to be Nancy’s since Sean grew up in Springfield, OR where the creamery was founded in 1960. Given the greatness of Biere Royale—the resulting beer augmented with currants like a kir royale (get it?)—it’s not surprising others around town have attempted kettle souring but The Commons was first, at least in Portland. Sean’s pretty positive others had experimented with it sooner. Please send me the link or citation if you know of an earlier example.

Afterward, there was a pizza run, well, walk since Sizzle Pie’s just a block away. There was talk about getting his pizza fix in North Portland where he lives but with substandard pie, which is sad. He also talked about skipping the re-opening of the brewery in a month since it overlaps with another beer festival much closer to his home (he wishes he could ride to work; I think I encouraged him to tackle the five-ish mile ride). I suspect he was kidding. Either way, that’s likely the next time I’ll see him but we won’t have the luxury of sitting down and just talking since it will be crowded and there will be an agenda.

SF Beer Week: Oregon Takeover

Posted on February 4, 2015 by Brian Yaeger

I love everything about SF Beer Week (namely the parts about San Francisco and it being a week of beer). Back in 2009, when I lived there and the first SFBW took place, I knew it was special but I didn’t know just how special. Everything about it was over the top yet just right. I remember the tap takeovers from locals like Anchor to ones nowhere near SF like Allagash. I remember the beer dinners including one from the always legendary Sean Homebrew Chef Paxton. And I recall going on the Beers 2 Breakers bike ride that inspired Bryan Kollesar, Derrick Peterman, and myself to throw a bona fide Beer Run the next couple of years. I won’t be doing the Beer Run again this year, sadly, but I am going back and this time, it’s a full-on night of Oregon Breweries, Beaver state beers that’ve never basked in the California sun. After visiting every brewery in the state for my brand new guidebook, I’ve put together this list:

Ale Apothecary: Sahalie, Sahati, Spencer. Bend
Barley Brown’s: Turmoil CDA, Pallet Jack IPA, Fork Lift IIPA. Baker City
Boneyard: RPM IPA, Notorious 3IPA. Bend
Breakside: IPA, Salted Caramel Stout. Portland
Cascade: Gingersnap, Foudre Project #1. Portland
The Commons: 3^rd Bbl-aged Stout (using bourbon barrels from Bourbon Little Brother). Portland
Crux: Tough Love bbl-aged RIS, Half Hitch Mosaic IIPA. Bend
De Garde: Bu Weisse (Berliner Weisse), Petit Desay tart farmhouse. Tillamook
Double Mountain: Devil’s Kriek, My Little Runaway (Belgian cherry ale). Hood River
Ft George: 1811 Lager & Vortex IPA. Astoria
Hair of the Dog: Fred From the Wood. Portland
Hopworks: Abominable Winter Ale, Kentucky Christmas “aka Bourbon A-bomb”. Portland
Upright: Special Herbs (gin-aged gruit with lemongrass, sweet & bitter orange peels, hyssop, and Sichuan peppercorns. Portland
Viking: Winter Squash Porter Braggot. Eugene

The lineup is a sliver of what I know Oregon beer is all about: variety. Oh it’s also about greatness, depth of flavor and artistry, but look at that incredibly wide-range of beer styles (some traditional, some wholly made up). Let’s have fun with some numbers

1 braggot. Because of course Oregon has a dedicated braggot brewery in Viking. Actually, there are two (the other being Fire Cirkl)

2 X-mas beers. The commercial holiday may be over, but HUB keeps the season going here with Abominable (“A-bomb” is a hoppy winter ale) and Kentucky Christmas, the bourbon-aged version of A-bomb!

3 Bend. I strived for geographic diversity with this lineup since it’s OREGON Breweries Night, not just Portland. But when you have 20 amazing breweries in a town of just 80,000 people, of course I sought out more than one or two. By that measure, fewer than half of these are from PDX. Oregon’s a great place to road trip for beer and you’ll see waterfalls, hop farms, and gorgeous coastline along the way.

6 Darks. with no two alike. Some are barrel-aged while others have flavors like salted caramel (in collaboration with Salt & Straw ice cream) and delacata (winter) squash in the form of a porter braggot.

7 Farmhouse. and again no two alike. Yes Upright and Ale Apothecary both work within this realm but between their 5 beers being poured, they’re all wildly different

8 IPAs. various styles from PNW IPA to CDA to imperial to a triple

9 sour beers. Cherries, ginger, wild black currants, and some sans overt fruit flavors, soured purely through wild yeast.

11 barrel-aged beers. Stouts, sours, strong ales and even a gruit. Barrels include bourbon, wine, and even gin.

21 GABF medals won by Barley Brown’s alone (4 last year, more than any other company). Breakside has won 6 including a gold for the American-style IPA being offered here. Both The Commons and Hopworks have earned 4 apiece, too.

90% RPM. This IPA is 100% delicious, but some 90% of Boneyard’s production is of this beer which I feel safe calling Oregon’s favorite IPA and you’ll see why. But wait til you try Notorious, which is basically a 3xRPM.

200 dollars. That’s how much Eric Cripe spent on the case of Hair of the Dog Fred From the Wood. Drink up and thank him heartily. I really had to call in some favors to make this event happen.

1811 Lager. No, not 1,811 lagers, but a lager named in honor of the year Astoria was founded, which is where Ft. George Brewery was founded many years later. With so many boldly flavored beers, I thought a lighter, pre-Pro lager was necessary to recalibrate our palates!

I hope to see tons of old friends and new ones this Saturday night at:

The Jug Shop (1590 Pacific Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94109; 415.885.2922)

Cost: $45 adv/$50 door. (Nearly sold out. Only room for about 20 more)

Starting time: 6:30 p.m.

Books: Get your copy of Oregon Breweries for $20 (happy to sign ’em free)

Over a Pint: Ian McGuinness of Natian Brewery

Posted on January 26, 2015 by Brian Yaeger

I interview brewers all the time and frequently socialize with them, too, but typically at some type of beerfest or event. Of my own work, I’ve frequently said I’m a beer writer who really writes about people. So here’s the idea, the goal, and not only am I going to keep this going, but I’m putting it out there that everyone with some type of beer blog should participate.

“Over a pint.” Sort of in the vein of The Session kicked off by Stan Hiernymous exactly 8 years ago in 2007 and still going strong. The Session entails a different blogger each month conceiving a disparate topic related to beer wherein everyone aims for that target and then said blogger hosts the discussion on his or her web-log. Since The Session claims First Friday of the month, how’s about Last Monday for Over a Pint?! I’ll link to everyone’s “OaP” left in the comments or tagged on Twitter. I’m envisioning just two instructions.

Head out with someone who brews for a living and talk to them over a pint (or more) without recording it or taking any notes. Just chat. About stuff.
Don’t do it at the brewery’s pub or tasting room.

This is what I did the other night. Here goes. Oh, and maybe each installment of Over a Pint can start with the most basic of templates like this:

I neglected to pull out my iPhone and take a pic so here’s Ian’s Facebook profile

Name: Ian McGuinness

Brewery: Natian

Professional brewing experience: Since 2009 (I’d list every brewery Ian has brewed at but it

At some point a few years ago, Ian and his then girlfriend Natalia suggested getting together for a beer at one of his favorite watering holes, Laurelthirst on NE Glisan. It’s not hip but it’s not a dive. It’s primarily a live music venue with two bands nightly and there’s tchotchkes everywhere like an old toboggan, a rocking chair, and I think a mandolin on the wall above the bar. I’d say there’s about 20 taps if that.

Over the years, whenever I’d talk to Ian, the idea of going there would come up but it just never happened. So we made it happen. At this point, Natalia’s long out of the picture but I don’t feel badly bringing her up. She’s the first half of the brewery’s namesake. Oh yes. It was Nat and Ian’s one barrel nanobrewery. Nat + Ian. Natian (pronounced “Nation”). He’s now working on a 10-barrel system and the guy who I gather is Natian’s sole but lofty employee, Dave, also joined us. When I got there they’d grabbed a table because it fills up by 6 for the music and they were drinking pints of stout. He pleaded that I go get a pitcher of the stout and, not that I’m getting paid for this so no need for any “full disclosure” but he said to put it on his tab. I did. And I simply ordered “a pint of the stout” from the bartender. She came back with a pitcher of Pelican Tsunami Stout.

Neither Ian nor Dave noticed. Noticed what? That it was Pelican’s 7% export-style stout (winner of seven GABF medals since 1998) and not Natian McGuinness Imperial Milk Stout at over 9% ABV. Then again, the folks at Diageo haven’t noticed the McGuinness Stout either.

As the band kicked in, we naturally had to shout to try to hear each other. Being a regular, he pointed to a tall, lanky, middle-aged guy with a button down shirt tucked into his slacks and warned us that he’d soon start dancing like Elaine from that famous Seinfeld episode. He was dead right. The whole night.

I know Ian is from Pennsylvania and has lived in Austin, Texas—a state he’d previously sworn never to live in but really Austin’s Texas’s anti-matter—so I’m not really sure how the subject of Florida came up, but I know he lived there, too. It’s one of three states I’ve never visited and am afraid to ever go. The weirdest stuff happens there. But he was saying how his bosses at the company he worked for all really liked it (since their offices overlooked the beach). That company, I thought I heard him say, was Slim Jim. Loud music. Turned out to be Slim Fast, which is almost as bizarre, but for a good minute I had visions of Ian shoveling Godknowswhat animal parts and some cayenne pepper into a grinder.

Another topic of conversation was the breaking news of Portland’s latest next brewery, One Nation Brewing. They’re building out on SE Division, a direct 1.5 mile walk down from Natian Brewery. It’s fair to say Ian’s a bit perturbed especially since he contacted them and they confirmed they were aware of Natian. I highly doubt anyone would try to open a brewery by adding a number and changing one vowel to an ‘O.” One Widmor anyone? Funnily enough, there was a recent news story about a brewery set to open in Missoula, Montana called One Nation (but they’ve since opened as Imagine Nation.) Given the other –ation/-ition breweries in Portland—Migration, Coalition, and now Culmination, you’d think One Nation could’ve made a smarter naming decision. If they’re into the whole “Under God” thing from the Pledge of Allegiance,” might I suggest IntOneNation (like how we use our voice). Time will tell how this pans out, but I loved the idea that Dave chimed in with: calling Natian’s next beer “One Notion” since in some universe changing an ‘A’ to an ‘O’ or vice versa is sufficient differentiation.

It didn’t dominate the night’s conversation quite the way Mr. Dancing Pants did. Which got me thinking how it’s too bad Ian hadn’t been dating someone named Elaine (who preferably doesn’t dance like that iconic character). He could’ve called his brewery Elatian. Everyone wants to be elated as they drink beer. Then again, his new lady friend joined us by the time our second pitcher, this time a proper McGuinness Stout, and her name is Mary. If One Nation sues Ian after operating successfully for five years and wins, maybe he can check to see how John Harris over at the galactic-themed Ecliptic would feel if he changed the name to Martian.

Elysian Sells to AB-InBev: Success without Succession

Posted on January 24, 2015 by Brian Yaeger

By now every beer blogger, tweeter, consumer, and curmudgeon has volleyed barbs at Seattle-based Elysian Brewing, founded in 1995, via every channel of social media to voice their dissatisfaction with today’s announcement that the Emerald City’s biggest little brewery has sold out, in toto, to Big Bad Bud (NYSE:BUD). By tomorrow we should all shut up about this and continue doing whatever it is we do to further the cause of good brewing either by making great beer, serving it, covering it, or the way that matters most, buying and enjoying it.

This image is blowing up the int-beer-net: Elysian’s collab beer with indie label Sub Pop). Ouch.

The bottom line is that the three co-founders, Joe Bisacca, Dick Cantwell and David Buhler, collectively decided to sell their baby to the largest brewing conglomerate on the planet. Terms were not disclosed but it’s safe to assume none of them ever has to work another day in his life yet all of them, at least for now, will continue to work at the company they once owned for twenty years. God bless them. Starting a brewery is hard work. Running one for that long is much, much harder. They deserve to reap their financial rewards. But here is what inspired this whole blog post: they collectively decided to sell their baby and I highly doubt selling to AB-InBev was ever something they’d considered two decades ago or probably even two years ago.

Did they consider its future at all? Did they ever develop a succession plan? All breweries are founded by mortal men and a few mortal women. People perish, but what happens to the breweries–that some people cherish as if they’re living entities–don’t have to die with them.

My next point is one I sincerely wish I didn’t have to bring up or even think about, but in 2012, Dick Cantwell’s son, Nap tragically died from a bike accident suffered while leaving the Elysian brewery he worked at on Capital Hill. As a father, I can’t think of a single worse tragedy than losing your young kid. I can only suspect that Dick, known for espousing independence in all forms, aspired to pass his share of his brewery onto him. (Since this is all conjecture, I don’t know what the cards held for Dick’s daughter Lucy but I know she’s the executive director at the New Belgium Family Foundation. Elysian and New Belgium share more than just their Trip Series of collaboration beers.) Nap’s passing perhaps altered his vision for the company’s future and even if that had nothing to do with this transaction, at the very least it shows that people face much bigger issues and dilemmas in life than crying about the sale of one of your favorite breweries (none of us has one single favorite).

So as the entrepreneurial men and women who’ve created this small but mighty segment of the brewing industry start reaching retirement age or face challenges that impede their ability to further helm the breweries they established, what should they do? Should they simply fold ’em? Should they bequeath them to offspring or employees who possibly aren’t equipped to manage them? (Point of interest: the attrition rate of family businesses shows that 30% successfully become Gen. 2 companies and only 12% make it to third generation, which I wrote about in this 2010 All About Beer story) Or should they cash in their chips? And if so, how much does it matter whether the buyer is a fellow craft beer stalwart, some faceless VC firm, or the evil-doers at the behemoth brewing brands?

I’ve never been nor will I ever be in that position–much like 99.9+% of you–so I don’t know if I’d rather take pride or mounds of cash to the bank. What I do know is this: In my first book, Red, White, & Brew, each chapter focused on a different brewery but it’s really a beer book that’s not about beer, it’s about the people. And one question I asked all of the subjects was about plans for the brewery’s future. Here’s a quick run-down because even when I started working on it in 2005, I didn’t realize how relatively quickly this issue would come to the fore. In order:

1. Yuengling (Pottsville, PA). The full name is D.G. Yuengling & Son, Inc. and for five straight generations beginning with David Yuengling in 1829, a son has always succeeded as the head of the company. Current jefe Dick Yuengling has no sons but all four daughters work there and represent the sixth generation of ownership. They will not change the name.

2. Geary’s (Portland, ME). David Geary and his then-wife started the brewery in 1986. Their daughter Kelly works at the brewery and hopefully still represents its future ownership. Their son Matt currently works in the beer industry for Pilsner Urquell. Considering their longevity, there are far worse places he could be learning the ropes.

3. Bell’s (Kalamazoo, MI). Larry Bell launched his brewery in 1985, making it one of the most veteran companies in the game. Today it’s the 7th largest craft brewing concern; 13th largest overall. His daughter is currently the VP!

4. Leinenkugel (Chippewa Falls, WI). I got some guff for including them in my book but at no time did I state it was about the craft brewing industry or exclusively craft brewers. Leinies had been an independent brewery in the Northwoods of Wisconsin for 121 years from 1867 to 1988. Today it’s a wholly owned subsidiary of MillerCoors. For what it’s worth, Jake Leinenkugel and his sons, the great-great-great-great-grandsons of Jacob Leinenkugel, still have jobs at the company.

5. Free State (Lawrence, KS). Chuck Magerl opened this brewpub in 1989 and fairly recently launched a production brewery. He told me during the interview that he envisioned going the employee-owned route as the succession plan.

6. New Belgium (Ft. Collins, CO) Co-founded in 1991 by Kim Jordan, she remained the majority owner until the tail end of 2012 when the brewery became 100% employee owned through an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan). It’s one of the very few breweries I’ve ever dreamt of working for. Fort Collins is a rad place to live and work.

7. Grand Teton (Victor, ID) Formed as the Otto Bros. Brewery in 1988, one of the Otto brothers died and the other, Charlie, sold it to the current owners–a husband and wife–in 2009. Well worth a road trip to visit no matter where your road starts.

8. Widmer Bros. (Portland, OR). Around here this story is already legend. Kurt and Rob Widmer started a tiny little brewery in 1984 helping to kickstart our whole Beervana thing. Neither has kids. They sold a minority interest to Anheuser Busch–more than the arbitrary 25% that the Brewers Association defines as sufficient to remain independent and “craft”–and now the parent corporation, Craft Brew Alliance, owns breweries from New England to Hawaii.

9. Anchor (San Francisco, CA) The makers of Anchor Steam Beer led the charge for craft brewing in 1965 when Fritz Maytag (yes, that Maytag) bought the funny little brewery that had existed, barely, since 1906. America wouldn’t see its first post-prohibition brewery open for another eleven years. Like a lot of people, I suspected his nephew who ran much of the operation would take over but in 2010 Fritz sold it to the Griffin Group (Sky Vodka). They don’t run it exactly how Fritz did, but it remains an integral player in the industry IMO.

10. Electric (Bisbee, AZ). I think the chapter on “Electric” Dave is everyone’s favorite in the book Arizona’s still a literal and figurative beer desert, but bless ol’ Electric Dave, he tried to change that back in 1988. He actually did sell the company to a couple guys who seemed like Jimmy Buffett “parrotheads” back around 2010 who couldn’t keep it afloat. Russian River‘s Vinnie Cilurzo can also tell you some stories about this guy!

11. Spoetzl (Shiner, TX). Not many breweries ever make it to their 100th anniversary but this one did. Granted, by that time it was owned by the Gambrinus Co. based not in the tiny town of Shiner but over in San Antonio. FYI, it’s the same company that owns “Oregon’s oldest craft brewery,” Bridgeport.

12. Dixie (New Orleans, LA). This one’s just sad all around. Another heritage brand that may not have been terribly relevant in today’s beer culture, but their Blackened Voodoo black lager was my A-HA beer back in the ’90s and the latest (and technically still current) owners lost it to a bunch of down-south, back-room bureaucracy and hypocrisy after the building was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and subsequent looters. Any bottles of Dixie you see on shelves anywhere are brewed up in Wisconsin or Minnesota or something.

13. Alltech’s Lexington (Lexington, KY). This was really just a side business when I was there but I wanted to an excuse to visit Kentucky and drink bourbon and their excellent bourbon-barrel ale gave me that. Now it’s one of the biggest brands in Ireland. Read the chapter.

14. Dogfish Head (Milton, DE). Huh, whatever did happen to this guy? If you hear about ‘im lemme know. (But seriously, Sam does have two young kids and I’d love it if they run the brewery and accompanying Annual Intergalactic Bocce Tournament.)

So cry in your beer today for the “loss” of Elysian. But at least we know they won’t be the next to close and that someone’s looking out for it in the long term to get their investment’s worth. I think it’s safe to predict we’ll start seeing “shocking” news like this breaking on the order of once a month for the next few years. Who’s next? And when it’s not them, let’s not pretend we’re stunned when we find out who it is.

Deluxe Brewing/Sinister Distilling in Albany

Posted on January 17, 2015 by Brian Yaeger

Howie manning the bar at Deluxe Brewing in Albany, OR

Technically I’ve been to Deluxe. But I hadn’t really BEEN. That is, I hadn’t tried their beer because when I visited on tour for the book, Eric “Howie” Howard was just building out his brewery/distillery or as they call it, “brewstillery.” Albany isn’t exactly the brightest star in Oregon’s brewery constellation but with Deluxe it now hosts two such businesses (the other being Calapooia a short walk down the road along the tracks).

Unless you’re really looking for it

The space is a large warehouse sectioned off with the brewing equipment, the bar area replete with a ping pong table (I didn’t find any takers during my visit which means I’m undefeated on the tennis table), and the “other” space as you walk in with two vintage pickup trucks and seating for anyone with minors. There’s a dry-erase board for local food options and a pretty good bbq cart parked outside. To pair with my brisket sandwich, I had the Pure Sin Schwarzbier, a dry, no-roast onyx lager at an ideal 4.7% ABV.

Howie said it’ll be a few months til he has any of his spirits available in bottles. There’s something pretty cool about a whiskey with a beer back that all originated paces from the bar. No sooner had he poured me a beer than he was whisked away to lead a tour that, since my seat in the 21+ area was within ear shot, sounded like an educational discussion of the brewing process conducted via a homebrew setup and a fridge/kegerator.

It’s what’s on tap

Albany is not Corvallis (though their flagship is Wild Beaver, which isn’t a spontaneously fermented lager as beer geeks might hope for but an amber or Vienna-style lager.) But if you’re looking for something on the truly wild side, their brewer named Bobby had a “Black Wine Ale” on tap. Far from something like a 13.8% black barleywine, it’s actually a 3.8% schwarz fermented with red wine yeast. I liked it. Maybe even more than Howie. I’d be curious what some lager-loving Germans would say.

Of Oregon IPAs

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Brian Yaeger

I’m currently at the Hawthorne Hophouse, having just completed my sampler flight of 15 of the “best” Oregon-brewed IPAs (half priced at $6 on Mondays).

“Fifteen? Surely you mean 12, you drunken reprobate!” you might have caught yourself exclaiming.

No, I mean 15 because after I ran through the dozen IPAs (no Imperials, no Sessions, no Grapefruit-infused, no sage-pomegranate aged in tequila barrels for a year while having daily positive affirmations recited to it by the lead brewer), I asked if they’d deliver a run-off of my 3 faves to really seal the deal.

All January long, both Hophouse houses are running this event: a blind flight of 12 IPAs for 12 bucks ($6 on Mondays) and the winner, after voting solely based on taste and not presumptions, goes on the 1-tap for the whole year. Spoiler alert: There are no spoilers in this blog post.

It can easily be argued that if there are 185 brewing companies in Oregon (by MY count and I promise that’s up-to-date as of 1-5-15), then there are in the vicinity of 235 IPAs so how can they have narrowed it down to only a dozen? I hear you and agree, but take it up with their mgmt. For my part, I thought the 12 they selected were good calls based on reputation and taste. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Hophouse…

Order the flight and they bring you a tray of twelve 2.5-oz samples. Just enough to give you a good enough idea of which ones you liked, which ones you didn’t, and which ONE you loved. As alluded to, I loved three. What blew me away was that I told my wait person I suspected they were all new to my personal pantheon but, in fact, were actually the two of the three I would’ve picked based purely on assumption and bias. FWIW, my 4th place vote was one I always put in my Top 3. BTW, I have 5 top threes.

The blind tasting runs all month long. I’ll post a follow-up around February 1st with my tasting notes, scores, and the eventual winner. But for now, here are the IPAs as they appear on taps 1-12 on Hawthorne:

1. Boneyard RPM

2. Hop Valley Alphadelic

3. Crux Outcast

4. Breakside IPA

5. Ninkasi Total Domination

6. Ft. George Vortex

7. Laurelwood Workhorse

8. GoodLife Descender

9. Gigantic IPA

10. Migration Luscious Lupulin

11. Barley Brown’s Pallet Jack

12. Double Mtn. Hop Lava.

What do you currently claim as your favorite Oregon IPA? Are there any you feel they blatantly left off the list? Will you come in and “vote”? Hoppy New Year.

Punker than my wife and kid: a punk looks at 40, or, Season’s Greetings and a Happy New Year.

Posted on December 19, 2014 by Brian Yaeger

I never wore a black leather jacket. I never owned a pair of steel-toed boots. I never saw the Sex Pistols because I was one when they formed and barely out of diapers when they disbanded, but I’m punk enough to know that when they reunited after I graduated college that they were fucking rotten sellouts. By the same token or possibly I mean on the flipside, my first car was my mom’s Volvo station wagon. My parents are still married after almost fifty years and the only time I ever ran away from home I left a trail of tangerine peels so they could find me if they wanted, but it ended once I got around the block. I earnestly love Tom Jones’s music.

Then/Now. Top: Clean-cut Dirty 30s. Bottom: Haggard but Sporty 40s.

The list of ways in which I’m not punk outweighs any itemization of my punk rock credentials. Those include starting, writing, publishing, and distributing a punk rock zine as well as having several years of the Punk Rock Bowling Tournament in Vegas under my belt.

While my stage-diving days are disappearing in my life’s rear view mirror, I hope they’re still down the road and around the bend for my son who is about to turn three. My wife is counting down the hours til she joins me in our forties. She claims she was into punk during her adolescence, but I’m sorry, knowing some of the words to that one Suicidal Tendencies song and loving that one Social Distortion song doesn’t really qualify. This exclusionary way of thinking is, I realize, the intersection of the punk/hipster Venn diagram.

I used to wear a long-sleeve pink button-down shirt with pinstripes in elementary school, selected a pink paisley tie to go with my three-piece, pinstripe suit I wore for my Bar Mitzvah, and in my wardrobe of awesome patterned shirts, the solid pink one nearly garners the most comments. I mainly bring this up because my wife and I are sad to hear our son say, more than figuratively out-of-the-blue, that he doesn’t like the color pink. Only girls like pink. During his transition into toddlerhood while we lived in Amsterdam for the past year, he used to love the color. Gender stereotyping is a learned American behavior. We plan to show him to that boys liking pink is punk. I mean, it’s preppy, too, but for toddler boys, it’s clearly anti-establishment.

What does any of this have to do with anything? Nearing the end of the year I get reflexive. I usually write a year-in-review type thingy. But my goal is to spend very little time on Facebook during the last days of the year and more time in the flesh with friends and family not being distracted by my stupid-phone. But it’s a big one since, as mentioned, I’m now in my fourth decade. I’m older than Kobe Bryant who’s on Year-One of his two-year Senior Citizen’s farewell season.

Since I already put much of 2014 into the hindsight machine during a series of posts outlining the top 10 ways Amsterdam life differs from Portland life (or really how European culture varies from American), here’s the recap in chron order:

1: Bikes and English.

2: Insouciance. Aka: café culture.

3: Playgrounds and parents.

4: Dog citizens.

5: Urban vs. natural beauty.

6: Trains/public transportation.

7: Seasonal creep and spiciness.

8: Beer! (finally)

9: Stroopwafels.

9.5: Koffie/coffee.

10: Violence, mainstream media, and doom. Aka: why we never should’ve left Europe.

So that brings us up to date. I’m very happy that my book is finally done and out and being well-received. I’m also very happy that the bulk of my launch promo events are done and can stop haranguing people into coming out (though naturally I have more lined up for January in Portland, Hood River, and Corvallis so far with the whole state coming soon thereafter). But mostly, I’m very excited about what 2015 will hold. I’m excited for Izzy to start swimming and skiing lessons. I’m jazzed for the music fests we’ll attend wherever they may be but they WILL be. I’m pumped to find out if my forties will be better than my thirties since, honestly, they were better than my twenties. I hope Wifey continues loving her new job at her work. I hope Izzy stays a “goofball,” which he will if nature and nurture have anything to do with it. I hope to find myself in more exciting and beautiful places that I’ve never seen before like I did throughout 2014. (I already know to are on the list: Patagonia and Florida.) And I hope all you guys have a fucking awesome year ahead. Sorry, my punk roots still show sometimes.

So here’s to the newborns, the babies turning into toddlers, the new breweries, the old breweries, new friends, new tunes, new resolutions, and a Happy New Year.

Bull Ridge Brewpub: R.I.P.

Posted on December 18, 2014 by Brian Yaeger

The guidebook Oregon Breweries is mere weeks old but the nature of the Oregon brewing scene is so fluid in nature, there are already a few brewing companies serving us that aren’t fully introduced in the book as well as one that is no more. In full candor, I have a mental list of a very small handful of breweries that I feel are not long for this world. In rare instances, it’s because the beer’s just not worth selling. In most instances, I just don’t see them being able to get their product into a sustainable number of thirsty mouths. Heck, maybe in such a Venn diagram there’s a large intersection. In any event, I had Baker City’s Bull Ridge pegged for the brewery obituary section and lo and behold, they’ve perished.

Rip page 197 out of Oregon Breweries. No, don’t! Double Mountain is on page 198 and they’re never going anywhere!

As seen in the screen shot above, I’d even contacted this brazen brewpub that bid to build Baker City into a two-brewery town alongside Barley Brown’s. Scroll through the comments on this thread this yarn and you’ll see there’s little love lost in town. The owners were inexperienced both in the restaurant game and the brewing biz. Two things pretty vital for operating a successful brewpub even here in Portland let alone a town of fewer than 10,000 people with tourism seasons that are more shoulder than peak.

On the upside, Barley Brown’s runs both the pub and the “Baker City Brewing” tasting room across the street, so Baker City’s still, technically, a two brewery town.

Brian Yaeger: Beer Writer

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