Descutes Black Butte Porter

Hey Reed College! I'€™m rocking on your dime! How you like that?! Heh, heh.

So I'€™m doing a live review of a bottle of Deschutes Brewery Black Butte Porter. It has been my long standing policy to not spend money in such a way that it will end up in the hands of people who hate me. I have established in my post on Deschutes Mirror Pond that the Deschutes Brewery donates money to the Republican Party and tends to lean to the right in general. So by purchasing a Deschutes beer some of my money will end up in the pocket of Karl Rove. I cannot live with that possibility. Hence I never spend money on Deschutes beer. However I have been able, though various contacts, been able to procure a bottle of Deschutes beer that I did not pay for. It was not stolen, instead it was payed for by Reed College. So, dear reader, I now get to review a bottle of Black Butte Porter.

The beer is deep amber in color, dark, but not very dark. The nose is a little malty, but with strong dusty/musty notes. That's about it.

The flavor profile is pleasant enough to start, with tiny hints of chocolate. Tiny. Barely there. Also barely there is the body, which is a particularly strange thing for a porter to be missing. However that is forgivable, as this beer could be crafted toward a particular demographic. What is unforgivable is the finish, which is dusty and slightly sour, long after the beer has left the mouth.

Hmmm, this seems to be bottle conditioned, as is Bridgeport, for whom the mustiness is characteristic as well. Are they related? Only more beer drinking can tell. Maybe we can set up a poll. I'll ask Saren.

After discussion with my father we dubbed this beer "€œBud Dark"€. Perhaps more fitting would be "Coors Dark" based on the political leanings involved. Now I don'€™t want to spend money on this beer because it is not very good. I can think of few reasons to drink this beer. I don'€™t particularly want to finish this beer, much less seek out another, (but I will, '€˜cmon, I don'€™t want to waste it, its beer!) so repeat drinkability is low.

WDTB? Way to many people. This is one of those beers that makes me have less faith in the tastes of the American beer drinking public. This beer is not good, better beer can be found at comparable prices.

WSDTB? People who like thin dark beer with strange aftertastes.

Rating: 6.1/10

New Old Lompoc L.S.D

Still at New Old Lompoc

L.S.D.

Now I’ve got a Lompoc Strong Ale, on nitro, I believe. The nose is rather smokey.

Not a huge amount of body, but that may be a perceptional effect of the nitro. A visual check shows that this is a deep red color, more like Guiness, which is rather thin as well. Most of the hops show up at the finish, which is rather bitter at the end. Overall the balance is a little hop heavy. I would personally prefer a little more malt and body to balance the hops, but some people might really like this.

Overall the complexity is above average, enough to keep it interesting. However the intense hop finish makes it more of a one pint beer.

The finish is quite smooth though, but kind of has a hole in the middle where the body should be.

WDTB? Apparently this beer is one of the most popular here.

WSDTB? Someone who wants a strong, dark, hoppy beer, although without much body.

Rating: 8.1/10

New Old Lompoc Jolly Bock

12/27/04
In the New Old Lompoc brewpub, who seem totally without usable website, with a Jolly Bock on tap.

This is a dark lager, with a nice hop nose. It is maltier than most lagers (it is a bock afterall), yet is still pretty crisp, with a pretty high alcohol content, weighing in at 7.1%.

They lager it for over a year. Can I say that? Is that an acceptable use of the word? Did I just verb lager? Welcome the wild frontier of internet English!

This has some nice citrus notes in the finish, very subtle and totally unexpected. The finish also has less hop bitterness than you might expect, while the body is less malty than most bocks, I think. However it’s been a while since I last had a bock, so I’m not entirely certain. Not too many breweries do bocks these days, which is a shame.

Repeat drinkability is quite high. We need to start a revolution here. Bocks should be the new ambers. Let’s do it. I’ll work on t-shirts and drinking lots of bock. You work on drinking bocks and wearing t-shirts if I ever do get them out.

WDTB? People in New Old Lompoc. Which is to say the only semi-worthwhile place on 23rd I’ve seen. Not quite hipsters entirely, not quite all yuppies either. I let the waitress choose this for me.

WSDTB? People who like bocks. People who like ambers. This is better than an amber. So fucking drink it!

Rating: 8.5/10

Editorial Time!

Recently two very interesting and divergent news stories passed through my consciousness. The first, in the Oregonian, was on the state of microbrews in Oregon. The second was on NPR's Marketplace and was on the decline of breweries in Germany. They painted two very very different pictures. As the Oregonian piece will probably only be accessible for a week or so more I will summarize it briefly: beer consumption across the US is flat over 2003-2004, however microbreweries in the Pacific Northwest have seen strong growth, with several new breweries opening each year. Many established small breweries are seeing growth in the 10-15% range, with some even higher. Rogue brewery, in my opinion the best brewery in the country, managed a 33% increase in sales over 2003, despite expanding into no new domestic markets and seeing international sales drop 5%. So quality sells in the Northwest.

However German breweries are closing. Experts estimate there is a 30-40% overcapacity of production country wide, so more closures are expected. Young Germans are choosing wine and mixed drinks over beer. The situation for German breweries is so dire they are desperately trying to shore up market share by re-designing labels to make them more hip while introducing new flavored malt beverages to the market.

Most people are shocked to hear this, as Germany is considered a beer Mecca. However I am not in the least surprised one main reason. This may seem counter intuitive, however I pin the decline of the German beer industry directly on the German beer purity law, or Rheinheitsgebot of 1516. This protectionist piece of legislation has successfully made it difficult to import beer in Germany for many years. However now it has completely stifled any creativity in the beer industry. I just posted a review of Rogue's Half-e-Weizen, which, as it includes coriander and ginger, could not be sold as beer in Germany. It was delicious. German beer is limited. You can't make out there experimental microbrews, nor can you make a cheap, piss water macro. My beer world has room for both of those things. Germany does not. As a result young people are looking elsewhere for their drinks.

As a brief aside let it not be said that the German drinking public is too high brow to drink crazy beer mixtures. While my mother was in Germany recently her hosts would routinely drink beer at lunch. But it was not unadulterated beer. Instead a popular drink was "dirty beer" a pitcher half full of beer, half full of coke. Also popular was beer and lemonade, also popular with Londoners. A pity, that Rheinheitsgebot.

Unlike some smarmy newspapers, I'm going to sign my editorials.

Kenji Spielman,
Drunkard in Chief

Rogue Half-E-Weizen

1/11/05 At Rogue Brewpub, with Dan who just turned 45. I’m drinking a Half-e-Weizen (aka Mo Ale).

This is an exceptionally delicate beer. There is not much nose to speak of and the flavor sneaks up on you slow ly. IT is flavored very lightly with coriander and ginger, which are quite mild.

The body is a little thin, but that matches the overall ethos of the beer.

Usually this is not a type of beer I like (flavored beer in general and Hefeweizens in particular), but for what this beer is intended to do it succeeds perfectly. There is just enough bitterness in the finish and the unusually spices keep it very interesting, even if their flavors are rather muted.

This is perhaps the best light beer I have ever had. You could drink huge quantities of this quite pleasurably. I will have to do more research into that later.

This is a very good beer to start the evening with. It leaves no unpleasant tastes on the palette, yet is interesting to the finish. I would deem it comparable to a Kolsh in character.

WDTB? Honestly, I don'€™t know. I'll let you know when I figure that out.

WSDTB? People who like light beers. People who find spice beers intriguing. People who are too hot and want to drink lots of beer.

Rating: 9.1/10

Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA

2/17 at the County Cork with Portland Taiko

Matt requested that I review the Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA. Or maybe he wanted me to review the 60 minute or the 120 minute. Well, either way he gets the 90 minute because that is what is on tap right now. I really want to review all three, but I do not have that opportunity yet.

The nose is sweet, with a hint of cinnamon. The beer is light amber in hue, which belies its full-bodied nature.

This is a full-bodied, yet smooth. The flavor profile is quiet complex, with the hop kick at the very end of the flavor profile.

The body is warm and rich, with the full flavor only becoming evident late in the flavor profile. There are lots and lots of hops in this beer, so much that you can feel their residue on your tongue and lips.

The finish is the exceptional part of this beer. It is very hoppy and complex, but without being cloying or bitter at all, quite astounding for a beer with as much hops as this beer has.

This is a fascinating beer, complex, yet drinkable. The body is full enough to balance the hops, yet not overly malty in the least. As near as I can figure the true coup of this beer is the creation of a strong (9% ABV), tasty, full-bodied beer with the ability to withstand the rigorous hopping that is the main purpose of this beer.

WDTB? Hop heads. This is a true connoisseur's beer, dogfish head being known all over the country.

WSDTB? People with a serious yen for hops, but need the beer to back it up.

This is a very warm beer, with exceptional repeat drinkability for the amount of alcohol and hops involved. Which is to say I could drink another. But not more than two, let's not get crazy up in here!

Rating: 9.3/10