I liked Coalition Brewing. Pretty small, with a great hang out vibe to it. Plus the bartender was quite pretty and gave out free stickers. They have a program where you can try your hand at the brewing process on their pilot system, and if people like the beer, they’ll scale it up to the bigger system. If I lived in Portland, I have the feeling I’d spend a little too much time here.

Tour organizer obscured by some fine Coalition beer — Portland, OR

Rob’s Picks
• Two Dogs IPA – 5.8% – Lots of hop. Floral, bitter, crisp.
• Wu Cream Ale – 4.9% – Very hoppy, but not particularly creamy. Sort of IPA-ish.
• Bump’s Bitter ESB – 5.5% – Not too bitter, not too malty. Great balance.
• Lost Glove Strong – 8% – Rose-y aroma. Caramel flavor that mixes well with the floral hoppiness, and a nice maltiness. Really good.
• Loving Cup Maple Porter – 5.5% – Great coffee dryness. Very drinkable.
• Hanso Stout – 6.2% – Seemed very similar to the Loving Cup. Still good, though.
• Apollo Creed CDA – 7% – Not too hoppy, but great maltiness and good balance. Nice.

The Rest
• King Kitty Red – 5.74% – Hoppy, malty aroma. Malty, hoppy flavor. Okay.
• Wheat the People – 4.4% – Bubbly, with a bready finish. Very light. Also okay.
• Mr. Pigs Pale – 5% – Floral aroma. Flavor a little too floral for me, but otherwise nice.
• Hanso vs. Bulleit – 6.4% – Aged on oak with Bulleit bourbon. Didn’t really taste the bourbon very much. Good stout, but I expected more from this one.

I’m now half-way through the brewery posts from this busy beer-tasting weekend. Whew!

The Portland brewery tour took the scenic route from Cascade Barrel House to Burnside Brewing in order to look in the window of the tiny Natian Brewery. Doesn’t get much more nano than Natian.  At Burnside, there was a long table open that fit all of us, conveniently enough. This was the first place of the day for me that seemed to put about the same amount of emphasis on food as on their beer, and so it felt a little odd to just order a couple pitchers and a sampler tray. Oh well. At least we didn’t take up their 12-top for too long.

Sampler tray and pitcher at Burnside Brewing — Portland, OR

Rob’s Picks
• IPA – 6.5% – Hoppy start, malty finish. Good and crisp.
• Sweet Heat – 4.9% – Lemony and spicy — nice. A bit bready. Interesting. Can’t quite taste the apricot, which is fine with me.
• Stout – 5.4% – Slow start, but good dry coffee stout flavor.
• Alter Ego Imperial IPA – 8.3% – Floral aroma. Complex hoppy flavor, malty base not overpowering. Good.
• Pinot Noir Barreled Oyster Strong Ale – 10% – Wow! Awesome balance of pinot noir and dark beer flavors. Didn’t taste the oyster, which was fine with me, but the person sitting next to me did. Life is funny that way.

The Rest
• Oatmeal Pale Ale – 5.5% – Floral hoppiness, malty blahness. Okay, but not too interesting.
• Stock Ale – 5.4% – Great malty finish, but start is not too strong.
• Bourbon Barreled Stout – 6.5% – Very bourbony, maybe too much so. Good stout, but it’s overpowered by the bourbon blast. Person sitting next to me really liked it, though.

One thing I’m happily surprised about is even though my tasting notes were very concise for the breweries on this tour, I’m able to remember a large percentage of the beers by reading them. Maybe it won’t be another three years before I go on another one of these tours.

The Green Dragon devotes a couple of its 62 taps to the various homebrewers in the Oregon Brew Crew who release a new Green Dragon-branded beer every week or so on the in-house 1bbl brewing system. Fun!

Remains of the Brew Crew, Buckman, etc samplers at the Green Dragon — Portland, OR

Rob’s Picks
• Hoppy Night CDA – Floral hoppy bite, good lingering roasted maltiness.
• Vienna Lager – Color a bit dark for a lager, but really smooth, nice, and simple. Goes right down.

Next time I’m in Portland I’ll have to swing by the Green Dragon again to see what new delights the Brew Crew have concocted.

The 15-person Portland brewery tour tsunami swept its way from The Commons to the Rogue-owned Green Dragon alehouse, which in addition to having 62 beers on tap also houses a distillery and two microbreweries, Buckman Brewery and Oregon Brew Crew’s 1bbl nanobrewery. Interesting set up. Buckman specializes in botanical brewing, with various herbs and spices and fruits and whatnot, which is an area that Rogue hasn’t explored too much. Anyway, there were too many of us to all sit together, and so we split ourselves across two tables. I ended up at the smaller, 6-person table, where we ordered two 4-glass samplers to cover the five Buckman and two Brew Crew beers on tap, plus a bonus Double Mountain IPA. The waitress eventually came back with two sets of the two samplers, which was a bit of a surprise but, in the end, a good problem to have. And since we were a smaller group and all seated, I was able to take more reasonable notes. Phew!

Doubled up samplers of Buckman and Oregon Brew Crew at The Green Dragon — Portland, OR

Rob’s Picks
• Fruit Cake Stout – Decent stout, slight fruity notes but not as fruitcake-y as I feared. Slight smoky finish.
• Chamomellow – Nice, light and bubbly, with good mellow flavor.

The Rest
• Black Saison – Dark in color but watery, kind of bland.
• Side Dish Sweet Potato Brown – More body and flavor than the Black Saison, some more complex sweetness.
• Ginger – Definitely taste the ginger. Well-made, but I don’t think I’d drink a whole pint.

So yeah, some interesting brews, but I think I still have a ways to go before I fully appreciate the world of botanical brewing.

The first stop on the Portland tour itinerary was lunch at Hopworks, but since I had already visited it in November, I joined up with everyone at the second stop, The Commons Brewery. Initially called Beetje Brewing, they changed their name to something more pronounceable and moved into a bigger location. It’s a nice space — lots of windows and light, with stacks of aging barrels. Lots of Belgian-inspired brews.

The pacing of the tasting was completely different from Occidental — everyone stood around the little table with the taster tray, and the sampler glasses made their way around one immediately after the other. I barely had time to scribble even minimal notes, while standing, before the next taster arrived. Yikes! I eventually came to think of it as speed-tasting: a sip of each beer, and then you paired up with the one you liked best.

The Commons tulip glasses (for sale, as well!) — Portland, OR

Rob’s Picks
• Flemish Kiss – 5.8% – malty and crisp, with an interesting bitterness
• Pale Evening Ale – 5.8% – nice pale ale
• Sticke – 6.8% – good brown ale, pretty dry
• Commons Blond Ale – 6.2% – nice hoppy blond, bready
• Madrone – 6.9% – nice sour bite, bubbly
• Saison de Pamplemousse – 5.8% – crisp, citrusy, although I couldn’t really identify it as grapefruit

The Rest
• Urban Farmhouse Ale – 5.3% – Lemony aroma. Sweet, bready, bitter — odd mix. Strong bitter finish.

With this rapid, stand-up beer tasting method, I think I can now safely add “Agile/Scrum experience” to my resume…

Well, after two and a half months of not visiting any new breweries, I ended up going down to Portland with a group of friends for a mad dash of brewery tours. Thinking I’d make the trip a bit more relaxing, I headed down the day before. The friends I stayed with then took me out to Occidental Brewing, which wasn’t on the weekend’s ambitious itinerary. Occidental does German-style beers, and I guessed that I would like their lighter beers more than their darker (dunkel/bock-style) ones. I guessed correctly. All very well-made, though — I’m just not a big fan of German-style dark beers.

Samples at Occidental Brewing — Portland, OR

Rob’s Picks
• Hefeweizen – Lemony, bready, light. Very refreshing. Good German-style hefeweizen. Clove/banana aftertaste, but not too strong.
• Cloudy Summer – Kolsch-style. Strong bready aroma. Great bubbliness. Good bready flavor and hoppy edge. Light, but not as light has the hefe. Yum!
• Altbier – Slight floral hoppy aroma. Good malty base with complementary bitter back end. Slight lingering caramel flavor.

The Rest
• Dunkel – Sweet bock/malty aroma. Malty and slight nutty taste, not too much of that malty sweetness. Pretty good.
• Lucubrator – seasonal Doppelbock – Similar aroma to the Dunkel. Tastes kind of like a stronger version of the Dunkel, in fact, but with a bit more of that malty sweetness. Sorta barley wine-ish in taste, but without the alcohol flavor and content.
• Dunkelweizen – seasonal – Very unfiltered lemony aroma. Clove/banana and slight lemon flavors with malty/bocky sweetness. Reminded me quite a bit of Leavenworth’s Whistling Pig Dunkelweizen.

This sampling session was nice and relaxed. Had plenty of time to scribble down my notes between tastes and discuss the beers with Robert, who does his share of homebrewing. Felt like I learned quite a bit about beer talking with him. Maybe I should give this homebrewing thing a try — just need to find somewhere other than my little one bedroom place to do it.

I finally headed back down to Oregon recently, mainly to visit friends but also to hit a few breweries. First up was lunch at the Hopworks Urban Brewery. I arrived in Portland a little after 1:00, and so Kappy and I were quite hungry by the time we sat down in the HUB. The place was all done up in various bike decor, frames above the bar and jerseys on the walls, and that made me feel right at home. Too bad Seattle doesn’t have a place like this. Anyway, we ordered our lunches, as well as the house-made pretzels as an appetizer. The pretzels, which looked more like bread sticks, were quite big. Very tasty, though. Then our plates arrived, and the portions were huge. I did my best with my Tofu Po’ Boy and salad, but ended up leaving most of the soft baguette. We were both still full by the time we made it to Corvallis and went out to dinner with Kappy’s wife. So much food! I’ll have to go for a run or something soon.

Taster tray at the hip Hopworks Urban Brewery — Portland, OR

Rob’s Picks
• Organic HUB Lager – 5.1% – Nice aroma. Initial light taste to strong breadiness. Very slight hop bite aftertaste.
• Crosstown Pale Ale – 5.3% – Floral aroma. Mix of floral and bready tastes. Smooth, with a good lingering bitterness. Not bad for a floral beer.
• Hopworks IPA – 6.6% – Hop aroma blast. Good strong hoppiness with floral and citrus notes. Nice balance of hops. Reminds me of Ninkasi’s Total Domination.
• Survival 7-Grain Stout – 5.3% – Strong chocolate aroma. Thick and chocolatey. Bit of coffee flavor, too. A very filling beer — I’d be full after one pint. Might be a bit too much, actually, and I debated dropping it down to The Rest, but didn’t.
• Hey Porter – 5.1% – seasonal – Interesting complex malty aroma. Dry, slightly smoky, good malty base. Some chocolate, some coffee. Pretty yummy.

The Rest
• Velvet ESB – 5.2% – Slight floral aroma. Good maltiness, with slight caramel flavor. Fairly crisp. Malty/floral mix kind of odd, though.
• Deluxe Organic Ale – 6.9% – Floral aroma. Some hoppiness, some maltiness, but kind of blah. Not too interesting.
• What the Helles – 4.5% – seasonal – Very light to start, leading to slightly bready flavor that lingers. Drinkable but, again, not too interesting.
• Abominable – 7.3% – seasonal – Floral aroma. Strong floral taste. Bit of a malty base, but not enough of a balance for me. Pretty light for a winter ale, too.
• Secret Alt – 4.2% – seasonal – Slight floral aroma. Bubbly and light, somewhat malty. Not so interesting, either.

They had two logo glasses for sale, as well. I went with the pint glass rather than the stein. It ended up being their BikeToBeerFest glass, which is awesome. The stein just has their logo, which is fine and all, but I’m all about the beer-biking. Maybe next year I’ll sign up for STP and have a celebration beer at HUB at the end of the ride…