Category: Beer Culture

Rock Bottom Brewery is hosting a Portland-brewed Belgian style beer fest in early April. Looks great.

Found a picture of the trunk spectacle. Kind of funny to see.

Joe, Lindsay, Michelle and I dropped by Hillsdale Pub for this year’s Battle for the Belt and were surprised by turnout. Maybe the sunny weather motivated people to stop in, or maybe the fact that nearly 20 brewers competed, but the place was packed. The spillover into the parking lot was easily as large as the crowd inside, and since we never got seated in the nearly 2 hours we were there, we hung out in the trunk of the car like many other people. The tailgate was in full effect, but for the first time ever, we had beer delivered to our car. Something was wrong, so very wrong with that picture. The crowd was a bit much, and there were only a couple great beers, so we ditched out.

I found a copy of Dancing Bull’s Guy’s Guide to Wine in the break room and flipped through it because my burrito had 2 minutes left. It’s a basic wine for dummies guide, but there’s a section on wine for beer drinkers. It assumes that guys know beer, and the 4 basic beer styles translate to wines. I thought it was kind of funny, so I scanned it to share.

My favorite part of the guide is the clumping of IPA and Pilsner as a style group, and their comparison to Merlot/Pinot. While inaccurate, the light beer and pilsner would be a better pairing. Second, it describes Merlot as “smooth and easier to handle than some of the big daddy reds.”

IPA? Smooth? It’s probably the only style of beer that most people excluded from their repertoire. Oh, and the Belgians.

The Rose & Raindrop is going to be closing in just over 1 month. As such, I’ve been twice in the last month to enjoy it while I can. Tonight Joe and I met to sample some fine cask ales – the dregs from the Portland Cask Ale Festival – and shoot the breeze. The previous visit, they had no cask ales… for shame!

I like the Rose & Raindrop. It’s in a gorgeous building (which is a curse, as it turns out), it has more history than you want to shake a stick at, and it has a robust selection of craft beers – including several cask ales. There are other “draws” that I don’t quite get; wireless internet, raw oysters, the TB clinic… but there’s also the smoking thing. R&R is one of the few great beer bars that allows smoking. As such – it’s bound to skank up anything you bring in to the bar. The skank can be so repelling that I only go maybe twice a year. And half those visits are for the cask ales.

Of the four places you can get a good real ale in Portland, half are in smoky bars, and the other half are Bridgeport(s). If you’re not a cask fan, fine; but the gentle body, sligthly less edgy flavor and wonderful overall sensation are hard to pass on. So much so that I’ll give up 24 hours of smell just to enjoy it.

If you’ve not tried a cask ale, or not been to the Rose & Raindrop – I highly recommend visiting before December 31st. And if they have the Mt. Hood Hogsback Oatmeal stout on cask – get it. And savor it. It’s not that easy to find, and it’s as perfect an ale as I’ve found so far.

There’s a great interview with the Ninkasi folks over at the Belmont Station blog. Answers a lot of questions about the who, what, and where of this new brewery. Mmm… IPA