Free Publicity

As a wee little company, in a remote part of Oregon, in a recession, with less than two years since the doors opened, advertising is very expensive. I just simply can't afford it. The goal has always been to not have to, so we don't. Initially I used the local rag, and put a few ads in Beer NW magazine (server was down when I wrote this). Now I'm finding that I don't have to. Word of mouth seems to be starting to yield new visitors; can't beat that. More interestingly is the free publicity that has come about in the last few months.

First of all, we made the cut to be included in the National Geographic Geotourism MapGuide for the Central Cascades region that came out late Winter. Right there, on the downloadable pdf file, is the magical mention of the pub. Perhaps we won't get that much traffic from it, but the NG sure does churn out a snappy map.

Then the pub appeared in the May/June issue of Imbibe Magazine. For free!

Most recently, National Public Radio appeared in Oakridge to do a story on the town's efforts to reinvent itself. The radio show is called State of the Re:Union, and they have been traveling the country looking for stories. And found Oakridge, can you believe it. It was fun having the talented folks around for a week, and they captured the beautiful sound of real ale being liberated into a proper pint glass. The entire broadcast can be streamed or downloaded.

Keeping Up To Date

I suppose all you Big Guy Breweries (tm) have time to keep up with your websites, what with having actual staff and all, but I find that just maintaining a list of beers gets missed more often than not. I was just finishing up doing the weekly beer line cleaning routine when I thought I might check to see when the last time I updated the beer list was. April 8, or something like that. Anyway, I have just posted the New Lineup (tm) as all the other jobs and stacks of paper on my desk vying for my attention looked quite dull in comparison. As you can see, the ABV's are dropping into more sessionable Summer standards. By this weekend it should have changed again, what with bringing on the Welsh Mild and rotating another guest beer or two into the works.

Of Mushrooms and Mild

We got another mushroom delivery this weekend; a pub exclusive. The first harvest of morels has made its home in our cooler, and they're beautiful. All you denizens of the Valley (and that means you as well, Portland) within access of poncy restaurants will have to go without, as we snagged the entire yield. Chef has created Creamy Herb and Fresh Wild Morel in a Pastry Bowl, one of several delicious options on the Specials Board. Don't expect it to be there long. He who hesitates is lost, as my Mom used to say.

Also, as May is Mild Month in Britain, I've brewed the first of this season's session beers, a Welsh Mild. I've never tried this style before. I was trying to recall some of the attributes of the ales I had in Wales way back in 1991, and have faint recollections of a dark and slightly smoky/peaty beverage lounging on the inside of my pint glass. For this batch, I made up a recipe that uses some Carafa III and a dash of a peated malt from Simpsons Malting in the UK. This is dangerous stuff - a little bit goes a long way. Casking up day was Saturday, in which I got to have a taste. It wasn't bad at all, but it's hard to tell what the full maturation and conditioning will be like. ABV clocked out at 3.6%. First cask will be breached on Saturday. I have a sneaking suspicion that it will be a perfect complement to some morels. See you at the pub.

Post Fest Post

A week has gone by. Turns out I didn't abscond with the beer as fantasized about in previous post, foregoing the inherent entertainment value therein, and went on my appointed rounds as, well, appointed. After spending four days in Portland, thoughts worthy of blog potential were rattling around the slowly decaying cortex. Now all the edges have worn off and I'm trying to at least put something together worthy of the kind of mediocrity that comes about at the end of a long day.

I have some observations. Yes, I do. And so had a number of other bloggers. I read you all. Now it's my turn. Observation Number One is, how have we become so fussy? Are we all that spoiled? I mean, it's one thing to point out the fly in the soup, or the pint of vinegar, but there were some really nice tipples at the Firkin Fest. Twenty years ago, were we to run across such a lineup, we'd be swooning and mooning and crooning the delights. Granted, for a festival devoted to cask ales, it is odd to have half of them be IPA's, but, ladies and gentlemen, wasn't the experience worth the cash and the time. One cask was cloudy with yeast, and another had a hint of sulphur in the nose, but all were drinkable and pleasant. Regarding the sulphur aroma, from an organic mild (YES!) from HUB, I had no problem with this, but I'm probably one of the few in the vicinity that has enjoyed some nice Burton-oriented ales in the UK. And I got dinged for not bringing up a session beer, unlike last year where I got dinged for bringing up a session beer. I'm still trying to figure that one out.

Observation Number Two: I like the East side of the river over the West side. I thought it would be fun to just spend my last evening in town walking around the city from my motel near PSU. A bit too noisy and poncy for me. A better plan would've been to park on the small numbers of Belmont, or Fremont, and just walk through the little neighborhoods all night.

Observation Number Three: I managed to survive a Meet-The-Brewer event at Belmont Station. This is perhaps due to being able to lurk unobtrusively in a corner. I was satisfied to see the cask of This Time For Sure drain in a couple of hours. The Green Dragon has also talked me into a similar event at the end of May, mainly by plying me with ale and assuring me that I wouldn't have to give a speech.

Observation Number Four: I really like cheese. Managed to snag my share from the cheese guy.

Observation Number Five: Knowledge or real ale is dismal in this state. Don't ask me again if I'm using a nitro tap.

That's all. Just finishing a heat transfer of a Welsh Mild and enjoying a pint. See you at the pub.

Cargo

I can't remember if it was Steven Wright or Gallagher who posed the question, "Why does cargo go by boat, and shipment go by plane?" Regardless, I have a car, specifically a 1993 JEEP Grand Cherokee with broken overdrive clocking in at 257,000 miles, with five firkins of fine West Coast cask ale and three beer engines, along with all the other bits and pieces necessary to make it work such as rubber mallets, ice quilts and jackets. This is true and valuable cargo. Two of the casks are mine; the other three belong to the Eugene City Brewery (Rogue), Oakshire, and Block 15. I have spent the last month or so cultivating the myth that I will be taking their scrummy product to the 3rd Annual Firkin Fest at the Green Dragon in Portland, and that I can be trusted to treat them with the utmost care that they are due. Little do they know that I have a campsite out in the woods, a guitar, a stack of good books, a crate of Cheetos and a cooler full of frozen pizzas.

Not a particularly realistic scenario, as even I can't drink that much cask ale in four days.

So my second choice is to actually drive up to Portland and spend four days NOT AT THE PUB, if you can imagine such a thing, working with real and faux real ale, schmoozing, visiting pubs in YOUR neighborhood, and trying to catch up on what needs to be done. The latter hopefully involves tinkering with my blogging and working on a menu revision for our wee community public house. I have great expectations. I may even have an original thought.

As for blogging, you're reading it. I'm sitting at Block 15 right now having a pint of Alpha IPA on cask and a very nice cilantro and pepper oriented Southwest Salad. I'm also thinking about how I'm not really a businessman and about how I need to get out more often. This is all a good thing. I sometimes forget who I am, and am often reminded by friendly patrons that I'm looking a little harried, with bouts of pale and wan.

These next four days should be a lot of fun, if I can let it sink in that I'm not working but yet am working. I have one of the remaining casks of the KLCC collabrewation beer with me to display at the Firkin Fest, for all of you who are too lazy to drive down to Oakridge for a sample. This is that mutant Belgian Cascadian Dark Rye that I've blogged about previously. I had intended to bring a session ale, but this stuff is just so good that I had to bring it. The other casks mentioned above in my fanciful episode of improbability are under my care, and I am hoping that the Green Dragon will allow me to have enough free reign to see them handled with the delicacy that they deserve. Three of them are fined, and I will be setting them up with pumps and handling the tapping and venting tomorrow.

Another little venture this trip is a rare and probably unique Meet The Brewer event at the Belmont Station. I've been avoiding these things - philosophical issues and so forth, but Carl has been trying to talk me into it for over a year. I will be up there Friday night from 6:00 to 8:00, and have a cask of "This Time For Sure", a hoppy pale ale that wrangles with subtleties of not trying to overdo the hop bit at cellar temperature.

See ya at someone else's pub.

Small Customs

I was going to comment on the [drinkability?] [quaffableness?] [sessionability?] of the latest session beer offering on the pumps, "Bob's Yer Uncle", weighing out at 4.0% ABV and tasting like the brewer mixed a Belgian yeast harvested from a previous batch of weirdness with a bitter ale recipe. But this is not a blog about beer, it is a blog about how publicans from different parts of the world, say, Britain and Oregon, set stuff up in the pub.

This is a thin topic; there's not a lot of meat here, but I've discovered that I annoy my staff by putting beer mats, or coasters are they are also called, directly in front of the seats. Why? Because that's not only the way I tended to find them in British and Irish pubs, but the way I was instructed to while I was working there.

Beer Mats at the Old Dungeon Ghyll in Cumbria

They are sorta like seat markers in my mind. Now, the argument here is that the punters have to move them when they sit down. My response is, "So." I'm fine with that. My pub and all. Not like it really matters. But does it? When I'm fronting the house I put them at the seats, not in the middle of the table. And I have to wonder how it started this way. I have made an informal study of the public house since 1991, the first time I ventured to the UK, and I am fascinated by the differences in habits. If I were to sum it up, and that's just what I'm about to do, I've discovered that the British and Irish pub denizens head to the pub to have a few rounds and socialize. The pint gets directed to the top of the beer mat. Here in the U.S. of A., most are looking for a restaurant and want to eat and move on to the next thing. The beer mat is shoved to the center of the table. Silly Americans; can't they just enjoy a nice evening session.

The other annoying thing I like to do is put little tick marks next to the special offerings on the specials board behind the bar. Helps me keep track of how many of the goodies are left. I've been told this negatively influences the patrons' decisions about choice, but we seem to go through the specials anyway. Go figure.

Fusion

Remember the old Reese's Peanut Butter Cup commercials? Where the serendipitous collision of chocolate and peanut butter resulted in a scrummy treat? Similar things are happening in the brewery right now, except that neither chocolate nor peanut butter are involved. Come to think of it, the serendipity has been found wanting as well. I guess there's not much similarity after all, but it makes for a smashing opening paragraph.

My point, though, is that we nano (femto? atto?) breweries can do what we want, eschewing tradition and style and habit. Sacks of remnant grains, baggies of stray hops, and jars of harvested yeast can be combined in a waste-not-want-not manner. As we've been without a session beer on the pumps for a while, and I'm not proud of this, I really needed to make something quaffable in the low ABV range. Except for the fact that I had a six month old cask of Rye Mild that had been languishing in the cellar for six months and is now being served, a nice best bitter was in order. The recipe for a previous one-off batch of "Good With Bacon" was to be the starting point. First of all, out with the Sorachi Ace and in with a pound of U.K. Challenger that I'd picked up at the local homebrew shop. I like the spiciness of this hop, and hope to use it more in the future for some of my bitters. Then the total grain bill was reduced a bit to try to target the 3.5% to 4% range.

And then the totally cunning plan was devised. Why not pitch in the half-gallon mason jar of Ardennes/Nottingham yeast blend that I'd harvested from the KLCC Collabrewation Brew batch? No reason I could think of. This is a second generation harvest, G0 coming from Oakshire and G1 off our "Because We Can". I was aware that this yeast likes a warmer fermentation temperature, so I did a heat transfer to target 24˚C. Fermentation started off within 24 hours, and it sprinted along at 23 to 24˚C for three days.

The problem now is that I have a bitter ale recipe with a blended Belgian/English yeast. What to call it? As I generally eschew style nerdiness and meticulous adherence to the BJCP, I am going to call it a Belgian Bitter. It will be named "Bob's Yer Uncle", not only because it came to me the other day out of the blue, but because the alliteration of "Bob's Yer Uncle Belgian Bitter" rolls off the tongue nicely and creates the anticipation of many days working behind the bar talking about it. Casking up day is tomorrow, and I hope to have it on the pumps a little over a week later. See you at the pub.