Chemistry and Physics

It was a week ago when I took off to Portland for the Firkin Fest at the Green Dragon. The festival was Saturday, but I wanted to go up early, not only to get the stillage and casks set up the day before the festival, but also to have some time off. As is typical, when I return I find that all the work has piled up such that it takes several days before I can find a moment or two to write. The nice part is that a number of empty casks had piled up over the weekend, which means that I needed to brew more ale. The not so nice part is that there is mounting desk work, including taking a peek at the ol' bank account to see how it might stand up against the stack of bills.

As the Local 180 was the only brewery dispensing out of handpulls, we were sent over to a corner like a naughty schoolboy. I was quite happy about this, as there was adequate space to rest two firkins and to set up the portable pub pulls, and to have elbow room for schmoozing during the festival. The other casks were all lined up on the bar and dispensed by gravity. I was in early Friday morning for the setup, as I needed to make sure the casks could settle before tapping. I returned Friday evening to vent, tap and taste. When I arrived Saturday morning for the final check I discovered, to the horror of anyone setting up a proper real ale festival (especially in the UK), that the firkins had been rolled on mere hours earlier. In fact, they were being tapped less than an hour before the festival opening. I suspect that none of the ales were true real ales, but were instead production brews destined for kegs which were simply drawn off into traditional firkins. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. The keystone broke on one of the casks during tapping, and the offending vessel was hauled out into the street for keystone replacement. Another left it's mark on the ceiling when the spile was driven home. Fun.

There were two open sessions with space for 200 participants. The first session seemed about half full, so it proceeded at a nice pace, and I got to work the entire three hours pulling beers and flapping my gums. For the second, an enthusiastic volunteer took over for me for the last hour and a half so I could do some sampling. This is the part of the story where I must resist the temptation so say I liked so-and-so beer, or that Widget Brewing Company's Numpty Porter was rubbish (although Bridgeport's Raven Mad Imperial Porter was scrummy, and I don't even drink much porter). Instead, what captivated my little gray cells was how much better all the beers I got to sample were when liberated from the cask at a reasonable temperature and without all the gas. I have much praise for American brewers' understanding of the chemistry of brewing. The variety of styles and flavors is outstanding. The trouble I'm having, though, is with the physics of beer. For ales, there is much lost in insisting that they be served cold and full of giant, obnoxious bubbles. This simply numbs the palette and rules out any hope of appreciating the subtleties and mouthfeel. It is my continuing hope that an appreciation for real ale will increase, and I'm attempting to promote the style one proper pint at a  time.

While not dealing with the festival, I trolled around looking for real ale outlets in Portland. The offering from Tugboat was quite nice. The pint of Racer 5 I had at the Horse Brass, while a banner pint when I had it in December with Dave Bailey of the Woolpack Inn, had lost most of its conditioning - still nice to have though. I finished at the Rock Bottom, where there were two offerings on cask. I noticed that both casks were equipped with breathers. I can't remember the style of the first pint I had (no jokes please), which was delightful to come across in keg country, but I recall that the stout I had second was starting to turn just a little. The barkeep merely nodded at me when I mentioned this, and I imagined him ticking the snob checkbox on my entry in his POS.

Before and after the main Portland segment of my trip, I stopped at the Highland Stillhouse in Oregon City. I love this place. In my book it rivals the aforementioned Horse Brass pub in its likeness and atmosphere to a British pub. I have hopes to someday drive up a firkin or two for a mini-festival.

Some other nice commentary of the Firkin Fest can be found here and here.

Experimental Results

Every night, after closing, someone pulls the Z off the primitive Casio till and peers at the numbers. This is myself, whether primarily or ultimately; I like seeing if we made any money, for one thing, but also how the grand experiment is progressing. Grand Experiment, you say? Yes - how is the real ale selling?

I sometimes view this project, the Oakridge real ale pub and brewery, as having two parts. The first is that, for some crazy reason, I want to run a pub and brew and drink real ale. The second, for equally crazy reasons, is that I want to see what happens when you stick with your guns and do all the things that you were told not to do but which you believe in anyway. It's for this second reason that I really enjoyed Sunday night's Z from the till; and this is a fairly typical example:

REAL ALE QT 50

36.36% $163.75

CO2 DRAFT QT 3

3.33% $15.00

etc.

What this means is that 50 servings, whether pints, halfs or 5 oz tasters, were served, as opposed to 3 servings of keg beer. 36% of the sales came from the stuff concocted in the back of the building. I do get to enjoy a happy moment from time to time.

Next time I post I'll be sure to find something to complain about.

Aiming at the Wrong Target, and Hopefully Missing

The Oregon legislature is being lobbed (lobbied) a bill to increase the beer tax. And not by just a little bit. It would certainly put us out of business should it pass. I'm not much of a letter writer, but this one is important enough. I have already sent off paper mail to my state senator and representative containing the following:

--------------------------------------------------
From:

Ted Sobel

Publican, Brewer

Brewers Union Local 180

48329 E. 1st St.

PO Box 739

Oakridge, OR 97463

To:

[Senator/Representative]

Re:

Proposed Beer Tax Increase

Dear [Senator/Representative]:

Permit me to introduce myself. I am the owner, publican and brewer of Oregon’s only real ale public house and brewery, the Brewers Union Local 180 in Oakridge. By real ale, I mean genuine cask-conditioned ale, as brewed in England, particularly utilizing the techniques practiced in the Lake District. I have been in business in the Uptown area of Oakridge now for six months, providing a safe comfortable meeting place for locals and visitors alike, with great home-cooked food and authentic ales. We are excited about the changes taking place here, with the growth of the mountain biking community and the wonderful outdoor recreational opportunities.

This project has the fulfillment of a dream of mine. I fell in love with the British pub and real ale on a trip to the UK back in 1991 before I moved to Oregon, and have wanted to start my own brewery and pub since a walking trip to Cumbria in 2006. After purchasing a building with a business partner in ’07, we spent 10 months completely gutting and rebuilding in the style of a British pub. With all the hard work we have put into this, and despite a rough economy and being in a small town, we are starting to experience a small amount of growth and recognition.

You can probably guess by now that my reason for writing is a concern over the proposed increase in the beer tax. Indeed, increase seems like too weak a word to employ in this context; perhaps I should suggest the egregious increase in taxation on beer. I might be able to understand a small, fair increase, such as $5/BBL, as long as it is fairly employed across the so-called sin-sector, i.e. apply the increases to wine and liquor as well. But, singling out beer, and making an order-of-magnitude increase, is blatantly unfair. The craft beer industry is one of the leading Oregon industries, and is in fact one of the many reasons people visit Oregon – to sample the richness and variety of our brewing culture.

I have put everything I own into this business, including taking out personal loans and putting a second mortgage on my house. I work seven days a week doing something I love. I employ seven people, paying a higher than typical wage, in a town that has struggled to rebuild itself after the demise of the logging industry. I do not serve minors. I do not indulge in, promote or encourage over-consumption. If this bill passes, those responsible for its signing into law will be, in fact, shutting us down. I cannot weather charging my customers at least another dollar per pint, and as such would have to let my employees go, shut my doors, and attempt to sell my house and business property in a stagnant economy.

I sincerely ask you to consider the impact that this bill would have on Oregon brewery businesses; the mom-and-pops; the little guys. We are already suffering from the consequences of the irresponsible. This bill is not a solution. The responsible local pubs and breweries are not the factors that promote and encourage the types of abuses that the bill attempts to remediate. Cheap, sugary alcopops at the local supermarket, purchased by “big brother”, and negligent bar owners who don’t care how they make a buck, have much more to answer for. I have been following a similar story in the UK with the out of proportion increases in duty on ale in the small community pubs, and watching them close at an alarming rate, while supermarkets play the loss leader with fizzy, sugar-laden nirvana. This bill must not pass in its current instantiation.

Thanks for listening. And please stop by for a pint sometime.

Sincerely,

Ted Sobel

The King

It's not every day Elvis comes to visit.

He wasn't here long. Not only didn't he sing, but he didn't consume a single pint of real ale, so I didn't get a chance to ask him whether he preferred it sparkled or not.

Cheers to the Cascade Brewers Society

I just had to make a quick note here, amidst this desk full of brewery paperwork pileup, to thank the Cascade Brewers Society for coming up with the bus and 30+ punters to visit our little establishment on Saturday. For the statistics file, 115 servings (pints or halves) of real ale, brewed in-house, were served by 5:00 PM. All six of the beer engines were engaged, and I was pleased to hear from those in the group who were certified beer judges that all the ales were true to style.

Also for the statistics file, by the end of the evening 145 servings had been pulled, making a new pub record. This even beat the best of the visits by the fall fire teams, who will have to strive to do better next year.