Mikey: January 2008 Archives

Here we are at Green Dragon, awaiting the arrival of Fiona Garlich. We have ordered a Eel River IPA and a Salmon Creek Dubbel.

J: Stop drinking that. [removes Dubbel from reach] We have to drink this one first.

18/1000: Eel River IPA

J: My first drink of it really caught my attention, but I think it's partly because of the way we're thinking about beer now. I thought it was citrusy and bitter.
M: I think this sausage killed my palate. Here, have a bite of this.
J: No, I had sausage at home. I don't want any more sausage.
M: I really should have tried it before I bit into that sausage. I think it's sort of bright?
J: It is bright. But it's an IPA. I would expect it to be.
M: Would you get a keg?
J: It'd be hard to make it my only beer for a while. But I'm a big fan of this beer. I would order it again in a second. It's not good with your sausage.
M: No, it gets destroyed.
J: It's good with these fries. It would work with things with a bit less flavor. Beans.

19/1000: Ayinger Weisse

J: This cloudy brew --
M: I like cloudy. These have such a specific smell, you know what to expect when you taste it. I don't like the smell, but it tastes good. It's pretty smooth, and it's kind of creamy. It has small bubbles. These are the descriptive words I have at my disposal.
J: It seems pretty typical for this style of beer. Sweet smell, mildly sweet flavor, kind of musty.
M: I wouldn't think I'd like this, but I really do. Maybe it's because of the sausage.
J: You think the sausage set you up to like this?
M: It cools the fire of my spicy sausage.
J: There certainly is something refreshing about this kind of beer. Do we want to say anything else about it?
M: I don't think it was as confusing or as complex as some... I don't want our brevity to be an indication that we didn't like it. But I feel that maybe there's more to talk about in a beer that we don't like.
J: In short, recommended. Ideal in its style of beer.

20/1000: Salmon Creek Dubbel

J: This is better now, after working through a couple others, and letting it warm it up. I'm more prepared for it.
M: The guy intimidated me into getting the full-size beer when I was just trying to order eight ounces. His voice is so gravely. And he's physically intimidating. He wanted me to get more beer than I wanted, and so I agreed with him. He should sell cars.
J: It's a good problem for us to have.
M&J: Fiona!
F: Whoa, that's a big fancy beer! [She tastes.] It's a sweeter beer. It's got a soft flavor to it. Not sharp and hopsy.
M: Remember the one that we said had a dark cherry aspect? This is like that, without the cherry.
J: That was the Anchor Bock that had the cherry. So maybe this is the one you pair with dried cherry.
M: Cause it's not as strong?
J: Yeah, you don't want to pile on.

F: I'm going to order another beer. I was never into IPAs, but I got into a local one in Minnesota, Summit 21.

21/1000: Laughing Dog Pale Ale, of Idaho

J: How's the taste, Fiona?
F: My first thought was sharp.
M: Does it get you back here, in the back of your cheeks?
J: Mike, you and your cheeks.
F: More the back of the tongue and roof of the mouth. This tastes like a giant hop.
J: It smells really hoppy.
M: It smells like vinegar. It tastes like fries with the malt vinegar.
F: So you think it tastes malty.
M: Vinegary.
F: I'm not really that into this beer.
M: I'm not a fan of this, either. Do you like it?
J: I like it, but I haven't failed to like many of the beers we've drunk. And I don't have any problem with IPAs.
M: My not liking this beer is my problem, not the beer's problem.
F: That's a very gray line you're walking.
M: It's like when people don't like coffee, or like cream in their coffee... They're being babies.
F: But how do you know when you should dislike a beer?
M: When it's a bad beer.
F: So this is a good beer, that you don't like the taste of.

22/1000: Catillon Gueze

J: Mike, you ordered an open-fermented sour ass beer.
F: Open-fermented?
M: The yeast comes in from wherever. Sometimes they'll put it under a tree and let shit fall in.
F: Don't you need an anaerobic environment for fermentation?
J: Maybe they leave it open to gather the yeast and then they close it up for fermentation.
F: It's very sour. I can't help but draw the urine comparison. Which I hate to do. But there it is.
M: These are hard to drink but I like them. They're very interesting, and bright...
F: Bright, I agree with that. Like someone waking you up by pissing on your face. Good morning!
J: I'm surprised that you like them, Mike.
M: I was shocked I liked the other sour beers when we were at that tasting at Belmont Station. The lambics. I sometimes get a pine flavor, a tangy sharpness. I like the pine. These sort of remind me of Pine-Sol.
J: This is giving me insight into what you drank as a kid. So are we done with the beer yet?
M: What did you think of it?
J: This the not the kind of beer I'm a fan of. I don't like drinking it. And I don't think it's a "me" thing.
M: But they're made, and there's a lot of them... Clearly it's a style that people enjoy. I think maybe the people who make them are the only ones who like them.
F: Is it like, a concept beer? They're doing it "because you can."
M: But I like this more than I like an IPA.
F: Are you just saying that to be a crazy person?
M: I thought so, at first. But when we tried lambics at Belmont Station, I ended up drinking a whole tall glass of it. I think I really like it.

23/1000: Golden Valley Red Thistle Ale

F: It's really mellow. It doesn't have a strong flavor either way. Unfortunately, I think that's why I like it.
J: You might find it more strongly flavored if you didn't have it after the Catillion.
F: If I didn't have it after the piss beer?
M: I like the color. I hate to bring up the beer nerds who always "rate" the color, but this beer has a pretty color. Color can be remarkable, but not rated.
J: So this beer is hard to say anything about.
M: It's a good session beer.
J: This is our fallback description for beers that we like that don't have many distinctive properties.
F: It's full, it's tasty, but there's not much to say.
M: Again, it's easier to talk about a beer you don't like.
F: I could say, "earthy."
J: I'd agree.
M: What's the deal with a red ale? I think I generally like them.
J: I don't know how they're defined.

24/1000: Deschutes Green Lakes Organic Pale Ale

J: This beer is available January 1, 2008 through April 1, 2008. That's it, folks.
M: Smells vinegary, again.
F: Smells like less pesticides.
M: It's spicy in an interesting way.
J: Ahhh... I'm not excited about this beer. It might be because it's our seventh, and I don't have my critical faculties available to me. I may be a bit beer-fatigued.
F: Is this a fair place to rate this beer from?
J: I don't think it's a beer place.

At this point we admitted that our tasting ability was shot. There was some discussion concerning if we count the Deschutes Green Lakes Organic Pale Ale as number 24 or if we need to retry it. In the end we chose to include it, but we may have to visit it again for completeness sake.

976 to go!

J: Ah, that is delicious! Caramel-y. It's so smooth! Most beers get to "smooth" by not being carbonated. It's kind of a cheat.
M: Yeah, they do it by texture instead of taste.
J: What is it?
M: I don't know. "The newest."
J: You didn't ask what it was?
M: I asked for the newest.
J: I'm going to go find out what it is now.

14/1000: Abbaye du Val Dieu Grand Cru, of Belgium

J: This beer is from a brewery that is nearly eight hundred years old!
M: It's one of those monk beers? What religion are the monks, generally? And are they the same that make the cheese?
J: I don't know the answers to these questions. We should get a guest monk.
M: I have an image of them with the brown robes and the knotted robes and the Friar Tuck hair, but... is it some weird Catholic thing?
J: I would have said Catholic.
M: There are no Catholic monks, are there? Who's heard of a Catholic monk?

J: This beer just floors me.
M: You love it way more than I do.
J: It just hits me with taste but it doesn't overwhelm.

15/1000: Pinkus Organic Munster Alt, of Germany

J: I want to look at this label. It's got these guys on it.
M: Are they Germans? It's like, "Look at me, I'm fancy and responsible." And the other guy: "I'm a crazy criminal!" He looks like Che Guevara. It's his son, maybe?
J: He does look like Che.
M: So this is kind of skunky smelling. Tastes kind of thick.
J: Looks so thin.
M: Yeah, I was surprised. It has a very traditional "beer" aftertaste, maybe like shitty American beer.
J: You don't like the aftertaste?
M: It's not that I don't like it, but it's just like I had some Budweiser.
J: I am not finding myself wowed by this beer. I'd like to bring it to a party to look fancy and then let other people drink it, and they will be perfectly happy with it. So I'm saying, I could see myself buying this again.
M: Oh, and it's got that big USDA Organic label, so it's good for Portland. People love that shit.
J: No way would I get a keg of this.
M: I'm not sure I need to finish it. But it seems disrespectful. Not to this beer, but to beer in general.

16/1000: Belzebuth Blond Ale, of France

M: "The Most Unique Ale in the World."
J: Oh, God, this is going to be awful.
M: It smells like the 120 [Minute IPA]... Oh no...
J: Hmm, It tastes like some of the strong Belgians I've had. This is different, but it's not awful. It's got that same sweetness.
M: I would say I don't like this, but not that I hate it.
J: It's about the context, it's about what you think of yourself as drinking. There are many kinds of beer.
M: But I feel like I've had this before, and there's nothing new and interesting. It's not "the most unique ale in the world."
J: We were looking for a French beer on the shelves, and could hardly find one. There were two, I think. They're not known for their brews.
M: But how can you have a whole country whose culture is based on food and wine and not have some good beers come out of that?
J: Mike, they drink wine all the time.
M: But the French are so in love with themselves, I would think they'd want to drink French beer. With a French flag and a beret.

J: The other French beer is just like that! It's about independence and it has the tri-color on it!
M: I bet it's better than this.
J: This is basically a strong (13% ABV) Belgian beer. Nothing subtle about it, either, I think we can do better.
M: I think it's a bad sign when the most noticeable aspect of a beer is their "HIGH ALCOHOL CONTENT" in big letters.
J: But for you to say that, you who would buy a beer solely for its label or its bottle... You bought Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA because it was the most expensive beer you could find. You are a seeker of novelty.
M: But...
J: Wait, are you telling me that you're learning?
M: I would never argue that novelty is a sign of quality. New isn't better. It's just new!

17/1000: Original Flag Porter of England

J: Ugh, everyone is trying to be novel, because everyone is trying to market to you, Mike.
M: How?
J: I quote, "brewed with 1825 yeast, salvaged from a sunken vessel in the English Channel using an original 19th century recipe."
M: I love that we didn't know about this when we bought it. This is HISTORIC beer. We are drinking history.
J: I'm not sure what the difference is between sunken yeast and any other yeast.
M: The term "original" actually has some meaning here!

M: I bet they didn't serve it this cold, back in 1825.
J: That's a good point. I actually think it needs more taste, and drinking it warmer would bring that out.
M: I keep remembering, as we do this project, how much I like porters, and how that's what I drank when I started drinking beer, but that I dropped that from my beer repertoire. Sometimes porter can have too much of a bite...
J: They're always smooth, they have no bite.
M: Is bite the wrong word? How does this compare to Black Butte Porter, to you? This tastes lighter than Black Butte Porter.
J: Black Butte Porter has a little fruity flavor, and less chalky malty flavor. I think I like Black Butte better.
M: I think I do, too, but I just can't talk about a porter without invoking Black Butte.
[Josh notices Mike's nearly empty glass, and points.]
M: I'm telling you!
J: Man, you should drink nothing but porters.

983 to go!

8/1000: THE BARONS OF SCHWARZ

"Baron's Schwarz" - a beer with a noble yet vaguely obscene name. A beer that smells like smoke. Bartenderman says it's a "dark lager," but we can't help but think of porter when we sniff it.

Mike: I like it.
Josh: You have to say something more interesting than that.
Mike: I like it ... a lot?
Josh: I had a Russian porter a couple weeks ago that this reminds me of. I think it was called Baltica 6. Which is an incredibly cool name. But it was thin and it didn't leave an impression. It's like it was watery even though it was a dark porter. This has the smokiness in common with the Baltica, but it's chewy and it has a really pleasant aftertaste.
Mike: I just burped a little bit of it, and it tasted really good.

Mike: I don't have a really good flavor vocabulary.
Jessica: I was just talking about that with Josh. When I blogged about cheese, I found I had very few terms to describe cheeses. They were always "nutty," "creamy," or "stinky."

Josh: Okay, so when do we think we'd want this beer?
Mike: I had just had it with some sausage, and that worked great.
Jessica: It makes sense that it would go with sausage, cause they're both German. Traditionally. Lagers and sausages.
Josh: When else would you want that beer again?
Mike: I would like to try it with things, like chocolate cake.
Jessica: I think it's an autumn beer. It could make that transition nicely, when you don't want summer, crisp, bright flavors, but you're not in your porter mood yet.
Josh: I could see it going well with nuttier hard cheeses, like Gruyere, or those Basque sheep's milk cheeses.

9/1000: Captured by Porches Amber

Josh: What is "Captured by Porches"?
Mike: They were the Clinton St Brewery?
Josh: But what does that mean?
Mike: I know there's this guy in Portland who will come to your party and serve you beer. He'll sell beer for your party. I thought this was that guy. We should look it up.
Jessica: He might have gotten shut down by the OLCC already. That doesn't sound legal.
Mike: I think he was responsible -- he checked IDs. It was designed more for house shows and house parties. And I think he biked!
Jessica: Then he's okay!
Josh: We need to look this guy up for Portland's Future Awesome.
Josh: I find the beer pretty unremarkable. It doesn't really stay with me.
Mike: Is it maybe the order we're drinking them in?
Jessica: I'm clearing my palate with mayonnaise... It has a really nice presentation, but then it goes away. It tastes good! But then, eh.
Josh: I looked it up, and what you're saying seems to be true, Mike. He is a homebrewer who runs beer for house shows. But Clinton St has his beers at their pub attached to the theater, too. We should check on the bike thing. Cause that sounds awesome.

10/1000: Black Bear Nitro Stout

Mike: Black Bear? We like those guys, don't we? Oh wait, I'm thinking of Bear Republic.
Jessica: I would like to try the same beer nitro and non-nitro some time.
Mike: Whoa, that tastes like sunflower seeds. Do you get that at all?
Jessica: No.
Mike: That weird saltiness that is in your mouth after you suck on a sunflower seed for a long time. Sunflower residue.
Josh: Let's get eight ounces more.
[Eight ounces more arrive.]
Josh: That is a beautiful creamy head.
Mike: It looks wonderful.
Jessica: Gorgeous.
Josh: Okay, who wants a beer mustache?
Mike: I think you should cause you have a mustache.
Josh: I think Jessica should, cause she can't grow a mustache!
Josh: Whoa, it tastes rusty. Like hard water. A flavor I know well from my childhood.
Jessica: But it doesn't have that horrible sulfur taste that your childhood water had.
Josh: It's that iron-y taste.
Jessica: Like blood!
Josh: Yeah, that's the same thing. The iron in both.
Mike: I like that! Like when you cut yourself and you taste the blood. Does this have iron in it?
Jessica: They should prescribe this beer for ladies during their special time in the month.
Mike: So you don't like the blood beer?
Josh: No, cause it really does stay with me. I have it in the back of my throat right now.
Mike: I like that.
Josh: I know, you said that. I think you're part vampire.
Mike: Let's make sure to look up later if there's some iron or something in it. Why would it be so recognizable?
Josh: I think it could be related to the water.
Jessica: I've had other beers with this flavor, but only stouts, I think. So that makes it seem like it's not the water.

11/1000: Lagunitas Lumpy Gravy

Mike: I just want to say right up front, that's a bad name for a beer. Cause I've had that Jones gravy soda, and that was just awful.
Jessica: A lot of these names are trying pretty hard.
Mike: Brew dudes, they're weird. Their whole Grateful Dead thing. This sounds like a Ben & Jerry's flavor.
Jessica: Like Lumpy Humpy.
Josh: They're faced with the problem of giving their beer a memorable name, and they're not marketing guys. They're brew dudes.
Jessica: And beers named by marketing guys are lame. Like fake micros.
Mike: I'm going to clear my palate, with some mayonnaise.
Josh: We haven't said anything about this beer yet.
Mike: I haven't gotten anything -- I couldn't smell it at all. It sort of tastes a little like medicine. I don't think I like it.
Josh: I see this as a session beer. It's not trying to blow you away with its flavor. But a more interesting one than the Paranoid India Pale Ale we had at Hot Lips.

12/1000: Fish Tale Pale Ale

Josh: I have had this in bottles. Never on tap. It tastes fresh! Dry and hoppy.
Mike: I say "bright and shiny!" I like it a lot, and it's so different from what we were just drinking.
Josh: I could see not having tons to say about this beer...
Jessica: But that doesn't mean you don't love it.
Josh: Yeah. This beer knows what it's doing.
Jessica: You've never been specifically excited about Fish Tale before.
Josh: Right now, on tap, and very cold, it tastes very crisp and refreshing.
Mike: It would be good in the summer, clearly.

13/1000: Anchor Bock

Josh: And now for a complete change in direction. Cherries. It sticks to the roof of your mouth.
Mike: Yeah, dark cherries. This is traditionally a winter beer?
Josh: Yeah, bock and dopplebock are late fall and winter beers.
Mike: It's almost too sweet.
Josh: Yeah, you described the Lumpy Gravy as medicinal, but I'd say this tastes far more medicinal.
Mike: It would be fun to pair it with food, though, with that sweetness.
Josh: What would you pair it with?
Mike: I don't know how food pairings work. Do you contrast or complement or what? Maybe just with cherries.
Josh: As I taste it again, I'm stuck on cherries. This is a cherry-flavored beer. But not like Starburst.
Mike: No, like real cherries.
Jessica: More like dried cherries. Not like Kriek. That cherry beer.
Josh: Okay, quick, cause we have to catch our bus: under what circumstances would you want to drink this beer?
Mike: Experimental circumstances. When I could try it among an array of food.
Jessica: I think after dinner, winter evening, it could stand on its own.
Mike: Like a fireplace beer?
Jessica: Yeah!

987 to go!