Oregon Beer

My trip to Oregon was initially about wine, but segued into a beer journey. That isn't too surprising: Oregon is one of the great states for craft beer, and visitors travel from across the US for the beer alone. The beer scene is extraordinary; spread around the state, it's concentrated in the major city of Portland and the smaller, remote, and very beautiful town of Bend. Beer here is treated with a fanatical fervour, its quality debated heatedly in bars and breweries.

ninkasi, eugene

I'd only tried one beer from Ninkasi before, Total Domination, a widely-available IPA I had found a little too sweetly aggressive. Nevertheless, while in Eugene I wanted to visit the ten-year-old brewery to see what else they had to offer. I'm glad I did. They have a small, intimate, and very friendly tasting bar, with ten beers on tap. Visiting a brewery or its tasting room offers the opportunity to taste beers that aren't distributed, and here I was able to taste two newly released beers. Their winter ale was brown, malty, and nutty, perfect for the rainy weather. The Megalodom was something else. Based on Total Domination (which the barmaid admitted was her least favourite of Ninkasi's beers), it's a whopping 10% ABV and dangerously drinkable. Such a beer encapsulates the trend of West Coast IPAs: extremely well made, highly alcoholic, fruity and hoppy, big but balanced, and not for the faint-hearted.

grain station brew works, mcminnville

Portlandia is a TV comedy which lampoons the touchy-feely habits of those who live in Portland. The first episode features a couple who won't order the chicken in a restaurant until they've visited the farm where the chicken was raised to establish that it was treated properly. I experienced a similar moment in McMinnville, a small town in the heart of Willamette Valley and Pinot Noir country. "Are your fries gluten free?" I heard a young girl behind me ask. The waiter responded, "All of our ingredients are gluten free, but I can't guarantee there isn't gluten in the environment." Thus ensued a half-hour debate, interspersed with the waiter going back and forth from the kitchen to check the gluten status of each product on the menu. "The fries are briefly cooked in sunflower oil, but we can't determine if that results in some gluten in the fries."

This was at Grain Station Brew Works, a brewpub located in an old timber barn and which I stopped off at for lunch to avoid the pouring rain. I had two beers: the Bet the Farm IPA, which was excellent, malty, fruity, and not too hoppy. I then ordered the RyePA, a request which prompted the waiter to ask me if I was sure I wanted it. The Oregonians can be a little too concerned with the customers' happiness, as it was a good, spicy rye IPA.

cascade, portland

A drinker from Florida sat next to me at the bar declared that he was "in heaven." He couldn't believe that a brewery was devoted to making so many sours. These are Belgian-inspired beers that small breweries like Cascade have taken to extremes, merging wine-making techniques with beer-making practices. Cascade have been doing this for so long that they can almost exclusively focus on aged beers. I tried two vintages of their Sang Rouge, a red ale aged in old oak barrels of different sizes. Ageing beer in wine and whisky casks is becoming common across the country, but doing it well is very difficult. The 2013 was fruity, sour, and still a little closed; the 2009 was tannic and leathery, with aromas of dried fruits and mushrooms, and as close to wine as beer will, for better or worse, ever get. Cascade are probably the best producers of sour beers in the States and their beers, although expensive, are well worth seeking out.

deschutes, bend

I drink a lot of Deschutes, mainly their Fresh Squeezed IPA, a green, hoppy, herbaceous summer beer that's now their best seller - overtaking Mirror Pond Pale Ale, another very drinkable beer. They're based in Bend, a town that's next to spectacular forests and far from anywhere. They started in 1988, beginning a trend that's led to Bend becoming one of the most beer-centric towns I've ever visited, with at least fifteen breweries in a town of 80,000 people. The Deschutes bar/restaurant was heaving when I visited, yet the two barmen were able to serve beer tourists like me while entertaining locals. The Bachelors' Bitter was as good an English-style beer as I've tried in the US (the other contender is Blue Bell Bitter by Magnolia in San Francisco).

boneyard, bend

This is quite a different operation, located in a reconstituted garage full of old car and garage parts (hence the name boneyard). It's down to earth, with full-on tattoo-style artwork, and still very low-key. The beers aren't bottled, and the tasting room only pours them by the 28ml (1oz) serving - though you can have as many as you like for $1 a pour. The IPAs are as magnificent and as full-on as the artwork. The RPM IPA is their best-known beer, distributed throughout Oregon, but Incredible Pulp was perhaps the best of those I tried: briefly infused in blood oranges, it's subtle, balanced, yet orange and intense. Boneyard encapsulate the Oregon - and by extension West Coast - beer scene: no frills but an intense concentration on quality and innovation.

The Funk's in the Stink 2

Last September, a trip to Portland, Oregon opened my eyes to a type of drink I'd previously found too difficult or plain weird: lambics and gueuzes, or sours as they are known in the States. These are beers which have undergone long, wild ferments, allowing yeasts such as Brettanomyces to develop, giving the beer distinctly funky, stinky aromas. They are also aged in oak over a period of time, sometimes together with fruits, to make the complex, difficult character of the beer yet more individual.

In June, I presented a masterclass on Belgian beer and it was amusing to see the customers react to Cantillon, one of the great beers of the world, exactly as I had when first tasting sours in Portland: with a mixture of horror, disgust, and disbelief, but with an almost involuntary compulsion to smell and taste the beer over and over to make sure the senses weren't playing tricks on the brain. Yes, the beer really does smell like that. And yes, it should. And yes, it's great, isn't it?

It can take some convincing to say yes to the final question, but once persuaded this is a world of beer that invites a neverending exploration, particularly in the States where imaginative, involved beers are evolving all the time. On my recent trip to Seattle, I tasted four more - one from Belgium and three from the Pacific Northwest - which once again demonstrated the possibilities of this wonderful, whacky style of beer.

the line up

tasting

Drie Fonteinen Golden Doesjel 6%

It's important to remember that Belgians don't churn out this stuff just because they're Belgian, or even because there are a number of American beer geeks drinking it like it's fizzy pop. Lambics and gueuzes are two of the most difficult styles of beer to make as well as sell, and it takes real dedication to battle against fashion and time to continue to make them.

Drie Fonteinen, one of the classic Belgian producers of lambics and gueuzes, is a case in point. For many years, the family blended lambics from three other breweries, Boon, Girardin, and Lindemans (hence the name of the brewery, "three sources") at their restaurant to make gueuze, before setting up their own brewery in 1998. Disaster struck in 2009 when there was a huge explosion at the brewery wiping out 80,000L of stock. The enterprise was only saved by volunteers mopping up all the beer to collect for distillation. Making and blending lambics was already a labour of love, and it only took heavy persuasion and help from the world's beer community to restart the business.

It's clearly worth it. The Golden Doesjel ("Snoozer") is an old, oak-aged lambic and a magnificent example of the complexity of lambics that somehow comes out as fresh, delicate, and delicious. Bottled well over two years ago, there's an old-sock funkiness to it, of course, with sour apples and blue cheese, but there's also a refreshing acidity and an incredibly long finish. This is a beer you could drink quite a bit of over the course of an evening, while all the time wondering at its complex flavours.

Collage Conflux Series No 1 11.8%
Belgian beer is famed for its high alcohol, but the lambics and gueuzes are often relatively restrained, especially in comparison to their American counterparts - the three we tasted tonight were all pushing 12%.

This beer is the first in a series of collaborations between two major Oregon brewers, Hair of the Dog and Deschutes, combining four of their beers: "Fred" and "Adam" from the former and "The Dissident" and "The Stoic" from the latter. It's interesting that two breweries should hook up to do this, but I'm not sure it quite works. A major part of the problem is that these are four very distinct beers, high in alcohol, and all aged in particular ways: the tasting notes for the beer state that it has been aged in "Rye Whiskey, Cognac, Sherry, Pinot Noir, Bourbon, new American Oak, and new Oregon Oak" casks. Whatver the genesis of the drink, that's far too many casks.

A dirty brown colour with a stinky nose - "offensive to at least two of the senses," in the words of @drinkaddition - it is surprisingly clean, if a little obvious, on the palate - malt, caramel, toffee, and treacle, creamy to the point of being described as like a milkshake. An interesting experiment, but difficult to drink more than a glass of.

The Dissident 2012 11.4%
Fascinating to try this straight after the previous beer, of which it formed a part. In the blend, the complex qualities of the beer were lost; here, they stand out for themselves. Aged in Pinot Noir barrels with Oregon Montmorency cherries, this is a great, balanced beer. An orange-brown colour, with flavours of citrus fruits (orange, tangerine), developing into more complex notes of coffee and chocolate, all overladen with the cherry backbone. Despite the alcohol, it's not too sweet, as it's balanced by the rich aromas and the bitter finish.

Cascade Bourbonic Plague 2011 12%
There is quite a fad for ageing beers in Bourbon casks, which I'm not quite convinced by. I've tasted beers which seem to have been left in the oak as if that were enough, producing sickly sweet beers that the brewer hasn't had enough control over. This beer shows what a skilled brewer can do, though it still left me wondering if beer should be treated like wine to this extent.

It's been aged in oak for two and a half years - 18 months in Bourbon and wine casks, then for another 12 months with dates and spices. The result is a heady, sweet beer that should be drunk like wine - slowly and with gradual appreciation. A very dark brown colour, the immediate flavours are of wood or wood related - charred wood, sandalwood, charcoal, smoke, tar, tobacco leaf - followed by sweet red fruits; on the palate, the dates and sweet spices become very apparent, the dates making the beer quite chewy.

The overall impression was of an aged, sweet red wine: powerful and alcoholic, with oak and dried fruit flavours. Given a choice between this and a recioto or a port, though, the beer would come third. As engaging and involving as it is, the flavour profile is upfront and obvious compared to the great sweet wines. If this criticism seems a little harsh, then this beer warrants it, for it's trying very hard, and coming very close to succeeding, in being an ageworthy, truly outstanding drink.

This brief tasting underlined that what's going on in Belgium and the US is quite different, even if the underlying principles are the same. The very best Belgian beers are drawing on decades or more of tradition to continue to create some of the world's great beers, while US brewers are experimenting, with a great deal of success, to redefine how we think about beer. Either way, these beers will change your palate forever.