For Christmas I’m giving a couple people a 6 pack of my homebrewed beers. I haven’t made any specific Winter Ales but I’ve decorated the bottles quite appropriately. I’ve got a couple Ginger Porters, a Nut Brown, a couple Pale Ales, and a Double Dry Hopped IPA.

Now, for a tangential note (this may seem random but I think I need to start talking about it):

I’ve been calling my little homebrewing adventure “Slow Beers” but am not totally certain about this name. I don’t want people to confuse it with the Slow Foods Organization but I do like the name because it subtly encourages leisure, rest, and relaxation as a form of social productivity. We’ll see how it goes. I consider the homebrewing to be a part of my field research into Oregon beer culture, something that I participate in quite frequently. I’m very interested in how Portland has established itself as this mega beer city, with 30+ breweries and brewpubs in the city-proper. and 9 more breweries opening up in the next few months. I’ve made recent visits to California and while they are most definitely brewing outstanding beer there, the beer community is not as obviously connected and close as it is here. And we have breweries doing some pretty amazing things: all the organic breweries in town, the theater pubs, Upright recently made an oyster stout, we’ve got breweries making beer from old and rare recipes, we just had the yearly Holiday Ale Festival which has 60+ beers made specifically for the festival, Lompoc released 7 winter beers a couple weeks ago and there’s much much more happening. I mean things are booming here and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

I’ve been exploring Portland’s beer culture with many of my art projects and I finally have many of these up on my main website at ericmsteen.com. As a professional artist I’m interested in the ability beer has to create and grow communities and groups of people, how it affects local business, and how it brings people into a greater understanding of their city or locale as a rich social site. What happens when a large number of breweries begin promoting their beers but aren’t asking their customers to get drunk, what happens when a whole city establishes local pubs as social centers, and what happens when people gain a greater understanding of a drink that has been a part of mankind’s history (in various forms) for thousands and thousands of years.

Homebrewing is one avenue of exploration for me. I have a small group of people that show up to learn about beer making with me (not that I’m an expert, we learn together) and we taste different beers and we participate in Portland’s offerings. Group members buy the beer for $1 bottle which is just a little more than cost so I’m actually paying for what I’ve called my field research. I encourage all artists to find ways to get sponsorship of some kind because research and exploration can become expensive in any field (painting, sculpture, etc). My group “buys-in” becoming supporters of my art and research and yet receive a gift for about the same price as (and often less than) the cost of buying beer in stores.