Hey everyone, in case you didn’t know it, I moved to Colorado in August. About 3 weeks ago I created a blog that’s all about craft beer in the Pikes Peak Region, especially Colorado Springs, which is just south of Denver, Colorado. The blog is called Focus on the Beer, and the tag line is “Free Thinking and Beer Drinking.” I’ve been quite busy with that blog, and am posting about 7 posts a week. I’ll be posting more about my Glasgow Beer Experience soon back here at Beer and Sci-Fi soon too. I’ll keep this blog up, but I’ve always wanted this blog to be more about the social nature of drinking, about how I see beer drinking as a type of small scale utopian activity (hence the sci-fi). The Focus on the Beer blog is allowing me to put some effort into understanding the beer scene in this new location in a way that just couldn’t work for this blog. I hope you’ll check it out, and check out the links for the twitter page and facebook page links as well.

Allan Wright, the head organizer for the Beer Blogger’s Conference interviewed me about the new blog. I’m going to post a little bit from that interview here, but you really should check out the Beer Blogger’s Conference Website to see the whole thing:

I really like the new angle on local beer at Focus on the Beer and am curious – did this come out of an idea from the conference?

In a way it did come out of the conference. I’ve been struggling for about a year now with my older blog beerandscifi, trying to rethink my goals with it. When I moved to Colorado 3 months ago I could see that the area needed something that was a little more like Brewpublic. I’m friends with Angelo but after spending 3 days with him I was inspired, and then after being at the conference I was also really inspired. I’ve made 6 blog posts in one week on both blogs, I finally got the energy and “balls” to just start the thing, and I have ideas streaming into my head every day. The conference was a huge inspiration for me…

What do you do for a living and why are you currently in Colorado Springs?

I moved to Colorado Springs for a teaching job at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. I’m teaching entry level art classes, as well as a few other classes like “Art and Social Practice” where I concentrate on how contemporary artists think about community and engage the public, or how artists use food and drink as their artwork…

To read the whole interview, visit the Beer Blogger’s Conference website.

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Calum Craigie is currently the president of the Scottish Craft Brewers. He wrote an article for Brewer’s Contact, a journal made by the Craft Brewing Association in the UK. If you are in the UK, or plan to go to Scotland any time, you should check these guys out. I’m posting the article below but in summary, it is a review of my art/beer project that I mentioned in my last post, and he speaks to the success of the event and how it should influence the way the Scottish Craft Brewers operate. I believe that Calum has really captured the purpose and meaning behind why I do what I do, and so I will let him do the talking now. So, big thanks to Calum for coming to this project with an open mind and for putting a lot of thought into what I was trying to do. My responses and thoughts will be documented in a round-about way throughout these Glasgow Beer Experience postings. Here is Calum Craigie’s review:

(Calum Craigie checking his Hot Liquor Tank)

Visual Art is not something that I would usually associate with home brewed beer. I fully appreciate the craft that is involved in brewing a good beer. But…Art? I would need some convincing.

Throughout April the ambition to serve home brewed beer in a traditional pub environment was exactly what Eric Steen, artist and home brewer from the USA, had in mind. A series of “Pub School” events were held in Glasgow which included a brew night, brewing talks, readings and even a tour of a local brewery. The culmination was an event named The Market Gallery Pub on Friday 30th April which was, to quote Eric, “a one night, experimental installation inviting viewer participation through sampling home brewed beers that are presented as artworks.” The venue was the Market Gallery, an artist run facility in the East End of Glasgow which hosts and sponsors an eclectic mix of artistic events. It was certainly an interesting and challenging concept.

Eric attracted twelve all grain brewers who between then provided 26 beers. There was also some support from three commercial breweries to ensure there was enough to go round. On arriving at the event I was welcomed at the door by a steward who passed me the program for the evening which included a welcome from Eric as well as an opportunity for each of the brewers to introduce themselves and their beer. The look and feel of the venue was very much like a modern pub, there was the mix of seating and also standing space so that we could mingle with other visitors. For decoration empty bottles had been lined up on a high shelf and on the wall behind the bar all 29 beers were listed decoratively on wooden plaques. The frontage looked out onto the street through full length French windows. It could have been a trendy cafe bar in any city in Europe.

The event was to highlight Craft Brewed Beer and the interaction it encourages, however my own interest was to experience a different kind of brewing event. I was interested to meet the brewers, try their beer and ask if they enjoyed the events that Eric had championed. Most importantly, from my view, was to find out if there was an appetite to support and attend future brewing events? The Scottish Craft Brewers have found it increasingly difficult to attract new membership, and attendances for our events have been in decline for a couple of years. Here in Glasgow, Eric had managed to unearth an enthusiastic brewing community who appeared keen to showcase their beer, share their experiences and gain benefit from a community of brewing peers.

I thought a good strategy would be to select a beer, seek out the brewer and find out more about their brewing setup and preferred styles and then move onto the next one. This appeared to work very well, the brewers were happy to discuss their beers at length and also how much they had enjoyed the “Brew School” concept. What was disappointing was that most of the brewers were unaware that the SCB existed and the ones that did felt that we were only an Edinburgh focussed brewing group. However I was able to explain that the aim of the SCB was to attract brewers from across the country for the mutual benefits that can be gained. I think there was genuine interest in hearing more and there was definitely an action on me to ensure that this happens and to follow up with the contacts I made.

(There I am, pouring beer)

The Market Gallery Bar closed its doors just after 10pm and the shutters went up, albeit figuratively, on a very successful event. From an artistic perspective I think the event worked very well – the bar was well laid out, it attracted a good mix from both the brewing and artistic communities, the atmosphere was jovial and educational and it certainly left an impression of what can be achieved by bringing together various talents to work on an innovative project. This was all helped along as the general quality of the beer on offer was also very good. The event was able to ignite the enthusiasm of a group of brewers and allow them to showcase their beer to a wider audience.

My own take home message is that if the SCB want to engage with this new brewing community we are going to have to work harder at communicating the events than we currently do. There is evidently a group of brewers who appear to want to get involved in brewing events. They are a younger generation of brewers who are looking for more innovative events that will not only interest them, but also allow friends and family to be involved too. The events that we currently run miss this broader social interaction and perhaps we should be considering this when planning some of our events in the future. I am not advocating changing every event we run, but there must be room in the calendar to consider this.

I admit to starting off quite skeptical on the Market Gallery Pub concept. I did question “What was in it for the brewer?” I got my answer in the best way possible – a pub full to bursting with visitors enthusiastically consuming home brewed beer and the brewers enjoying the interaction. I thank Eric for opening my eyes on the possibilities over this aspect of our hobby and hopefully we can learn the lessons as we move forward.

Many of you know that I recently visited Scotland, but not many of you know that I was working, and that the purpose of the trip was to create a socially based art project that explores the craft beer culture in Glasgow. No joke! That’s what I did. So, I’m going to have multiple posts about my experiences and thoughts now that I’ve had a few months to digest all the information. In the coming weeks you’ll see posts about my experiences. Blog posts will start with the phrase “Glasgow Beer Experience.” I’m starting with my project, called Pub School, so those of you who were present for this project there is hopefully some new information in here for you, but you can look forward in the next couple weeks to more of: Thoughts on “Real Ale,” WEST Brewery, Williams Bros Brewing, Outside reviews of my project, and my forecast for the craft beer scene in Glasgow.

Where to start? To summarize, I was invited by the Market Gallery to create a project for the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art. I created a series of events called “Pub School.” Each were types of participatory and experiential educational activities revolving around craft beer in the city. For the finale I built a temporary pub that served homebrewed beer from homebrewers around the area. I came to Glasgow with a basic skeletal structure – this “Pub School” – idea but I had yet to meet anyone in person that I had been in touch with, I had yet to visit any of the pubs and/or breweries I had been researching, and I had yet to drink beer in Scotland, so I came with an open mind and an open schedule. In the end, the Pub School events were weekly, for the entire month of April, and for each event the gallery had transformed slightly until by the end it was a full-service pub.

Pub School

The first four Pub School events were a lot of fun and pretty laid back. I invited Geoff Traill and Owen Sheerins, who I had met through an online homebrew forum to lead a public homebrewing demonstration. I had some drinks with these guys on one of my first days and I was really impressed with their knowledge of brewing, their knowledge of styles and traditions, and their commitment to understand the subtleties of flavor (flavour). So, these guys worked together to make a beer, with about 15-20 people watching and asking questions and eventually participating. They made an English style bitter and threw in some Willamette hops in my honor, as at the time I actually lived 22 blocks from the Willamette River in Oregon. They ended up with two fermenters so they used an English yeast in one and an American ale yeast in the other. These beers were both served at the final event, the homebrewers pub.

The second event was a beer-reading session where each person brought a text that they would be willing to read in front of the group. I brought information about the mystification of saints in the brewing tradition, others brought readings about the development of historical styles, reasons for drinking craft beer, there was a reading from Sam Calagione’s book where he talks about embarrasing moments in his early business days at Dogfish Head, and a novel where someone must drink an age-old beer in order to save the world. For the third event one of the brewers at Williams Brothers Brewing came to the gallery, which is based outside of Glasgow in Alloa. He brought us the line-up of historic ales and a few of their contemporary line and shared with us information about the brewery. I’ll have another post devoted to Williams Bros. For the fourth event we took a field-trip down to WEST Brewery and received a full tour of the brewery. They spoiled us there, we met the brewers, and had a few drinks. The reason I was excited about this place is that they make a beer with 100% wheat, so it’s great to see their equipment. Also, they keg their beer, which in this area of the world is against the grain of the craft beer world. I’ll have more thoughts on WEST in another post as well.

Market Gallery Pub

The final event of the Pub School series was the Market Gallery Pub. This event I had been planning in advance for months before I ever arrived. In the end, I worked with 14 homebrewers and they created a total of 27 beers that were served at this event. I also invited Harviestoun and Williams Bros. to provide extra beer in case we ran out. 30 different beers in all. These were served to the public for free…yes, free beer to anyone of-age that wanted it. There was a line out the door…I worked with many of the homebrewers closely, asking them ways to best present their beer so that it was poured properly, so it showed off what they did, and was presented as artwork. Together we came up with a system that I think worked really really well. We rotated the beers every 5 minutes or so and instead of pouring out of the bottle, we had a couple runners who were pouring the bottles into pitchers and avoiding pouring yeast into the beer. This turned out to be great because we had ten beers pouring at a time, and it made an incredible visual to have 10 pitchers filled with beer ranging in color from light yellow to orange to brown to the blackest of blacks, all different consistencies and textures, all ranging in flavors from a crisp ale, to a really bitter IPA, to a vanilla stout, to a mint ale, to a gruit, and much more. It was visually stunning and it also kept people coming back all night to make sure they tried as many beers as they could. We served nearly 800 bottles worth of beer and we were pouring 8oz or so at a time, so nearly 1600 glasses. There was some discussion of whether or not 8oz was too much for a sample, but this is one area where I stuck to my guns because I wanted the place to have a pub atmosphere and not only a tasting session. In the end, I believe it was a good decision.

The whole event-series was geared toward looking at the aesthetics of brewing as an art-form and beer culture as a world in which this art is cultivated, developed, and discussed, just like any other form of contemporary art. So one of my major goals was to highlight many different aspects of the beer as art. For the pub, as I mentioned, I wanted to create a visual element that would show the beauty and differences found in beer, differences that you could see, and then also taste. The bar itself served as a display for the bottles that had yet to be opened. I also had shelving on the wall where we placed all the empties so that as the shelves filled up, one could see the variations of the bottles, and the labeling that went onto the bottles. A good number of the homebrewers applied labels onto the bottles so that when displayed they were also represented as a type of sculptural element. There were also a couple shelves with bottles that I had brought from the Pacific Coast, along with beers that I drank with my new friends in Scotland.

The furniture in the pub was also something that I put a lot of thought into. The wood was donated by Glasgow Wood Recyclers, a non-profit organization that mostly use their wood to create raised bed planters for schools. When visiting their shop I was trying to figure out how to use the wood when I turned one of the planters on end and used it as a bench. Aha! The raised bed planter, turned on end, became the design for the benches, tables, and the bar itself, and when I was done, I could return it to the earth as a raised bed planter. Not only that but each piece could fit inside the other so that during transportation it took up less space. It was utopian furniture in my mind.

Lastly, I was thinking of ways to highlight the homebrewers as artists themselves, giving credit to them and not purely the product they made. I ended up making a 12 page menu for the event that was handed out to each visitor. The menu listed all the beers and general information about the beer, but also had a write up on each brewer. Much like an artist catalog for a good-sized exhibition of artwork, the catalog served as a way for you, the audience member, to learn something about the artist/homebrewer. So the menu was full of anecdotal stories about where they brew, what their brewing system looks like, how their wife won’t let them brew in the kitchen so they do it in the garage, what they do for a living, and more. This is one of the fascinating things to me about homebrewing. I truly consider it an art-form as the homebrewer must put a lot of time and effort into understanding what will happen during the cooking, fermentation, and conditioning of their beer. There is a lot of science involved and there is also a lot of creative thinking as well. It truly is art, and the great thing is that homebrewers do this for fun, not professionally. They do it in their spare time, after work, or instead of studying for their physics exam. It’s a beautiful thing.

More Thoughts

So, I am an artist, but I’m also a homebrewer. I believe very much in craft beer as a means to bring people together, that it gets people excited about creativity in a way that is possibly not accessible through visual art, and that it also inspires a type of mindfulness about history, land, and celebration. It’s a really great thing. As an artist I put together this event to showcase these things, but I wanted to say one last thing about my process. I believe that as an artist it is my duty to find interesting things that are happening in the lives of other people and to allow them to shine. That was my hope for the Pub School events. They would not have been possible if I had tried to generate the content all by myself. Much of what happened would never have happened if it weren’t for the interesting people that joined in. It was participatory, the credit is due to them as much as it is to me. This is how I operate as an artist, some might not call it art, but it’s an important part of my practice that I want to make sure other people understand.

I kept a general blog about the whole Pub School project, and there you can find a lot more pictures if you’d like.

Don’t stop reading here! I can’t go without saying a few thanks to some important people. Travis Souza was my main contact at the Market Gallery and worked with me the whole time to help put this together.  Robbie Pickering of the Refreshing Beer blog came to every single event, participated in everything, hung out with me, contributed beer, and was a really informative resource for beer in the area. I’m going to talk more about him in future posts involving my time in Glasgow, but just know that this guy will change Glasgow. Des Mulcahy was, at the time, doing contract work for Williams Bros. Brewing, and previously for BrewDog. He wasn’t from Glasgow so we hung out often and talked about how we didn’t understand anything anyone else was saying. He also showed me a bunch of great pubs and beers in the city, and he also attended every event and helped plan with me, and even volunteered and worked hard during the Pub. Mark Brannan helped me build the bar, that was super helpful. WEST Brewery and Williams Bros. Brewing were incredible, and I’ll post more about them soon too.

The video below is a response from Greg Koch to my previous post. In order to see the video, please first familiarize yourself with my original post where I express a specific concern over Stone’s desire to open a brewery in Europe. Then in order to watch the video you’ll need to use this passcode: gkresponds

11.08.10 // Slow Food, Europe & Stone from stonebrew on Vimeo.

passcode: gkresponds

First I’d like to thank Greg for taking the time to respond to my concern personally and for giving me permission to post the video. I’ll summarize the video a little here: Greg points out that many of the things we call traditional aren’t necessarily how we might think of them, many recipes that we think of as traditional have not bee around as long as we might imagine. He goes on to say about Stone, “We are not going over to usurp, of course not, we are going over to be a part of the collective craft brewing movement.” He mentions that Italian breweries, in their diverse and experimental beers are actually gaining their inspiration from places like Belgium as well as their own surroundings, and yet they aren’t necessarily considered traditional in Italy because that culture hasn’t really been developed as it has in places like Germany. Greg admits that because much of Stone’s flavor character comes from the bitterness in Pac NW style hops, these will need to be shipped to Europe, hops being fractional in weight comparison to most other ingredients in beer, lowering the carbon footprint than if they shipped bottles of beer over.

[To cut in for a minute though, a question arises in my mind at this point in the video as to whether this is even necessary. There is still a large footprint, albeit smaller, but why the need to ship the beers or hops over? Or even, why not keep the beer in the States and keep Europeans anticipating the beer so that they will make sure to have some when visiting the United States. The answer I think lies in part in some of Greg's early statements in the video, to “be a part of the collective craft brewing movement.”] He continues to answer this question by saying that Stone’s goal is in “joining the fight for furthering the appreciate of great craft beers. The culture of sharing craft beer comradery is not as intense as we have developed here in the United States.” He also says that Stone isn’t trying to come and do this as an individualistic thing, they aren’t trying to cast Stone as this mighty individual power that will change Europe. He says their interest in doing this is a passion/interest based decision. He also says he wants to make sure that at the new Stone many of the locally made beers will be featured as well. So why Stone and not a European brewery to do this? It’s not said outright but Greg knows it, and implies it, and I think I can say it…Stone is an authoritative presence in the craft beer world and maybe has the zealousness needed to pull off something that may potentially gain huge interest in a beautiful product. Beer evangelism, I do it all the time.

So, in response, I actually don’t think I have too much to say. I think Greg Koch cleared up many of my concerns. Maybe I spoke too soon, maybe I didn’t familiarize myself with Stone as much as I should have, or maybe I just should have asked Stone a few questions first, but in the end I’m glad that I was a little upset and that a response like this could go online. Instead of it looking like I’m just out to mindlessly promote every brewery and that Stone is just using me and other bloggers to promote their thing I think what’s happened here is that Stone has been able to clear up a question or inconsistency that many other people would have seen. [Maybe I just mindlessly posted my thoughts though?] To be clear, it’s not that I ever disliked Stone or was out to get them, I just thought I heard conflicting ideologies at work. My original concern was that if Stone is going to Europe and they do the same beer they do here, it feels like a cookie-cutter business move, and not like a company concerned with the goals of the Slow Food movement, which Stone associates with. I’m glad that Greg sees my point, and understands where I’m coming from. With his explanation I can see that Stone’s primary goal is promoting a great craft and I also see that they take localism and slow foods quite seriously. Yes, there are still issues with carbon footprint in shipping the hops over, but it seems like this has been a thought-through balancing act and not a decision that’s being made lightly or that is based solely and purely for monetary reasons [Would this be a problem? Maybe to me, but probably not to others...]. I believe in that because, as I’ve said many times on this blog, I believe craft beer is an agent for social change, and that drinking good beer is a form of activism. Drinking good beer inspires slow living, community, and landfulness. “Drinking Beer With Friends is the Highest Form of Art.” Thank you Stone.

This weekend I had the great fortune of attending the first annual Beer Blogger’s Conference. I don’t plan to make a full review but would like to show a few photos and then talk a little bit about my thoughts on the presentation by Greg Koch of Stone Brewing Co. I’ll start with Stone.

Greg Koch of Stone Brewing Co.

I pulled this exciting photo from Greg Koch’s twitter page. He’s at the Beer Blogger’s Conference in Boulder, Colorado. Greg’s presentation to the beer bloggers was charismatic and full of energy. At times he challenged the bloggers to do some investigative journalism to dig up juicy stories of shadey deals that go down between breweries and places that serve beer. He strongly encouraged a more radical approach to blogging. He also brought out an unreleased beer, Lucky Bastard 13, and let the whole room take samples. I was enjoying his approach and his stories until he began talking about how Stone is looking for a place in Europe to open up a new Stone brewery. I’m sure he was bringing this up so that we would leak the information to the world, and help prepare everyone for what is likely a pretty risky move on Stone’s part. He’s a smart guy. Everyone was very excited about all the news he brought from the famous brewery, everyone was sending their Lucky Bastard photos across Twitter with the #bbc10 hashtag, making the rest of the beer bloggers out there jealous that they had missed out. Everyone felt special.

(picture credited to hookedonwinter)

But as I alluded, I had some beef with Stone’s new plans. Greg at one point said that he had been around the world and that people in different parts of the world very rarely point to American beers and say that what’s happening in The States is not good. He said that most beer lovers in other countries say things like, “I wish our beers and our beer scene was more like the US.” This is when he brought up that Stone had been looking at places to establish a new brewery in Europe. Someone asked if Stone would then change their line-up and change their way of doing things in order to accomodate a more European beer culture. He said the answer to that question is “somewhere between No and Hell No.” Everyone clapped and cheered. At this point someone thanked Greg that Stone is so committed to the Slow Food Movement and that they have helped inspire an incredible standard for the beer industry. I cannot deny that this is true, however, I raised my hand to say something because I saw a conflict of interest. I said something along these lines (embellishing a little bit here with post-conference thoughts): I believe very much in the Slow Food Movement, I think that what they are doing is incredible. One of the things I appreciate most from the organization is their commitment to localism and geographic identity based on foods. It’s a beautiful thing when your plate of food is something that is locally sourced. But if Stone is going to build a new brewery on the other side of the world and do their Stone thing and make Stone beers without sourcing local ingredients, without considering the tradition of that land, and to just continue making the same things then I don’t see how they can associate themselves with Slow Foods. It feels more like globalism and cookie-cutter franchising. Greg’s response wasn’t so much now “Hell No, Stone won’t change” as it was that Stone won’t be shipping their bottles overseas, which is helpful, and that regionalism is a difficult concept today (an example is that we associate Italian food with tomatoes but that is a New World plant). Also he mentioned that this difficulty-of-regionalism means it’s easier to take Stone and put them in a new site (without changing Stone). If I’ve missed anything, someone please correct me. Regionalism in food is important to me (even if the food is grown in a place where it isn’t native to that specific geographical place). And Regionalism in beer is a very important thing to me; when a brewery wants to think regionally I appreciate it immensely and am very supportive. It shows a true commitment to environmental politics and a mindfulness to the land. When breweries don’t think regionally I can deal with it, but I’m not happy that a brewery would say they are committed to the thing and then do their own thing. Stone has a really great opportunity to try to push the limits of traditions, new ingredients, new styles, etc. If you go to Belgium, why not do a Belgian-Stone, not a Stone in Belgium? So my challenge to Stone is to adopt a more regional attitude, combine your interests with those of the place you move in to. And I wish you success in your business.

Beer Blogger’s Conference in Boulder, Colorado

Like I said I won’t go into too much more specific detail. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and learned a lot. The more formal sessions of the conference were informative and helpful, especially in the most practical presentations from WebConnoisseur about SEO, Brewgasm’s anecdotal stories of ways to get involved in writing about your local beer scene, and the down to earth Jay Brookston when he encouraged us to be artists in our blogging.

Brewdog’s End of History Beer. Photo credited to @BeerCruiser
There were also some slightly less formal (major under-exaggeration here) happenings such as a bottle share where people brought their best-of beers from around the country. I finally got to try some Cigar City Brewing, as they were sold out by the time I got to their booth at the Great American Beer Festival. I also enjoyed some Elysian pumpkin beers, and even though I’m from the area I drank some Vintage sour beers from Cascade Brewing that Brewpublic brought. They’re were other great beers I tried too. I brought a Bristol Brewery Venetucci Pumpkin Ale, an Upright untitled beer, and Ninkasi Sleigh’r Double Alt. What was very exciting for me (mostly because now “I can say I did it”) was drinking Brewdog’s 41% Sink the Bismark as well as getting a small gulp of the 55% End of History (which is actually not the strongest beer in the world). Neither of those two beers tasted good, but I didn’t really expect them to. Yes, Brewdog is pushing the limits and I got in on it. We also did some pub crawls and everywhere in town that noticed our beer blogger’s badge hooked us up with insane amounts of beer. I went to Avery Brewing with Brewpublic, see what he has to say about that experience. Another big highlight for me was drinking the pumpkin beer over at Mountain Sun Brewpub during the pub crawl, absolutely delicious beers there.

Other people covered the conference better than me, and I’ll update this post below with their stories. Also, follow beerandscifi on twitter for more info as it comes in. The conference will be in Portland, Oregon next year and I will gladly give high recommendations.

- Brewpublic’s Review of the BBC10
- Pencil and Spoon’s Summary of Day 01
- The Hop Press’ thoughts on Women in Beer Blogging and James Pavlick’s thoughts on the Women in Beer Blogging Session

* * * * * * * * * * UPDATE * * * * * * * * * *

10/10/2010 – You might notice in the comments that Greg Koch actually sent a video response. In my opinion that response clears up many of my concerns. Instead of deleting this original post I would like to keep it here with this update. I have posted the response on a new post, along with some of my additional thought.

The Art & Beer event last month was a tremendous amount of fun. It’s the second time I’ve organized the event and I hope the museum continues to invite me to do it. If you’re unaware of it, Art & Beer is an event that highlights one of Portland’s most well-known crafts, beer, as a form of art. If you know me, you know that I believe craft beer is a form of art, and that beer is an agent for social change. Angelo from Brewpublic interviewed me about this project as well as how I think about beer as art. For this event I chose Hopworks Urban Brewery, Coalition Brewery, and Rock Bottom Brewery. Brewers received tours of the museum and selected artworks that inspired the creation of new beers. The beers were then served free to museum visitors. We went through 8 kegs in just over 4 hours. That was wild. Here’s a quick look at the artwork selected for this year’s beers.

N.C. Wyeth’s The Great Train Robbery inspired Coaltion’s beer. Their beer was a California Common, a style that got it’s name because people during the time depicted in this painting were moving West to California and would use a specific yeast that could ferment like a lager but in warmer temperature. The beer was fresh hopped with California hops and was called Liquid Sterling.

Rock Bottom Brewery chose William Ivey’s Untitled piece. In this painting they associated the yellow and red colors popping out of the larger blue and grey with the way that American beers have morphed out of British brewing styles. They created a beer that was an American IPA but suppressed with British fermenting techniques and cask conditioned, as preferred in the UK, a process that rounds out the bitter notes.

Hopworks chose Rick Bartow’s Ursa Major which depicts a flying bear carrying a passenger. They chose ingredients that this bear might find on one if it’s journeys. Their beer was smoked with Alder, had Hazlenuts, Huckleberries and Salt, all locally sourced.

*The line to get the beer was pretty long, stretching almost all the way to the street.

This is the Coaltion Brewing Team enjoying their beer.

**A friendly photo of the Hopworks Crew enjoying themselves.

*The lucky guys who got to pour over 3000 glasses of beer in record breaking time.

*Rock Bottom treated us with casks. Each one had a sentence written on it: “This is Art.” “This is Also Art.” And “This is Not Beer.” A fun touch. The brewer Van Havig, was versed in art history and was a big fan of Marcel Duchamp.

* Photo courtesy of Dabudah
** Photo courtesy of Brewpublic

Description:
Art & Beer (2010) is the second event of it’s kind, brought to you by Eric Steen and the Portland Art Museum. Art & Beer combines beer, one of Portland’s most well known crafts, with experiencing art. For one night only, you can sample three new beers from Coaltion Brewing, Hopworks Urban Brewery, and Rock Bottom Brewery at the Portland Art Museum. Each brewery received a tour of the museum’s collection, selected an artwork and will make a beer inspired by that artwork. The selected artwork and the beer style will remain a surprise until the night of the event. This beer sampling is part of a one night event called Shine A Light, an event that will host a number of performances, time-based art actions, music, and more. The entry fee for the event is $12 and will give you access to all the art and performances, the museums galleries, and unlimited sampling of the three new beers.

The Brewers:
Coalition Brewing: Bruce MacPhee and Elan Walksy
Hopworks Urban Brewery: Christian Ettinger and Ben Love
Rock Bottom Brewery: Van Havig

The Art:
Sorry! We’re not going to give away the surprise!

Details:
Portland Art Museum
October 15th, 6pm – Midnight (or until the beer runs out!)
$12 entry includes access to all the nights events, the art collections and unlimited beer samples

The Daily Pull had a great post about whether it is still “craft” it one brewer has someone else brew their beer. The post uses Goose Island from Chicago as a point of departure. Read that article first here. Here’s my response:

It’s a really good question. I’m not so quick to dismiss the craft aspect of it though. Let’s say I’m a homebrewer and a lot of people like my beer so I sell it illegally or give it away. One day someone else let me use their equipment and I made my beer on their equipment. People continue to be interested in it, so this person keeps letting me brew on their system. One day though, he/she says “you know, if you pay me I’ll just keep brewing this on my system…I’ve watched you enough and know enough about your process…and I know how you make it…just pay me and I’ll keep making it for you.” Has it lost the craft? I don’t think so.

Artists that show in contemporary museums and galleries do this all the time. It’s their ideas and concepts as it relates to the artwork and the history of the arts that is the most important part. They design the piece but send the design to a manufacturer to get it done. But I guess this is often considered conceptual art. I don’t know how I feel about conceptual beer.

The brewers in larger breweries have still practiced and work awfully hard to get a recipe correct. Now they are able to pass it along to Redhook…maybe they’re just freeing up some space so that they can concentrate on new things. It would be difficult in Chicago for Goose Island to open a whole new facility.

I like your point about this situation being an example that breweries are less interested in competition (at this point). But I am interested in the question of whether outgrowing your means and constant expansion is a sustainable business practice. At what point does a brewery say “enough.” That’s a different question I suppose.

There is a nice post about Beer-Evangelism over at the New School Beer Blog. It is about Ben’s attempt to show some of Portland’s finest beer offerings to people who did not necessarily like or care to drink beer. My comments are a nice anecdote to the blog post, but I’ll also copy and past them below. I’m curious about beer-evangelism because I have found myself doing it. I grew up in a Christian household and evangelism was something that was seen as normal and good, but as I’ve grown older I’ve developed a distate for it. Now when I develop a strong interest in something I find myself still trying to “convert” the nonconverted, trying to get them to see something that I see that they don’t yet see. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it when it comes to beer, or when it comes to attempting to share your interests with others. I think that common-experience and shared interest is a huge part of why it’s done though. People want to feel connected to other people; it’s part of human nature to band together and find some kind of idyllic value in the groups we form. I’m sure I will have more to say about this in the future, once I start writing for this blog again.

One last thing before I post my comments is that if you don’t already know I recently returned from Glasgow, Scotland where I built a temporary pub that served homebrewed beer. I was acting as a type of curator, working with Scotland brewers to represent their beer as best I could and to offer their handiwork as a type of art. I can post images on the blog soon, but if you want a sneak peak, please visit glasgowbeerandpubproject.blogspot.com.

Okay, now for my comments on the New School’s Beer-Evangelism post:

I took some of Portland’s best to a bunch of homebrewers that I met in Scotland. They loved the stuff, and were very curious and delighted by the overhopped beers and CDA’s but I too have found that dropping a heavy beer or hop bomb (with someone who does not love beer the way I do) on the table is not good.

My dad, who never really liked beer, was very impressed by Laurelwood’s Free Range Red but only after he had done a taster tray at Laurelwood. There he got to see one brewery with about 8 different beers, different in color, taste, and weight. I think in terms of beer-evangelism, this is a good strategy. It’s too bad that they (the reporters) did not have time to tour a number of breweries to see the different ways Portland brewers set up their systems and the different beers they each produce.

But I think you’re observation regarding the challenging of your belief that everyone can enjoy the right beer is a good observation. I think everyone can experience moments of utopia, bliss, or whathaveyou but in different forms. For some, lifting weights is the be-all and end-all and they always want me to come lift weights or go running with them. I’ve tried it before and I can’t stand it. They tell me that I need to just keep doing it, that I need to break some sort of invisible barrier but I have come to the point where I just say no. I wouldn’t say that I’m being stubborn, I just don’t want to continue spending my time trying to find something that this other person has found when I’ve already found it in beer, books, or something else. The same might be true for others, just in reverse. They may not want to take the effort to understand the beer the way you have because they have already found something that gives them what they need.

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This is a preview of the labels I’m making for my Heather Ales. I made four 10 gallon batches of Heather Ale, using heather flowers, bog myrtle, and a little hops for their acidity (not flavoring). Each batch is slightly different.

I’m creating these for two different events: The Mythical State of Jefferson exhibition at Southern Oregon University’s Schneider Art Museum and the Open Engagement Conference in Portland Oregon (both are in May, 2010). The Jefferson show is about Northern California’s secession movement, democracy, and the idea that you can take political matters into your own hands. The Open Engagement Conference is focusing on the ins and outs of socially engaged art. I was mostly interested in the history of this beer. The ingredients were banned in 1707 by the Act of Union when Scotland was made part of Great Britain. The recipe was mostly lost until someone had it translated in 1986. The beer has helped usher in a huge interest in extinct or nearly extinct beer styles. It is also a great example of the diversity that geography brings to beer. This is part of the reason I see drinking quality craft beer to be a form of activism, and not just consumerism; by drinking craft beer you are saying no to mass produced, tasteless beer that relies on chauvinism to sell its products and instead you are turning to a drink that celebrates local business, geography, complex tastes, quality, and embraces a longstanding human tradition.

I just read a review of the movie Beer Wars over at The Brew Dude. It’s the first review I’ve read that gives some criticism, albeit quite constructive-criticism. The Dude’s main complaint is that “more (smaller than Dogfish) craft brewers could have been included in the story to help with the realization that the community is so huge but so small & collaboratively driven at the same time.”

As an observer of the craft beer industry and a consumer of their wonderful products I have very much felt the collaborative nature of these businesses. It often seems like local brewers aren’t out to get each other and steal the market; they just want to make quality products and share them. This collaborative economy makes customers feel a part of the community and it grows interest so that no market stealing is necessary.

As far as the movie goes, everyone has given it a thumbs up, including the Brew Dude so don’t be deterred. It likely raises some important questions about the way industrial beer corporations do business and whether or not you, the consumer, want to support them. I also read this article, What Budweiser Can Teach You About Innovation, and I can’t tell if it’s a joke or not but it helps solidify my thoughts that the only innovative thing that’s happening in mega beer corporations is manipulative marketing.

Today I saw an interesting post over at A Good Beer Blog. Taking a quote from Zythophile, he thought through it’s meaning and wrote a few nice paragraphs. Go check it out. Here’s the quote:

“It’s not said often enough in this argument: we drink because we enjoy it, and the overall happiness that brings to society, I would suggest, vastly outweighs any disbenefits.”

And in reply:
“…If we are thinking about good beer we should also take an interesting in increasing and sharing the benefits while reducing easily identifiable harm – including those harms short of full bore alcoholism. When I think about this blog writing and the thousand of you who I am told read my posts every day I sometime wonder if I have encouraged anyone into a habit that is harmful rather than convivial. I am not satisfied to think of the statistics…”

Last night I attended the Scottish Pub Sing, led by the Portland Revels, at one of my favorite breweries, Lucky Lab in Portland, Oregon. It was beautiful hearing everyone sing songs while we all drank together. We sang love songs, sad songs, and outrageously fun songs about sharing homebrews, making you feel at home, and drinking the city dry. Having a group of people sing together like this reminded me very much of church and just further solidified in my mind that the pub is really a wonderful social center, and good beer is an important element in bringing people together. Lucky Lab is on my list of places that are doing beer and community right. What a wonderful night!

The brewery had a whole load of new specials so I had to try out a few. I ordered the sample tray and had two different Alts, a Scottish Ale, Barleywine, an Amber, an IPA, and a Cascadian Dark Ale (Black IPA).

Here’s the chorus of one of the songs I don’t remember hearing, but I imagine would have been a good one:

OLD DUN COW
There was Brown, up-side-down,
Moppin’ up the whiskey on the floor.
“Booze, booze,” the firemen cried,
As they came knockin’ at the door.
Don’t let ‘em in ’till it’s all mopped up
Somebody shouted, “Macintyre!”
(Everyone shout) MACINTYRE!
And we all got blue blind, paralytic drunk
When the Old Dun Cow caught fire.

Greatest Sips from Hot Knivez on Vimeo.

This is a video from Hot Knives, a group of bloggers devoted to elevating vegetables and drinking good beer. They’ve put together a book that has 21 or so of their favorite writings from their blog. It looks like a pretty nicely packaged book and it comes with a URL where you get a mixtape of music that “goes well with the beers.” A pretty exciting package I think, combining good design, craft, and beer. They even have a review of the 20th anniversary Heather Ale from Williams Brothers on their site (which is one of the beers I most look forward to on an upcoming art trip to Glasgow), and it seems like their logo was inspired by Scotland’s BrewDog Micro Brewery.

This is by no means a comprehensive look at good beer in NYC. I went to New York because I had some art up for the Incidental Person Exhibition at the Apexart Gallery. I was showing documentation from the Portland Art & Beer project. I figured that while I was in town I better find some good, and most importantly, local beer.

My time was very, very short so I had a big list of things I wanted to see and didn’t get to most of them. This is often what happens when visiting NYC and I’ve learned before it’s best not to try to cram it all in, I just tried to enjoy where life brought me. Ahead of time I found four bars online that looked worth checking out: The Blind Tiger, The Ginger Man, D.B.A., and 4th Avenue Pub. I only made it to the Blind Tiger and it seems no one that I talked to knew about the 4th Avenue Pub. I was specifically looking for beer from Sixpoint Craft Ales, Kelso of Brooklyn, and  Captain Lawrence Brewery.

The first and only bar on my list I was able to make it to was The Blind Tiger, as it was relatively near the gallery where I spent most of my time. They had a list of about 30 beers. They had the Sixpoint IPA, so I ordered one of those. It was a well-balanced NW style IPA that would earn respect here in Oregon. They also had a good list of Winter Belgiums so I tasted a few of those. I’m a little upset at myself for not sampling the He’brew RyePA on Cask, but beer is very expensive in NYC. The nice thing is that the microbrews are just about the same price as the bad stuff. I liked The Blind Tiger, although the neighborhood was lame, it was surrounded by expensive clothing stores. I would not normally find myself in this part of town.

I was able to visit a couple other bars that friends invited me to. Each place had a handful of local beers, always one from Sixpoint (either the IPA or the Otis Stout, which is also good) and usually the Ommegang Witte from Cooperstown, NY which I very much enjoyed. Friends brought me to a place called Union Hall in Brooklyn which has an indoor bocce ball area. There I sampled the Kelso of Brooklyn Dark Lager and was very happy with that beer. Although the bar was just a little too noisy for my taste. I headed north where another friend took me to a place where I finally saw a Captain Lawrence ale on tap! I ordered that immediately. It was their Liquid Gold beer, a super friendly tasting Belgium Ale. I’m sure they make even better beers, but I knew I could go home happy after that.

On my last day I visited the Sixpoint brewery. They told me that an excellent beer bar in town is Spuyten Duyvil but I was never able to make it to that one. All my friends had heard of it though when I mentioned it. The Sixpoint guys said that directly across the street from that bar is a restaurant that sells their Vienna Ale, which they make exclusively for that place. The visit to the Sixpoint Brewery takes some time. It’s in a part of town called Red Hook and requires a lot of subway transfers and then about 30 minutes of walking. But it was worth it. Check this place out:


The guys in the brewery were very hospitable. After showing me the brewery they took me upstairs to sample their beers. They sent me home with a bottled Wheat primed with honey, and a Wormwood Ale. Looking forward to that. They don’t bottle commercially though so you do have to go to NYC at this point.

Turns out these guys are running at full capacity and are looking to expand. It’s easy to see why. There are millions of people in NYC and only a handful of places making good beer. Sixpoint was easy to find but the other beers weren’t as easy. I think there is a room for a lot more beer in NY and I’m surprised that it’s not brimming over with beer. If Portland, with 2 million people can have 30+ breweries with 7-10 more opening up soon, then NY can handle a few more as well. The great thing is that opening new breweries is not necessarily a competitive business move, it really gets the locals further interested in local beer and helps grow a more sustainable and local-minded community.