The Portland Beer Market in One Picture

This is the sign at Eastmoreland Golf Course, a public course owned and operated by the City of Portland:

Wasn't long ago your choices were Bud, Bud Light and PBR.

Okay So Maybe You Can Get Rich in Beer

Although it will take a lot of hard work, good publicity and marketing skills, considerable luck, and well, maybe it would help if you started nearer to the start of the craft beer renaissance.  You can tick all of those boxes for Jim Koch founder of Sam Adams, whose recent stock gains have made Jim a billionaire at least on paper.

Closer to home, one can only wonder how well Gary Fish is doing.  He built Deschutes from scratch and it remains a privately held concern, but one that appears to maintain healthy growth.

But as Jim Koch mentions in the article, getting rich is not (or shouldn't be) the point. Having fun and enjoying what you do is.

Most craft beer businesses are built around creating a sustainable local business but there are some, like Ninkasi to name the fist brewery that pops into my head, that are build on raid growth and expansion.  As beer is a large economy of scale business, that is the one way to make it to the 1%.  Or in Jim's case the .1%.

Cheers!

Widmer Octoberfest

There are so many beery events in Portland I don't get too uptight about missing them, but the Widmer Octoberfest is one that I have been wanting to attend.  Fortunately, this year the good folks at Widmer have invited me to come along and I plan on accepting. 

The brewery site is a pretty cool place (and especially easy to access now that MAX goes right by) the Widmer's make consistently excellent beer and the pub focuses on Germanic-y food so they got the sausage and pretzels nailed presumably.

The fest runs Friday and Saturday and after this freak storm, hopefully the weather will be good. 

Recommended.

The Oregon Brewer's Festival

Some may think it suspiciously coincidental that my two week return to Oregon from my sabbatical in Brazil coincides with the Oregon Brewer's Festival (OBF).  I call it a happy accident.

So, despite my extended stay in Brazil (where, try as I might, I could not find much beer to blog about), I will attend the OBF this year.  As is my tradition, I will attend the afternoon of the opening day which is now a Wednesday (July 24).  No idea how the Wednesday opening will affect this, but in the past it was the only time one could enjoy the fest without the hooting hoards - and even then you only had about 3-4 hours of peace which seemed to shrink each year.

What I am looking for this year as always are nice hoppy session ales (not a contradiction as Widmer has proved with their Citra Blonde).  I also look for pilsners and other lighter lagers.   I am glad to see many low ABV beers on the list representing a number of styles.

There are many great beers to try but here is a short list of ones that have caught my eye all but one below 5.5% ABV:

10 Barrel: Swill.  Their take on a German Radler beer might be the perfect thing if the fest gets really hot.

Alameda: Huckleberry Hound.  Low ABV and fruity - could be interesting.  Must say that their description of fruit and malt-forward makes me think overly sweet - so this will be an interesting experiment.

Boulder: Blueberry Wheat.  Bleuberries are hard to brew with in my opinion (formed from some less than stellar experiments) but David Zuckerman might just be the man with the magic touch.  Proving that that Lewis & Clark education didn't go to waste.

Boundary Bay Brewery: Double Dry Hopped Bravo Pale Ale.  I am especially excited about this.  One of my favorite breweries that never fails to impress me at the OBF with a new (to me) hop - Bravo.  Might just be my first stop.

Breakside: Float.  Breakside + lager = yum.

Bridgeport: Long Ball Ale.  Meridian are one of the new 'it' hops and I suspect many have tried this one brewed for the Hillsboro Hops, but it'll be new to me.

Cascade: Raspberry Wheat.  Because no one does fruit beer better than Cascade, this one is a must-try.

Eel River: Cali Pale.  Meridian, Citra and Simcoe all in one pale?  Sounds like it will be squeezably citrusy - and that sounds pretty good to me (disclaimer - I am in thrall of the new citrusy hop varietals).

Epic: Hop Syndrome Lager.  I know Jeff is interested in the hoppy lager trend and this will no doubt be the subject of discussion.  Aramis hops is enough to get me to taste.

Gigantic: & Juice.  Because it is Gigantic.  Do you need any more reason?

Ninkasi: Bohemian Pils.  The hop masters have proven that they can make a damn good pils, I expect that this will be no different.

Occidental: Occidental Dortumunder.  Occidental has bucked the trend in Oregon breweries and is planted solidly in the German tradition.  Look forward to finally getting a taste of their beer.

Speakeasy: Tallulah.  This one features El Dorado hops, a hop I have just brewed with for the first time but my beer won't be ready for a couple of weeks so I can get a glimpse of what I have in store with this beer.

Upright: Offen Kölsch.  Kölsch is one of my favorites and Upright is almost always a sure bet. 

Vertigo: Key Lime Tropical Blonde.  I predict this will either be sublime or terrible.  Will be fun to see which.

Wild River: Kölsch.  Another Kölsch from a brewery I have not yet sampled.

Wildwood: Organic Ambitious Lager.  One more lager again from a brewery that is new to me.

That's more than I would typically get through but this year the pours will be 3oz rather than the 4oz of years past, so maybe I will...  Besides with all of them pretty low ABV by American standards, it should not be too much.

Enjoy the fest!

Consumer Reports and Craft Beer

Consumer Reports has had a go at craft beer...with predictable results.  Over at Beervana, Jeff has a go at them, pointing out the myriad problems in their analysis. 

This doesn't surprise me, I love CR and have subscribed to their digital version for years and I always consult them for purchases where objective tests and ratings convey real info.  But they always fail when it comes to food.  Tastes are subjective and personal.  A restaurant critic, or beer critic for that matter, can discuss what they liked and did not like about a food or beer, but trying to create a subjective evaluation, which is the CR method, is always going to fail.  I'll just add the little amusing anecdote that they seem to have taken the electronics template and put the beers in it as they refer to different beers as 'models.' Oops.  Check out the ratings of the 'models' below:

You'll find lots to hate about this list, probably beginning with the presence of Shock Top, Kirkland and other not-quite-what-we-think-of-as-craft beers. 

But I'd like to make the rather obvious point that this endeavor is yet another milestone in the popularizing of craft beer.   If CR is doing it, it is because of the widespread and growing appeal of craft beer.  And I can tell you from my experience with my in-laws that these ratings will send a whole bunch of folks past the macro lagers and into the craft beer section of the local Safeway.  

The fact that their first taste of 'craft beer' will be Stone IPA may set the whole movement back, however - Stone IPA is not a gateway beer.  It is a full on face melter for the uninitiated - but I digress.  

Craft beer is full-on mainstream now and that means lots of good intentioned if misguided efforts like this and we all should welcome these clumsy embraces.  The far greater crime would be to dismiss craft beer as a niche enthusiasts occupation and ignore them. 

Oregon Craft Beer Continues to Grow Rapidly -- and What it All Means

Hipster Sweet Spot: Bikes, Gritty Industrialism, Ironic Humor and Good Beer - GIGANTIC 

Craft Beer in Oregon (or locally produced non-macro lager if you prefer) is still going gangbusters according to the Oregon Brewers Guild:

PORTLAND, Ore. (June 26, 2013) – The Oregon Brewers Guild announced today that Oregon’s breweries crafted 1,296,000 barrels of beer (or roughly 321 million pints) during 2012, an 11 percent increase from the previous year. 

***  

Oregon currently has 137 brewing companies operating 174 brewing facilities in 59 cities across the state. There are currently 51 breweries in Portland, 15 in Bend and 10 in Eugene.  

More than 17 percent of the 2.79 million barrels of all beer — both bottled and draft — consumed in the state were made in Oregon. For draft beer, that percentage is even higher, with Oregon breweries producing an estimated 47 percent of all draft beer consumed in the state. Oregonians consumed 12.8 percent more Oregon craft beer over last year, equaling 483,400 barrels. Craft beer production in the U.S. grew 15 percent in 2012 and now represents 6.5 percent of the total volume of beer brewed in the United States.

This last bit is what really strikes me: consumption in Oregon grew 12.8% and 47% of all draft beer consumed is Oregon craft beer (add in the out-of-state craft beer and you are certainly talking about more than half of all draft beer consumed in the state being craft beer of some sort).

To the extent that Oregon represents the most mature craft beer market in the US and perhaps the world, this shows that there is still a lot of room to grow.  My favorite personal index is the college student consumption that I see in my day job as an OSU professor - watching college-types buy beer at the market, drink beer in the bars and talk about their likes and dislikes among a myriad of styles suggests to me that the sea change has come: beer has been redefined.  Beer is now defined by having a plethora of styles, brands and tastes.  Beer is now connected to place, time and personality.  Beer from Bend or Eugene or Hood River is considered different stylistically and provenancially (I may have just made that word up).  Seasonal and special one-offs give beer a time dimension it did not have in the macro days.  And brewers are becoming figure-heads, spokespeople for their beer and their brewing philosophy. 

All of this to me suggests that we are defining a new market not re-defining an old one.  I am not so sure how much it makes sense to talk about taking market share from the macros any more as it really is about shifting a different demand curve.  What these Oregon data suggest to me is that there is still a lot of shifting of the curve that can be done.  For example I suspect that part of the dominance in draft beer is that craft is really growing the pub trade again.  Take the 'tap room.' Almost all craft breweries have them and they are extremely popular --- why?  They are typically underwhelming spaces with limited ambiance and food, often out of the way in industrial enclaves and have limited hours.  But they are extremely popular and I think it has to do with the way people want to relate to their beer: they want to connect to the source.  [There is, of course, the element of ironic hipster-ism: let the suburban affluents roll up to the bucolic Yamhill wineries in their Volvo SUVs and sip wine, we are biking on out fixies to the grungy industrial district to chug beer in a corrugated iron warehouse!]  This is a 180 degree turnabout from the macro days and suggests again that we are talking about a different product all together. 

So with each release of these annual statistics there is the inevitable talk about saturation, future growth and so on.  Though there will inevitably be failures and shake-outs I suspect that the overall growth in craft beer, even in Oregon, will continue unabated for quite some time.  The market might be less forgiving to breweries like Migration that took quite some time to find their footing and the inevitable grow-or-die calculus that is the inexorable result of the inherent economies of scale in beer will claim victims, I would still back most new breweries to survive and even thrive. 

Gambrinus, Sellwood and Portland Breweries of Yore

No, not that one, this one:

HT: Vintage Portland

Bill Night has made a map to historic breweries in Portland (of which I was reminded by his comment to VP's post).

Bill, however, did not Bill's map includes the Sellwood Brewery:

Though it is not clear where exactly this was.  What I love about it is the clear notion that Sellwood is another city down the river - so remote in fact that Mr. Wilhelm's Half-and-Half has reached Portland and is so popular that he has opened a Portland Depot.  I can only assume that this is the same Wilhelm family that ran the funeral home.

[Corrections added - see comments]