Beer on the Pacific

The Oregon Coast is less well-known than Southern California's, but it has it charms: gray and dark blue, wind-bent trees, a sense of power welling deep within the world's largest body of water. The ocean typically is too cold to swim in, but a few brave souls slip into wetsuits and surf.

The coast is also home to some of Oregon's best breweries. Pelican Pub & Brewery in Pacific City has a beachfront view of Haystack Rock. The scenery is breathtaking and has helped Pelican become a popular tourist destination.

This little brewery has repeatedly cleaned up at the Great American Beer Festival. Pelican won the Large Brewpub of the Year award in 2006. The brewery has accumulated an astonishing 28 GABF medals since 1998, including three this year.

After a long and beautiful drive from the Willamette Valley, my buddy and I sat down at a window seat to watch the waves roll in, eat lunch and drink beer.

I first ordered a Kiwanda Cream Ale (5.1 percent ABV, 25 IBUs), one of Pelican's mainline brews. Kiwanda beat out 54 other beers to win the gold medal in the Golden or Blonde Ale category at this year's GABF.

It pours a golden honey color with a decent head. The carbonation makes the flavor pop. Kiwanda certainly does taste of cream, reminiscent of a cream soda. The light ale body holds the beer together superbly. Kiwanda uses two-row malt, flaked barley and light hopping with Mt. Hood hops to achieve a perfect balance.

Next I tried Pelican's fresh-hop beer, Elemental Ale (6.5 percent ABV, 75 IBUs). This one uses big quantities of Sterling hops. It's worth reading Pelican's description of the beer:

Brewed only once a year at peak hop season, this beer is made with 400 pounds of freshly picked, "wet" Sterling hops from Goschie Farms in Silverton, OR. The hops were only three hours from the vine when they went into the kettle. The mash tun was also used as a hop back, holding 300 pounds of hops! This beer features a huge floral, spicy, grassy aroma with a firm malt background and a huge, snappy hop finish.

Fresh-hop beers have become de rigeur for ambitious breweries, particularly in Oregon, home to a substantial percentage of the world's hop production. It's also caught on in Colorado, where Ska, Steamworks and Pagosa all brewed fresh-hop beers this season.

To my taste, Elemental Ale was a little over-hopped. I enjoy the floral, citrus and grassy qualities in hops, but at 75 IBUs, the subtleties are overwhelmed by bitterness. Additionally, Sterlings, a close relative of Saaz, aren't my favorite hops for the sort of starring role played in a fresh-hop beer.

Pelican does a great job with their beer and food (my shrimp pizza was delicious). I still have two significant nits to pick:

1. Price. Lunch for two with three beers between us ran almost $50. Pelican puts out a good product, but they make you pay for it.

2. Service. The restaurant was understaffed, and our server obviously had as many tables as she could handle. Beers were slow in coming, I didn't have utensils for about 20 minutes after I sat down and when she finally took my debit card, the receipt came back without a pen with which to sign it (I had to track down one at the bar). The staff were friendly but either overworked or inattentive, a common problem at tourist restaurants.

After leaving Pelican, we drove south on Highway 101 along the ocean until we pulled into Rogue Ales' headquarters, spotted beautifully in Yaquina Bay at Newport.

I ordered a snifter of John John Hazelnut, a version of Hazelnut Brown Nectar that has been aged in rum barrels. (It's actually a collaboration between Rogue's head brewer and its head distiller). It would make an impressive winter warmer, but I found the rum note a bit over-the-top, smothering the tasty hazelnut flavor of the base beer. The liquor taste could be welcome in some situations, but I just wasn't feeling it.

Much better was a sampler highlighted by a dry-hopped Saint Rogue Red Ale that expressed its Chinook and Centennial hops very favorably.

A taste of Rogue's Double Chocolate Stout proved that Young's version isn't the only game in town. The bittersweet chocolate taste was deep and inviting.

After driving back to the valley, I'm comforted that where the Pacific meets North America, brewers are practicing their craft with skill and conscience.

Hops and ales in Bend, Oregon

Bend, Oregon, reminds me a lot of Durango. It rests at fairly high elevation (a little over 3,000 feet), it has a wealth of outdoor recreation and natural beauty, and it relies on a tourism and second-homeowner economy.

Most importantly, it has five breweries (but a larger population, about 80,000 people). The best known is Deschutes Brewing, whose beers can easily be found in Durango. The town also hosts Bend Brewing, 10 Barrel Brewing, Cascade Lakes Brewing and Silver Moon Brewing.
I have been drinking Deschutes beers since I was of legal age, so it was nice to finally see the Bend pub.

Deschutes serves a six-beer sampler, all the better to enjoy during an Oregon Ducks football game. I chose Miss Spelt Hefeweizen (4.1 percent ABV, 17 IBUs), Yam-a-Lama! (5, 50) Down Under Dark Ale (4.7, 38), Mirror Pond Pale Ale on cask (5, 40), Lugnut Fresh Hop Pale Ale (6, 45) and Hop Trial Strong Amber (7, 52).

Most interesting and unusual was Yam-a-Lama!, a fresh-hop pale ale using Crystal hops, but with the addition of what the brewery calls a "heck of a lot of sweet potatoes." The sweet potatoes were a bold and different take on the American-style pale ale, adding a dimension I'd never tasted before.

It was a wonderful fall seasonal beer that took an entirely different tack than the many German-inspired Oktoberfest lagers.

The hefeweizen was also notably good, a flavorful turn on the popular style using wheat, pilsner, carared and spelt malts. It was brewed to style and very tasty.

I'm lucky to be here, in the midst of hop country, during a slew of fresh-hop releases. Deschutes had no fewer than four (four!) distinct fresh-hop beers on tap.

While I love Deschutes' beers, I was keen to try Bend Brewing. The brewery is best known for its rock star chick brewer, Tonya Cornett, who has won multiple Great American Beer Festival medals.

Bend Brewing's Elk Lake India Pale Ale (6.2 percent ABV, 64 IBUs) was a superb IPA, brimming with ample Nugget and Cascade hops. This bitter and floral IPA was head-turning.

I also tried Bend's seasonal Oktoberfest, which I felt lacked heft. Given Cornett's track record, and the wonderful IPA, I'm inclined to give her a pass. On a later visit, I tried the brewery's seasonal pilsner, a refreshing style that nicely complemented a light lunch. This one had a pleasant hop backbone.

Of Bend's three remaining breweries, the only other beer I managed to try was 10 Barrel's Summer Ale (4.7 percent ABV, 26 IBUs). A light golden ale with an assertive honey note, the Summer Ale was a dead ringer for Durango's own True Blonde Ale.

So that was Bend, a town with more than its fair share of craft breweries. For my next post, I'll have a rundown of Oregon's coastal breweries, including the much-laureled Pelican Pub & Brewery.

Oktoberfest wrap-up

A couple of new beers from Carver Brewing Co. and Steamworks Brewing Co. highlighted last weekend's Oktoberfest in Durango.

Held on East Second Avenue, Oktoberfest attracted all four Durango breweries. My favorite beer at the fest was Carver's new Harvest Festbier, a delicious Oktoberfest lager. It's got a lot of big, malty amber flavor. Try it while you can.

Steamworks was pouring its new fresh-hop beer, Wet Hop Brown Ale. Most breweries that are lucky enough to get fresh hops choose to showcase them in pale ales or IPAs. It's highly unusual to brew a fresh-hop brown. In fact, this is the first time I've heard of a fresh-hop brown.

It makes me wonder if Steamworks simply wanted to differentiate its offering from Ska's Hoperation Ivy, a wet-hop IPA. In any case, it made for an aggressively hopped brown ale, which was a bit strange. Browns usually showcase delicious, chocolately malts.

Give Steamworks props for trying something different, but I personally hope they try something else next time.

Hoperation Ivy released today

Ska Brewing Co.'s Hoperation Ivy was scheduled to be released today.

Hoperation Ivy is a fresh-hop IPA, brewed with the bounty of San Juan Hop Farms near Montrose. It is no. 13 in the Durango brewery's Local Series.

It should be in Durango liquor stores in 22-ounce bomber bottles.

I haven't tried it yet, but last year it was a very tasty, aggressively hopped ale. If you haven't tried any fresh-hop beers, you owe it to yourself to drink a bottle. Fresh-hop ales have a more floral and oily quality that less fresh beers just can't duplicate.

Fresh-hop (also called wet-hop) beers are exceedingly popular in regions lucky enough to have hop farms. These beers involve driving to nearby farms, choosing the hops, then driving back and getting the hops into a brew kettle in a hurry.

Deschutes Brewery in Oregon and Sierra Nevada in California brew fresh-hop beers that show up on our local shelves.

Steamworks Brewing, last I heard, was also brewing a fresh-hop beer using San Juan Hop Farms hops. I'll let you know when I have more information on their edition.

You can read more about Ska's hop trip to Montrose below.

Update: It's on the shelves for sure, at least at Ska HQ.

Ska's hop harvest

Ska Brewing Co. will release its fresh-hop IPA on Sept. 22.

Hoperation Ivy uses hops from San Juan Hop Farms near Montrose. This is from Ska:

Last summer, while returning to Durango with a truckload of Cascade hops that had just been harvested by a crew of Ska employees, co-founder Bill Graham had a revelation: “My truck smelled like hops, I smelled like hops, and I thought to myself, using locally-grown hops that we just picked a few hours ago is going to make an incredible beer," he said in a news release provided by Ska. "It’s a very unique, seasonal beer that can only be brewed once a year, and it is also low impact. That’s why there’s such a buzz around using local ingredients in food, and beer is food, right?”

Ska is once again traveling a few hours north to San Juan Hop Farms, and harvest Colorado-grown Cascade hops to create another batch of wet-hopped India Pale Ale. Generally, when hops are harvested they are dried and pressed into pellets but fresh hop, or “wet hop” beers use whole flowers that were plucked from the vine just hours before and still retain most of the volatile flavors that are lost during processing.

As Graham realized, it’s not only an opportunity to create an “almost” local beer, it’s also a chance to reduce the carbon footprint associated with producing a craft beer. Ska co-founder Dave Thibodeau said the brewery jumped at the opportunity to work with a Colorado hop farm. “We’ve always focused on trying to minimize our impact on the planet as the business grows," he said. “Using local ingredients means fewer ingredients we have to transport here from the Northwest or Europe, and that’s about the biggest reduction in impact you can get.”

Hoperation Ivy will be Ska's 13th Local Series beer. Fresh-hop beers do have a unique flavor that is difficult to explain - they're oilier somehow. I enjoyed Ska's fresh-hop beer last year, and look forward to the 2009 edition. Hop-heads should love it.