Great American West Brewery Tour - Installment III

Installment III: 9/01/2007
Portland, Oregon, to Eureka, CA

As promised, this day’s review begins at breakfast, specifically, Laurelwood’s. Allie and Melissa both tried to re-create their favorite scramble from The Dish, some kind of Hawaiian Pizza-like monstrosity which our half-awake waiter butchered. Nick and I were content to order off the menu considering that it had some of the most delicious items I’ve ever heard of, in particular an omelet of tiny shrimp, green onions, avocado, jack cheese and sour cream. Yum!  Before describing the beers, it is worth noting that everyone at the table appreciated Laurelwood’s branding materials. This sounds bizarre, but you know you have a whole table full of ‘Js’ (in MBTI-speak, sorry non-corporate-types) when everyone oohs and ahhs over the consistently sized and styled logos in complimentary color shades.  We also appreciated that Laurelwood lists Original Gravities, Terminal (Final) Gravities, and IBUs for all of its beers. While these are probably concepts unfamiliar to most novice beer drinkers, they ought to be one of the first things you learn because they make it easy to predict which beers you’ll like. For a review of the concept of gravity, see the cream ale face-off.  For a discussion of how to make taste predictions based on gravity and IBUs, see the end of this review.  But enough of that, I have 9 beers to review:

Laurelwood Public House (Portland, OR)

• Motherlode Golden: Crisp & dry, no special hop or malt flavor, high carb. Not particularly memorable
• Piston Pale Ale: More hoppy than the Golden, but again not very special
• Boss IPA: The much better of the two IPAs! The Centennial, Cascade, and Ahtanum hops taste like tangerine and grapefruit, nestled in a dry, high carbonation brew. Lovely!
• Workhorse IPA: A disappointment after the last IPA. I think this is their “California-style” IPA, since it is 10 IBU units higher than the last one. It just tastes like a more bitter version of the pale ale. Hops for hops sake. Proof, despite what Nick started to say during the trip, that I don’t indiscriminately favor hoppy beers.
• Seasonal Rye: I forgot to take notes and now I can’t remember. Sorry.
• Free Range Red: Sweeter than all of the previous beers, but not showing the complexity and layering that can go with medium and dark beers.
• Hooligan: The best of the bunch! I will definitely seek this out again. Unfortunately, I think it is seasonal, and must be very new since it is neither listed on the Laurelwood website or BeerAdvocate. In any case, I think it is an English Brown Ale. It tastes like a very crisp, clean Porter, with a bright, well-defined coffee character.
• Tree Hugger Porter: Solid, with very strong coffee and chocolate flavors. The hops are noticeable, even through the dark malt. It’s tasty, but not a knockout.
• Space Stout: Probably the weakest of the bunch. It is flat-ish, despite the fact that I definitely made my way around the tasting tray relatively quickly this time. It doesn’t have as strong a flavor as either the Hooligan or the Tree Hugger, in hops or roast.

The best were by far the Hooligan and the Boss IPA.

Six Rivers Brewing Company (McKinleyville, CA)  

Alas! I was going to review Six Rivers Brewing Company next, but I can’t find my notes! I am sure they will turn up somewhere as I unpack, but I don’t want this to hold up the reviewing process since I have 2 days worth of breweries left to review after that. What I will say right now, is that they had a Chili Pepper Ale that was like a carbonated version of what you find in the bottom of an Ortega chilies can. I wouldn’t quite say it was disgusting, but just imagine what that is going to do to your digestive tract. Our waiter said the brewer wants them to do Mexican Car bombs (shots of tequila dropped into beer) with it. Good luck.

Coming up next:

• Installment III.b: Six Rivers
• Installment IV: in which we make like bears at a berry bush and meet the alternately hostile and fastidious touristic denizens of the southern redwoods (and go to Eel River Brewing Company and North Coast Brewing Company).
• Installment V: in which we rise to meet the challenge of our final day, tackling Anderson Valley B.C., Bear Republic B.C., Russian River B.C., and then stumble onto a wacky assemblage of AARP members on acid at the Ace in the Hole Cidery.

 

Gravities & IBUs

Gravity measures the density of a beer, which is the result of the amount malt sugars dissolved in the water. The higher the final gravity, the more malt sugars in the beer. IBUs are International Bitterness Units, which as you might guess, measure the bitterness of a beer. IBUs actually measure the parts per million of isohumulone in beer, a bitter chemical released by hops. The higher the IBU, the more bitter the beer.  Knowing this, if you’re a bit of a nerd like me, you can think about plotting beers on a two by two grid. Think of the X-axis as the bitterness, measured in IBUs, and the Y-axis as the sweetness, measured by final gravity.

At extreme corner of the low-low quadrant, you’d have watery light American lagers (think Miller, Coors, Bud, etc.), with single digit IBUs, and final gravities that can even dip below 1.000 (less dense than water because there is so little malt sugar left in the beer and alcohol is lighter than water). The overall lack of ingredients other than carbonation pretty much explains why these taste like water, or piss, depending on how bad they are.

At the opposite extreme, in the high-high quadrant, you’d have American barleywines. These have IBUs that can be 120+ (it is generally believed that the human tongue can’t taste the difference over 100 IBUs), and final gravities over 1.035 (most beer falls in the 1.005 - 1.030 range). The high sugar content obscures some of the bitterness, but these are still very syrupy sweet and bitter beers.

In the low gravity-high IBU quadrant, you’d have your IPAs out in the extreme corner, and your pale ales a little closer in. These will have gravities in the 1.010 - 1.020 range, but IBUS usually between 60 and 80. The big trend in America in general, and in the Pacific Northwest and California more specifically is to pack hops into all of their beers, which can push the IBU level above 80. Generally, you don’t want to raise either hops or malt too much without raising the other, or the beer will taste off-balanced and overwhelmed by a single flavor (think about the balance of sugar and lemon juice in lemonade). Of course, different recipes call for a different level of balance, such that IPAs will always have a higher ratio of IBU to gravity than, say an amber or brown ale, but you can see this principle acting within styles. For example, Imperial or Double IPAs, which are generally more hoppy versions of their Standard IPA cousins, usually carry a higher gravity as well, to help balance the extra hops.

The last quadrant, the high gravity-low IBU quadrant is the hardest for me to think of an example. Because of the relationship I just mentioned, many beers with highly ratcheted gravities also have high IBUs relative to run-of-the-mill beers. So, there may not be too many beers that sit in the far corner of this quadrant. But it would include heavier caramel-y sweet bock beers (boppelbocks, weizenbocks, etc.), old ales, and flanders brown ales. Closer in to the center of the grid would be less exotic beers like cream stouts and strong Scotch ales.

Now, lest I forget it, there are 2 caveats to this whole framework:

#1) I’ve left out the whole idea of color. This is largely determined by the type of malt (i.e. 2-row barley, 6-row barley, wheat, rye, etc.) and the treatment of the malt (light roast, dark roast, etc.). This adds a whole other dimension of flavor that overlies the previous system. I’d tell you to think of it as a third axis, but then you might think you need to know multivariable calculus to figure out your favorite type of beer, and who wants that?
#2) I’ve also left out all other kinds of ’specialty’ additions to beer, such as fruit or vegetable flavorings (think about the apricot, pumpkin, and Kona coffee beers you’ve probably tried), and other tricks like oak barrel aging. These are a discussion for another time.