PDX 12: Travelogue

Scrambled eggs, home fries, apple sausage and rye toast--goodbye jet lag

Monday, July 23rd -- Tokyo to PDX in 8.5 hours. Not too bad. We went from the airport straight to the Cadillac Cafe for some much-needed big brekky, with organic and GF options, of course. In Portland even Safeway asks you if you want paper, plastic, or gluten free. WTF? Friends and family stuff the rest of the day.

Tuesday -- Shopping at Ross in the morning. Meeting with the VP of brewing at Widmer Brothers Brewing in the afternoon. Drinking at Apex in the evening.

Turns out I sort of knew this guy at Widmer way back 20 years or so ago at my first job in Portland, a bakery/brewpub where Widmer ran a pilot system. All us bus-boys knew who the brewers were. We'd see them doing their thing behind the big glass windows in the pub part of the place. After work we'd drink our shift beer plus 7 or 8 more, and that was my initiation into the world of craft beer. I sort of remembered the name Sebastian for one of them. I'd never actually said hi to the guy before though. Skip ahead to recently, when my older bro, who also lives in Portland, emails me, "Hey I should hook you up with my friend Sebastian that I went to Reed College with. He works at Widmer." Ding! Sebastian, could it be? So we did the email exchange thing and sure enough, same guy. He seemed stoked to get together. My bro had introduced me as "My brother in Japan who would love to get back to Portland someday and do something in the brewing world, nudge-nudge." Huh. So, seems like he thought I wanted to meet to ask for a job, which I did, but only because it was suddenly a sort of outside possibility; I was really just going to try to impress him with my passion for brewing, deliver a bottle of home brew, and see where the chips fell. And it seems like he was ready to talk turkey, like in a job-interview way. Anyway, too bad, no job offer. But that actually cleared the air for us to have a real conversation, which was really good, and opened my eyes to some things. One is, unlike in Japan, beer is simply part of the surroundings there. Now I knew this, but I interpreted it as meaning that it's just that much harder to get a foot in the door. Not so, says Sebastian. He reminded me that the niche, nano-brewery option is definitely one to pursue, especially for somebody with no resume to speak of, and few names to drop, but good homebrew and unmitigated passion to make a case for him. He says Portland isn't like other places in that respect. He gave me a couple brewery recommendations, and a list of interview Dos and Don'ts that he's witnessed over the years. His final point was, "And then at the end you have to tell them that it was their beer that got you into craft brewing." Oh come on! I'm thinking. I laid it out how that was actually the case for me with Widmer, and described my experiences at the brewpub 20 years ago. He was just smiling and said, "Yeah like that," and I was like dude! Telling the truth here. When I bullshit you, you'll know I'm bullshitting.

Apex is situated just next to a take-out taqueria on SE Division St. You can get your cow brain tacos or whatever, and then go next-door to the outdoor picnic table area at Apex and choose from their 50 rotating taps. Or if that bores you there might be something in their 250 bottle collection. Honestly, of the 50 taps there were only a handful that were not IPAs or sours of some stripe; those are hitting big right now. I and my crew did fine with the taps though. The highlight of the evening--and maybe the whole trip--was Firestone Walker's Wookey Jack CDA. (They don't call it CDA though, natch, even though that's what the hell it is!) Seriously, this is one of the finest examples of this embattled style that I've had. At Apex I was reminded that you have to tip, even if the bartender is a total bitch. Overall a great experience though. Visit Apex. Do it.

Wednesday -- Drove out to Hillsboro to visit Mainstreet Homebrew Supply Company in the early afternoon. For you who live stateside or in other similar lands of milk and honey and craft beer bounty, this might not seem all that special. But here in Japan it is a @!$*# pain in the ass to get even a paltry selection of brewing stuff, and even then you're gonna pay dearly for it. So I was in a little bit o' heaven walking around this paradise of brewing wares. The staff was really helpful and knowledgable too, in particular the proprietor, Kevin. It's a bit of a trek to get out there from Portland (mainly due to freeway traffic), but well worth it for the pennywise homebrewer. Rock on, dudes. You're doing the gods' work. The beer gods, that is.

Met my P-town friend Red at the Green Dragon in the evening. Red is one of the Brewvana folks, and writer of a great Japanese beer blog. In Japanese. He also has one in French. Dude. Stop over-achieving already. So: met Red at the Green. This is a funky lil quonset hut place that Rogue sort of took over, in a sort of "we're gonna let you do whatever you want" kind of way, "long as we get to put our stamp on the brews that come out of your teeny tiny brew system, cuz this is Portland, and our analysts are telling us that nobody in Portland really gives much of a shit about Rogue any more because all they care about is breweries that either a)started up in the last 5 years, or b) haven't sold out, and c) we won't tell you what the definition of "sold out" is, but d) probably means people outside of Portland know about it." Yeah, that's how it is over there. Don't wanna be too successful. Oh well. Green Dragon was great. I bought some takeout beers there. GD also has a huge outdoor picnic table area. That seems to be a theme in Portland. I support it wholeheartedly.

Cascade Brewery Barrel House--get your sour on

I'd heard much of Cascade Barrel House's renowned sour beers, so we headed over there after the Green Dragon, arriving just in time to miss last call. Blimey! Only 11:00? Forgot they don't keep pouring until 5 am like in JP. The barman was kind enough to pull me a snoot-full of the apricot sour though, which I enjoyed. I can't say I'm a fan yet, but it did go down much better than others I've had.

Gigantic, a big big love

Thursday -- Awesome day, like all the other days. My lovely wife and I visited some folks. Then we swung by Gigantic Brewing Company. This was one of Sebastian's recommendations. Unfortunately the brewmaster was out, downtown taking care of their booth at the Oregon Brewer's Festival, so I didn't get any schmoozing in. But we did stay and peruse their scene a bit. Gigantic is just a stone's throw from the house I used to live in in Southeast Portland. It's just a brewery and a bare-bones taproom. They've got a bar with 10 taps (5 of theirs and 5 guest taps), and the requisite picnic tables out front. Also a cold case with their beer, and a selection of champagne of all things. I guess this is what you do to arouse the public interest in a hugely saturated market. Or maybe they just like champagne! Anyway, the beer I had was pretty good--a pint of Axes of Evil, which was clean, crisp and refreshing. A ways to go to be outstanding maybe, but still extremely quaffable, and a nice break from the standard caramelly fare you tend to get out west. One interesting thing I learned while there is that their labels are done by one of my erstwhile favorite illustrators, a San Franciscan called J. Otto Seibold. Gigantic, I'm writing down big pluses next to your entry in my little book entitled, 'breweries to remember for better or worse'.

The parents came into town. We had dinner and pints at the Horse Brass that evening. What can I say about the Horse Brass? They have resisted the urge, or don't even know about the urge, to upgrade to a hipper type of place, and that is a good thing. This is one of the "old Portland" places. On our visit I was reminded once again that there's an "old" and a "new" Portland. The new one is the self conscious, 'hey Portland is weird' one. The Portlandia one. I'm supposed to not like the new one I guess, but even the new one is pretty effin' OK by me.

Friday -- Powell's books in the AM: kids books and beer books. Dropped in on my old co-workers at Escape From New York Pizza in the afternoon. Talk about old Portland. Go there if you get a chance. Back yard barbecue with the family units in the PM.

Oregon Brewer's Festival with Justin and Atsuko

Saturday -- Portland State University has a terrific farmer's market on summer weekends. Went there. Did that. Loved it. Then it was time for the Oregon Brewer's Festival. This was the best and worst of times. The best because we were with wonderful people, and because of the sheer quantity of great beer from around the country. The worst because you couldn't f**ing get to any of it because every f**ing troglodytic a**-hole fratboy and girl for 500 miles around was also there, just taking up space and being incredible pud-wacks. That part sucked. Also getting attacked by these two drunk wenches and their gang-banger friend after I accidentally collided with one of them and spilled some beer. This was surreal. One of them's face literally opened up like John Carpenter's the Thing and started puking obscenities at me, while the thug in the background made "let's fight" gestures at me, and the one that got her beer spilled just cried. We left pretty soon after that. Word to the wise: avoid the OBF on the weekend. For dinner Atsuko and I had burgers at a McMenamin's joint. After the OBF trauma, we needed comfort.

Sunday -- Hood River road trip! I'd heard that Joon, the new chef at Nakameguro Taproom in Tokyo had settled on "New Haven-style" pizza for NMT based on his research eating pizza in the Pacific Northwest (tough life), specifically settling on it after visiting this brewery in Hood River, Oregon, about an hour's drive east of Portland in the Columbia Gorge. This sounded a bit suspect to me, so I suggested we go out and investigate. The fam and I ended up at Double Mountain Brewing. (By the way, Hood River was homebrew god Charlie Papazian's choice for "Beertown USA". Just thought you should know that. Personally I think he's using the "relax and have a homebrew" maxim a little liberally here.) There are a shitload of breweries there though, one for every 2000-or so people, which comes out to...three breweries! All right, just goofing around here. Hood River rocks, there's no way around it. World class wind surfing, small town charm, laid-back attitude, loads of craft beer. Full Sail's there! But what the hell is a New Haven style pizza? Well from what I can gather, New Haven Connecticut is the pizza capital of the world. (I gathered that from what it says on the menu at Double Mountain: "New Haven is the pizza capital of the world." Take a second to let that sink in.) And what New Haven pizza IS is...it's a little burnt. Yup. They heat the oven to nearly 700F, which creates little burnt spots (sorry, "char") on the crust. And that's your New Haven pizza. It's also your pizza that you get at that chain, Salvatore in Tokyo, only his is saltier, and they just call it "pizza". Also, I believe that any brick oven pizza will kind of turn out like this, so... What I suspect is that somebody at Double Mountain really wants us to know that he went to Yale, and that's why they mentioned New Haven. It's too bad though, because all we could talk about was what BS this New Haven pizza thing was, and it was hard to notice that the pizza is actually pretty good. Maybe not worthy of its own style distinction, but still quite delectable. But what about the beer? Interestingly, or not, they only use two types of yeast for all their beers. Sticking with the 'double' motif, they say. They use a Kolsch, and a Belgian. Don't remember or they didn't specify, but I'd guess they're calling Brett the Belgian; two sours figure prominently in their line-up. They blend the yeasts in different proportions, so their beer comes out pretty much Kolschy tasting, regardless of style, or just sour and weird. And their sours have a ways to go. The ones we tried were sort of just like vinegar. Not good. Overall I'd say Double Mountain is spending valuable brewing time on silly marketing concerns. Their beers were good, but not great. The one that was really good though, was a hand-pump brown called Dapper Dan, which they were serving on nitrogen for extra creamy goodness. Nice work, DM. We got a little impromptu brewery tour, just by asking, and I bought a T-shirt. Oh, and the brewer guy copped to using other yeasts once in a while for their specialty beers. OK then. I'm giving them pretty severe treatment here, but this was actually one of the higher points--among many high points--of our Portland visit, all things considered. And when you consider things, you really should try to consider them all.

Monday -- Back to Tokyo. No fair.