Game-Day Comfort: Beer Cheese Soup!

When I heard that a couple we know have an annual party on Super Bowl Sunday, I was shocked. You see, if there are any of our friends who seem completely unlikely to be putting on giant foam hats or wearing team scarves or jumping around pumping their fists in the air (covered or not in outsized foam rubber pointy fingers) shouting at the television, it's these two.

Pimento cheese on a Ritz.

So I was relieved when they admitted, after witnessing our shocked countenances (mouths agape), that it was really all about the food for the event. It conjured images of miniature hot dogs swimming in mahogany barbecue sauce, overflowing bowls of salt-encrusted potato chips with virtual vats of onion and clam dips at the ready, as well as the requisite pimento cheese dip to slather on crackers—Ritz, Triscuits or Wheat Thins, depending on your inclination.

All that salt was, of course, as anyone knows who has succumbed to the siren song of free pretzels at their neighborhood watering hole, intended to encourage the consumption of any liquid within reach, normally beer, for purposes of hydration. Naturally I volunteered to bring any and all of the consumables mentioned above to the festivities, since, being a person of dodgy acquaintance with sporting endeavors yet always johnny-on-the-spot for anything involving chips and dips, I was, as they say, all up-ons.

The recipe file reveals all.

The conversation happened to coincide with running across a recipe from my college days when I managed a soup kitchen—we called it a "coffeehouse" at the time—at the U of O that served a soup and bread lunch for a nominal sum five days a week, relying on a haphazard yet dogged cadre of volunteer cooks to prepare several gallons of the potage of their choice for the day's service. Most were a simple combination of stock, vegetables and protein, like Robert's French Onion Soup l'Abbe or Jane's Potage Parmentier—but one in particular stood out for its inclusion of beer.

Mike, the ostensible manager of the campus Koinonia House, had a family recipe for a beer cheese soup that her family was  crazy about and that she volunteered to make on a weekly basis, a guaranteed winner in my book. It also became a viral hit in those pre-viral days, and I commend it to you for any and all of your game-day gatherings. Rich, creamy, with that certain beer-y je ne sais quoi, it's best made a few hours or even a day ahead to allow the flavors to meld and the beer to mellow. Or heck, if you want, just whip it up a few minutes before guests arrive and let the li'l smokies flow.

Mike's Beer Cheese Soup

3/4 c. butter  (one and one-half sticks)
1/2 c. diced onions
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 c. diced celery
1/2 c. diced carrots
1/2 c. flour
5 c. chicken stock
1/4 c. parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp. dry mustard
6 oz. cheddar
1 12-oz. bottle (or can) of beer, preferably a lager or pilsner
Salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter in large saucepan or Dutch oven over medium heat. Sauté  onions until tender. Add garlic, celery and carrots and sauté until tender. Add flour and dry mustard, stirring to combine. Stir for two minutes to prevent sticking, then stir in stock and cook for five minutes. Blend in cheeses and beer, combining well, and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent scorching. Using a stick blender or working in batches with a blender, purée the soup. Season to taste with salt.

This is best made a few hours or, better yet, a day ahead and reheated, which allows the flavors to mellow. Serve with salad and a good artisan loaf.

Hopworks Celebrates Tenth Anniversary with Salmon-Safe IPA Festival

This post was developed in collaboration with Hopworks Urban Brewery, a supporter of Good Stuff NW.

How does a fantastically successful Portland brewery celebrate its 10th anniversary?

Well, if its founder is Christian Ettinger, it takes a whole year to do it justice. It started with an event in April when he looked back at his roots as a homebrewer, getting his first job as the head brewer of what would become Laurelwood Brewing Company, then, finally, establishing his own Hopworks Urban Brewery in Portland in 2008.

Brewmaster and founder Christian Ettinger.

At that time, his passion for sustainability and the environment was behind the decision to rehab an old industrial building on a moribund strip of a major eastside thoroughfare. It involved rethinking the building's mechanical systems, electrical systems and storm drainage systems from its roof and parking lots, as well as the use of water, the main ingredient in making beer. Critical to its function but a source of much waste in the industry, Hopworks now only uses 3.39 gallons of water per gallon of its finished product, compared with an industry average of more than seven gallons per gallon of beer.

This focus on systems led Ettinger in 2015 to seek out certification as a B-Corp, a designation that “uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems.” Hopworks became only the seventh brewery in the world to earn that designation. Later that same year, Hopworks was the first brewery site in the country to achieve Salmon-Safe certification, an eco-label based on an assessment that considered the site’s stormwater management, water use, chemical and pesticide reduction, water quality protection and enhancement of urban ecological function.

Which leads to the second part of the year-long celebration, the first annual Salmon-Safe IPA Festival being held at the brewery on Saturday, August 25th.

The festival began taking shape when Hopworks issued a challenge to 35 craft breweries across the country to make an IPA-style beer using only Salmon-Safe certified ingredients. More than 20 breweries from some of the largest in the country to some of the smallest accepted and were given a list of farmers who produce beer-related ingredients.

“We’re excited to be able to use our skills as brewers to bring attention to what’s going to be the single greatest issue facing humanity in the next decade,” Ettinger said.

“We want to really inspire brewers to ask the questions and make the move toward sustainable sourcing,” he continued. “Salmon-Safe is a first step for sustainable farming, and it’s a gateway to organics.”

Dan Kent, co-founder and Executive Director of Salmon-Safe, said the festival is also a celebration of the hop growers and malt producers who have worked hard to ensure that their farming practices use water efficiently and don’t negatively affect nearby waterways. He said the craft beer industry became a focus for his organization when it found that 90 percent of all hops grown in the United States comes from two salmon watersheds—one in the Willamette Valley and the other in central Washington near Yakima.

“Hopworks has been the champion for Salmon-Safe in the region,” Kent said, and he’s excited at the prospect of working with breweries that may not have been aware of the certification previously.

Gayle Goschie in the hopyard at Goschie Farms.

That appreciation of Hopworks extends to many of the growers who have worked with Ettinger over the years, including Gayle Goschie of Goschie Farms, the first hop grower in the country to be certified as Salmon-Safe.

“From day one I have been impressed with Hopworks’ focus on sustainability and the lightness of its footprint,” Goschie said. She has found that awareness of the availability and quality of Salmon-Safe ingredients has grown from those early days to the point that now brewers are requesting certified hops to use in their beers.

For Ettinger, his involvement with Salmon-Safe and clean water goes back to his childhood growing up in the Willamette Valley.

Chinook salmon from the Willamette.

“I spent a ton of time as a kid swimming in the Willamette and the Tualatin [rivers] and you tried not to open your mouth when you jumped in,” he said. He remembers asking himself why it was so gross, eventually coming to the realization that agriculture and industry had thoroughly ruined these waterways.

“Here we’ve got this abundance of water,” he said, “And in the last hundred years man’s done a pretty good job of destroying this most precious natural resource, and it’s up to us to reverse that.”

“I’m honored to use the power of beer to propel the message,” Ettinger said of his reason for having the festival as part of Hopworks’ anniversary celebration. “Beer is fun, it’s social, it’s light. It’s our task to keep the storytelling simple and meet people where they’re at, make the resources available for them to take the deep dive. But what more fun space to shake the tree and get a little more environmentally aware than over a beer?”

But his not-so-secret agenda?

“This is the world’s first ever Salmon-Safe invitational beer festival with the sole subject being how do we change the world through water and through responsible sourcing,” he said.

Cheers to that.

Purchase tickets for the Salmon Safe IPA Festival on Saturday, August 25.

Photo of Gayle Goschie from USDA "Women in Ag" interview. Photo of Chinook salmon from Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife.

Want to Reverse Climate Change? Have a Beer!

This blog post was developed in collaboration with Hopworks Urban Brewery, a supporter of Good Stuff NW, though the words are all my own.

Oddly enough, it all started a year-and-a-half ago when Christian Ettinger, owner of Hopworks Urban Brewery in Portland, thought he was being pranked. He was at the grocery store with his family when his phone rang. Stopping mid-aisle to answer it, the voice on the other end said he was calling from Patagonia Provisions and that the company would like to discuss making a beer with Hopworks.

"It was a surreal moment because it was hard to believe that a company that I look up to as a business owner had just dialed my number and asked to make a beer with us," Ettinger recalled. "That week we met up and our team learned about Kernza for the first time."

Kernza.

Patagonia Provisions had singled out Hopworks not just because both companies are B Corps, companies certified to have met rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency, but both have a mission of sourcing organic and sustainable ingredients as much as possible.

Patagonia Provisions itself is dedicated to supporting a farming method known as "organic regenerative agriculture"—one that restores soil biodiversity, sequesters carbon and grows crops efficiently without chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Better yet, this method keeps harmful effluents out of the environment, improving the health of surrounding communities and the people in it. Call it organic farming with benefits.

Kernza has an impressive root system.

Kernza wheat fits into this picture because, as a perennial crop, it doesn't have to be replanted every year like other types of wheat. That means it allows long-term storage of carbon dioxide in the soil (called carbon sequestration), rather than releasing it into the air when the soil is plowed each year. Because Kernza lives on from harvest to harvest, its roots can grow to 10 feet in length and are so efficient that the plant needs much less water that other strains of wheat. These long roots also help to reduce erosion by stabilizing the soil, and the plant itself absorbs more atmospheric carbon than annual grains and thrives without the use of pesticides.

Originally a Eurasian forage grass called intermediate wheatgrass (Thinopyrum intermedium), a grass species related to wheat, it was selected by researchers at the Rodale Institute and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as a promising perennial grain candidate. In 2003, The Land Institute, which works to develop staple foods without compromising cultural and ecological systems, took the grain into its traditional breeding program—think Mendel's peas rather than genetic engineering—and began selecting for traits like yield, disease resistance and seed size.

Hopworks production manager Justin Miller.

Calling it Kernza, which was registered as a trademark to protect the name from being applied to other strains, the institute then began talking with its partners about commercial uses for the grain. Patagonia Provisions stepped up and, with the idea of making a beer from the grain, brought in Ettinger and his team from Hopworks to start formulating a beer.

"It was very exciting for us," Justin Miller, Hopworks production manager, said of the opportunity to be the first to work with the organic, sustainable grain. "It very much fits into what we do here at Hopworks."

Indeed, Hopworks is the first commercial brewer to make a beer using Kernza as an ingredient. Miller said it took eight test barrels—at 31 gallons to the barrel, that's more than 240 gallons of tests—and much, much tasting to finally come up with a beer that the teams at both Hopworks and Patagonia Provisions were happy with. Hopworks even went so far as to put a test batch on draft at its Portland pubs, so if you had a pint of Prohibition Double Secret Ale, you got an early taste of it.

The final product.

The final product, dubbed Long Root Ale, contains 15 percent Kernza along with organic two-row barley, organic yeast and a blend of organic Chinook, Mosaic and Crystal hops. The flavor is that of a classic Northwest-style pale ale, a bit peppery with a balanced, clean finish and a sessionable 5.5 percent alcohol-by-volume.

It's being rolled out at most Whole Foods markets up and down the West Coast, and while Hopworks is the first to use Kernza to make beer, Ettinger is convinced the grain has a promising future in the industry.

"Kernza is really paving the way for future discussions about other commodity grains that we use to brew," he said. "As organic brewers we are really excited about the ‘grain to glass’ model, and Long Root Ale is just that."

Top photo by Chad Brigman. Photo of Kernza roots by Jim Richardson.

Travels with Chili: Mountains of Fun, Part 2

On a trip to Eastern Oregon for a food conference in May (read my report here), I decided to take a couple of days to explore this incredibly beautiful part of the state. You can read part one about the trip to La Grande and Union. The portion below follows up with our adventures in Baker City and a tour of a buffalo ranch in Halfway.

After a day spent sitting in a conference room, fascinating as the topic was, I was ready for a beer. Fortunately we were scheduled to spend the night in Baker City, home of the award-winning Barley Brown's brewery. In addition, we must have been due some karma points, since, on our arrival at the Geiser Grand Hotel, we were escorted to a corner room on the second floor with a stunning panorama of the aptly named Blue Mountains.

A sitting room with a view.

The historic landmark hotel, built in the Italianate style popular during the Victorian age, first opened in 1889 and remained in continuous operation until 1968. Threatened with demolition in the  early 1980s, it was bought by preservationist and developer Barbara Sidway and her husband, who spent several million dollars restoring the grande dame which now dominates the quaint downtown. From the gleaming woodwork to the filigreed railings and period chandeliers under the huge stained glass ceiling on the second floor mezzanine, it's clear this restoration was a labor of love.

Fermented libations at Barley Brown's.

After settling into our room, we strolled a block down the main street and took a seat at Barley Brown's bar, trying to decide on the type of beer we were in the mood for—mild, wheat, flavor, hoppy and bold are the categories listed. It's a small place by Portland brewpub standards, but features a wide-ranging menu from standard pub grub to a 10-ounce flat iron or 12-ounce ribeye. And from what we saw coming out of the kitchen, it all looked mighty tasty.

Our travel bar.

There was plenty of time before our dinner reservation at the hotel's restaurant that evening, so a snooze seemed like just the ticket to follow our pints. After waking up an hour later—and wondering why we don't do this at home more often—Dave reminded me that we'd brought our travel bar with all the fixings for martinis. A civilized cocktail in our elegantly appointed room before sashaying downstairs for dinner? Done!

Overlooking the Brownlee Reservoir and Richland, Oregon.

In conversations before we arrived, Sidway told me that once restoration of the hotel was completed in 1993, she felt the natural next step was to focus on featuring local food on the restaurant's menu. As I had found out at the conference earlier that day, being surrounded by cattle ranches, farms and fields of grain does not a local food system make. Most of the beef and grain was shipped out of the region to supply the commodity market, and the food available in local grocery stores was arriving from destinations hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away.

Buffalo mothers and calves near Halfway.

Since that time a few local ranches have started supplying the area with pasture-raised beef, pork and lamb, and Sidway has found small-scale farmers to supply vegetables for the kitchen during the summer months. As a result of meeting local producers for her restaurant, she also became active in promoting agritourism in the area. An outgrowth of those efforts is that hotel guests wanting to learn more about the economic and cultural importance of ranching to the region can now choose from a curated selection of Ranch Experiences.

Dave Dur, rancher, Halfway, Oregon.

One of Sidway's ranchers is Dave Dur, who supplies the hotel's restaurant with buffalo meat from the herd of 250 animals he raises on pasture in Halfway, Oregon, a little more than 50 miles from Baker City. Tucked in the foothills of the Wallowa Mountains, he (and his buffalo) also have a view of the Seven Devils Mountains on the other side of the Snake River in Idaho. On the day we visited in late May, the alfalfa on Dur's ranch was nearly ready to harvest and the foothills were so green it looked more like Ireland than the dry brown landscape I expected to see in that part of the state.

Originally from Pennsylvania, Dur owned an electrical business in Corvallis until he decided to buy the ranch in Halfway, though the buffalo only came along after he'd failed to make a go of sheep, grain, hay and cattle. A neighbor told Dur that he wanted to go back to Alaska, offering to sell him 12 buffalo for a good price. The animals turned out to be perfectly suited to grazing in his pastures. "These animals took care of themselves for millions of years," he said. "They don't need me to take care of them."

Buffalo on pasture in Halfway.

Tall, with a shock of white hair, crystalline blue eyes and a booming laugh, Dur has the courtly manners of a bygone era but isn't above making blunt observations. On a tour of the ranch, he also likes to shake up his city slicker guests by chasing some of bulls across the rutted pasture in his old Chrysler sedan.

"Murdered by his pretended friends."

After the merry chase, Dur took us to a spot in one pasture where there an iron cage surrounding a white marble monument (the better to protect it from buffalo that felt it was ideal for rubbing their horns on). It marks the spot where, as it states in flowing script, "Willard I. Moody was murdered by his pretended friends on this spot. Sep. 15, 1906." Dur said the story goes that Moody was killed in a disagreement over a woman, and that the memorial was placed there by Moody's father, with a similar marker on Willard's grave in the Halfway cemetery.

Now that's what I call a memorable farm tour. (Note to others: Murder? Buffalo chase? The bar has been raised!)

Read part one of this series about La Grande and Union. You can also read my report on the rural food system conference I attended.

Being a B Corp Brewery

In mid-October of this year, Portland was host to a gathering of certified B Corporations. The metro area currently boasts more than 40 businesses that have gone through the tough vetting process required for certification, out of a total of 55 in the entire state. To get an idea of how certification impacts businesses in one industry, I attended a panel featuring four craft breweries that have been certified by the organization. The breweries featured on the panel were employee-owned New Belgium Brewing of Fort Collins, Colorado; Beau's All Natural Brewing Company of Vankleek Hill, Ontario, Canada; Brewery Vivant of Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Hopworks Brewing Company of Portland (our fair city), Oregon. This post was developed in collaboration with advertiser Hopworks Urban Brewery, one of the B Corp-certified breweries featured on the panel.

First of all, what the heck is a B Corporation?

According to the website, B Corporations are "for-profit companies certified by the nonprofit B Lab to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency."

In practice what it means is that each of these breweries chose to look critically at not just their business practices, but their use of resources, the way they treat their employees and their commitment to their communities. Perhaps because the founders of B Corporation were business guys, the focus on merging doing good while growing a business has helped these breweries commit to taking a long-term approach to recouping the costs of becoming more sustainable.

For Katie Wallace, the Assistant Director of Sustainability at New Belgium, that means the values-based ethics of her employee-owned business benefited from "putting into words what we've been doing since the company was founded." Steve Beauchesne of Beau's, a certified organic brewery, echoed Wallace's statement, saying that his family decided to go through the process because it was "better to be at the leading edge rather than trailing behind," baking sustainability into the DNA of the company rather than trying to retrofit. Plus, on a practical if not completely serious note, "the beer tastes better."

The process of certification, based on a scorecard and point scale, is flexible enough to accomodate different approaches depending on the focus of the business. For instance, initially Christian Ettinger of Hopworks said that his brewery focused on the resource side, like water use, electricity, sourcing of ingredients and the built environment of the brewery itself. A further step involved establishing a board of directors for the company, a move that B Corporation encourages as the best way to ensure that the values of the company are maintained over time, one that Ettinger feels has far-reaching benefits for the stability of the business going forward.

Two key areas for all of the breweries involved their employees and the public.

Kris Spaulding, co-owner of Brewery Vivant, said that they've worked to cultivate an ownership mentality in the culture of the brewery, like giving employees permission to put their passions to work through paid time off to do voluteer work in the community. Beauchesne said that even though, in his words, "beer is a big motivator," since getting certified he's seen Beau's employees make more of a personal connection to their work.

Ettinger said that Hopworks has even inserted sustainability into job descriptions, with every applicant being asked how they see sustainability fitting into their work. Panelists echoed the importance of having every worker become a champion of the sustainability goals, making the goals not just words on a piece of paper, but also another way of holding the company accountable to those goals.

As if dispensing terrific beer wasn't enough to make customers happy, B Corporation certification helps the breweries differentiate themselves from others in their respective areas, and the good will it generates "makes it an easy way to engage with their customers," according to Spaulding. Accountability also plays a part with the public, with an informed customer base encouraged to get involved and hold the business to its stated goals.

The bottom line is that certification is not a one-time achievement but an ongoing effort. Beauchesne said that for Beau's, "the most important part was going through the process," having goals for improvement via the evaluation the brewery received, with the scorecard helping them to focus on where to invest their energy and money in the future.

As Ettinger joked, "When we get to 200 points [on the scale], I can retire."

Watch a video of the entire panel discussion.

Top photo, l to r, Kris Spaulding of Brewery Vivant, Steve Beauchesne of Beau's All Natural Brewing Company, Katie Wallace of New Belgium Brewing and Christian Ettinger of Hopworks Brewing Company.

B Corp Certification for Hopworks Brewery

On the eve of its seventh anniversary, Hopworks Urban Brewery, the only all-organic brewery in Oregon—and one of the few in the U.S.—has also become the first brewery in the Northwest to achieve B Corp Certification. It's only the seventh brewery in the world to earn the designation for using the "power of business to solve social and environmental problems."

Owner Christian Ettinger.

Oregon is fortunate to have 47 businesses so designated, out of more than 1,000 certified businesses in 60 industries in 34 countries. In other words, for a single state, we're doing quite well. In its application for certification, Hopworks detailed its practices, such as using "USDA Certified Organic and Salmon-Safe Certified ingredients in beer, giving of 1% of Powell brew pub pint sales to local charitable organizations, providing organic and local pub fare, maintaining 100% carbon neutral operations and a zero-waste initiative."

But wait, there's more: the brewery has installed a system to drastically cut its use of water. At a current rate of 3.39 gallons of water to produce a gallon of beer, it's using less than half the industry average.

I think we can all raise a glass to that achievement and toast founder Christian Ettinger and his crew for their efforts. We'd expect no less!

Covalent Brewing: Woman Owned, Woman Brewed

Women and beer. It's a fraught subject even in the 21st Century, isn't it?

While most of the advertising for beer still features mostly young guys with a smattering of smashing-looking female model types (just so you'll know the guys are manly men), there's not a lot of acknowlegement of women—and I count myself among them—who really love beer.

That same absence of women is reflected in brewing. As Megan Flynn, editor of Beer West magazine (now closed) said in an article I wrote in 2011 on Oregon's women brewers, "I don’t think it’s that different from any other male-dominated industry," noting that the dearth of women in the field isn’t because women aren’t interested in beer or brewing.

"The at-work brewing scene, the guys are very used to being dudes," she said. "It’s heavy lifting, manual labor, moving hoses, lifting up kegs and listening to loud music." It can make it hard for women to feel welcome, even if there's not outright harassment.

Covalent Brewing's Meagan Hatfield.

Teri Fahrendorf, founder of the Pink Boots Society for women brewers and for 17 years the head brewer at Steelhead Brewing in Eugene, said it was evident to her early on that women could do the job by doing it smarter, not harder. Instead of trying to match the guys muscle-for-muscle, she said, she always asked "how can I do this so that I’m not going to get worn out" after a few years as she'd seen so many of her male colleagues do.

So far there's only one woman, Kari Gjerdingen of Mutiny Brewing in Joseph, Oregon, who has opened her own brewery. But we who live in the Willamette Valley may be about to get our own "woman-owned, woman-brewed" brewery in the person of Meagan Hatfield. A home-brewer for 13 years, a six-month stint at Wyeast Laboratories confirmed her decision to go into brewing as a profession. A degree in biology also helped.

"The science of brewing is so fascinating, " she said. "I'm kind of a nerd for that."

It's no wonder, then, that she's named her new venture Covalent Brewing after chemical bonds formed during the brewing process. Not that it's all science, mind you. Hatfield said that she's found that creating different flavor combinations is also exciting, and foresees a wide range of year-round standards on her list with a couple of rotating taps for experiments.

Lately she's been particularly taken with chile pepper infusions and is curious about incorporating other seasonal ingredients like squash in her brewing. Hatfield has been slowly collecting equipment and is looking for a building that would accomodate a small brewery and tasting room somewhere in Southeast Portland or possibly Milwaukie. Let's hope she finds one soon.

At Ecliptic Brewing, It's Tough To Not Get Starstruck

It's not hard, looking at brewer John Harris, to imagine him as a 10-year-old, laying on his back in the grass gazing up at the stars shimmering in the blackness of the night sky. It's not just his boyish looks that make this leap so easy, especially when he starts explaining each of his beers is named after a different star, moon or astronomical phenomenon. Or that the looping design of the lighting system above the dining room reflects the path of the sun as observed from the dining room, a figure eight shape known as an analemma. Of course, he had to give his brewery an appropriately spacey name, too, and chose Ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun on the celestial sphere.

Fine.

Mussels steamed in Spica Hefepils.

But in the two years he spent looking for a building after quitting the job he'd held for 20 years as Brewmaster at Full Sail Brewing, he also knew he wanted more than just a typical brewpub to serve his—and this is no exaggeration, since we're talking about the guy who created such iconic Oregon craft beers as Mirror Pond Pale Ale, Black Butte Porter, Obsidian Stout and Jubelale—exceptional lineup of beers. Not for him the usual pub menu consisting of half-hearted hummus plates, hamburgers or pizza. He went looking for a chef who could create a menu that would measure up to the exceptional quality of the beer he was making, who would be as committed to the quality of the ingredients in the food as Harris himself was to the ingredients going into his beer.

Confit drumsticks. In a pub. Yowza.

It's interesting, to say the least, especially in food-crazed Portland, that the idea of a chef in a brewpub is practically unheard of. I'm sure Harris ran into his fair share of rolling eyes and shaking heads when he said that was what he wanted to do, but from my visits to the pub since it opened and from a media event to unveil the new fall menu, he's found a complementary vision in the food that Executive Chef Michael Molitor (on the right, top photo) is cranking out of the kitchen. The menu is set to rotate every six weeks on—get this—"the Old World calendar" dates for Samhain, Winter Solstice, Bridgid, Spring Equinox, Beltane, Summer Solstice, Lammas and the Autumnal Equinox. (It's so nerdy, I love it.)

Pan-roasted chicken with red pepper vinaigrette.

While not hoity-toity in execution—this is food meant to go with Harris's hearty Northwest microbrews, after all—it is exceptional in that it's far more than breaded, fried and (heavily) salted pub grub. Take, for instance, the appetizers presented at the tasting mentioned above. Yes, they do have fries, but these are thin, crispy and served hot with aioli. The mussels are steamed in roasted tomatoes and Spica Hefepils, then topped with shaved bonito. There's a choice of a Caesar-esque romaine and treviso salad overlaid with a slice of pecorino or an endive, asian pear and Camembert salad with a maple-mustard vinaigrette. Instead of the ubiquitous wings or fish and chips, you can have light and heavendly salt cod fritters or a plate of confit drumsticks with sweet chili sauce. Pinch me!

A couple of mains worth mentioning are a succulent pan-roasted chicken with a corn and zucchini salsa with cotija cheese and a red pepper vinaigrette, or a red wine-braised brisket on housemade Savoy cabbage kraut scattered with house-pickled rutabaga (not yet listed on the website menu). Talk about setting the bar; I was knocked out. I hope you will be, too!

Details: Ecliptic Brewing, 825 N Cook St. 503-265-8002.

Hopworks to World: Can It!

This man is Christian Ettinger. He owns a  brewery call Hopworks. Christian is happy. Very happy. Because he's achieved a big dream. A dream to put his beer in cans.

It was a dream that had to wait a long time. Wait until cans could keep his beer as perfect as the day it went into the can. Perfect from the instant you pop the top and take that first sip right up to the moment you drain it.

You'll find cans of Hopworks lager and IPA in local stores by this weekend. Which will make Christian even happier. Maybe happy enough that he'll make more beer and put it in cans. Which would make lots of Portland beer drinkers happy. Very happy.

Note: It's a can that also has a secret trick you can do with it. See the little red dot down at the bottom? The one that says, "Drink Responsibly"? It happens to be in just the right spot to shotgun the can of beer. But I wouldn't advise that, and neither would the brewery. No sir. It wouldn't be responsible.

Happy St. Paddy's Day!

Sláinte!

Found: A Piece of Beervana History

We used to be big garage sale fans. Dave would scour the paper early Saturday morning, circling his picks in the classifieds, with those offering tools or, especially old woodworking planes, in bright red ink. After a cup of coffee I'd take a crack at the ads and we'd map our route to get to as many of our best picks within the couple of hours of precious weekend time we could devote to the hunt.

In the last few years we've slacked off, realizing that at this point we need to get rid of stuff rather than accumulate it. Though once in a great while we'll come across a treasure that just can't be passed up.

This morning Dave came home from running errands with a real find. Stopping at a sale in the Hollywood area, he noticed some brewpub growlers sitting on a table. One in particular stopped him dead in his tracks. On the front was a sticker announcing it was from Old World Pub & Brewery, an early but short-lived brewery and café that was taken over by Mike DeKalb's nascent Laurelwood Brewing.

We'd gone to Old World to check it out and, while the food was uneven, its beers were spectacular, the work of a young and then-unknown brewer by the name of Christian Ettinger. When Old World morphed into Laurelwood, Ettinger stayed with the company, developing an award-winning array of hop-forward beers that would help define the Northwest style of brewing. As most beer fans know, he left Laurelwood after several years to start his own Hopworks Urban Brewery (HUB), an all-organic brewpub and café on SE Powell, opening the Hopworks BikeBar on North Williams this summer.

The woman who was giving the garage sale rolled her eyes when Dave handed over his money and, pointing at the growler, said, "Portland brewing history!" But, needless to say, he's beside himself with excitement over his treasure, and can't wait to take it to Hopworks and get it filled. The question is, will they notice?

Quick Take: '09 Oregon Brewers Festival

I really like beer. More specifically, I'm a woman who really likes beer. And while that may sound like a strange thing to say, there are still lots of women who don't, or who like their beer sweet and fruity (i.e. not tasting like beer) rather than dry, full-bodied and hoppy.

But when it comes to beer festivals, I defer to the wisdom of he-who-is-all-about-beer in this household, and that is my husband Dave. He estimates barbecue and smoker time in terms of how many beers it'll take to get the job done. Vacations? How many brewpubs are there in the area? The day my brother moved into a tiny apartment and asked us to store his kegerator in our basement will go down as one of the great moments in his life. And don't even get me started on how much he loves the beers brewed at Hopworks Urban Brewery. Suffice it to say that the words, "It's me or Christian's beers" will never cross my lips.

We've skipped the last couple of Oregon Brewers Festivals for various reasons, and Dave's regular beer buddy had to work that day, so I volunteered to accompany him with the thought that it might make a good blog post. We parked Chili on the east side of the river and walked across the bridge to the festival, where the crowd was starting to fill the tents where more than 80 craft breweries were pouring their beers.

About half the beers are in the pale-to-golden range, with another quarter dedicated to amber and the rest falling in the red, brown and black range. Dave had a few he'd heard about and wanted to try, though after a couple of pales he was ready to move on, as he said, "to the real beers." Here, in order, are the ones we tried:

• Organic Wild Salmon Pale Ale, Fish Brewing Co., Olympia, WA: Well-made (as are all these beers, so no need to repeat it each time) though unremarkable; a "lawn-mower beer."
• Clackamas Cream Ale, Fearless Brewing Co., Estacada, OR: The brewer asked two local homebrew clubs to submit examples of this style of beer for inspiration, and this crisp, light example was the result.
• Festivale, Terminal Gravity Brewing, Enterprise, OR: This one got the "Ooooh…that's good" rating right off the bat. (My man loves his big beers, all right.) At 8.3 ABV and an IBU of 73, this demands attention. The final word? "Pretty damn nice."
• Radiant Summer Ale, Ninkasi Brewing Co., Eugene, OR: "Very nice." Lots of malt but nice dryness from hops. When we couldn't fight our way back for seconds on the Festivale, this was his next choice.
• Big Eye IPA, Ballast Point Brewing, San Diego, CA: When Dave says an IPA is "not bad" (especially one brewed this far from the Northwest), that's a high compliment considering it's his favorite style of beer. Definitely worth drinking.
• India Red Ale (IRA), Double Mountain Brewery, Hood River, OR: "Really good." We've visited their taproom and it's well worth the drive to sample their excellent range of beers.
• Bitter Bitch, Astoria Brewing Co., Astoria, OR: This was a good beer but, as Dave said, it was "very bitter, more like an IPA" than a traditional English-style bitter. "Despite the name, it's pretty good."
• Organic Chocolate Stout, Bison Brewing Co., Berkeley, CA: One of the pleasures of going to these festivals is the chance to try beers you might not run across otherwise. "Good but not exciting" was the word on this one.

FredFest '08

Drink some amazing beer and honor the memory of Michael Jackson (the beer writer, not the freak show) at the 3rd Annual FredFest, this year promising "15 rare and unique beers" from some of Oregon's finest, including Hair of the Dog (with a special keg of Jim 07), BridgePort, Deschutes, Widmer, Hopworks Urban Brewery, Rogue and Firestone Walker.

Originally a surprise 80th birthday party for writer Fred Eckhardt (above), a supporter, mentor and cheerleader for Portland's place as the capital of Beervana, this festival now serves as a benefit for a charity of Eckhardt's choice. This year it's Parkinson's Resources of Oregon, the local affiliate chapter of the National Parkinson Foundation. His longtime friend and fellow beer writer Michael Jackson died in 2007 after a long battle with Parkinson's disease.

Tickets for this event sell out quickly and attendance is limited to 200, so send an e-mail and get your spot reserved soon!

Details: FredFest 2008. Sat., May 10, 2-6 pm; tickets $50, reservations only by e-mail. Event at Hair of the Dog Brewing, 4509 SE 23rd Ave.

Oregonian file photo.