Beer Around Town

I’m not a big fan of new years. Ryan Seacrest’s blathering, champagne, horrible music performances in Times Square, getting older, stupid sunglasses, people’s gnarly make out sessions to ring in the new year. It’s awful, embarrassing actually, and us West coast viewers don’t even get a live TV feed countdown for our west coast 12:00, we have to watch a repeat of Hillary pressing some giant fake button to make the “energy efficient” new years ball drop. Ehhh, what can you do.

Well our brew-years eve was much better. Champagne swapped for a nice casual pub crawl. Deschutes had an excellent selection of PDX pub created brews this week. First up was a Super Spiced Jubel, I’m not sure what the scoop is, this doesn’t taste like Super Jubel, so I think they just amped up the spices in it, what ever they did I approve. Moving towards the spiciness of Anchor OSA this had a really nice dry holiday spice character throughout. I’m not a really big fan of the Anchor OSA, I’m not sure what it is, but it has a odd nutmeg and ginger kinda sweet spice taste, this had a more dry and clovish spiciness that worked really well. Next up was a Plum Stout that was a solid sweet stout with a very subtle plum flavor, maybe a bit too subtle, but pretty drinkable overall. Lastly, I had a Red Chair IPA, good balanced IPA, built more like an English IPA with NW ingredients, the hops were floral, but didn’t feel as bitter and one sided as most NW IPAs, very sessionable.

Next stop we dropped into the Full Sail Pilsner Room on the waterfront. I hadn’t been here for a while and I had forgotten how great this place is. Excellent tap selections with 3 or so exclusive beers. I had to try the Full Sail Big Daddy J’s Malt Liquor, I mean, how often do you see this “style” on a menu. The Big Daddy J’s wasn’t all that bad for a Malt Liquor, although I’m not really sure what that style really means, I’ll have to go do some reading on it. It kinda tasted like a boozy malty amber lager, sweet and a bit cloying. They also had a nice Winter Dark Ale that I only had time for a small sample of, but I enjoyed it. Hopefully I can make it back before that brew is gone to get a better sample.

Somehow we had wasted enough time to run the clock down so we headed home to open the traditional bottle of champagne, take a sip then, rinse that awful flavor away with a nice Pike Entire Stout, first beer of the new year. I’m thinking this town needs a New Years fest at one of the breweries, make this holiday a little less boring. Maybe it’s just me though.