Springtime for Beer

I had to return from my self-imposed blog exile today like the proverbial groundhog from his winter cave to tell you about the incredible beer we’ve been tapping this week. If you’ve been lucky enough to drop by over the past few days, you know what I’m talking about. We just blew through the last of the Deschutes Dissident, we just tapped the Three Creeks Stonefly Rye and Cascade Tempter Tripel, we’re practically empty on the firkin cask of Bridgeport Hop Czar that we started serving on Wednesday (although we’ve got a back-up keg of it coming on draft), and we’re introducing Upright Brewery to the Portland area with their farmhouse style Five.

It’s been such a relief for me to watch these spring beers arrive and start to replace some of the big beers of winter. The spring is that ideal time of the year when beer is clean and thirst-quenching but still flavorable enough to really appreciate and savor.

It’s also the time of the year that two of my favorite styles return– the maibock and the farmhouse/saisons. While we don’t have a maibock on yet, I’m just waiting for some kind soul to finish off our current Nitro beer so that we can tap it (that’s right– a maibock Nitro from Lompoc; three of my favorite words right up against each other).

As for the farmhouse, it’s excellent and all the more exciting since it hails from Portland’s newest brewery. Upright’s Five is a 5.5% ABV brew that’s  incredibly dry, spicy, and clean with just a bit of that barnyard funk sneaking in and a teensy bit of sourness on the finish. It’s probably the driest and hoppiest farmhouse I’ve ever had and absolutely perfect for a sunny spring day.

Anyway, with the sky looking like it’s finally going to remain blue and sunny for at least the rest of the day, you ought to come in and celebrate with a good beer. I know I am.

Beer Wars Premiere Party!

Bailey’s is teaming up with Stone Brewing and Yelp this Thursday, April 16th, to host a party in honor of the documentary film, Beer Wars. The movie explores the struggle between macro and microbrewers for total beer supremacy.

To celebrate, we’re having a rep from Stone Brewing drop in from 5:30 to 7:30 PM and share some of the legendary brewery’s finest beers with us. We’ll have Stone IPA and the Russian Imperial Stout on tap, and the rep will be pouring free samples of the 12th Anniversary, 08 Vertical Epic, 08 Double Bastard, and Ruination.

Afterward, the group plans to take the MAX train to the Lloyd Center theater for the 8:00 PM world premiere screening of the film.

This will be the one and only screening of the film, so don’t miss your opportunity to check it out and enjoy some Stone beers with us.

For more information on the film, check out: http://beerwarsmovie.com/

And for more information on the event, or to RSVP, head over to: http://www.yelp.com/events/portland-uye—beer-wars-world-premiere-pre-party-w-stone-brewing-baileys-taproom

Early Friday Opening

If there’s a travesty that needs correcting, it’s this: Bailey’s Taproom is closed more often than it’s open. And if you think about it, that means that all your favorite beers are behind locked doors more often than not in a week, just sitting there lonely, waiting for those precious 8 hours a day (6 days a week) that someone will come in and drink them.

Well, thanks to popular demand, we’re giving this whole early hours idea a test drive this Friday the 27th to see if people will put their money where their mouth is and their mouth where our beers are.

We’ll be opening our doors at 12 noon for any thirsty lunch goers who’d like to stop in and sneak in a beer before heading back to work or any of you lucky folks who have the day off from the workplace or any of you unlucky folks who have every day off the ex-workplace.

If this turns out to be a success, we just might consider doing it again. And if it turns out to be a huge success, we just might consider being open all the time, 24/7, Geoff and I swapping places behind the bar every eight hours for the rest of our natural lives.

But I wouldn’t bet on that.

Last Chance for Pliny the Younger

For anyone who doesn’t know yet (and happens to check the blog today), we tapped Russian River Pliny the Younger on Saturday and it’s been a mega-hit. One of only a handful of kegs to arrive in Portland, this rare Imperial IPA has elicited more than a few “best beer I’ve ever had” utterances from rabid fans.

If you haven’t tried it yet or have but need one last glass before it goes, today is the day to stop by Bailey’s. Based on its activity in the past three days, this will blow by the end of tonight, Wednesday the 4th of March.

Don’t miss it!

Fish Mudshark Porter on Cask!

Just a quick FYI for you folks that we’ve got the Fish Mudshark Porter on cask today. I’ve been looking forward to revisiting this one in the winter. If my memory serves, this is an especially chewy, chocolatey porter, perfect for cloudy days and cool temps. Drop by today to get it fresh.

The Sin of Mixing

Sometimes, when you’ve had a few drinks, you do something you really regret… something that will haunt you until your dying days. This happened to me yesterday when I… I… mixed beers!

Oh, God! What have I done!?

I wish I could say I was wasted beyond reason, totally incapacitated by alcohol when I perpetrated this crime against beerdom. But the ugly truth is that I had only had a sampler’s tray worth of beer and I just couldn’t help my curiosity.

You see… a couple came in Saturday night, and after I’d tapped the Six Rivers Raspberry Lambic, they started propagandizing heretical notions of taking said Raspberry Lambic and combining it with North Coast Old Rasputin on Nitro. I told them they were mad, evil, wrought from the Devil Himself.

How could one take the Best Nitro Imperial Stout Of All Time and defile its virtue with a far sweeter fruity beer? It was monstrous. It was wicked. It was… tempting.

The notion of a raspberry imperial stout, melding with coffee and chocolate, cinnamon and cream stoked my curiosity… my basest desires. But I withheld, reminding myself that it was evil to mix beers. Every beer snob worth their cirrhosed liver knows that you don’t take a masterpiece beer and dilute it with another. That’s the act of a vandal, a scourge, a… an Englishman.

But I did it. There’s no going back from that. And my actions influenced another at the bar, who promptly ordered an entire taster tray of Belgian-style beers– the North II, Vlad, and the beer that tastes like a Belgian-style, the Cascade Old Growth–and began combining them in a separate 10 oz glass with the lambic, like some modern-day Dr. Frankenstein. Only then did I realize the pure evil of my actions. I had opened a Pandora’s Tap of Evil that could not easily be shut off.

How long before some other madman starting asking for IPAs mixed together, or ambers and pilsners, brown ales and saisons? What other monstrosities might spawn from my one tiny indiscretion?

And the worst of it is that I had sold my soul for a fool’s bargain. The lambic and stout mixture was certainly not repulsive, but nowhere near as good as the beers by themselves. Even with only a third of the lambic to a 2/3 fill of the imperial stout, the stout flavors were almost invisible under the sugary punch of the lambic.

I beseech each and every one of you not to follow this dark path. There is no retribution, no return from this abyss. Once you have indulged in the sin of mixing, you are going straight to Beer Hell, where they serve only Bud Ice and Natty Lite in dirty paper cups out of warm cans for the whole of eternity.

Learn from my tragic mistake and remain virtuous, fellow beer lovers. Only through your salvation do I have any hope at all for redemption.

Wreck the Halls on Cask!

This week’s cask beer is the Full Sail Wreck the Halls, one of the better IPAs to come out this winter. I recently had a chance to revisit this beer and liked it even more than the first time we had it on. If you missed out on it before or share my fond memories of this hoppy masterpiece, be sure to come in today to give it a whirl on cask. Hops are just so much better when cask-conditioned.

Fresh Hop Black Flag on Cask!

We get a lot of great beer on cask, but this week’s choice is extra special. What makes it so, you ask? Everything you need to know is right in the name:

Cask-Conditioned,

Fresh Hopped,

Black Flag Imperial Stout.

I could go on, but I think this is definitely a case where I can let the name speak for itself. Come on in and try this rare treasure for yourself.

Sweet!

For anyone who likes their beers sweet, we’ve recently tapped a few beers that just might give you cavities. Hopheads need not apply.

• Moylans Irish Red- This is one of the richest red ales I’ve ever had. It builds in caramel sweetness as toasted malts join in about halfway through the sip to temper that sugary burst. It mellows just a little from there, even getting a little sour in the finish. Aside from the mouthfeel effect, the hops in this one are practically unnoticeable.
• Block 15 Belgian Brown- Is this a case of mistaken identity? As far as I can tell, this one tastes far too much of sweet banana flavors to be recognizable as your typically drier, more roasted and sour “Belgian Brown.” Rather, this is very much like a Dunkelweizen with the sweet banana flavors leading off and a lighter, more subtle roast and slight sourness peeking in at the end.
• Caldera Old Growth ‘04- What’s an Imperial Stout doing on this list? I have no idea. This beer is so crazy, it ought to be institutionalized. Technically a lager and brewed with black peppercorn, hemp seed, and a witch’s brew of other assorted ingredients, this “stout” tastes incredibly tart. Sour cherry hits you in the tongue to start, followed by a smoothing out of sweet and sour peaking and receding in turns, and a roasted, peppery finish that comes out of nowhere. Let this one warm up to get the full effect.

Headless Beers!

One thing I’ve never understood is why some people don’t like any head on their beer, or only just the tiniest sliver of it. Personally, I love beer foam. I love the taste of it, the look of it, and most of all, what it tells me about the beer I’m excited to taste.

It’s always a sign of a good beer, and a good beer system behind the bar, when you receive a pint that has a perfect inch to inch-a-half of foam and that foam is thick and resilient. While it’s rare that a beer will retain its head for the entirety of the drink, those that do also manage to retain their aroma and carbonation for longer.

So, what does it say if you don’t get a good beer head? There are a number of possibilities, but here are some of the more likely ones:

1. The beer is flat. The keg didn’t get carbonated properly at the brewery, the bar isn’t supplying enough CO2, or the beer’s been on tap too long and has become oxidized.
2. The glass or the lines are dirty. Nothing kills foam faster than grease or bacteria. If the bar isn’t cleaning their lines from the kegs to the taps regularly and/or if they are using soap and detergent to clean their glasses without removing all the residue, it can result in a headless beer with a lot of unpleasant off-flavors.
3. The pour was lousy. Overfilling a glass can push out the foam, filling it to the brink with liquid instead. Also, a careless bartender may not realize that each beer comes out of the tap a little differently and that some require a more aggressive pour to release foam.
4. It’s the glassware’s fault. While a regular 16 oz pint glass “works,” its design isn’t as good as the bubbled imperial pint glass at capturing foam and keeping it.
5. The beer is supposed to be that way. This usually isn’t the case, but some breweries intentionally carbonate their beers less for some higher alcohol styles like barleywines because carbonation can conceal some flavor nuances.

Whatever you do, don’t end up with a headless beer. It’s not only an indication that your beer is going to go flat pretty soon (if it isn’t already); it probably means there are a number of other things wrong with it, too.