Your globetrotting liquor reporter has just returned from a junket along the Pacific Northwest and what a time he had!
It all started with a business trip to Vancouver that I decided to tack a week of vacation time onto, beginning with a scenic 4-hour AmTrak ride along the coast from Vancouver to Seattle.
The beer fans in the audience may be thinking to themselves that Washington state is the heartland of the American hop industry, with over 75% of total domestic production.
Yes, gentle reader, along with water, malted barley, and yeast, hops are the final ingredient in beer that provides the bittering flavours, and also act as a preservative to keep beer from spoiling.
For those in the audience that have not spent much time inside of a brewery, hops are a flowering plant, and will vigorously climb up a lattice or pole during the growing season.
Much like the wine industry, there are also the noble old-world hops from Europe, as well as the upstart new-world hops from North America.
The new-world hops tend to be more bitter, while the old-world hops tend to be more aromatic. You will find that many brewmasters will use several different hop varieties in a particular beer, in order to perfectly balance the entire flavour profile.
Due to the local hop industry, Washington state is home to the most varied and interesting craft brewers in North America, so you intrepid liquor reporter felt right at home.
Beginning with a few days in Seattle, your humble narrator was snapping photos and craning his neck at the different beer-related landmarks like one of those Japanese tourists in Banff!
Long-time boozers may remember Rainier Beer, an iconic Seattle landmark from 1884 to its eventual closure in 1999. Rainier was a dependable session beer, brewed in the Light American Lager style. Not so much enjoyed by the beer snobs of the world, but very popular with the unwashed masses.
In a nod to local history, a new craft brewery called the Emerald City Brewing Company in the old Rainier building in 2010, and is using locally grown hops and barley to further tug at the patriotic heartstrings of the local boozers.
Pike Brewing is another Seattle brewery whose products are widely available here in Alberta, My favourites are the Naughty Nellie and the Kilt Lifter ales, both done with a mixture of noble European hops as well as locally grown varieties.
After a few days in Seattle, it was time for another 4-hour scenic AmTrak trip south to Portland. Your intrepid liquor reporter was delighted to discover that fine local microbrews were available in the dining car, so you can imagine that most of the trip was spent there.
Luckily, your humble narrator has a cousin in Portland, so I had a local tour guide to show me the sights.
Experienced travellers may recognize Portland as the city with the twin honours of having the most strip joints and microbreweries per capita in the United States.
As you can imagine, on vacation in a city with 48 breweries and countless strip joints, your humble narrator will need to withhold some of the more prurient escapades of that one particular weekend in order to protect the virtue of the younger readers in the audience.
Your intrepid liquor reporter’s first sip of the golden elixir in Portland was a pint of Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve, a beer that first touched my lips back in 1997 in Calgary’s own Bottlescrew Bills pub while I was working my way through the Around the World in 80 Beers passport with the little red-haired girl as my drinking companion.
Henry Weinhard’s Brewing is now owned by the SABMiller beer conglomerate, but it started up as a quality craft brew in Portland way back in 1856, and is still a local favourite.
In fact, your humble narrator credits this particular beer for helping dispel the prejudices of my callow youth that all American beers were nothing but fizzy yellow water. Many years have passed since that first sip in a crowded Calgary pub, but the full flavour was just as familiar as if it were yesterday.
Since Portland’s beer culture is primarily microbrew-based, there is very little available for export to Canada. Not to worry – I’ll just have to make another trip to Portland to try them all!
