I've always wanted to challenge myself to take a shot at episodic reviews. Not so much because it's something I necessarily think I want to do, but more to see if I can do it and not hate the output. I figure Rectify is the perfect show for this for a few reasons. One, the third season is just six episodes, so it's not a crazy commitment. Two, I really like it, so I'm sure I'll have plenty to say. Three, it's not a show with a super-large following, so I don't feel like I will only being saying things others have said. If you've never seen the show, the first two seasons (a total of 16 eps) are on Netflix and Amazon. This post will still be here when you're done catching up.
The marrow of a television show is the characters, which makes the story the blood, I suppose. This means you need both to stay alive, to carry the analogy to its natural conclusion. Film can function with one or neither of those, because a meditative movie (think Under the Skin or Waking Life) doesn't need us to keep tuning in every week to enjoy the work as a whole. If instead we are going to spend 6, 10, 13 hours or more with a work, there needs to be some story driving it along that keeps our interest, and that story needs to involve characters we care about.
It would be silly to argue that Rectify doesn't have the character part down. Every member of the Holden-Talbot clan is a well-drawn unique piece of the tapestry of Southern life that the show weaves. The tougher argument, given the show's pace, is that the story is superb. I would argue that it's actually its strength.
For me to successfully defend that, it's of utmost importance to remember that plot does not equal story. Rectify is inarguably light on plot. The central thread of the show - the machinations around Daniel's innocence or guilt - has often been secondary to other goings on in Paulie. That the show lacks a great deal of plot does not mean there is not a rich story to tell. Just the opposite, Daniel's release and subsequent actions have affected every character in the show and advanced them all to a different place in life. With a couple exceptions, little of this has been through the typical life-or-death stakes that a plottier show would employ (there are no ticking clocks on the Sundance Channel). Rather, Rectify has become perhaps the best show on TV at using emotional stakes to tell a gripping, yet moving story.
The best examples of this in the third season premiere both involve Teddy*. The first comes early when Teddy joins dinner in progress. Daniel's mother tries her best to please her son by getting the BBQ she knows he used to love, but we soon find out that her memory is imperfect**: The restaurant didn't even open until Daniel was incarcerated, and it was instead Teddy who loved the food. Later, Janet goes to visit her (effectively) adopted son. The two share a heartbreaking conversation about the troubles in Teddy's life, which ends with Teddy pointedly calling her by her name and Janet expressing regret that she ever asked him to do that. In these two scenes, Rectify shows its mastery of story in two main ways. One, it makes reference to episodes past, with allusions to Daniel's own faulty memory and Janet's request to Teddy (from the Pilot!). Two, it tells the story of how Teddy's whole well-being is dependent on acceptance from his family, and his surrogate mother. By displaying the shows commitment to the emotional stakes of the proceedings, we can see how Rectify tells a story as important as anything on TV, without minimal violence or extraordinary physical duress.
*That Teddy is the standout of this episode is a testament both to Clayne Crawford for his acting and to the writers for taking what could have been a one-dimensional character and making him whole.
**This is a beautifully subtle way to circle back on the theme of memory and the lack of clarity it can provide. Like her son, Janet isn't able to recall everything she'd like to.
The episode succeeds in other ways, as well, most notably with Amantha's journey post-plea deal. More than anyone on the show, the effort to clear Daniel's name has been the lifeblood for Amantha for nearly two decades. Now that it's effectively over, Amantha needs to figure out what her life is going to be; something she's been able to put off for years. Not only does the plot of episode move this forward, but so does the tremendous (as always) acting from Abagail Spencer. Whereas we typically know Amantha as brash and sharp in her voice, she now comes off as calmer and slightly more removed. This doesn't mean she's lost her ability to trade barbs...see her (final?) conversation with Jon. Still, as she sits in a meeting with her boss, trying to decide if she wants the promotion she's being offered, we see a rare bit of hesitance from Amantha. In all, Spencer's work in the episode is lovely, and offers us an insight into what will probably be one of the most intriguing story lines of the season.
And with that I've come full circle. The stakes in Amantha's life are low by the standards of most television (and even of most real life). But that doesn't make it any less important to her story going forwards. By investing us in the authentic lives of its characters, Rectify is able to tell a story as graceful and fascinating as anything on TV.
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Portland
A few weeks ago, the wife and I made a visit to Oregon, one of the few states neither of us had been to. In that state resides one of the most unique metropolises in the nation in Portland. We were drawn to the city not just for its idiosyncrasies, but also by nature, food, and beer. Since we both highly recommend a visit to Portland for all, here are some thoughts on what we did, and thus, what you should do if you're ever in the area.
HIKING
The best part of heading West is that no matter the location, there's probably good hiking nearby. Because we both love the outdoors, we went hiking every morning, save for the first jet lag-adjusting day. Friday morning we went as high as we reasonably could, hiking the Pacific Crest Trail around the tree line of Oregon's tallest point, Mount Hood. This eventually led us to the Zigzag Canyon, which not only gave us a great view of Mount Hood and one of its primary runoff channels, but also Mount Jefferson and all of the foothills and valleys to the South.
The next day we decided to take it a little easier, and went to Forest Park. While parks within city limits are generally not too exciting from a hiking standpoint, this one is the exception. We started just off of a highway, but after a few minutes were quickly emerged in a thick forest on top of a series of foothills above the Willamette River. There is a trail that runs the length of the park, but it's a pretty big park, so it takes a whole day to hike. Seeing as we had other things to do, we walked alongside for a mile or two, and then descended back down to our car.
On our final day, we attempted our most ambitious hike yet: Ascending a small mountain from a remote outpost. I say attempted because it didn't quite work out. The road leading to the beginning turned from a regular highway into a smaller highway into a gravel road. After a few minutes of going ten miles an hour in our Chevy Cruze and trying to avoid the larger rocks on the road, we decided not to risk it, and turned back. Luckily, we were able to pivot into something just as cool: A hike along (and up) the Columbia River Gorge. It was equal parts terrifying and exhilarating to essentially stare 800 feet straight down at the valley below. Once again the lesson is that the sheer number of awesome places out west assures that you will never be disappointed spending a morning wandering around, even if your first option falls through.
FOOD
Obviously, we ate at a lot of different places over our four days in Portland, so I'll just highlight a few of the top selections. Like in most urban areas, brunch seems to be a pretty big deal in Portland, so we headed over to Tasty n Sons (link) our first morning in town (we were able to avoid lines by going at opening time on a Thursday). The menu touches on pretty much every brunch option one could desire, but the Thursday special is chillaques, so neither of us could resist. The dish was a lovely blend of perfectly cooked eggs, green salsa, and all of the Mexican fixings. Neighboring tables had numerous other dishes, so I can vouch for the fact that everything they make looks good.
After our hike around Mount Hood, we were pretty hungry, so we headed to Lardo's (link) for a couple of big greasy sandwiches. They were so good that we headed back there a couple days later. I had a Korean pork sandwich and a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit. Both were wonderful, although the texture of the meat made it a little hard to eat in traditional sandwich form. Ad had the chickpea burger both times, and loved it. As she is a semi-expert in veggie burgers, I will trust her judgment. Like everywhere else in town, the East location we went to had a nice patio with plenty of picnic tables. They also had a Crux tap takeover, which allowed me to try a lot of their beers (more on that soon).
Finally, we tried Podnah's Pit (link) because nothing says good barbecue like Portland, Oregon. In all seriousness, everything we had there was quite good, including my plate of meat. The pulled pork was the best, but you can't go wrong with any of the options.
We also went to Sweedeedee, Taqueria Nueve, Apizza Scholls, and Ned Ludd. Every one of our meals was fine (although service at Sweedeedee was slow), but I don't feel the need to write about everything.
OTHER
So maybe you've heard that Portland is a weird, quirky city. While our four days there probably wasn't enough time to become experts on the validity of this, it seemed more like a typical urban area than I was expecting. I mean, we did see two people on bikes get in a verbal altercation where one them called the others' dog an asshole, but other than that the overall vibe was remarkably similar. There still are a lot of unique things about Portland, but more than anything it's just another really cool place in a nation full of them.
One thing that is quirky about Oregon is that it is illegal to pump your own gas. I knew this going in, but it was still weird having another person involved in the transaction. I could look up the stupid reason why this law is in place, but I'd rather just imagine that members of the state legislature saw Zoolander, and took its central message to heart.
I categorized all of the things we did under hiking, food, and beer, but there was one place we went that doesn't fit into those categories. Upon the recommendations of many, we headed to Powell's City of Books (link), a bookstore that takes up a whole city block in downtown Portland. Given that amount of space, the store has everything you could want, with three floors and many sections of books. There was a rare books room on the top floor complete with autographed copies and century-old books kept behind glass. There were old encyclopedias and other such collections for hundreds (or thousands) of dollars. And there were a few cute mishmashes of aisle and end-cap subjects:
BEER
So I saved the best for last. I was super excited for the culture of Portland as well as its surrounding wilderness, but let's not lie: The beer was the main draw. As the city with the most active breweries within its limits, Portland is one of the primary beer destinations in the world. Due to time and liver constraints, we were not able to visit all 88 breweries within an hour's drive. That said, I was able to visit ten of the most notable outfits, and also had enough selections from a couple of Bend's finest to be able to pass judgment. The most notable exclusion from this list is Deschutes. They are widely distributed at this point, so if beer's your thing, you should probably already know about them.
Of related note is that I have been considering writing a similar piece on all the local Columbus breweries. However, there are still some I need to visit, so that project will have to wait. The one thing I have done towards that end is create my own rating system, to use for that exact purpose. Instead of using a typical 5 or 10 point system that provides no specific direction, this system was made to help convey the necessity of visiting a particular brewery. The ratings are:
1 Star: Skip it
2 Star: Perfectly cromulent, visit at your leisure
3 Star: You should probably go there, if you know what's good for you
4 Star: LeBron-ish
I also allow for 1.5 and 2.5 ratings, because I can be of two minds on things and deciding is hard. Here is the list, presented in reverse order for dramatic effect:
12: Ecliptic Brewing (link) - 1 Star
Ecliptic is a relatively new venture, created by a long-time Oregon fixture who had a hand in many of Deschutes' most famous beers. All of their beers are named after heavenly objects, and their menu rotates according to astronomic phenomena. And the space itself is interesting, blending a bar, outdoor patio, and dining area nicely. Because of all of this, I really thought it was going to be one of my favorites. But it was not. A couple of the saisons were decent, but all of the hoppy offerings were failures. The Helix hoppy lager was the most prominent disappointment, as it supposedly was brewed with Citra, but didn't taste like it at all. Honestly, making a beer that loses track of probably the most pungent hop is kind of impressive.
11: Hopworks Urban Brewery (link) - 1 Star
This avoids last place only because Ad enjoyed her coffee stout. I'm not sure if it's because of the limitations of being organic-only, but there was something off with the yeast profile of each of the beers I tried. The Simcoe Single-Hop IPX was decent enough, but the weird sweetness in each beer made this place my least-favorite of the trip. Much like Ecliptic, the building itself was a good place to drink, although the stringent limits on tasters (you had to buy a set of either 9 or 15) was a bit onerous.
10. Laurelwood Brewing Company (link) - 1.5 Stars
Laurelwood elevates above the bottom two almost entirely on the strength of its Workhorse IPA, a Flower Power-type brew with enough piney backbone to let you know it's from the Northwest. Nothing else was particularly special. The milk stout (Hugh Heifer) was tasty but way too thin, and the seasonal IPA (Green Elephant) was nice and grassy, but a little one-note.
9. The Commons Brewery (link) - 2 Stars
Commons wins points for its setup in an old warehouse-type building, and the lovely smell coming from the cheese stand within the brewery. They also make some fairly interesting beers, focusing on a lot of farmhouse-type offerings. Their spring seasonal, Myrtle, was probably the most interesting as it tasted strongly of lemonade, while retaining enough of the malt and the funk to remain balanced. Everything else nicely reflected the French and other European styles the brewery aimed to recreate.
8. Hair of the Dog Brewing Company (link) - 2 Stars
Hair of the Dog is, I believe, the oldest brewery on this list, having existed since 1993. And boy, do their beers taste like it. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It's good in that most offerings display the expertise and precision that two decades should produce. Their most famous beer (Adam) is a fine example of this, mixing chocolate notes into a dark ale that is amazingly smooth for 10%. It's bad in that some of the beers (specifically the Blue Dot DIPA) are very old-fashioned, and thus not all that interesting. It's tough to give Hair of the Dog just two stars, as it feels like an essential part of the Portland beer scene. That said, there's so much else going on that it got lost a bit in the shuffle for me.
7. Gigantic Brewing Company (link) - 2 Stars
Gigantic is the first hop-dominated brewery on this list. You can tell this quickly upon visiting, as all three of their year-round beers are of the IPA persuasion. While all of those were fine, I found the one-off beers to be a bit more interesting. Passion Playa was a nice little passion fruit sour that went well with the warm day. Smoove Operator, an oatmeal APA, was my favorite of the bunch. If you squint hard enough, the mix of flowery nose and malt body tastes a bit like Surly's Abrasive. The bar inside the brewery is pretty small, but it opens into a nice outdoor area in the summer. Unlike the predominant urban settings for Portland breweries, Gigantic's location resembles that of your typical Ohio brewery, smack dab in the middle of an industrial area.
6. Migration Brewing (link) - 2.5 Stars
We almost missed Migration, but luckily, we squeezed it in on our last day. Migration has, like pretty much all the other breweries at this point, a really nice space with plenty of outdoor seating. As for the beer, a couple of their hoppier offerings were quite good. The Luscious Lupulin was a nice Simcoe-y IPA, while the seasonal 503 IPA found an interesting place in between the silkiness of Nelson and the pine-ness of some of the C hops (a la Modern Times' Blazing World). Nothing else stood out, although the porter was pretty solid.
5. Crux Fermentation Project (link) - 2.5 Stars
The first of two breweries on the list from Bend, Crux is probably one of the most hyped breweries coming out of Oregon. We were lucky enough to encounter them on some bar's tap lists as well as at a tap takeover at Lardo's. Half-Hitch (their DIPA) is the most infamous of their offerings, but I was pretty mixed on it. Good high-gravity beers featuring Mosaic hops are possible (Great Lakes' Chillwave really impressed me this year), but the booze and the malt overrode the hops too much for me. Everything else was hit-or-miss with their Outcast IPA being the most interesting and focused of the bunch.
4. Breakside Brewery (link) - 3 Stars
Now we enter the realm of the truly excellent. Breakside gained a bit of fame when they won the gold medal in the IPA category at the 2014 Great American Beer Festival. After sampling no fewer than six of their IPAs (they had a deal that day....saw me coming), I can say that the fame is deserved. Their award winning IPA is quite delicious, but I was even more impressed by the range their other beers showed. Tropical Fruit Salad was billed as tasting like Sunny D (and it did), but it still retained enough malt and hop character to make it a (somewhat) balanced beer. Back to the Future was a nice use of the New Zealandy-tasting Azacca hop. Finally, the Session Double IPA was probably a bit too cute, but perfectly pulled off the light mouthfeel/complex flavor combo that the paradoxical name suggests. We visited their northern location which....was a nice bar with an outdoor patio. Stop me if you've heard that before.
3. Upright Brewing (link) - 3 Stars
Upright is different from the other Portland breweries in that they do not have a nice bar and a patio. They physically can't, because it's a basement.* It's basically Gus Fring's super-lab without the laundry facility overhead:
*Thanks to my wife for following me into a basement to drink beer on a sunny, 80-degree Saturday.
In spite of the (awesome) humble surroundings, Upright is just about as good as anything in Portland. The brewery specializes in the saison/farmhouse realm, with their main line of such offerings named simply the number corresponding to the original gravity of the beer. I had a Seven, and Pinot-barrel-aged Four, which were both splendid. My favorite was probably Four Play, a version of the Four aged in oak barrels with both brett and lactobacillus. The result was a perfect wheaty, sour, funky, oaky beer that represents everything awesome about Upright.
2. Boneyard Beer (link) - 3 Stars
Boneyard, the other representative from Bend, is pretty much the pinnacle of what a hop-focused brewery from the Pacific Northwest should be. Every variety of IPA was great in its own unique way, so if you see something from them on tap, you can't go wrong. Even so, a couple of them stood out as the best of the bunch. One was Notorious, an 11.5% monster triple IPA. The problem that can befell many such beers is that the alcohol dominates everything else, and the end product turns into a so-so barleywine. That was not the case with Notorious, as the alcohol played nicely with everything else, creating one of the smoothest high gravity beers I've had. The other favorite was the Bone-a-Fide APA, which was (and this is not an exaggeration) Zombie Dust with a better nose. Citra hops are probably overused at this point in the craft beer zeitgeist. That said, some of the very best beers are able to use it to create a complex, fruity, amazing beer. In spite of the dumb name (or maybe because of it?), Bone-a-Fide is one of those beers.
*We found Crux, Boneyard, and a few other things (like Pliny the Elder) at some of the local beer bars, each of which had it's own unique personality. Bailey's is a good downtown location, Belmont Station and BeerMongers are nice bottleshop/taproom combinations, and APEX (probably the best of all) is an awesome partially-outdoor beer garden. Fun note: this trip got me 10% of the way through the top 100 beer bars list.
1. Cascade Brewing (link) - 4 Stars
I'm reasonably good at living in the moment, but I'm even better at stepping back and thinking about the bigger picture. This means that as our time in Portland progressed, I would often find myself thinking "how truly enjoyable is all of this?" Given that my answer to that question would inform the possibility of any future trips to Portland, the question really was "is this something that is necessary to my living life to the fullest?" Time and money are necessary for any trip to Portland, but those are limited things, and those limitations will only increase as time goes on. Will my ever more scarce resources worth it?
As this was in the back of mind for most of the trip, I had a suspicion that this was leading me to pick out the negatives and highlight those to the detriment of my enjoyment of the present. I was spending too much mental effort convincing myself that my experiences in Portland weren't good enough to miss or to long for when I returned home. Ad and I had a conversation about our overall enjoyment of Portland near the end of the trip, and while we were being honest in our agreement that it didn't quite stack up to our favorite places (San Diego, Madison, Vermont, RMNP), that conversation served to gloss over the sad feelings of having to soon leave everything behind.
Of course, that I chose this section to write about this implies that there was something special about Cascade (that, and the "1" next to it's name). Cascade is a nice enough place, with a large bar, many tables, and a spacious outdoor area. And of course, the beer is amazing, with virtually every selection offering something unique and special. The Apricot is probably the most perfect blend of sour and the fruit at hand. The Blackcap Raspberry tastes basically like raspberry juice (in a good way). The Strawberry takes the sweeter side of the fruit and blends it with vanilla in a beautifully concordant manner. And the Kriek is probably best of all. The 2011 version I had was a perfect blend of sweet, sour, and oak, taking the brilliance of great beers like New Glarus' Belgian Red to a whole new level.
So what makes Cascade a place I truly miss, beyond the amazing beer? I suppose it's the inherent ephemeral nature of such an operation. You'll notice the years on the beer list in addition to the live barrel selections. Much of what makes the beer great is how time combines with the ingredients to make an ever-changing experience that is rewarding in different ways from year to year. If and when I do return to Cascade, much will likely be the same: There will still be sour beer, and there will still be many of the same styles. That said, it will never be the same as when we were there. Now, this is true of almost any place, but it comes to the forefront at Cascade. One year's varietal gives way to the next, and even the same versions will taste different for each year it ages. If you want to be reminded of the constant passage of time (and how that can actually be a good thing), Cascade is a good place to be.
HIKING
The best part of heading West is that no matter the location, there's probably good hiking nearby. Because we both love the outdoors, we went hiking every morning, save for the first jet lag-adjusting day. Friday morning we went as high as we reasonably could, hiking the Pacific Crest Trail around the tree line of Oregon's tallest point, Mount Hood. This eventually led us to the Zigzag Canyon, which not only gave us a great view of Mount Hood and one of its primary runoff channels, but also Mount Jefferson and all of the foothills and valleys to the South.
The next day we decided to take it a little easier, and went to Forest Park. While parks within city limits are generally not too exciting from a hiking standpoint, this one is the exception. We started just off of a highway, but after a few minutes were quickly emerged in a thick forest on top of a series of foothills above the Willamette River. There is a trail that runs the length of the park, but it's a pretty big park, so it takes a whole day to hike. Seeing as we had other things to do, we walked alongside for a mile or two, and then descended back down to our car.
On our final day, we attempted our most ambitious hike yet: Ascending a small mountain from a remote outpost. I say attempted because it didn't quite work out. The road leading to the beginning turned from a regular highway into a smaller highway into a gravel road. After a few minutes of going ten miles an hour in our Chevy Cruze and trying to avoid the larger rocks on the road, we decided not to risk it, and turned back. Luckily, we were able to pivot into something just as cool: A hike along (and up) the Columbia River Gorge. It was equal parts terrifying and exhilarating to essentially stare 800 feet straight down at the valley below. Once again the lesson is that the sheer number of awesome places out west assures that you will never be disappointed spending a morning wandering around, even if your first option falls through.
FOOD
Obviously, we ate at a lot of different places over our four days in Portland, so I'll just highlight a few of the top selections. Like in most urban areas, brunch seems to be a pretty big deal in Portland, so we headed over to Tasty n Sons (link) our first morning in town (we were able to avoid lines by going at opening time on a Thursday). The menu touches on pretty much every brunch option one could desire, but the Thursday special is chillaques, so neither of us could resist. The dish was a lovely blend of perfectly cooked eggs, green salsa, and all of the Mexican fixings. Neighboring tables had numerous other dishes, so I can vouch for the fact that everything they make looks good.
After our hike around Mount Hood, we were pretty hungry, so we headed to Lardo's (link) for a couple of big greasy sandwiches. They were so good that we headed back there a couple days later. I had a Korean pork sandwich and a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit. Both were wonderful, although the texture of the meat made it a little hard to eat in traditional sandwich form. Ad had the chickpea burger both times, and loved it. As she is a semi-expert in veggie burgers, I will trust her judgment. Like everywhere else in town, the East location we went to had a nice patio with plenty of picnic tables. They also had a Crux tap takeover, which allowed me to try a lot of their beers (more on that soon).
Finally, we tried Podnah's Pit (link) because nothing says good barbecue like Portland, Oregon. In all seriousness, everything we had there was quite good, including my plate of meat. The pulled pork was the best, but you can't go wrong with any of the options.
We also went to Sweedeedee, Taqueria Nueve, Apizza Scholls, and Ned Ludd. Every one of our meals was fine (although service at Sweedeedee was slow), but I don't feel the need to write about everything.
OTHER
So maybe you've heard that Portland is a weird, quirky city. While our four days there probably wasn't enough time to become experts on the validity of this, it seemed more like a typical urban area than I was expecting. I mean, we did see two people on bikes get in a verbal altercation where one them called the others' dog an asshole, but other than that the overall vibe was remarkably similar. There still are a lot of unique things about Portland, but more than anything it's just another really cool place in a nation full of them.
One thing that is quirky about Oregon is that it is illegal to pump your own gas. I knew this going in, but it was still weird having another person involved in the transaction. I could look up the stupid reason why this law is in place, but I'd rather just imagine that members of the state legislature saw Zoolander, and took its central message to heart.
I categorized all of the things we did under hiking, food, and beer, but there was one place we went that doesn't fit into those categories. Upon the recommendations of many, we headed to Powell's City of Books (link), a bookstore that takes up a whole city block in downtown Portland. Given that amount of space, the store has everything you could want, with three floors and many sections of books. There was a rare books room on the top floor complete with autographed copies and century-old books kept behind glass. There were old encyclopedias and other such collections for hundreds (or thousands) of dollars. And there were a few cute mishmashes of aisle and end-cap subjects:
BEER
So I saved the best for last. I was super excited for the culture of Portland as well as its surrounding wilderness, but let's not lie: The beer was the main draw. As the city with the most active breweries within its limits, Portland is one of the primary beer destinations in the world. Due to time and liver constraints, we were not able to visit all 88 breweries within an hour's drive. That said, I was able to visit ten of the most notable outfits, and also had enough selections from a couple of Bend's finest to be able to pass judgment. The most notable exclusion from this list is Deschutes. They are widely distributed at this point, so if beer's your thing, you should probably already know about them.
Of related note is that I have been considering writing a similar piece on all the local Columbus breweries. However, there are still some I need to visit, so that project will have to wait. The one thing I have done towards that end is create my own rating system, to use for that exact purpose. Instead of using a typical 5 or 10 point system that provides no specific direction, this system was made to help convey the necessity of visiting a particular brewery. The ratings are:
1 Star: Skip it
2 Star: Perfectly cromulent, visit at your leisure
3 Star: You should probably go there, if you know what's good for you
4 Star: LeBron-ish
I also allow for 1.5 and 2.5 ratings, because I can be of two minds on things and deciding is hard. Here is the list, presented in reverse order for dramatic effect:
12: Ecliptic Brewing (link) - 1 Star
Ecliptic is a relatively new venture, created by a long-time Oregon fixture who had a hand in many of Deschutes' most famous beers. All of their beers are named after heavenly objects, and their menu rotates according to astronomic phenomena. And the space itself is interesting, blending a bar, outdoor patio, and dining area nicely. Because of all of this, I really thought it was going to be one of my favorites. But it was not. A couple of the saisons were decent, but all of the hoppy offerings were failures. The Helix hoppy lager was the most prominent disappointment, as it supposedly was brewed with Citra, but didn't taste like it at all. Honestly, making a beer that loses track of probably the most pungent hop is kind of impressive.
11: Hopworks Urban Brewery (link) - 1 Star
This avoids last place only because Ad enjoyed her coffee stout. I'm not sure if it's because of the limitations of being organic-only, but there was something off with the yeast profile of each of the beers I tried. The Simcoe Single-Hop IPX was decent enough, but the weird sweetness in each beer made this place my least-favorite of the trip. Much like Ecliptic, the building itself was a good place to drink, although the stringent limits on tasters (you had to buy a set of either 9 or 15) was a bit onerous.
10. Laurelwood Brewing Company (link) - 1.5 Stars
Laurelwood elevates above the bottom two almost entirely on the strength of its Workhorse IPA, a Flower Power-type brew with enough piney backbone to let you know it's from the Northwest. Nothing else was particularly special. The milk stout (Hugh Heifer) was tasty but way too thin, and the seasonal IPA (Green Elephant) was nice and grassy, but a little one-note.
9. The Commons Brewery (link) - 2 Stars
Commons wins points for its setup in an old warehouse-type building, and the lovely smell coming from the cheese stand within the brewery. They also make some fairly interesting beers, focusing on a lot of farmhouse-type offerings. Their spring seasonal, Myrtle, was probably the most interesting as it tasted strongly of lemonade, while retaining enough of the malt and the funk to remain balanced. Everything else nicely reflected the French and other European styles the brewery aimed to recreate.
8. Hair of the Dog Brewing Company (link) - 2 Stars
Hair of the Dog is, I believe, the oldest brewery on this list, having existed since 1993. And boy, do their beers taste like it. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It's good in that most offerings display the expertise and precision that two decades should produce. Their most famous beer (Adam) is a fine example of this, mixing chocolate notes into a dark ale that is amazingly smooth for 10%. It's bad in that some of the beers (specifically the Blue Dot DIPA) are very old-fashioned, and thus not all that interesting. It's tough to give Hair of the Dog just two stars, as it feels like an essential part of the Portland beer scene. That said, there's so much else going on that it got lost a bit in the shuffle for me.
7. Gigantic Brewing Company (link) - 2 Stars
Gigantic is the first hop-dominated brewery on this list. You can tell this quickly upon visiting, as all three of their year-round beers are of the IPA persuasion. While all of those were fine, I found the one-off beers to be a bit more interesting. Passion Playa was a nice little passion fruit sour that went well with the warm day. Smoove Operator, an oatmeal APA, was my favorite of the bunch. If you squint hard enough, the mix of flowery nose and malt body tastes a bit like Surly's Abrasive. The bar inside the brewery is pretty small, but it opens into a nice outdoor area in the summer. Unlike the predominant urban settings for Portland breweries, Gigantic's location resembles that of your typical Ohio brewery, smack dab in the middle of an industrial area.
6. Migration Brewing (link) - 2.5 Stars
We almost missed Migration, but luckily, we squeezed it in on our last day. Migration has, like pretty much all the other breweries at this point, a really nice space with plenty of outdoor seating. As for the beer, a couple of their hoppier offerings were quite good. The Luscious Lupulin was a nice Simcoe-y IPA, while the seasonal 503 IPA found an interesting place in between the silkiness of Nelson and the pine-ness of some of the C hops (a la Modern Times' Blazing World). Nothing else stood out, although the porter was pretty solid.
5. Crux Fermentation Project (link) - 2.5 Stars
The first of two breweries on the list from Bend, Crux is probably one of the most hyped breweries coming out of Oregon. We were lucky enough to encounter them on some bar's tap lists as well as at a tap takeover at Lardo's. Half-Hitch (their DIPA) is the most infamous of their offerings, but I was pretty mixed on it. Good high-gravity beers featuring Mosaic hops are possible (Great Lakes' Chillwave really impressed me this year), but the booze and the malt overrode the hops too much for me. Everything else was hit-or-miss with their Outcast IPA being the most interesting and focused of the bunch.
4. Breakside Brewery (link) - 3 Stars
Now we enter the realm of the truly excellent. Breakside gained a bit of fame when they won the gold medal in the IPA category at the 2014 Great American Beer Festival. After sampling no fewer than six of their IPAs (they had a deal that day....saw me coming), I can say that the fame is deserved. Their award winning IPA is quite delicious, but I was even more impressed by the range their other beers showed. Tropical Fruit Salad was billed as tasting like Sunny D (and it did), but it still retained enough malt and hop character to make it a (somewhat) balanced beer. Back to the Future was a nice use of the New Zealandy-tasting Azacca hop. Finally, the Session Double IPA was probably a bit too cute, but perfectly pulled off the light mouthfeel/complex flavor combo that the paradoxical name suggests. We visited their northern location which....was a nice bar with an outdoor patio. Stop me if you've heard that before.
3. Upright Brewing (link) - 3 Stars
Upright is different from the other Portland breweries in that they do not have a nice bar and a patio. They physically can't, because it's a basement.* It's basically Gus Fring's super-lab without the laundry facility overhead:
*Thanks to my wife for following me into a basement to drink beer on a sunny, 80-degree Saturday.
In spite of the (awesome) humble surroundings, Upright is just about as good as anything in Portland. The brewery specializes in the saison/farmhouse realm, with their main line of such offerings named simply the number corresponding to the original gravity of the beer. I had a Seven, and Pinot-barrel-aged Four, which were both splendid. My favorite was probably Four Play, a version of the Four aged in oak barrels with both brett and lactobacillus. The result was a perfect wheaty, sour, funky, oaky beer that represents everything awesome about Upright.
2. Boneyard Beer (link) - 3 Stars
Boneyard, the other representative from Bend, is pretty much the pinnacle of what a hop-focused brewery from the Pacific Northwest should be. Every variety of IPA was great in its own unique way, so if you see something from them on tap, you can't go wrong. Even so, a couple of them stood out as the best of the bunch. One was Notorious, an 11.5% monster triple IPA. The problem that can befell many such beers is that the alcohol dominates everything else, and the end product turns into a so-so barleywine. That was not the case with Notorious, as the alcohol played nicely with everything else, creating one of the smoothest high gravity beers I've had. The other favorite was the Bone-a-Fide APA, which was (and this is not an exaggeration) Zombie Dust with a better nose. Citra hops are probably overused at this point in the craft beer zeitgeist. That said, some of the very best beers are able to use it to create a complex, fruity, amazing beer. In spite of the dumb name (or maybe because of it?), Bone-a-Fide is one of those beers.
*We found Crux, Boneyard, and a few other things (like Pliny the Elder) at some of the local beer bars, each of which had it's own unique personality. Bailey's is a good downtown location, Belmont Station and BeerMongers are nice bottleshop/taproom combinations, and APEX (probably the best of all) is an awesome partially-outdoor beer garden. Fun note: this trip got me 10% of the way through the top 100 beer bars list.
1. Cascade Brewing (link) - 4 Stars
I'm reasonably good at living in the moment, but I'm even better at stepping back and thinking about the bigger picture. This means that as our time in Portland progressed, I would often find myself thinking "how truly enjoyable is all of this?" Given that my answer to that question would inform the possibility of any future trips to Portland, the question really was "is this something that is necessary to my living life to the fullest?" Time and money are necessary for any trip to Portland, but those are limited things, and those limitations will only increase as time goes on. Will my ever more scarce resources worth it?
As this was in the back of mind for most of the trip, I had a suspicion that this was leading me to pick out the negatives and highlight those to the detriment of my enjoyment of the present. I was spending too much mental effort convincing myself that my experiences in Portland weren't good enough to miss or to long for when I returned home. Ad and I had a conversation about our overall enjoyment of Portland near the end of the trip, and while we were being honest in our agreement that it didn't quite stack up to our favorite places (San Diego, Madison, Vermont, RMNP), that conversation served to gloss over the sad feelings of having to soon leave everything behind.
Of course, that I chose this section to write about this implies that there was something special about Cascade (that, and the "1" next to it's name). Cascade is a nice enough place, with a large bar, many tables, and a spacious outdoor area. And of course, the beer is amazing, with virtually every selection offering something unique and special. The Apricot is probably the most perfect blend of sour and the fruit at hand. The Blackcap Raspberry tastes basically like raspberry juice (in a good way). The Strawberry takes the sweeter side of the fruit and blends it with vanilla in a beautifully concordant manner. And the Kriek is probably best of all. The 2011 version I had was a perfect blend of sweet, sour, and oak, taking the brilliance of great beers like New Glarus' Belgian Red to a whole new level.
So what makes Cascade a place I truly miss, beyond the amazing beer? I suppose it's the inherent ephemeral nature of such an operation. You'll notice the years on the beer list in addition to the live barrel selections. Much of what makes the beer great is how time combines with the ingredients to make an ever-changing experience that is rewarding in different ways from year to year. If and when I do return to Cascade, much will likely be the same: There will still be sour beer, and there will still be many of the same styles. That said, it will never be the same as when we were there. Now, this is true of almost any place, but it comes to the forefront at Cascade. One year's varietal gives way to the next, and even the same versions will taste different for each year it ages. If you want to be reminded of the constant passage of time (and how that can actually be a good thing), Cascade is a good place to be.
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