Tag Archives: beer

What’s a Bikes, Beer, and Airbnb Travelogue?

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I recently learned that I was not selected to write a beverage column for a local publication. However, as the “close runner-up,” I wanted to post the sample column, and include a few photos, for my blog readers. It’s also a great tie in for my upcoming library program about last year’s vacations to Oregon and Asheville, North Carolina. Come to the Fairhope Public Library at 2 PM, on January 29th to see pictures, hear stories, and learn about my airbnb experience. Although we will not be doing any Day Drinking, I’ll be giving away some souvenirs during and after the program.

2014: The Year of Magical Drinking

On Christmas, I was pouring tastes and offering pulls from my bottle of Lucky Buddha, a beer my brother Mark brought for the festivities.

As I took a sip of “Enlightened Beer,” I pondered. Then I began to count my 2014 blessings. It really was a year of magical drinking.

Portland, Oregon (Or-y-gun)

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Ten days of vacation in a walkable, bike-able city like Portland is pure bliss. And that’s before we even had anything to drink. Portland’s called Beervana for a reason. We were within walking distance, less than a mile, to about ten breweries/tap rooms, six distilleries and a few micro coffee roasters. I’ve written about Oregon before, but here are a few places not to miss.

Base Camp has great beer and the best water dispenser. The water line empties into a keg that’s hanging on the wall and you tap your own water.

Cascade Brewing is a sours only brewery. These tart barrel aged beers use wild yeasts from the air, or left behind in aging barrels to help ferment the beer. The wild yeasts are unpredictable, and time consuming as many sours can take up to two years from barrel to bottle.

Oregon Brewers Festival 

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So many beers, so little space. Here’s my list of favorites with brewery, style, and a few choice words.

Anderson Valley, Summer Solstice, summer cream ale, Not your Father’s.

Boulder Brewing, Shake, Chocolate Porter, You can taste the cacao.

21st Amendment Brewery, Hell or High Watermelon, Wheat, a picnic in a glass.

While sitting with some people we met during the festival, drinking a Laurelwood Pale Pony India Session Ale, we witnessed a Portlandian moment. A man in a Darth Vader helmet was riding a unicycle and playing the bagpipes. He’s obviously doing his part to “Keep Portland Weird.”

As we were leaving someone was handing out samples of hop soda. The Proper Soda Company makes a crisp, refreshing, and thirst-quenching soda, and it’s made with cane sugar and hop extracts.

Where would a congenital below-knee amputee like me, go to get coffee around Portland? Why Stumptown, of course.

It was summer so I ordered an iced coffee, but this is Portland, where they’ve melded coffee and beer brewing techniques together. Stumptown’s cold brewed iced coffee is infused with nitrogen.

They also fill growlers of this nitrified coffee to take home. (Read my recent post on Fairhope Roasting here.)

Willamette Valley (Wuh-lamb-it, rhymes with damn it)

Susan and I left the city for the valley and stopped at the Sokol Blosser Winery. After sampling some very fine wines, bought a bottle of the 2013 Willamette Valley Pinot Gris, made in the Alsatian style with rich and spicy tropical fruits with hints of fig and grapefruit. We intended to take it home but on July 26, after a day of whale sightings and lighthouse climbing, we opened it on our balcony and watched the sun sink into the Pacific.

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Take a detour to Rogue Farms. There’s something special about seeing the hops budding and being near the ingredients that make it into my pint glass.

Asheville, North Carolina

Henry the VIII deemed hops “a wicked and pernicious weed,” when brewers began adding it to beer. The beers at Wicked Weed are amazing, full of hops and yet delicate as flowers. They have managed to fuse bitter hops with the grace of grains to create a complex medley of balanced brews. From floral aromas and drinkable session IPAs like “Feral,” to their dank, hoppy beast, “Freak of Nature,” a double IPA, the beers at Wicked Weed do not disappoint.

Do you know how fabulous it is to find a list of craft beers on tap at a concert venue? Asheville lives up to it’s nickname, Beer City, USA. The Green Man Porter was delicious, especially while singing and dancing, (well grooving) along to “Time of the Season,” by The Zombies, at The Orange Peel.

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On a trip to Birmingham (for the Y’all Connect Social Media Conference) I had time to visit the good people, at Good People Brewing. I sat at the bar and enjoyed my first Oatmeal Stout.

What’s better than a brewery and tap room? A brewery and tap room with the best BBQ two doors down. That along with some fine beers is what Avondale Brewing has got going on, especially with their saison. We ordered up some Saw’s Soul Kitchen and brought it back to the taproom. Trunks Up!

Gulf of Mexico

My sister Laurie was in town around the Fourth of July. Six of us piled into a Suburban to watch the Blue Angels air show over Pensacola Beach. I only had my five toes in the sand, but it was a hot day! For a tiny moment, a grain of sand in the hourglass of eternity, a Pepsi “made with real sugar” quenched my thirst.

Fairhope

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As the winning bidder for an Alabama Coastal Foundation Fundraiser, a group of us had a personal tour of Fairhope Brewing (celebrating their 2nd anniversary this weekend) from Head Brewer Dan Murphy. We were an inquisitive bunch and I seem to remember him saying something along the lines of it being one of the better tours he had given at the brewery. Dan walked us through the naming of each beer while talking up the tasting profiles of each ale. He gave us the scoop when he announced that the brewery was expanding their production and then showed us what was in store for the future. He had obtained several wine barrels to begin experimenting with sours.

The bottle of Lucky Buddha was returned to me, alas, empty.

Never one to let his little brother down, my brother Steve went to the fridge and poured me a glass of Blue Pants Chocolate Oatmeal Porter.

I can’t wait to sip what the future holds.

Tenders of Information, Libations, and Patrons

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The restaurant patio was quieter than the library. There was one woman sitting outside, with a dog lying by her feet. Sue and I walked into the bar at Cosmo’s in Orange Beach and quickly realized we were the only patrons inside. It was 3:30 on the first good beach day in about a week and we were greeted by several staffers. They set tables and did other chores in advance of the maddening red-skinned, owl-eyed tourist hordes that would descend in a few hours seeking liquids and a late dinner.

I had just gotten the news that a former staff member died. Jill was only 35 when “Her heart stopped.” I was shocked by it, and yet I really didn’t know her, outside the library. Except for the time that she almost ran me over in her black SUV shortcutting through the Greer’s parking lot.

It turns out Jill had problems, like the rest of us, though hers in hindsight were a bit more serious. When we got to the bar, I was feeling thirsty after a few hours on the beach, and yes, a bit confused and saddened by the news of her death.

Grabbing chairs in the middle of the bar, we sat down and Sue ordered a Pensacola Bay Raspberry, and I ordered a NOLA Hopitoulas.

We had great service, two bartenders.

“Cassandra,” in dark-framed glasses, was getting stocked up on new work shirts. She was also gearing up for her shift and put on this accoutrement for opening bottles. She attached two bottle openers to her body where a wrestler would rake an opponent with forearm shivers.

We noticed all the stickers about dogs around the bar and both women told us Cosmo’s and the owners’ other restaurant Cobalt are the names of their dogs.

“I’ve got a sticker that you’d love,” I said, in between fried shrimp sushi bites.

“Yeah, what is it,” Cassandra asked.

‘In dog beers, I’ve only had one!’ She laughed, not a patronizing laugh either. I like to believe it was a genuine, never heard it before guffaw.

Cassandra asked how our sushi was and talked about how she was going to learn to roll sushi, by her coworker at Cosmo’s.

“Are you going to get together at work sometime?” I asked.

“No, I’ll just have it at my place,” she said.

“Oh, a party,”

“A rolling party,” she corrected me, and we laughed at the unspoken marijuana reference wafting through the bar.

After some more good conversation and barroom banter we parted ways.

I kept thinking about the sticker on the ride home, and I decided to send it to Cassandra.

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It was only today, writing this card to our barkeeper, that I realized the bartenders and reference desk jockeys have a few things in common. I also sit or stand behind a bar and greet patrons. Librarians are servers too, but of books, information, and computer assistance. Good service, not textbook, but professional, the kind where you form a brief but satisfying relationship, is our aim.

Cassandra’s job is not much different than mine at the reference bar at the Fairhope Library. Some similarities and differences are capitalism, ID for legal drinking age, and food safety. The library is not in it to make money, your library card is your ID to get free stuff and to use the computers, and we allow you a safe place to surf the web, check Facebook, or write your resume.

Patrons come to us when they want to tell a story, a joke, or are simply lonely or looking for answers. Conversation seems to be the most important thing patrons crave. If nothing else, bartenders and reference staff should be good listeners. Sometimes it’s easier being friends with strangers. Telling the problem to someone often lifts a measure of the burden and remember, when you find a good relationship, work at it, don’t take it for granted.

My co-worker Jessica reminded me yesterday about Forrest Little, a former Fairhope Library guy, who died on Father’s Day weekend in 2013.

Why, in less than a year, have the following people died? Theresa Barrows. Roberta Long. Tinley Combs. Forrest Little. AJ Crochet. Michael Mannion. Jill. I’ve been the memory tender for some of them here on these pages. I write the stories for the living, so we can read, and remember, but the tenders of bars will never have all the answers. We don’t always know. Sometimes we can only listen.

Beer, Books, and Bras

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I brought home a massive book I had the library order about John F. Kennedy’s assassination, The Day Kennedy Died: 50 Years Later LIFE Remembers the Man and the Moment. I browsed through the book, the photos, and illustrations, but what really piqued my interest was the reproduction of the November 29, 1964 LIFE magazine that was included in the back. Now that we are past all the anniversary remembrances for a president who died three years before I was born, I was intrigued by how our products have changed in 50 years. This is not a trip down nostalgia lane, but an image comparison, a visual catalog if you will, to see how remarkable and unremarkable the changes to products have been over 50 years.