Portland On Nitrous

To me, Portland cannot be any more famous for anything than for that of her beer. Her fine brew brings to this nation the finest concentration of hops per capita than any other city on God's beautiful hop-filled green earth. To many Portlanders, present company included, we see it as our duty to celebrate our good fortune by partaking and critiquing the fruits of the labors of our Portlandian brethren. By this, I mean consuming crafted beer created on the lands in which we reside.

Erika and I personally enjoy visiting many of the breweries in not only Portland, but Oregon as well. There are plenty of good ones. There are some not so good ones as well, but each one has been worth whatever trek we have made to get there, as a fresh mediocre brew from the source will top that of any mass-produced, internationally distributed piss-beer. For example, we had dinner at a McMenamins this evening, a luxury many Portlander's overlook and often take for granted. McMenamins has a fine selection of great beer, the wheat of which I crave and order regularly. They don't distribute, though, so you have to be aggressive if you want to take anything home, and their oversaturation of restaurant locations in the Portland metro area has, to a degree, decreased some of the exciting appeal of trying something fresh and new.

Since there are so many microbreweries here in Portland, one would think that any beer-related activity would be a refreshing and educational event for even an experienced life-long (well.. almost) Portland beer consumer like myself. This is sadly not the case.

A friend invited me to attend a focus group for one of the major beer players in town this week, in which I happily accepted. It's hard for me to resist an opportunity to participate in an open conversation about one of my passions where a major Portland brewery will consider my feedback. Hopefully they will take it seriously, as my comments about Widmer Hef being a breakfast beer drew only laughter.

During this session, I learned that many Portlanders were not born in Portlandia, which is fair, I guess. About 10% in attendance were lifers. This is an attractive place, so I pass no judgement. What concerned me was the attitudes towards people who live and work within certain regions of the city such as Beaverton, Hillsboro, or the Pearl, and how they cast judgement upon us based on a preconceived stereotype and a series of blanket statements that got passed handily around the room. These harsh words were then also used to describe the major Portland brewery in discussion, with references and comparisons to minivans, BMW's and sell-outs. How dare you throw stones at this city's best IPA.

My disdain for these heretics was simply more fueled by their own self-proclaimed label of "Beer-Snob." And while we native life-long Portlanders drink the yuppie beers, these stone-throwers avidly tout their Pabst and Sessions and tell me I drink my IPA so I can look wealthy. Before I would allow myself to stereotype anyone, or start my own rant about the Hipster plague that has toileted our fair city with a false-sense of cool, I realized that we were there to talk about the beer. Yet no beer-snob spoke of anything European, ignoring the heritage of the beverage. No beer-snob even spoke in detail of style selection, incredients, or technique. Instead, the concentration turned to bashing the Widmer's and Henry's for selling out. God forbid they make a buck so that we can keep drinking their beer.

I can only hope that one day we revert away from what we have become -- the standoffish, cliquish city where it is hard to make friends. Though, its probably just me, because Indie and Hipster is the new Jock, and the geek is still geek, unless she has black hair and square glasses. Some people here may never really see me for who I really am, and they may never taste our beer for what it really is. Maybe that is Portland's best-kept secret. post a comment {1}