Breweries of Eugene: Sam Bond's

Another beautiful Sunday in the Willamette Valley. After helping a friend with some yardwork, it was time to relax over a beer or two.

I'd heard that Sam Bond's had soft-opened their new brewery's tasting space earlier in the week, so it seemed like the perfect time to check it out. Sam Bond's has been making their own beer since last year, and I've seen kegs on sporadically at various bars. I've seen that the Whiteaker bar also has a number of their beers on draft. But I wanted to be in a position to see the full range of their offerings, straight from the source, so visiting the brewery seemed like the best course of action.

Located at the corner of 8th and Ferry, adjacent to the courthouse, the brewery is set in what used to be a foundry specializing in gears, fire hydrants, and other such complex metallurgic creations. The space itself is an exercise in contrast - the tasting space and the bar are fashioned from attractive dark wood and clean, simple tile. Evidence of the facility's origins are everywhere - the bar's got clear insets which feature rusty tools and other mechanical components, and large rusted gears adorn the windows and walls. The ceilings are high, with unfinished beams supporting the roof. The roped-off brewery proper is set in a much rougher space. Worn walls, scuffed tile, and old bay doors house the shiny 10-barrel system, with a series of small fermenters lining one of the walls. Overall, it still feels very much like a warehouse - it's open, spacey, and a bit scuffed around the edges.

So, how does Sam Bond's beer fare?

From left to right: Alt, New IPA, Huakina IPA, Kolsch

The brewery had 11 beers on tap - a good number for an opening! A flight of four 4oz pours runs $5.

Here are my notes:

Pre-Klassic Kolsch: Light, effervescent, but heavily marred by an unfortunate flavor on the finish that reminds me of the aftereffects of Novocaine.

Dana's Alt: Roasty malt with a hint of chocolate. Finishes with a sharp astringent punch.

New (name will change) IPA: Good hop/malt balance, but the finish is rough where it should be smooth. Mediocre compared to other local IPAs.

Huakina NZ IPA: Extremely malty, with a good British biscuit-y flavor, but minimal hop presence.


I found the beer disappointing on the whole. I was planning on sampling 8 beers, but the first flight was so disheartening that I simply couldn't continue. From my homebrewing experience, I recognize some of the off-flavors and flaws as things that professional brewing systems should be able to control for. Maybe it's the recipes that need some tuning? Some breweries improve with time and experience, and I truly hope Sam Bond's is one of them. Still, even with beer like this, I have no doubt they'll do well with the students. The location is great for biking - right off the river path - and there's ample bike parking.

I can't in good conscience recommend Sam Bond's, at least not for now. I hear they're planning on adding a kitchen in the space and turning the brewery into a pub in the coming months. I'll watch their further developments with interest, and I'll check back in a couple months to see if things have improved.

Beer Bars of Eugene

Eugene has long had a rich and vibrant brewing culture, but the past several years have brought explosive growth - the number of active breweries has doubled, at least, and many more are in various stages of planning.

One happy circumstance of this growth has been the flourishing of local beer bars. What is a beer bar? I define it as a bar where the focus is on the beer being served. It might serve food or other beverages, but the reason it exists is to present and promote craft beer. Specifically, it's a bar that:

• Serves only craft beer, with no adjunct lagers on tap.
• Properly maintains their keg space and tap lines.
• Serves beer in style-appropriate glassware.

By these measurement, there are three major beer bars in the Eugene area: Sixteen Tons, the Bier Stein, and the Tap and Growler. (One might also count among these ranks the variety of new growler-fill stations springing up across town, but I choose to exclude these because they're not really bars. Sure, at some of them you can get a pint and drink it on-site, but these places have a primarily retail-based atmosphere).

The Bier Stein is the oldest of these bars, dating to 2005. From their initial 12-tap location on E 11th, they've expanded into the comparatively massive edifice on Willamette. The Stein is the standard for beer bars in Eugene. It has 2 bars with a combined 28 taps, seating for more than 100, and a staggering bottle selection of 1000+ beers. There's also a menu of pretty-good sandwiches and a monthly pairing menu tuned to a particular beer style.

But as good as they are, the Bier Stein's not perfect. The line to order beer or food often stretches from the counter to the door, and the prices have noticeably been bumped up with the move (At the old location, they usually offered a daily beer special for $3.50 a pint. Now you're lucky to find anything pouring for under $5). The text-based ordering system they've implemented seems to work as often as not. And it's always quite busy and loud, especially during peak times! 

Then there's Sixteen Tons. Opened in 2010, this beer bar sports a completely different atmosphere. It's much smaller - any more than 20 or so people and things start to feel quite crowded. I started frequenting them back before they had any taps installed. They had bottle tastings several nights a week, which was a great way to be quickly introduced to many breweries and styles of beer. Now they've built in 18 taps, and tend to feature beers that are a bit more off the beaten path. A quick glance at their current taplist features a stout with curry spices, a Belgian-style IRA, and a gueuze, for instance. They also have several hundred bottles to choose from, should the taps prove inadequate. The staff here is generally quite knowledgeable and experienced. The atmosphere tends to lend itself to smaller, quieter social gatherings. It's a great place to meet with a friend or two and play cards. Sixteen Tons has a couple downsides, too. They tend to keep beers on tap too long at times, sometimes rotating them between locations for over a month. Also, there's no bar sink at the High Street location, so all the glasses are shipped over from Willamette, and they're dried stacked on top of each other - leading to a sometimes funky and off-putting aroma in the glass.

The newest member of this club is the Tap & Growler, which opened last year. Located on 5th Street next to Cornucopia, T&G is doing things a bit differently. They have more taps than anywhere else in town - usually around 40 beers. But they go a step further by also having a couple dozen assorted wines and ciders available on tap - tap wine in particular being a fairly new phenomenon in Eugene. There's a daily happy hour in the afternoons for a buck off their already quite reasonable pint prices. The decor is attractive dark wood, there's a long bar, and garage doors that open to the street when the weather is nice. T&G also has a fairly substantial food menu featuring mostly upscale sandwiches and small plates.
Some caveats to keep in mind if venturing to T&G: the service can be slow, especially when there's a lot of folks at the bar. The food is inconsistent, too. And the beer selection, though large, isn't particularly varied.

So there you have it - three excellent choices for craft beer in Eugene. Between them, there's something for every beer lover. Get out there and enjoy a pint!

Brewday!

Today was brewday! It's been a while since my last brew session, so it felt really good to get back on the bandwagon.

I ended up making a Kölsch with some tweaks to the hopping. I'm going for something with a bit of lemon character and a touch more bitterness than the style generally calls for.

Brewing in the small space I inhabit is challenging - both in terms of the process (having to use a spotty electric range as the heating element) and the fermentation (being mostly at the mercy of the weather to maintain a good temperature).

I'm working on a method to fix the latter issue. Eventually, it's going to involve having a full kegerator with a dual-stage temperature controller, so I can keep everything working in a fairly strict range. To get started, I'm trying to pick up a mini-fridge big enough to hold a carboy and hoping I can calibrate its temperature control to something reasonably close to optimal fermentation. We've got a week of fairly cool weather on the way, so it's not a hugely pressing concern, but by this time next month, anything brewing is going to suffer immensely in the 90+ degree heat.

Still, the important thing is to always be brewing, right? That's my plan going forward!

Breweries of Eugene: Claim 52

Friday afternoon I had the luxury of finishing work early. I decided to fully leverage this time by driving out to West Eugene and stopping in to Claim 52's tasting space.

Founded in 2012, Claim 52 remains one of Eugene's smallest breweries. They're only open on Friday afternoons, but are well worth the stop - especially if you have business at the nearby post office or DMV.

I hadn't visited in several months, and quite a lot has changed. Most prominently, there's now a proper bar with about a dozen taps, as well as seating for 40-50. There's also a food truck here every Friday - the selection on my visit was a Vietnamese fusion of some sort.

But all of that is window dressing - how is the beer?

The tasting tray. Clockwise from top: Imp. Stout, Amber, IPA, Kolsch

There were seven beers on tap. A flight of 4 4oz pours runs $5 - a pretty good deal. Here are my notes:

Kolsch: The standout of the bunch. This is on tap everywhere in town, it seems, and with good reason. It's crisp and slightly citrus in aroma, with an excellent mouthfeel and a clean finish. A perfect summer beer.

Fine Line Amber: Heavy caramel/roasted malt/smoke character. Almost more like a brown in profile.

Insta-IPA: A very resinous, juicy, mouth-coating hop experience. Flavors of citrus dominate.

Lil' Angus Stout: Imperial, aged slightly in bourbon barrels, with added chocolate. By far the most ambitious of Claim 52's beers, this stout is, by the assistant brewer's own admission, still young and a bit hot. But it has much to recommend giving it a try - a wonderful chocolate flavor/aroma, a slight hint of woodiness, and a good bit of roast. It finishes quite light for such a beer.

Joe, the assistant brewer, chatted with me a bit, and directed my attention to the four barrels in the corner of the tasting room. That's where the rest of the stout is aging, sans chocolate. This might be something to watch for, several months down the road. My only worry is that the beer won't have the alcohol heft to support all the whiskey/wood flavors that'll come with time - it finished under 9%.

For the sake of completeness, the other brews on offer are their red, an apricot pale, and a wheat beer. I also counted a tap of Atlas cider (a ciderhouse getting quite a bit of buzz at the moment) and a tap of red wine.

Claim 52 makes good beer. The one thing I don't quite understand is what they're focusing on. The name and image evoke pioneer settlements of decades past, but it's not reflected in the style or branding of the beers. But for a brewery that's been around just a couple of years, they're making pretty impressive inroads locally. I look forward to seeing what they come up with in the months and years ahead.

It's Almost Brewing Time

With summer finally and firmly arriving, this young man's fancy is turning, once again, to making his own beer. I seem to have made an unconscious habit of starting to prefer lighter, more effervescent beers, perhaps resulting from the lovely sunny (and unfortunately, pollen-thick) weather we've been blessed with here in Eugene of late.

With that mindset, I'm considering my options in terms of the style I'd like to brew. I've narrowed it down to a handful:

• Kölsch
• Weissbier
• Saison

What's an eager, modestly-skilled homebrewer to do?

I'm taking a trip to Europe this fall, to experience - among other things - Oktoberfest in Munich. Regional German ales have therefore been often on my mind, and Kölsch is one that I've really enjoyed when I can find a good representative. It'd be interesting to have hands-on knowledge of Cologne's most popular locally-made beer. This has the benefit of being a pretty simple ale to make, though there's not much tolerance for flaws, should I run into complications with the brewing process.

Then there's Weissbier - some sort of ale made with wheat, also in the German tradition. Here I'd be curious to explore flavors beyond the traditional clove/banana dichotomy - maybe adding some dark malt, experimenting with different hopping, or something to that effect.

Finally, Saison. I've had a handful of good ones, locally, but nothing that's been precisely what I'm looking for - something neither too tart or too salty; with prominent estery flavors, but not dominated by them. My only recourse, it seems, is to attempt to make one of my own. I'm led to believe this won't be an easy task - saisons are notoriously finicky to create, and minor variations in the brewing process or fermentation conditions could have pronounced effects on the final product.

I've still got more thinking to do. I'll report back on brewday with my final decision.

Beer of the Moment: Session Lager

It's been an ongoing quest of mine to find a suitable post-workout beer. This is something I'd want to tuck into with relish after lifting weights or biking several miles. Ideally, I'm looking for something with the following qualities:

• Low to moderate alcohol content
• Highly flavorful, low bitterness
• Crisp, clean finish
• Reasonably priced

This has been surprisingly difficult. Most standard adjunct light beers would seem to work, but they have the misfortune of being uniformly awful-tasting. IPAs and pale ales tend to be a little too bitter and boozy, stouts and porters are generally a bit too heavy in the mouth.

On a whim, I decided to grab a case of Session Lager when I went to the store this past week. It was on sale, and the cute little stubby bottles are irresistible. Still, I thought I'd made a mistake - until I tried one.

Revelatory! The corn and rice sweetness that cloys in more mass-marketed lagers is here perfectly balanced against noble hops. Session Lager avoids the common pitfall of light lagers everywhere: being soda-like due to the overabundance of carbonation. Session's still plenty fizzy, but not too much so.

About the only knock I can give Session is that the packaging reduces the volume of each bottle to 11oz. A case of 12 is therefore equal to 11 12oz bottles.

Still, I think I've found the workout beer for me. Excellent work, Full Sail.

Eugene's Whiteaker Brewery Crawl

It isn't easy to keep up with all the breweries in the Eugene/Springfield area anymore, now that there're over a dozen of them, but thanks to the fairly recent construction in the Whiteaker neighborhood, it's now possible to visit the three biggest breweries in the area without need of a car.

I made such a trek last week, seeking insight into the current state of Eugene beer. Here's what I discovered:

My first stop was at Ninkasi's tasting room. The oldest and smallest of the spaces, Ninkasi's been pouring beer here since late 2009. There are 10 taps, showcasing the standard lineup plus a couple of specialties. After a bit of sampling, I decided on the Lux Helles lager. It's part of their Prismatic Lager series, and a welcome change from the usually hop-saturated ales for which Ninkasi has become well-known. I enjoyed my pint, but there are better lagers being made in town.

As a company, Ninkasi's philosophy from founding has been to expand as quickly and widely as possible. Just a few weeks ago, they finished construction on a new production brewery just across the street from the current one. Despite opening only 8 years ago, they're now able to brew 295,000 barrels of beer per year, easily putting them in the top 20 craft breweries in the country, at least by that metric. The difference in scale between Ninkasi and the area's other breweries is difficult to overstate. The next two biggest local breweries (Oakshire and Hop Valley) combined can produce around 30,000 barrels per year.

There has been - to my taste buds, at least - a marked decrease in Ninkasi's overall quality over the past few years, perhaps as a result of this aggressive expansion. Too, the caliber and number of new and one-off beers has been quite low; likely a necessary sacrifice to support their entry into a number of new markets every year. My trip here was the first time I'd been to the tasting room in over a year, and though I like the space and the bar staff, I probably won't be returning soon.

From Ninkasi it's just a few short blocks to Hop Valley's new outpost, and that's where I headed next.

Hop Valley got their start in Springfield, opening in early 2009. Until the coming of Plank Town last year, they had the distinction of being Springfield's sole brewery. As a brewery, Hop Valley takes quite a bit more risk. By way of illustration, even at the initial restaurant and pub, they're the only place I've been that consistently serves beer on both cask and nitro. They tend to experiment boldly with style, adjuncts, and other brewing factors. My fondest memory of visiting them in Springfield hearkens back to November 2011, when they released a Spinal Tap-inspired beer where everything was literally 'turned up to 11'. 11 malt types, 11 hop varieties, all coming out at 11% ABV and 111 IBUs. The beer was improbably delicious and remains to date the best beer they've yet produced. But I digress.

The new facility in Eugene, which opened last summer, clearly spared no expense in design and construction. Everything is attractive dark wood and big windows, with a clear view into the adjoining production space. In terms of seating capacity, I wouldn't be surprised if this new 'tasting room' surpasses the original restaurant, especially if the huge patio is taken into consideration. This is a facility built with a big ambition behind it.

Unfortunately, like Ninkasi, I feel the focus on the beer has been lost. It's true that no brewery in Eugene probably releases more single-batch beers than Hop Valley. Every time I go in there's usually a handful of new offerings, but the quality of late hasn't been up to their past standards. I sampled 3 new beers in an attempt to find something worthwhile, settling on a pint of dry-hopped red ale served on cask. It was the correct temperature and the hopping really shone through, but overall it was weaker than most of the standard lineup.

The standard lineup deserves a bit of discussion, as well. It's obvious the brewers have been doing a bit of soul-searching over the past year, as they've made a lot of tweaks to the flagship beers. I don't think they're yet settled on a good balance. Right now, the bottled collection includes 4(!) IPAs, a blonde, a red, a vanilla porter, a lager, and a pilsner. Hop Valley appears to be a brewery in transition. With a bit more focus in the kitchen and a more prudent selection in the brewhouse, they still have potential to be great.

Finally, Oakshire's new public house awaits, a little further east.

Oakshire got its start in 2006, like Ninkasi. But they've embraced a very different path, focusing on slower, more sustainable growth. Initially, the best way to try Oakshire's beers was by driving to the brewery's small tasting space on Saturdays. All that changed when the Public House opened last May in a converted warehouse. The new space is well put-together, but quite a bit smaller than I would have expected. Going there after work is generally an exercise in frustration, standing, and having friends claim seats ahead of time. It reminds me of the old Bier Stein location.

Thankfully, the quality of Oakshire's offerings remains both consistent and high. They've committed to releasing a new beer every Tuesday. Not all of these are unique - the new beer when I visited was a tea-steeped variation on their summer seasonal Line Dry Rye - but they're generally of outstanding quality. I tucked into a pint of Goatshed - a coffee-infused IPA that drinks something like a cross between Watershed and Overcast, managing to retain the best qualities of each. No easy feat.

So what's the takeaway from this crawl? I don't think there are any breezy answers here. I'd rather just enjoy a pint and a good conversation. But it's a testament to the explosive growth of the industry that none of this would have been possible 5 years ago. Even as recently as a year and a half ago, Ninkasi would have been the only option.

Visiting the Whit is never boring, and there's more excitement yet to come. Sam Bond's has started a small brewery, and I've heard talk of a distillery opening soon in the neighborhood. Regardless of preference, there's never been a better time to be a fan of craft beer in Eugene.