Ugh, I hate this kind of news. John Foyston is reporting that Oregon’s first organic brewery, Roots Brewing in Portland, is closed. Owner Craig Nicholls also founded the North American Organic Beer Festival, but no word on the festival’s fate. Check out the full story in the Oregonian.
This is just disappointing. A writer at the Portland Mercury, Patrick Alan Coleman, missed the point of the Beer City USA poll by Charlie Papazian and the Brewers Association and instead took things negative with this missive.
Normally I wouldn’t be concerned about something from the Examiner. But Asheville, NC? We’ve got to take them down. We’ve got more “beer city” in the backwash at the bottom of our pint glasses than can be found in all of their pubs and breweries.
Dude, you should be ashamed of yourself. This is supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be about civic pride, beer pride, beer community pride and building up support for your hometown. It’s not supposed to be about tearing down the other communities. It’s not about insulting other communities. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you’ve never even been to Asheville or probably any other beer towns, either, because you come off like a provincial bigot. You’re not helping your community. Both towns have a lot to offer, beer-wise. It goes without saying that I’m a huge fan of Portland and have many, many friends in the Rose City. And I hope they all do the right thing and denounce you for being so antithetical to what makes the broader craft beer community so great: the sense of community that’s bigger than any one town.
Here are some of my photos from this year’s Oregon Brewers Festival Parade that marches through Portland to the OBF where a ceremonial keg is tapping, officially opening the festival. This year Portland mayor Sam Adams joined the parade and also tapped the keg. I’m still getting the hang of using Flickr, but here is a slideshow of the parade. Let me know what you think of the new photo format here. You can also the see the photos full screen at the Flickr Slideshow Gallery.
While there are plenty more photos to share from this year’s Oregon Brewers Festival, I wanted to get out this fun little video I took from the end of the OBF parade on Thursday morning. After marching to the festival, a little ceremony takes place to officially open the festival. First, this year’s brewery host, Full Sail Brewing, hands over the ceremonial keg hammer to next year’s sponsor, who will be Deschutes. The video begins with Gary Fish, owner of Deschutes, accepting the hammer and then handing it over to Portland mayor Sam Adams so that he can tap the keg. Be sure to watch the video at least through to the tapping.
To view it larger, visit the YouTube page.
Alan Sprints, who owns the wonderful Hair of the Dog Brewery in Portland, Oregon, was inspired by the recently posted beer cake recipe to share his mother’s amazing beer cake, which she made for FredFest. According to Alan, “it [was] not made with Beer, but it tasted great with Beer.” Although there’s no recipe, he did share the secret of its construction. “It was made out of 20 chocolate and lemon cakes stacked over a wooden dowel.” Yum. Thanks, Alan.
Today at 3:00 p.m. (left coast time), the online auction for FredFest begins, and will close on Sunday, also at 3:00 p.m.
Here’s some of what’s up for auction, the proceeds of which will be donated to charity. You can find more information about the lots at the Liquid Solutions Blog and the auction itself is at Liquid Solutions.
From the press release:
Beer aficionados across the nation will be reaching for their wallets this weekend when rare beers and vertical collections will be highlighted at the first-ever FredFest Online Beer Auction.
The auction starts at 3 p.m. PDT Friday, May 9 and begins to wrap up at 3 p.m. PDT Sunday, May 11. The auction is designed to run concurrently with FredFest 2008 — a celebration of the 82nd birthday of Fred Eckhardt, the Dean of American Beer Writers, which is taking place May 10 at Hair of the Dog Brewing Co., in Portland.
“FredFest started as a surprise 80th birthday party for Fred, but is coming back around in its third year as a fundraiser in the memory of fellow beer scribe and friend, Michael Jackson,” said FredFest co-organizer Lisa Morrison.
Each year, Eckhardt is asked to choose a charity for FredFest. This year, he chose Parkinson’s Resources of Oregon, a local affiliate of the National Parkinson Foundation. Jackson had been battling complications from Parkinson’s disease when he died last summer.
The first-ever FredFest online auction was the brainchild of Hair of the Dog owner Alan Sprints, Ben Love of Hopworks Urban Brewery and Matt Maples of Liquid Solutions bottle shop.
It’s for a worthy cause, so bid generously.
Portland’s Fred Eckhardt is a living legend, especially in his home city, having pioneered writing about and defining beer styles with his early book on the subject, The Essentials of Beer Style, published in 1989. A couple of years ago, Portland threw Fred a surprise birthday party for his 80th — called “FredFest.” It’s become an annual event, now in its third year. And this year, the charity event will raise funds for Parkinson’s disease in honor of fellow beer legend Michael Jackson, who passed away last August.
From the press release:
More than 15 rare and unique beers created by some of Oregon’s most celebrated breweries will be on tap at FredFest 2008. The event will take place from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, May 10 — the actual date of Eckhardt’s 82nd birthday — at Hair of the Dog Brewing, 4509 SE 23rd Avenue in Portland.
The beer menu is still being firmed up, but brewers are promising to pony up something special for the event. The number of beers for FredFest will increase from last year, according to co-organizer and chief beer wrangler Preston Weesner. Some of the breweries that already have committed to the event include: Hair of the Dog (with a special keg of Jim 07), BridgePort, Deschutes, Widmer, Hopworks Urban Brewery, Rogue and Firestone Walker.
Attendees will be treated not only to a rare assortment of hand-selected beers, but also light fare including pastrami cured with Hair of the Dog Fred ale and a birthday cake — complete with a round of “Happy Birthday” — for Eckhardt. Cheeses, chocolate, candy and even cereal will be offered in abundance so attendees can experience some of Eckhardt’s famed beer-and-food pairings.
Cost for the event is $50 in advance and includes a souvenir glass, free ticket for a raffle of bottled specialty beers and four hours’ of sampling, sipping and story-telling with Eckhardt. Admission is limited to 200 attendees. Judging from previous years, the event is expected to sell out quickly. Tickets are available through Pay-Pal. E-mail fredfest@comcast.net to purchase tickets.
Additionally, this year, a silent auction featuring bottles of rare beers running in conjunction with FredFest, allowing Fred fans across the country to be a part of Eckhardt’s birthday and the FredFest celebration and fundraiser.
As always, proceeds from FredFest and the related online auction will go to a charity of Eckhardt’s choice. This year, Eckhardt named Parkinson’s Resources of Oregon, the local affiliate chapter of the National Parkinson Foundation, as the featured charity in memory of his longtime friend and fellow beer writer Michael Jackson, who died in 2007 after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease.
What more could you ask for, great beer and a worthy cause.
John Foyston had a nice piece in the Oregonian yesterday about one of my favorite — and perhaps most underrated — beers to be poured at the Oregon Brewers Festival. It was certainly my favorite the year it appeared, 2006, and as this story attests, people are still talking about it. The beer is Ned Flanders, a sour beer based on the style Flemish Red Ale, of which Rodenbach Red and Duchesse De Bourgogne (another fave of mine) are perhaps the best known examples. I chose it as my buzz beer of the festival that year. Van Havig, then the brewer at Rock Bottom in Portland (and now a regional brewing manager) put quite a bit of effort into the beer, aging it in five different kinds of barrels and then blending it back together. Responding to a question from Foyston, Havig lays out the full story of this beer, and it’s a fascinating account filled with history and chutzpah.
Will the real Ned Flanders please stand up? Van Havig and his inspiration for Ned Flanders Sour Red Ale.
I want to be clear from the start. There are people who have been bashing the Boston Beer Co. for a long time for a variety of reasons. I’m not one of those people. I like Jim Koch and think he’s done more good than harm to promote better beer to an ever-widening audience of consumers. I think Samuel Adams Boston Lager is a fine-tasting, if somewhat unremarkable, beer. When choices are thin, I’ll happily drink one, which is something I won’t do with several other high-profile popular beer brands. And the specialty beers Jim has made include some really terrific beers that have truly stretched the imagination and the very definition of what beer is.
That being said, I think Jim Koch is getting some awfully bad advice. First there was the ill-conceived radio talk show stunt that Boston Beer was involved with which challenged a couple to have sex in a church. Many were not amused — though personally I could have cared less — and there was some public relations fallout from the incident. Now there’s a new flap that’s not doing Jim Koch any favors and I think the blame rests squarely with his advisors and their poor handling of it.
The story concerns Portland, Oregon’s new candidate for mayor: Sam Adams. No, not the long-dead patriot and signer of the Declaration of Independence. And not the historical brewer personage that the Boston Beer Co. appropriated for their own use in 1984. No, this Sam Adams has been around since 1963, or at least 21 years before the beer brand was trademarked. This Sam Adams is running for the mayor of beertown, Portland, Oregon. When current mayor, Tom Potter, who’s led the Oregon Brewers Festival Parade two years in a row, announced he would not be running again, popular City Commissioner Adams stepped up and announced his candidacy to be the city’s next mayor.
Two DJs from KEX News Radio 1190 in Portland, Dave Anderson and Mark Mason, registered the domain names www.samadamsformayor.com and www.mayorsamadams.com on behalf of the candidate and promised to give them to Adams provided he went on their show to discuss politics, which he subsequently did.
In the meantime, Boston Beer’s Intellectual Property Manager, Helen Bornemann, got wind of the web addresses and fired off a boilerplate cease and desist letter without, apparently, doing any research whatsoever or even picking up a phone to ask anyone about the domain names. I’m no lawyer, though I did work in a law office for eight years and I’m also married to one, but that strikes me as a pretty sloppy way to react. I know IP is something companies take very seriously and often vigorously protect, but a little fact-checking might have gone a long way toward keeping them from placing their foot so deeply in their mouth. The letter is up on the radio station’s website for all the world to see.
In the letter, she announced that they’ve been using the trademarks since 1984, to which the bemused mayoral candidate quipped. “I’ve been using it since 1963.” But Sam Adams the candidate is also concerned and his staff is talking with attorneys, too. Adams is already using the campaign slogan “Sam Adams for Portland Mayor” on his own website and it will likely appear on signs and bumper stickers. too.
According to an AP story, “Boston Beer’s Helen Bornemann said she didn’t know there was a real Sam Adams running for mayor when she sent the letter.” But she sent it anyway without bothering to find out. To me that’s a bully’s arrogance. It’s saying I must be right and you have to prove me wrong … or else. She further tries to excuse her behavior by claiming that “she feared someone was copying the advertisements” that Boston Beer Co. ran years ago, a marketing campaign called “Sam Adams for President.” Feared, but again didn’t try to find out any facts to support those fears.
So okay, she made a mistake. I could almost excuse her behavior up to this point as being over zealous in trying to protect her client’s or her company’s interests (it’s not clear if she’s a lawyer but if not she’s clearly consulted with one and cites specific law in her letter to the radio DJs). But then she pours gasoline on the fire with this statement, again from the AP story. “Bornemann said she’s willing to discuss Adams’ use of his name on his Web sites ‘probably for the length of the time the election is being held.'”
Oh, really. She’s “willing,” is she, to talk about whether Sam Adams should be allowed to use his own freaking name in his own campaign website as he runs for mayor of a prominent American city? How magnanimous. How insulting. Oh, and after the election she may not allow him to be able to continue using his own name? This is an excellent example of how to get yourself some very negative PR. I don’t think it’s even about a strict interpretation of law, it comes down to how the public — your potential customers — view your actions. And the city of Portland is not amused.
If you didn’t know, the state of Oregon has already had a somewhat tenuous relationship with the Boston Beer Co., ever since they had another contract brand that they marketed under the name Oregon Beer Co. in the mid-1990s To be fair, I really liked the Blackberry Porter they made, but Oregonians were not particularly thrilled with having their own beer prestige co-opted by a beer that — and somebody correct me if I’m not remembering this correctly — wasn’t even brewed in Oregon. Boston Beer had, of course, a legal right to use the name but it struck many people at the time as somewhat dishonest.
There’s already a backlash and calls to boycott Samuel Adams beer over this latest gaffe. In addition to the AP story that’s been picked up all over the place, such as in the Washington Post, there’s also been local coverage in the Oregonian and Willamette Week. Naturally, it’s Portland bloggers who are setting the tone and calling for boycotts, such as Rusty’s Blog, who’s following it day by day. Today, for example, his post is called Sam Adams Post, Day 3. Others include Beervana, Blue Oregon, The Champagne of Blogs, Jack Bog’s Blog, Metroblogging Portland, Witigonen and the ZehnKatzen Times. But my favorite take on all this is from Isaac Laquedem’s blog, who advances the novel theory that Boston Beer Co. may be in violation of local election laws (as set forth in ORS 260.695). The way the election laws are written it’s possible to interpret them so that if they continue to sell the Samuel Adams brand people could confuse the bottles as a political endorsement for the candidate. Hilarious.
I think when all the dust settles, this will be remembered and perhaps even taught in business schools as a stellar example of how and why not to react to a potential IP threat in a kneejerk fashion. Yes, Bornemann will cling to the excuse that she was just doing her job and perhaps she even has a leg to stand on, legal-wise (though I sort of doubt it), but had she exercised even a modicum of common sense and tried to learn something about the true nature of what she perceived as a threat to her company’s trademark, she could have avoided creating a PR nightmare that will doubtless continue to haunt her company for years to come, especially in Portland, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. How much ill will has been created and how much business will Boston Beer ultimately lose over that simple failure to investigate and the bullying tactics of their IP Manager? Obviously, that’s hard to say, but I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes come performance review time.
UPDATE: Yesterday the Wall Street Journal Law Blog dubbed this issue the Trademark Dispute Of the Day: Sam Adams v. Sam Adams. Apparently they’ve received a call from a spokeswoman for Boston Beer claiming “they never had an issue with the mayoral candidate using his name but they do have an issue with the radio station using Sam Adams for its own business purposes.” Hmm. That’s new. Sounds like revisionist backpedaling to me. Let’s not forget that Boston Beer’s IP Manager, Helen “Bornemann said she’s willing to discuss Adams’ use of his name on his Web sites ‘probably for the length of the time the election is being held.'” That certainly goes beyond the scope of merely having an “issue with the radio station using Sam Adams for its own business purposes.” And while we’re at it, what exactly would be the “business purposes” that Boston Beer is so worried about? Given that the word “mayor” is in both domain names and there really is a person named “Sam Adams” who’s running for and quite possibly will be elected mayor (and I’ve got to believe all this publicity will give Adams a big assist in getting votes) it’s hard for me to understand their concerns. Wouldn’t a reasonable person conclude that the first domain name would be used by the mayoral candidate and the second by mayor Adams (assuming he’s elected) and not for any nefarious “business purposes.”
With the roller coaster I’ve been on lately, I never had a chance to finish posting photos from this year’s Oregon Brewers Festival at the end of July.
So without further ado, here’s three — count ’em, three — days of fun at the Oregon Brewers Festival that even includes singing watermelons, sort of.
To see the photos from this year’s Oregon Brewer’s Festival, visit the photo gallery.