Our Life – Disappointed LOST Fans

June 2010

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Part 01:

Part 02:

One last thing before I post my comments is that if you don’t already know I recently returned from Glasgow, Scotland where I built a temporary pub that served homebrewed beer. I was acting as a type of curator, working with Scotland brewers to represent their beer as best I could and to offer their handiwork as a type of art. I can post images on the blog soon, but if you want a sneak peak, please visit glasgowbeerandpubproject.blogspot.com.

Okay, now for my comments on the New School’s Beer-Evangelism post:

I took some of Portland’s best to a bunch of homebrewers that I met in Scotland. They loved the stuff, and were very curious and delighted by the overhopped beers and CDA’s but I too have found that dropping a heavy beer or hop bomb (with someone who does not love beer the way I do) on the table is not good.

My dad, who never really liked beer, was very impressed by Laurelwood’s Free Range Red but only after he had done a taster tray at Laurelwood. There he got to see one brewery with about 8 different beers, different in color, taste, and weight. I think in terms of beer-evangelism, this is a good strategy. It’s too bad that they (the reporters) did not have time to tour a number of breweries to see the different ways Portland brewers set up their systems and the different beers they each produce.

But I think you’re observation regarding the challenging of your belief that everyone can enjoy the right beer is a good observation. I think everyone can experience moments of utopia, bliss, or whathaveyou but in different forms. For some, lifting weights is the be-all and end-all and they always want me to come lift weights or go running with them. I’ve tried it before and I can’t stand it. They tell me that I need to just keep doing it, that I need to break some sort of invisible barrier but I have come to the point where I just say no. I wouldn’t say that I’m being stubborn, I just don’t want to continue spending my time trying to find something that this other person has found when I’ve already found it in beer, books, or something else. The same might be true for others, just in reverse. They may not want to take the effort to understand the beer the way you have because they have already found something that gives them what they need.

I have needed to slow down on my posting to beerandscifi because I have been rethinking the site. I’m not ready to talk much about it, but I am ready to tell you all that I’m going to just sit on it for a while until I figure it out. I think some good time out will help me a lot. Lately, I’ve had this constant nagging in the back of my head that I need to post something, but I don’t want to just blindly post things without a secure direction, so that’s what I’ll be figuring out. With that said I just might post something if I’m really inspired, but I don’t want you to expect anything from me for a while. Please check back to see if/when I’ve started up again.

For now, you are welcome to follow me on twitter.com/beerandscifi where I have been quite active. It’s much easier to post things to that page because they are of less consequence. If I post stuff you aren’t interested on the blog, you’ll stop reading…but you likely will find little weird things more appropriate on twitter.

This is a preview of the labels I’m making for my Heather Ales. I made four 10 gallon batches of Heather Ale, using heather flowers, bog myrtle, and a little hops for their acidity (not flavoring). Each batch is slightly different.

I’m creating these for two different events: The Mythical State of Jefferson exhibition at Southern Oregon University’s Schneider Art Museum and the Open Engagement Conference in Portland Oregon (both are in May, 2010). The Jefferson show is about Northern California’s secession movement, democracy, and the idea that you can take political matters into your own hands. The Open Engagement Conference is focusing on the ins and outs of socially engaged art. I was mostly interested in the history of this beer. The ingredients were banned in 1707 by the Act of Union when Scotland was made part of Great Britain. The recipe was mostly lost until someone had it translated in 1986. The beer has helped usher in a huge interest in extinct or nearly extinct beer styles. It is also a great example of the diversity that geography brings to beer. This is part of the reason I see drinking quality craft beer to be a form of activism, and not just consumerism; by drinking craft beer you are saying no to mass produced, tasteless beer that relies on chauvinism to sell its products and instead you are turning to a drink that celebrates local business, geography, complex tastes, quality, and embraces a longstanding human tradition.

As an observer of the craft beer industry and a consumer of their wonderful products I have very much felt the collaborative nature of these businesses. It often seems like local brewers aren’t out to get each other and steal the market; they just want to make quality products and share them. This collaborative economy makes customers feel a part of the community and it grows interest so that no market stealing is necessary.

As far as the movie goes, everyone has given it a thumbs up, including the Brew Dude so don’t be deterred. It likely raises some important questions about the way industrial beer corporations do business and whether or not you, the consumer, want to support them. I also read this article, What Budweiser Can Teach You About Innovation, and I can’t tell if it’s a joke or not but it helps solidify my thoughts that the only innovative thing that’s happening in mega beer corporations is manipulative marketing.

“It’s not said often enough in this argument: we drink because we enjoy it, and the overall happiness that brings to society, I would suggest, vastly outweighs any disbenefits.”

And in reply:
“…If we are thinking about good beer we should also take an interesting in increasing and sharing the benefits while reducing easily identifiable harm – including those harms short of full bore alcoholism. When I think about this blog writing and the thousand of you who I am told read my posts every day I sometime wonder if I have encouraged anyone into a habit that is harmful rather than convivial. I am not satisfied to think of the statistics…”

The brewery had a whole load of new specials so I had to try out a few. I ordered the sample tray and had two different Alts, a Scottish Ale, Barleywine, an Amber, an IPA, and a Cascadian Dark Ale (Black IPA).

Here’s the chorus of one of the songs I don’t remember hearing, but I imagine would have been a good one:

OLD DUN COW
There was Brown, up-side-down,
Moppin’ up the whiskey on the floor.
“Booze, booze,” the firemen cried,
As they came knockin’ at the door.
Don’t let ‘em in ’till it’s all mopped up
Somebody shouted, “Macintyre!”
(Everyone shout) MACINTYRE!
And we all got blue blind, paralytic drunk
When the Old Dun Cow caught fire.

Greatest Sips from Hot Knivez on Vimeo.

This is a video from Hot Knives, a group of bloggers devoted to elevating vegetables and drinking good beer. They’ve put together a book that has 21 or so of their favorite writings from their blog. It looks like a pretty nicely packaged book and it comes with a URL where you get a mixtape of music that “goes well with the beers.” A pretty exciting package I think, combining good design, craft, and beer. They even have a review of the 20th anniversary Heather Ale from Williams Brothers on their site (which is one of the beers I most look forward to on an upcoming art trip to Glasgow), and it seems like their logo was inspired by Scotland’s BrewDog Micro Brewery.

My time was very, very short so I had a big list of things I wanted to see and didn’t get to most of them. This is often what happens when visiting NYC and I’ve learned before it’s best not to try to cram it all in, I just tried to enjoy where life brought me. Ahead of time I found four bars online that looked worth checking out: The Blind Tiger, The Ginger Man, D.B.A., and 4th Avenue Pub. I only made it to the Blind Tiger and it seems no one that I talked to knew about the 4th Avenue Pub. I was specifically looking for beer from Sixpoint Craft Ales, Kelso of Brooklyn, and  Captain Lawrence Brewery.

The first and only bar on my list I was able to make it to was The Blind Tiger, as it was relatively near the gallery where I spent most of my time. They had a list of about 30 beers. They had the Sixpoint IPA, so I ordered one of those. It was a well-balanced NW style IPA that would earn respect here in Oregon. They also had a good list of Winter Belgiums so I tasted a few of those. I’m a little upset at myself for not sampling the He’brew RyePA on Cask, but beer is very expensive in NYC. The nice thing is that the microbrews are just about the same price as the bad stuff. I liked The Blind Tiger, although the neighborhood was lame, it was surrounded by expensive clothing stores. I would not normally find myself in this part of town.

I was able to visit a couple other bars that friends invited me to. Each place had a handful of local beers, always one from Sixpoint (either the IPA or the Otis Stout, which is also good) and usually the Ommegang Witte from Cooperstown, NY which I very much enjoyed. Friends brought me to a place called Union Hall in Brooklyn which has an indoor bocce ball area. There I sampled the Kelso of Brooklyn Dark Lager and was very happy with that beer. Although the bar was just a little too noisy for my taste. I headed north where another friend took me to a place where I finally saw a Captain Lawrence ale on tap! I ordered that immediately. It was their Liquid Gold beer, a super friendly tasting Belgium Ale. I’m sure they make even better beers, but I knew I could go home happy after that.

On my last day I visited the Sixpoint brewery. They told me that an excellent beer bar in town is Spuyten Duyvil but I was never able to make it to that one. All my friends had heard of it though when I mentioned it. The Sixpoint guys said that directly across the street from that bar is a restaurant that sells their Vienna Ale, which they make exclusively for that place. The visit to the Sixpoint Brewery takes some time. It’s in a part of town called Red Hook and requires a lot of subway transfers and then about 30 minutes of walking. But it was worth it. Check this place out:


The guys in the brewery were very hospitable. After showing me the brewery they took me upstairs to sample their beers. They sent me home with a bottled Wheat primed with honey, and a Wormwood Ale. Looking forward to that. They don’t bottle commercially though so you do have to go to NYC at this point.

Turns out these guys are running at full capacity and are looking to expand. It’s easy to see why. There are millions of people in NYC and only a handful of places making good beer. Sixpoint was easy to find but the other beers weren’t as easy. I think there is a room for a lot more beer in NY and I’m surprised that it’s not brimming over with beer. If Portland, with 2 million people can have 30+ breweries with 7-10 more opening up soon, then NY can handle a few more as well. The great thing is that opening new breweries is not necessarily a competitive business move, it really gets the locals further interested in local beer and helps grow a more sustainable and local-minded community.

The movie is technically not a science fiction, but really it fits right in. It is both a pre and post-apocalyptic look into our world. Herzog asks questions about why humanity feels the need to control other animals and nature and to put our fingerprints on everything in the world. He assures us that, according to popular theory, nature will not allow humanity to live on this planet forever.

In another scene we see someone who used to be a linguist. This person says that it is possible that 90% of languages will be extinct in our lifetime. (I actually have a friend who, as an art project, teaches people the alphabet of a dying language – her website is at Daikons.com). Herzog says, “In our efforts to preserve endangered species’ we seem to overlook something equally important. To me it is a sign of a deeply disturbed civilization where tree-huggers and whale-huggers in their weirdness are acceptable, while no one embraces the last speakers of a language.”

At one point Herzog has researchers watching the doomsday creature-feature “Them” (the one with the giant ants) saying the film “express[es] grave doubts about our long-ranging presence on this planet. Nature, [the movies] predict, will regulate us.” In the very next scene we see images of single-celled creatures found by Antarctic divers displaying what Herzog calls a display of intelligence.

This movie was challenging in a way that I’m not sure I can describe yet. It is quiet and simple, yet in its simplicity it is haunting. There are, of course, beautiful landscape and underwater shots, but the movie is more about the actual infiltration of the last remaining wilderness. I highly recommend it for any science fiction lover.

I’ll be reading through 2 books and posting my thoughts on Twitter. Please follow me and forward me to your friends.
The books are:
1. (Science Fiction) The Best Short Stories of J.G. Ballard
2. (Beer) Fermenting Revolution: How to Drink Beer and Save the World by Christopher Mark O’Brien

The Fermenting Revolution I will review on this blog after I’m done reading it. I should be clear that the book was donated to me for review. I asked the publisher for the book because, from what I could tell, the content seemed to match my thoughts that I express on this blog (but not always so succinctly) that good beer is an agent of social change and that good, local beer inspires greater community and helps builds interest in small business. I look forward to reading it and I will be fair in my review.

Now, for a tangential note (this may seem random but I think I need to start talking about it):

I’ve been calling my little homebrewing adventure “Slow Beers” but am not totally certain about this name. I don’t want people to confuse it with the Slow Foods Organization but I do like the name because it subtly encourages leisure, rest, and relaxation as a form of social productivity. We’ll see how it goes. I consider the homebrewing to be a part of my field research into Oregon beer culture, something that I participate in quite frequently. I’m very interested in how Portland has established itself as this mega beer city, with 30+ breweries and brewpubs in the city-proper. and 9 more breweries opening up in the next few months. I’ve made recent visits to California and while they are most definitely brewing outstanding beer there, the beer community is not as obviously connected and close as it is here. And we have breweries doing some pretty amazing things: all the organic breweries in town, the theater pubs, Upright recently made an oyster stout, we’ve got breweries making beer from old and rare recipes, we just had the yearly Holiday Ale Festival which has 60+ beers made specifically for the festival, Lompoc released 7 winter beers a couple weeks ago and there’s much much more happening. I mean things are booming here and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

I’ve been exploring Portland’s beer culture with many of my art projects and I finally have many of these up on my main website at ericmsteen.com. As a professional artist I’m interested in the ability beer has to create and grow communities and groups of people, how it affects local business, and how it brings people into a greater understanding of their city or locale as a rich social site. What happens when a large number of breweries begin promoting their beers but aren’t asking their customers to get drunk, what happens when a whole city establishes local pubs as social centers, and what happens when people gain a greater understanding of a drink that has been a part of mankind’s history (in various forms) for thousands and thousands of years.

Homebrewing is one avenue of exploration for me. I have a small group of people that show up to learn about beer making with me (not that I’m an expert, we learn together) and we taste different beers and we participate in Portland’s offerings. Group members buy the beer for $1 bottle which is just a little more than cost so I’m actually paying for what I’ve called my field research. I encourage all artists to find ways to get sponsorship of some kind because research and exploration can become expensive in any field (painting, sculpture, etc). My group “buys-in” becoming supporters of my art and research and yet receive a gift for about the same price as (and often less than) the cost of buying beer in stores.

This is exactly what I feel when I visit these forests. My times in the Redwood Forest are some of the most memorable and inspiring I’ve ever had. When I am there I become quiet, realizing that my busy-ness and my striving to become important is not as important as I perceive it. My place in this world is not the center, and I am much less important than I have thought. But this is not a bad thing, it brings me to become less selfish, more caring, and more compassionate of a person. The joys of Friluftsliv.