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If you have any contact with Portland's brewing world, you've
probably heard of the Oregon Brew Crew. Called, modestly,
a homebrewing club, they do a lot more than brew up five-gallon
batches of beer in the basement. You may have seen them
around town, with brew kettles boiling, as they demonstrate
the process at beer festivals or on May 5, National Homebrewing
Day.
Behind the scenes, the club's more than 120 members take
on the Herculean task of organizing hundreds of volunteers
for the Oregon Brewers Festival and Spring Beer Fest. They
help organize and judge at local homebrewing competitions,
including the Rose Festival Homebrew Contest held at Nor'Wester
Brewing. And, if you've ever ordered a pint of Collaborator--a
beer produced jointly by the Brew Crew and Widmer Brothers
Brewing that's available at area bars, including The Rose
and Raindrop, Dublin Pub, and Widmer Gasthaus--you've even
tasted their beer.
Things weren't always so active for the club. In 1980,
members started meeting at the Cartwright Brewery, the first
(and now-defunct) Oregon micro formerly located at Southeast
Sixth Avenue and Main Street, to discuss beer and brewing.
At the time, it may have seemed an obscure pastime; the
chief beer debate raging across America was between "tastes
great" and "less filling." No one had ever heard of the
weird beers the Brew Crew was interested in--except maybe
the guys at Cartwright, and they brewed pretty bad beer.
Membership at meetings hovered in the single digits. There
just wasn't much interest in good beer. Of course, it didn't
take long for that attitude to change. The rise of microbrewing
was just around the corner, due in part to groups like the
Brew Crew. Especially in Oregon, brewing found especially
fertile ground, and many people who started out as hobbyists
ended as professionals. Over the course of nearly two decades,
the Brew Crew's membership, which tends toward men, featured
some well-known names: Rob and Kurt Widmer, Fred Eckhardt,
Alan Sprints and Doug Henderson.
When I met with members of the venerable club at The Rose
and Raindrop to discuss their activities, I asked, now that
good beer was as common as rain, how had their focus shifted?
As I listened to them describe all the irons they had in
the fire, I began to wonder--when do these guys have time
to brew? Don Rutledge, the current president, admitted that
the time he could devote to actually making beer had dropped
off sharply. He seemed to speak for many when he said, "Homebrewing
is still a huge part of my life--just not the brewing part
of it." In fact, Bob Brewer (yes, that's his real name)
added, that probably wasn't uncommon. Due to busy lives
and other activities in which the Brew Crew are involved,
the time-consuming brewing process sometimes gets squeezed
out. "Probably one-third of our [members] don't even brew."
If this sounds like a paradox (and it did to me) things
became clearer as members began to discuss the connoisseurship
element of homebrewing. Scott Sanders, who created the recipe
for the Collaborator Brown Ale we were drinking, offered
some explanation: "Everybody thinks of the Brew Crew as
just a homebrew club, but actually beer appreciation is
a major focus." When a casual beer drinker tastes a beer,
he notices the flavors--bitter or sweet, spicy, citrusy,
malty, and so on. For a homebrewer, the experience is quite
different. True, beer can be cataloged by flavor, but it
will also be phenolic or contain diacetyl or fusel alcohol.
It points to the relationship homebrewers have to beer.
Though what finally matters is the flavor of the beer, the
trained palate of a brewer can detect subtle flavors that
indicate, say, high fermentation temperatures. Having experience
at making their own beer, homebrewers sniff and sip at their
beers like forensic scientists, looking for the fingerprints
of the brewing process.
Although they might not be able to share this level of
experience with everyone else, the Brew Crew would love
to expose people to as much of beer's versatility as possible.
An excellent example is the Collaborator project, which
had its genesis in a discussion about rare beer styles between
the Brew Crew and the Widmers. For homebrewers, no beer
style is obscure; far from it, they tend to gravitate toward
making beer they can't find commercially. Members of the
Brew Crew lamented, though, that certain styles weren't
available to everyone else--and because of their limited
market potential likely never would be.
Working through some "what ifs," they explored the idea
of collaborating to produce these kinds of beers for local
distribution (hence the Oregon in the club's name). The
plan that developed drew on the strengths of each group:
The homebrewers created recipes for the beers, and the Widmers
brewed them and arranged for distribution to local pubs.
For the Brew Crew, this posed two exciting possibilities.
First, it gave homebrewers the chance to have their beers
reach a larger audience (as far as anyone in the club knows,
this is the only such arrangement in the country). But even
more important, it was an opportunity for members to work
directly toward exposing the public to a broader range of
beer styles than is commercially available. Being involved
in the process meant they could create beers as authentic
to historical or regional styles as possible.
They began with a style called milk stout, a light-bodied,
sweet stout made creamy by the use of lactose. No American
versions exist for this beer, and even in England, where
it was invented, it's now rare. Since then, they've released
a Belgian-style dubbel and Sanders' brown. Two more are
planned; a Belgian wit (white)--a light summer ale made
with coriander and curaçao orange peels--will be
released in the summer, and an old ale, currently in production,
will be aged and released this winter. Like any club, the
Brew Crew are activists for their pastime--they love newcomers
to try their hand at brewing up a batch of beer. But then
again, they'd be just as happy if more people sniffed and
sipped and admired the next pint of beer they ordered--especially
if it's Collaborator.
To find out more about the Brew Crew and how to become
a member, check out the club's Web site at www.oregonbrew.com
or call its hotline at 288-2739.
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