MAGIC BEER: THE MCMENAMINS DRINK TANK
MAGIC BEER: THE MCMENAMINS DRINK TANK
By Fred Eckhardt Issue date: 01/29/2008
Honorary Beer Scribe for Guest on Tap
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brothers Mike and Brian McMenamin have built themselves a modest empire of wondrous proportions. They operate some 54 mostly historically important establishments, including 23 breweries and brew pubs, a vineyard, a winery and a distillery. There also are nine theaters, a golf course, eight hotels, and bed-and-breakfast inns in locations from north of Seattle to Roseburg in central Oregon.
My favorite McMenamin establishment has to be Portland’s White Eagle on North Russell Street, opened by two Polish immigrants in 1905 (nickname then: “Bucket of Blood” from the fighting there). Offering recreation, poker, liquor and beer to young Polish immigrants, it featured an opium den downstairs and a brothel upstairs.
The breweries reference some 200 recipes and up to 500 different brews. Each brewer is expected to make the major McMenamin brews, but they also are given artistic freedom to invent their own.
Artistic? Well, yes! Mike McMenamin says he considers his brewers to be artists. And why not? This is an organization that has a company historian, Tim Hill, a poet or two and a number of paint artists; all of whom are given great creative license.
The most distinctive and interesting brew the brothers make is the annual anniversary beer to commemorate the 1983 beginning of their first (combined) venture, the Old Barley Mill Pub, on Portland’s Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard. Each year’s brew is distinctive.
These anniversary brews are fascinating, not only for their taste, which is great, but for their design and their effect when you drink them. They are designed by what can only be called a drink tank — usually 12 to 25 people, each of whom brings a strange or exotic ingredient to add to the current anniversary brew. Magic beer, indeed.
Lunch is served and the meeting is convened at a secret location. Sometimes it’s at their first brew pub: Portland’s Hillsdale Brewery and Public House.
The genial Mike McMenamin supervises the activities. The wort for the base beer will be at a full rolling boil. Each drink tank participant brings a favorite libation, herb selection, flower, poem or article to read, and there always is a musician to contribute musical selections from time to time.
The various libations, including many McMenamin beers, wines and spirits, will be sampled by everyone, after which the remaining liquor will be poured into the offerings vat. The contents of that vessel will be added to the finished brew in the kettle.
I remember their first brew in 1989: Wisdom Ale. Fig Newton cookies, rosemary, thyme, sage, peaches and sunflower seeds. There also was ceremony: Irises were laid on top of the cover to the brewery’s open primary fermenter, and there were readings from wise books of the ages.
The herb selections were from Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs. That beer had a magical effect, because after the first sip I felt wiser; but my newfound wisdom was gone by day’s end.
Later, there was Longevity Ale (1990), and that was even better.
In 1991 there was Invisibility Ale. I have a hard time remembering that one, but I may have turned invisible because the herbs were designed to make one scarce — not a problem to one’s neighbors. The brew included amaranth, chicory, edelweiss, mistletoe, poppies and some secret stuff. There was Grateful Dead music (“Stella Blue” by Jerry Garcia). I may have stayed invisible for a week.
The 1992 Hallucinator Ale was downright scary, as was the ingredient list. The first sip set me to giggling. Suddenly I felt older, wiser, slightly invisible and giggly.
All at once I knew the secrets of the universe. I forgot them immediately and decided to bark at the moon instead; but it was high noon and I was completely discombobulated.
Some of the herbs included althea (protection, psychic powers), angelica (protection, healing, visions), lavender (love, longevity, happiness, peace), mint (love, money and psychic powers). You get the picture. That was a rich marinade to inject into a beer.
When Pat McNurney, Edgefield grounds manager (who had collected the herbs), actually sipped from the marinade, Mike McMenamin tried to protect him. But his cry, “Pat, stop. Don’t drink that. You’re too important to lose,” was too late. McNurney recovered in a few weeks time, but I still feel giddy.
For the first eight years there always was a bottle from a case of Lanson “champagne for connoisseurs only,” acquired from an old brewmaster of the now-long-gone Blitz-Weinhard brewery, in France, in 1945, just after World War II had ended.
The ’45 was a banner year for that champagne. We may have consumed the planet’s last bit of that great vintage in 1996.
My notes are indecipherable, but I think the 2006 (2005?) confab featured 55 additions, with samples of 20 McMenamins and other brews (including first bottling Hammerhead, and Lucky Lager’s final bottling).
Four herbal and floral offerings, followed by Krug champagne, readings from James Joyce, and a Henry Weinhard ad from The Oregonian from November 1914, tiny copies of which were added to the tub. Remember — Oregon went dry in 1916.
There were various other additions including songs, poems and who knows what all. I contributed a bottle of my own sake, and led the congregation in the Prohibition-era Starvation Army song: “On the right side of Temperance we now take our stand. …”
In conclusion let me state that “Sanity is for sissies; a he-man needs another beer!”
By Fred Eckhardt Issue date: 01/29/2008
Honorary Beer Scribe for Guest on Tap
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brothers Mike and Brian McMenamin have built themselves a modest empire of wondrous proportions. They operate some 54 mostly historically important establishments, including 23 breweries and brew pubs, a vineyard, a winery and a distillery. There also are nine theaters, a golf course, eight hotels, and bed-and-breakfast inns in locations from north of Seattle to Roseburg in central Oregon.
My favorite McMenamin establishment has to be Portland’s White Eagle on North Russell Street, opened by two Polish immigrants in 1905 (nickname then: “Bucket of Blood” from the fighting there). Offering recreation, poker, liquor and beer to young Polish immigrants, it featured an opium den downstairs and a brothel upstairs.
The breweries reference some 200 recipes and up to 500 different brews. Each brewer is expected to make the major McMenamin brews, but they also are given artistic freedom to invent their own.
Artistic? Well, yes! Mike McMenamin says he considers his brewers to be artists. And why not? This is an organization that has a company historian, Tim Hill, a poet or two and a number of paint artists; all of whom are given great creative license.
The most distinctive and interesting brew the brothers make is the annual anniversary beer to commemorate the 1983 beginning of their first (combined) venture, the Old Barley Mill Pub, on Portland’s Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard. Each year’s brew is distinctive.
These anniversary brews are fascinating, not only for their taste, which is great, but for their design and their effect when you drink them. They are designed by what can only be called a drink tank — usually 12 to 25 people, each of whom brings a strange or exotic ingredient to add to the current anniversary brew. Magic beer, indeed.
Lunch is served and the meeting is convened at a secret location. Sometimes it’s at their first brew pub: Portland’s Hillsdale Brewery and Public House.
The genial Mike McMenamin supervises the activities. The wort for the base beer will be at a full rolling boil. Each drink tank participant brings a favorite libation, herb selection, flower, poem or article to read, and there always is a musician to contribute musical selections from time to time.
The various libations, including many McMenamin beers, wines and spirits, will be sampled by everyone, after which the remaining liquor will be poured into the offerings vat. The contents of that vessel will be added to the finished brew in the kettle.
I remember their first brew in 1989: Wisdom Ale. Fig Newton cookies, rosemary, thyme, sage, peaches and sunflower seeds. There also was ceremony: Irises were laid on top of the cover to the brewery’s open primary fermenter, and there were readings from wise books of the ages.
The herb selections were from Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs. That beer had a magical effect, because after the first sip I felt wiser; but my newfound wisdom was gone by day’s end.
Later, there was Longevity Ale (1990), and that was even better.
In 1991 there was Invisibility Ale. I have a hard time remembering that one, but I may have turned invisible because the herbs were designed to make one scarce — not a problem to one’s neighbors. The brew included amaranth, chicory, edelweiss, mistletoe, poppies and some secret stuff. There was Grateful Dead music (“Stella Blue” by Jerry Garcia). I may have stayed invisible for a week.
The 1992 Hallucinator Ale was downright scary, as was the ingredient list. The first sip set me to giggling. Suddenly I felt older, wiser, slightly invisible and giggly.
All at once I knew the secrets of the universe. I forgot them immediately and decided to bark at the moon instead; but it was high noon and I was completely discombobulated.
Some of the herbs included althea (protection, psychic powers), angelica (protection, healing, visions), lavender (love, longevity, happiness, peace), mint (love, money and psychic powers). You get the picture. That was a rich marinade to inject into a beer.
When Pat McNurney, Edgefield grounds manager (who had collected the herbs), actually sipped from the marinade, Mike McMenamin tried to protect him. But his cry, “Pat, stop. Don’t drink that. You’re too important to lose,” was too late. McNurney recovered in a few weeks time, but I still feel giddy.
For the first eight years there always was a bottle from a case of Lanson “champagne for connoisseurs only,” acquired from an old brewmaster of the now-long-gone Blitz-Weinhard brewery, in France, in 1945, just after World War II had ended.
The ’45 was a banner year for that champagne. We may have consumed the planet’s last bit of that great vintage in 1996.
My notes are indecipherable, but I think the 2006 (2005?) confab featured 55 additions, with samples of 20 McMenamins and other brews (including first bottling Hammerhead, and Lucky Lager’s final bottling).
Four herbal and floral offerings, followed by Krug champagne, readings from James Joyce, and a Henry Weinhard ad from The Oregonian from November 1914, tiny copies of which were added to the tub. Remember — Oregon went dry in 1916.
There were various other additions including songs, poems and who knows what all. I contributed a bottle of my own sake, and led the congregation in the Prohibition-era Starvation Army song: “On the right side of Temperance we now take our stand. …”
In conclusion let me state that “Sanity is for sissies; a he-man needs another beer!”
posted by PDXBeer at 7:30 AM
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