This blog has allowed me to complete one of my objectives for the year! This is the western seaboard finished! It’s a small victory, in the grand scheme of things, but right now I need some positivity so this has certainly helped. Oregon is a state I know very little about so I’m looking forward to researching about it. First though, let’s drink some beer!
Cascade Brewing – Coral Horizon (2018 Blend)
This 500ml, 8% beer cost just over £10 from Roberto’s in Digbeth, Birmingham.
I don’t think I’ve had a been in this blog yet, that you can smell the tartness of the beer before you taste it. As you can see from the photo above the beer was certainly lively. From the colour you could be forgiven for thinking you were pouring an aged cider! So, from the first sip I’m able to tell that this beer isn’t the normal style that I would choose. However that said, the complex flavours and the nice smooth mouthfeel certainly make this sour beer more attractive to me than some I have had the (dis)pleasure of trying in the past. I suppose that’s probably my own fault for mainly drinking in a bar that specialises in Belgian sour beer (it has other things as well), but gueze/lambic is the predominant style of beer you see in there, both on draft & in bottle. Anyway back to the beer in hand. The label on the bottle tells we what flavours I should be able to taste, so I’m going to use that as a guide. Firstly this beer has been aged in the same type of barrel as last weeks beer, however they taste completely different. So I can use that as a guide as to if the ageing has helped. 3 flavours are added towards the end of the fermentation. Grapefruit, Hibiscus & root Ginger. Now I get the sour grapefruit hit & I can kinda understand the ginger. There is an earthy afterthought which I guess is that. The hibiscus in my opinion though is lost. I guess it should give a floral note, but I’m just not getting it. Head retention with the beer is very good, however as noted earlier, carbonisation is through the roof and in my opinion a little too much. It detracts from the beer and leaves a foamy like sensation at the back of your throat after each mouthful. Really not for me sorry. So, I think we have found a sour beer that at a push I could probably enjoy a few bottles of, however, it would have to be the only thing on the menu for me to probably pick it out of choice!
The brewery is based in Portland. Named after Portland, Maine, the Oregon settlement began to be populated in the 1830s, near the end of the Oregon Trail. Its water access provided convenient transportation of goods, and the timber industry was a major force in the city’s early economy. At the turn of the 20th century, the city had a reputation as one of the most dangerous port cities in the world, a hub for organized crime and racketeering. After the city’s economy experienced an industrial boom during World War II, its hard-edged reputation began to dissipate. Beginning in the 1960s, Portland became noted for its growing progressive political values, earning it a reputation as a bastion of counter-culture. The city operates with a commission-based government, guided by a mayor and four commissioners, as well as Metro, the only directly elected metropolitan planning organization in the United States. Its climate is marked by warm, dry summers and cool, rainy winters. This climate is ideal for growing roses, and Portland has been called the “City of Roses” for over a century. Portland lies on top of a dormant volcanic field known as the Boring Lava Field, named after the nearby bedroom community of Boring. The Boring Lava Field has at least 32 cinder cones such as Mount Tabor, and its center lies in southeast Portland. Mount St. Helens, a highly active volcano 50 miles northeast of the city in Washington state, is easily visible on clear days and is close enough to have dusted the city with volcanic ash after its eruption on May 18, 1980. The rocks of the Portland area range in age from late Eocene to more recent eras. Multiple shallow, active fault lines traverse the Portland metropolitan area. Among them are the Portland Hills Fault on the city’s west side, and the East Bank Fault on the east side. According to a 2017 survey, several of these faults were characterized as “probably more of a hazard” than the Cascadia subduction zone due to their proximities to population centers, with the potential of producing magnitude 7 earthquakes. Notable earthquakes that have impacted the Portland area in recent history include the 6.8-magnitude Nisqually earthquake in 2001, and a 5.6-magnitude earthquake that struck on March 25, 1993. Though much of downtown Portland is relatively flat, the foothills of the Tualatin Mountains, more commonly referred to locally as the “West Hills”, pierce through the northwest and southwest reaches of the city. Council Crest Park at 1,073 feet is often quoted as the highest point in Portland; however, the highest point in Portland is on a section of NW Skyline Blvd just north of Willamette Stone Heritage site. The highest point east of the river is Mt. Tabor, an extinct volcanic cinder cone, which rises to 636 feet. Nearby Powell Butte and Rocky Butterise to 614 feet and 612 feet, respectively. To the west of the Tualatin Mountains lies the Oregon Coast Range, and to the east lies the actively volcanic Cascade Range. On clear days, Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens dominate the horizon, while Mt. Adamsand Mt. Rainier can also be seen in the distance. Annual snowfall in Portland is 4.3 inches, which usually falls during the December-to-March time frame. The city of Portland avoids snow more frequently than its suburbs, due in part to its low elevation and urban heat island effect. Neighborhoods outside of the downtown core, especially in slightly higher elevations near the West Hillsand Mount Tabor, can experience a dusting of snow while downtown receives no accumulation at all. Portland’s cityscape derives much of its character from the many bridges that span the Willamette River downtown, several of which are historic landmarks, and Portland has been nicknamed “Bridgetown” for many decades as a result. Three of downtown’s most heavily used bridges are more than 100 years old and are designated historic landmarks: Hawthorne Bridge (1910), Steel Bridge (1912), and Broadway Bridge (1913). Portland’s newest bridge in the downtown area, Tilikum Crossing, opened in 2015 and is the first new bridge to span the Willamette in Portland since the 1973 opening of the double-decker Fremont Bridge. Other bridges that span the Willamette River in the downtown area include the Burnsides Bridge, the Ross Island Bridge (both built 1926), and the double-decker Marquam Bridge(built 1966). Other bridges outside the downtown area include the Sellwood Bridge(built 2016) to the south; and the St. Johns Bridge, a Gothic revival suspension bridge built in 1931, to the north. The Glenn L. Jackson Memorial Bridge and the Interstate Bridgeprovide access from Portland across the Columbia River into Washington state.
Portland is home to numerous museums and educational institutions, ranging from art museums to institutions devoted to science and wildlife. Among the science-oriented institutions are the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), which consists of five main halls and other ticketed attractions, such as the USS Blueback submarine, the ultra-large-screen Empirical Theater (which replaced an OMNIMAX theater in 2013), and the Kendall Planetarium. The World Forestry Center Discovery Museum, located in the city’s Washington Park area, offers educational exhibits on forests and forest-related subjects. Also located in Washington Park are the Hoyt Arboretum, the International Rose Test Garden, the Japanese Garden, and the Oregon Zoo. It is frequently claimed that Portland has the most breweries and independent microbreweries of any city in the world, with 58 active breweries within city limits and 70+ within the surrounding metro area. With this in mind why are so few seen in the UK? However, data compiled by the Brewers Association ranks Portland seventh in the United States as of 2018. Portland hosts a number of festivals throughout the year that celebrate beer and brewing, including the Oregon Brewers Festival, held in Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Held each summer during the last full weekend of July, it is the largest outdoor craft beer festival in North America, with over 70,000 attendees in 2008. Other major beer festivals throughout the calendar year include the Spring Beer and Wine Festival in April, the North American Organic Brewers Festival in June, the Portland International Beerfest in July, and the Holiday Ale Festival in December. The Portland International Beer-fest (PIB) is an annual festival of beers in Portland, Oregon, and is a three-day long event held around late June and has a sister festival located in Seattle around the same time of year. The PIB is a beneficiary of Pet Cross, a federally registered charity. Each year the beer festivals donate roughly $20,000 to local area animal welfare groups in Portland and Seattle. The PIB specializes in rare, hard-to-find, exotic beers from 16 countries, and also features unique and experimental pours from local breweries in the Pacific Northwest. Food is provided by local food trucks and there are activities and performances by local artists for entertainment. There are no reported incidents. In 2015, the organizers took extra precautions to make sure visitors would be hydrated and comfortable, in efforts to lower the chances for health risks to occur. They went on to get 900 feet of hose, 5 jumbo misting sprinklers and 14 jumbo fans that were put on the ends of every single beer tent. Experts with the CDC warn that drinking alcohol in the heat can be a dangerous combination, and in the triple-digit weather Portland was facing that summer, hydration and a cool environment were a top priority.
Portland International Raceway (PIR) is a motorsport facility. It is part of the Delta Park complex on the former site of Vanport, just south of the Columbia River. It lies west of a light rail stationand less than a mile west of Interstate 5. The track hosts the IndyCar Series, ICSCC and SCCA and OMRRA road racing, the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West, and SCCA autocrossevents. Additionally, the PIR grounds are host to OBRA (Oregon Bicycle Racing Association) bicycling races on the track and the surrounding grounds. The facility includes a dragstrip and a motocross track. The road course is almost perfectly flat and runs clockwise. Two track configurations are possible. One includes a hard chicane at the end of the front straight and involves 12 turns alength of 1.945 mi. Without the chicane, the track has nine turns and a lap length of 1.915 mi Portland is classified as an FIA Grade Two circuit. PIR is built on the former location of Vanport,which was destroyed on Memorial Day, May 30, 1948, when a railroad berm broke and water from the Columbia River flooded the city. After the flood, all that remained were the paved streets and concrete foundations of destroyed buildings. The first races took place on these old city streets in 1961 during the Portland Rose Festival. Since then, the Rose Cup has become an annual event. Racing at “West Delta Park”, as PIR was known back then, was quite dangerous. Racers leaving the track unexpectedly could collide with leftover concrete foundations or fall into ponds. Under the threat of losing the Rose Cup races, since many of the sanctioning racing bodies would no longer sanction races due to the deteriorating roads and dangerous obstacles, the track was finally paved in the 1970s. In 1975, Portland International hosted the Trans-Am Series, the premier series of the Sports Car Club of America, which was won by John Greenwood, driving a Chevrolet Corvette. Greenwood would go on to win the 1975 Trans-Am Series Championship. Beginning in 1984, Portland International began hosting the cars and stars of the Champ Car World Series, with Al Unser Jr. taking first win, driving a Cosworth powered March. In 1999 and 2000, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series ran a race at Portland International Raceway. The race was added after the demise of the ½-mile Portland Speedway that hosted races early in the series. The 1999 running saw the first (and as of 2021, the only) time there were more than one African-Americans competing in the same NASCAR top-three division race, with Bill Lester and Bobby Norfleet on the grid. At the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008, PIR went through a track renovation. The track was repaved with new asphalt and some minor changes were made to the track layout. Turns 4-7 were widened. The fence on the inside of turn 6 was moved to provide a better sightline through the corner. Turn 7 was sharpened to slow down racers prior to entering the back straight. Formula One-style curbs were also installed on the track. The track reopened on February 23, 2008, with a ribbon cutting ceremony. Portland is best-remembered as being the site of two of the closest finishes on a road course in Indy car racing history. In 1986, Michael Andretti lost fuel pressure on the final turn of the final lap, which allowed his father Mario to catch up and beat him to the finish line by 0.070 seconds. At the time, it was the closest finish of any race in Indy car history. In 1997, in a three-wide finish, Mark Blundell beat second place Gil de Ferran by 0.027 seconds, and beat third place Raul Boesel by 0.055 seconds. For a road course race, it was the all-time closest finish in CART series history, as well as the closest three-car finish in series history.
Well that was fun. As you can probably tell, I enjoy showcasing lesser known motorsport venues around the globe! Next week we head back to the UK for another county. After that though, I have no idea as the beer shelf is looking very empty currently. Let’s see what happens!
Big Alex's World Beer Blog 