Another Festival Debuts: Pints in the Pearl

Every year, and especially during the summer, there seems to be at least one new beer festival popping up on the Portland beer scene. Landing on the weekend between Memorial Day and the start of PDX Beer Week is a festival put on by the Pearl District Business Association. Pints in the Pearl is a one-day block party that will feature four breweries, all located in the Pearl - 10 Barrel Brewing, BridgePort Brewing, Deschutes Brewery and Fat Head's Brewery.

Admission to the festival, which will take over the street (and be closed to vehicles) at NW 13th and Everett, is free. For those that want to enjoy the beers and/or food each of the breweries will be bringing, $20 will provide a souvenir stainless steel pint and three tokens. The tokens are good for either a 16 oz pour of beer or a food item, including Fat Head's chicken wings. They've made plans to have a six-foot grill on site to finish their rubbed and smoked Smokehouse Wings and I suspect this will be one of the most popular food items. Other food available includes grilled chicken, corndogs and pretzels,which should pair well with the beers that range from lager to IPA to Belgian styles.

A couple of notes for those thinking about attending - it is a family friendly-festival (a bonus or a detraction depending on your own child-friendliness) and only credit/debit cards will be accepted for payment (generally not an issue unless you're a cash-only kind of person).

Pints in the Pearl
Saturday, June 4th 12-9pm
NW 13th and Everett

Bottle Cap Map

I've had my eye on beer cap maps for some time but hadn't committed to buying one for one reason or another. Recently I was offered one to review and I happily took the folks at Beer Gifts up on it since I have boat load of bottle caps sitting around that I've been wanting to do "something" with.

A week later a package arrived on my doorstep with an Oregon Beer Cap Map. Within minutes of unwrapping the map I was digging into the kitchen drawer that holds bottle caps for one to fit in. A little unsure how difficult it would be to pop them in I was pleased to find it was relatively easy to insert the first one, a Buoy cap, into the back of the map.

From there things got harder as I weighed putting Oregon only bottle caps into the map or simply filling it with the caps I like, regardless of the state they're from. I know the former is the idea of the maps for each state but I'll be honest that it seems a little more ambitious than I'm up for. Instead, albeit it possibly committing blasphemy by doing so, I decided to select my favorite caps from the vast collection I've accumulated over the-beer-gods-only-know-how-long.

So far it's about half filled but it's definitely taking shape and I'm looking forward to completing it so I can work on finding a place to hang it. That'll be a bit of a challenge as we have relatively little available wall space but with strategically placed pre-drilled holes in the map and its minimal weight once I do identify a place it should take mere minutes to put it up.

So whether you're looking for something for yourself or a gift for a fellow bottle cap collector and plan to use it as intended or take my course of action it's an easy to use product that offers an easy way to display those bottle caps that I KNOW you have tucked away in drawers.

****COMPLETION UPDATE****

With my bottle cap map now complete (save for two spots that are waiting to be filled by caps attached to beers in my fridge just days away from being consumed) I wanted to share a couple of helpful tips.

1. Work from the inside/center, outward. This doesn't need to be a hard and fast rule but it will become more important as the map fills up and you'll find less handholds needed to apply pressure to add caps.

2. Plan on this being a multi-day project. Your thumbs (or whatever digits take the most pressure pushing the caps into their holes) will give out and you'll need to give them a rest. Plus, a little time away from it will provide better perspective on the overall look and outcome of the map.

Creeping Charlie

Disclaimer: THIS beer was not brewed with Creeping Charlie.
It did catch my eye as a nice background.

No, it's not the name of yet another new brewery opening, rather it's something found in many lawns, especially in the Midwest. On a recent trip home my dad was once again beginning his yearly battle against his greatest lawn enemy. Then mere days later a friend mentioned that he didn't care that most people hated Creeping Charlie, he liked it and was going to let it flourish in his lawn. Circling back to my dad, in a call to wish my mom a happy Mother's Day, he mentioned he had heard on some program he was watching/listening to that Creeping Charlie could be used instead of hops in making beer. I threw the question out to the interwebs and one of my Facebook friends was kind enough to dig up some information.

As I had suspected, and shared with my dad, Creeping Charlie would most likely have been used as heather has been in gruit-style beer. Sure enough, not only is that the case but apparently that application of Creeping Charlie was common enough to have earned itself an alternate name - alehoof.

Going back a millennia, Creeping Charlie has been known as a medicinal herb that is extremely high in Vitamin C, making it a great way to prevent scurvy. There are plenty of other medicinal uses for it and apparently it can be part of your next salad as it's a member of the mint family, just don't eat a whole bowl of it as there could be some dangerous side effects of gorging on it.

But what about brewing with it? This guy, who sounds like he would fit in perfectly in Portland, but currently resides in Hamilton, Ontario, posted a beer recipe using solely Creeping Charlie after a couple of previous attempts in which he used it in conjunction with hops. This time he was going all in but unfortunately there was some pretty massive fermentation happening (according to follow up notes) causing his glass carboy to explode and thus preventing him from sampling the beer.

I'll definitely be sharing all of this with my dad although I'm sure he'll continue his fight against what he sees as a stubborn weed. But perhaps for those with less old-school, more progressive views on what a lawn can be this may be an enlightening look at a plant that's great ground cover (another alternate name being ground ivy) and might just be worth cultivating for a future hop-less homebrew.

Many thanks to Michael Agnew who dug up the articles I've linked to. Perhaps he'll don his homebrewing hat for a batch of Creeping Charlie brew and fill us in on how it turned out.