By Gail Oberst

Oregon is Number One, but craft beer drinkers already knew that.

According to the latest analysis from the Brewers Association, Oregon’s beer production and sales has a greater impact on the economy of any other state, generating $448.50 for every man and woman over the age of 21. That number is derived from sales of beer as it moves from the brewery to the consumer, producing jobs and company profits along the way. Nationally, craft brewers’ economic contribution reached $34 billion in 2012.

In Oregon, the brewing industry that year generated 14,883 jobs, paid $487 million in wages and $1.3 billion in economic impact. As of July 2013, Oregon Brewer’s Guild officials reported the economic impact as $2.83 billion per year.

“As consumers continue to demand a wide range of high quality, full-flavored beers, small and independent craft brewers are meeting this growing demand with innovative offerings, creating high levels of economic value in the process,” said Bart Watson, staff economist for the Brewers Association.

Why is Oregon’s beer so successful? While the Oregon Beer Growler would like to take credit, Oregon’s success is actually a collaborative endeavor that includes passionate brewers behind hundreds of beer attractions and events that draw an increasingly educated drinking public.

Brian Butenschoen of the Oregon Brewers Guild updated members and guests during his recent statewide tour, delivering good news about Oregon’s breweries in 2013. Among interesting factoids:

250 events were part of Oregon Craft Beer Month in July alone.

Craft beer sales in July 2013 in Oregon increased by 9.9% over last year to $7.3 million.

June-August 2013 sales in Oregon set a record high at nearly 150,000 barrels, up 15% over last year.

As of mid-2013, Oregon Breweries employed 6400.

By Gail Oberst

You probably haven’t heard of Tiah Edmunson-Morton. She doesn’t brew beer, she doesn’t run in brewing circles, and she hasn’t published anything of note about the beer world.

But someday, if you live and breathe beer, you will want to visit some of Tiah’s work. Tiah and her cohorts at Oregon State University Library’s new Oregon Hops & Brewing Archives (or OHBA) are quietly gathering the artifacts of the drama that has become Oregon’s modern and vibrant brewing Renaissance.

OSU – a land grant university with a long agricultural past – has been keeping records on brewing and hops-growing for at least a century. This summer, Tiah began to hone collections for OSU’s archives in a way that was “more deliberate,” she said. These archives can put an archivist’s stamp of authenticity on Oregon’s brewing Renaissance.

Although she’s been working at OSU for seven years, Tiah’s work on OHBA has just begun, so she’s looking for help. To kick it off this fall, she staged several community events – including a cooking with beer event that featured beer-based foods made from historic recipes gathered and archived in the OSU Libraries. The recipes are now listed online, ranging from a 1914 rye beer gelatin to Depression-era egg beer and dozens of other beer dishes.

Creating an archive dedicated to documenting and preserving Oregon’s brewing past and present is not just an archivist’s work, it’s the community’s work, said Tiah. The more people know about the archives, the better the potential for collecting materials that may now be gathering dust in someone’s attic. Already, supporters have produced photos, event records, coasters, letters, postcards, stories and recordings related to people, places and beers we now see as “historic” in their importance.

And Tiah is moving into a new branch of archiving, born of the digital age.

“How do you preserve a website or a blog?” she said. “People are writing and talking about really amazing stuff at an unheard of level. They’re growing hops, brewing and visiting breweries and writing about it!”

You might mistakenly assume from her enthusiasm for social networking that she is new to this internet thing, but she is not. In addition to web archiving and working in virtual boxes to collect what people are producing, staff at OSU are also digitizing their historical photo collections and putting them online. She’s also blogging about her adventures in archiving Oregon’s beer history at http://thebrewstorian.tumblr.com. Thanks to the recipe event, OHBA now has a collection of old and new beer cookbooks, and her blog adds a few notes about new recipes being added, such as those at Deschutes’ www.deschutesbrewery.com/brews/pub-recipes. And, as a true librarian should, she indexes things to make it easy to access.

But Tiah also said she hopes that beer history events will bring people to the collections, not only so they’ll donate materials, but also so they’ll learn from them. “I’m hoping for a hands-on way to engage people,” Tiah said.

Those who are interested in the archives can start at http://scarc.library.oregonstate.edu/ohba.html, which has links to photos in Flickr and Tiah’s blog.

How can those of us who love beer help?

“We’re asking people to see their place in this history and see that we didn’t come to this place in history without a connection to the past,” Tiah said. “But we can also ask people to archive right now, so that researchers in the future will get it right about us. Think in the future,” Tiah said.

Beer writers, farmers, brewers and company owners need to consider how their information is being saved. “Think about your place in history, and record it. Be intentional and deliberate.”

That means taking the pictures off your phone and organizing them into accessible files with dates and identifications. That means backing up your files! For writers, it means doing real research, with information gathered from the source, not just repeated from blogs or other publications. For videographers, it means talking to people who have played a part in Oregon’s beer history, no matter what their role was. “Did they have any idea at the time they started that any of this would happen? I don’t think so,” Tiah said.

Tiah can be reached at 541-737-7387, or by e-mailing tiah.edmunson-morton@oregonstate.edu.

By John Foyston

Hair of the Dog Brewing's annual production of 1,200 kegs makes it one of Oregon's smallest brewers, yet the brewery --- which turns 20 this month ---  is an outsize presence in the world of Good Beer. 

Consider:
Two Hair of the Dog beers were included on a recent Stanford University list of the 20 best beers of the world, as chosen by beer experts at Ratebeer and similar sites. A Ratebeer.com 2010 list of the 100 best beers in the world included four Hair of the Dog beers. 

Owner/brewer Alan Sprints recently put a dozen 12.7-ounce bottles of Dave, a 19-year-old Barleywine of nearly 30 percent alcohol, up for sale. The price? $1,500 a bottle if you drank it at the tasting room, $2,000 to go. Needless to say, he expected to have them available for a little while, but they all sold in five hours. Everyone from the Huffington Post to Time magazine picked up the  story of the $24,000 half-rack.

When Hair of the Dog holds its anniversary dock sales, the door open at 10 a.m. and customers are limited to how much they can buy --- and still the beer runs out. Eager fans start lining up at 7 a.m. or earlier, and Sprints --- a trained chef --- has been known to cook  breakfast for the faithful. This year, for his 20th, Sprints has created ticketed afternoon and evening sessions on November 9. You can read the details below, but tickets are likely gone already.

One of the brewery's earliest champions was (and is)  legendary Portland beer writer Fred Eckhardt, who urged Sprints to recreate an old, obscure Dortmund recipe that became Hair of the Dog Adambier, now just Adam, the brewery's flagship beer these 20 years. In 1996 Sprints repaid the favor by creating Fred  --- a golden strong ale of five malts and ten hop varieties --- in his honor.

Those beers soon  caught the attention of the late Michael Jackson, the  world's most influential beer writer. Jackson began including HOTD beers in his books, thus exposing them to a worldwide audience,  and visited the brewery whenever he had the chance.

Sprints got two bourbon barrels in 1994 and filled them with Adam to make Adam from the Wood.in 1996, he got two new wine barrels from a friend and created fred from the Wood: It was a turning point for Sprints, who discovered that barrel aging made his beers even more flavorful and complex. Other brewers took note, to the point that nearly every Oregon brewery now has a rack of beers aging in barrels. “I didn't invent barrel aging beer,” Sprints says, “but I think it's safe to say that our beers influenced a lot of brewers.” HOTD now has 10 barrel aged beers on the roster, some of which age for three years on wood. In 2006, he bottled a batch of Fred from the Wood for Ratebeer, which gave the beer a score of 100 out of 100.

Sprints has recently been invited to brew some high profile collaboration beers, such as the recent Collage with Deschutes Brewery and Flanders Fred, which he brewed in Belgium with Dirk Naudts of De Proef Brouwerij. On that trip, he also brewed with Belgian brewmaster Urbain Coutteau of De Struise, who in turn brewed with Sprints at Hair of the Dog in summer of 2012.

“That was the realization of a dream for me,” Sprints says. “I always idolized the beers and brewers of Belgium, and to have Urbain come to my place and brew with me, well, I don't know what else there is to achieve. I guess I'll be happy to maintain what I've got, to keep making flavorful, unique beers for people who really seem to appreciate them. 

“In a way I feel almost weird that I don't really have any desire to get huge, like so many other breweries seem to want to. Staying small allows me to be creative and make the beers I imagine, and it allows me to have a relationship with my staff and my customers. I'm happy making 600 barrels of beer a year.”

Sprints, who has always wanted to make things by hand, has achieved his fondest wish at Hair of the Dog, where the brew day is just that --- a 24-hour marathon. It takes three batches made in the brewery's original four-barrel open kettle to fill a fermenter, so Sprints brews from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m., when assistant brewer Denver Bon takes over for swing and graveyard, then Sprints comes back in at 5 a.m. the next morning to finish the brew.

Alan Sprints trained as a chef after moving to Portland in 1988, the year of the first Oregon Brewers Festival. “The OBF was pivotal for me;” Sprints says, “sparking my imagination about brewing and connecting me with the Oregon Brew Crew, one of the oldest homebrew clubs in the country. As president of the club for three years I met many of Oregon's brewing pioneers, which led me to becoming a professional brewer in 1991.”

He worked at Widmer Brothers until 1993, when he and then-partner Doug Henderson started Hair of the Dog in an old foundry in Southeast Portland on the edge of the Brooklyn railyard. From the start, Sprints wanted to brew big, bold beers such as Adam, which is 10 percent alcohol. “I had this idea to brew versions of the big holiday beers that I loved and brew them year 'round. It seemed like a niche we could fill.” 

In retrospect, he says, he's not sure he'd do it again: “We were early, and its been an uphill struggle much of the time. I bought out Doug in 2000 --- relationships are tough and things were not much fun, not that they got a whole lot more fun after we split. I still brewed all the beer, but I had to learn the business side, too; keeping the books, making sales call. Plus I had to assume all the debt, which was considerable --- I stood to lose my house if things didn't turn around.”

But he kept on, buoyed by the belief that there was a place in the beer world for his kinds of beers. In 2010, he made the major move from the old factory in Southeast to Hair of the Dog's present brewery and tasting room on the east end of the Morrison Bridge. It's paid off, raising HOTD's local profile and attracting beer tourists from around the country and the world to the taproom, with its current and vintage HOTD beer selection, its robust, Belgian-influenced menu  and décor of stained glass and ceramic pieces made by Sprints.

“The new place has dramatically changed things,” he says. “Now I have a staff of 18; in the old days, if I wasn't working, Hair of the Dog wan't making money; if someone came by to visit, I had to drop what I was doing. And the tasting room has added a new dimension, because I've always believed that eating and drinking elevates both beer and food to a new level.”

By Gail Oberst

Women in pink boots naturally attract attention, but in September, the video cameras were rolling, and not because of footwear.

The all-woman traveling video crew from Heartfelt Productions’ Empowerment Project showed up last month to interview and film the work of the women brewers and beer industry representatives of the Pink Boots Society. The society’s members staged a collaboration brew day at McMinnville’s Heater Allen brewery.

Sarah Moshman and Ashley Hammen said their small production company is touring the nation in search of inspirational women to feature in their video production. Teri Fahrendorf, one of Oregon’s first women brewers and one of the founders of the Pink Boots Society, invited the company to the Pacific Northwest Chapter’s event hosted by Lisa Allen, assistant brewer at Heater Allen. The group of nearly 20 women used Heater Allen equipment to brew a Sticke Altbier, a dark, strong, malty and roasty beer. Fahrendorf’s employer, Country Malt, donated ingredients.

"Sticke means secret in German, and the first Sticke was a mistake but the beer was so popular it became a traditional style of altbier,” said Lisa Allen. “It is fermented cool and maintains a bit of fruitiness on the nose. It is a special beer that is only released twice a year, including each November. Since we are brewing this for our Nov/Dec fundraiser Party, and Sticke is a rare style among craft beers, I thought it would be a great style for the gals to brew together."

The public will get a chance to taste and purchase the beer during a public holiday fundraiser to generate money for the Pink Boots Society Scholarship Fund. The Pink Boots Society is throwing a public holiday fundraiser party with a goal to raise $3,000 for the society’s education fund. The fundraiser is in December. In addition to selling the Sticke Alt the women brewed in September, there will be food and a raffle with lots of prizes, according to Emily Engdahl, Pacific NW Regional Meeting Co-Coordinator.

The Pink Boots Society is an international nonprofit charity that aims to empower women beer professionals. More than 900 people now belong to the group.

For more information about Pink Boots, visit the website, www.pinkbootssociety.org.

For more information about the Empowerment project, visit the website, http://heartfelt-productions.com.

By Gail Oberst

Portland’s Lone Fir Cemetery at dusk: Shadows fall in the west end, where ancient headstones dot the landscape and in the foreground, a crumbling tomb sits – the tomb of George F. Bottler, one of Oregon’s first brewers. If ghosts rest uneasy in battered tombs, Bottler is agitated. His tomb, one of the oldest in the cemetery, is in bad shape.

Don’t be afraid. The Friends of Lone Fir Cemetery and Lone Fir Cemetery Foundation are among the groups hoping to remodel Bottler’s final resting place. Recently, the brewing community joined the effort.

Both of the brewing Bottler brothers were named George, which causes some historical confusion, according to Peri Muhich, volunteer genealogist for the Friends of the Lone Fir Cemetery.  George Michael Bottler was the 1857 founder of the City Brewery in Portland, later to become Henry Weinhard’s brewery. George Michael Bottler was visiting relatives in Germany when his brother, George Frederick Bottler, died in 1865. George Frederick had started a brewery in The Dalles, but when he died without his brother nearby, his fellow brewers – including Weinhard – made arrangements for George Frederick to be buried in the Lone Fir Cemetery in Portland. When George Michael Bottler returned from Germany, he built a tomb over his brother’s grave and purchased two other plots nearby to house his own remains.

But George Michael Bottler died later in Germany, and is buried in his Bavarian hometown, Schillingsfurst, not in the tomb in Portland that now houses his brother’s uneasy remains.

The Bottler tomb is cause for some activity today, 128 years later. The tomb’s disrepair inspired Art Larrance to commit $10,000 from his Oregon Brewers Festival proceeds to a fund that will help restore the tomb to its past glory.

According to Lone Fir Cemetery officials, it will cost up to $80,000 to do the meticulous work of restoration, and they are working now to raise the rest of the money.

“This is a great project for the Foundation to support,” said Mary Faulkner of the Lone Fir Cemetery Foundation, which formed in 2011 to assist the Friends in fundraising efforts such as that for the Bottler tomb.

McMenamins’ Mission Theater in Portland staged a well-attended fundraiser in July for the tomb, according to McMenamins historian, Tim Hills. The event was part of the kick-off activities for Oregon’s Craft Beer Month. Former Gov. Barbara Roberts spoke at the event, urging those present to help with the effort to restore Bottler’s tomb.

Although Weinhard bought the City Brewery from the estate of the Bottlers, the brothers’ cousin, Michael Bottler, remained in the Portland area where, unlike his brewer cousins, he married and raised a family. Michael Bottler’s descendants still live in Portland and are assisting with renovations. One relative, Tim Bottler, is a contractor who is donating his time to plan the restoration and gather materials in hopes that the tomb work can begin next year, said Muhich.

The cemetery is the oldest and largest of the 14 historic cemeteries managed by Portland Metro.

George Bottler’s ghost may not be the only one unrested at the Lone Fir Cemetery. With burials that date back to 1846, the cemetery is one of Portland’s oldest, located between southeast Morrison and Stark streets, and 20th and 26th streets. Lone Fir has more than 25,000 burials in its 30 acres – 10,000 of which are unknown. The cemetery is home to the bones of governors, legislators and dozens of other Portland glitterati, not to mention the Chinese workers who were often buried without markers in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Those unmarked Chinese burials at the cemetery brought it to the foreground in recent years, after the discovery that government buildings may have been built atop graves.

The cemetery was privately owned until 1928, when it was sold to Multnomah County. Metro took control of the cemetery in 1994, expanding to include the unmarked burial grounds in 2007. That year, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

To donate to the Bottler Tomb restoration, send a check to the Friends of the Lone Fir Cemetery, P.O. Box 14214, Portland, 97212, with a “Bottler’s Tomb” note on the check. For more information on the Friends group and its activities, visit www.friendsoflonefircemetery.org.