As we commence 2013, those of you who are intellectually challenged (or bored) may be asking, “What did Thebeerchaser accomplish in 2012, in the second year of his Tour of Portland Bars, Pubs and Taverns?  Is said Tour still alive and healthy?”

Although a biased commentator, my answer to the latter question is “Yes!” based on the data shown below, which includes twenty-two watering-holes last year and eight public houses during five months in 2011.

Establishments Visited in 2012  *1

Neighborhood Bars – County Cork, Muddy Rudder Public House, Hawthorne Hideaway, Laurelthirst Pub

Dive Bars – Ship Tavern, Bar of the Gods, Dixie Tavern

Historic or Classic Bars – Claudia’s, White Eagle Saloon, Lutz Tavern, Cheerful Tortoise, Mock Crest Tavern

Bars that Defy Classification – 1856, Gold Dust Meridian, Bottles, Interurban, Ash Street Saloon

Brew Pubs – Migration Brewery Pub

Bars Outside of Portland – Embers Brew House (Joseph), Desdemona and Wet Monkey Café (Astoria), PourHouse (Port Townsend, WA)

*1 The Davis Street Tavern was visited but the review will be posted in 2013.

During my career in legal management, I analyzed many statistics and trends.  Figuratively regressing, I would suggest that visiting and reviewing a bar every 16.6 days (15.9 if one counts the Davis Street Tavern) in 2012 was a reasonably ambitious schedule and compares favorably with the partial 2011 year (starting in mid-August) in which the average days between visits was 17.1 – and no visits were made to bars outside Portland.

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Keeping in mind my former co-managing partner’s favorite quote: “He  uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts – for support rather than for  illumination,” further analysis reveals other critical relationships and possible development of an esoteric null hypothesis.

For example, the Historic Bar class representing 26% of the bars was the most frequent type visited followed by Neighborhood Bars and Pubs Outside Portland in second place with 17% and Brew Pubs with only 4% of the visits last year.  It’s very interesting to note that the average visits for each category is 16.5% with a standard deviation of 7.6%.  Clearly, Brew Pubs need closer scrutiny in the coming year if the deviation from the mean is to be diminished!

The White Eagle – Historic on the Exterior and the Interior –

To impress my son-in-law who is an engineer, I tried to work in the radius of gyration function into these statistics without success.  But let’s momentarily digress to help educate readers on the benefits of beer-related topics and how they relate to the scientific method………..

Boyle’s Law, for example, may be encountered in beer production given that breweries are closed systems with constant temperatures and its worth toasting (with your favorite microbrew) the inverse relationship of pressure and volume in the given mass of confined gas within the vats as fermentation occurs……..

Another pioneer in chemistry influenced by my favorite brew was Joseph Priestley, an 18th century English clergyman, philosopher and chemist, whose house was next to a brewery.  He began to experiment with the gas given off by fermenting beer and discovered a method of impregnating water with the carbon dioxide by placing a bowl of water above a vat of fermenting beer – thus inventing soda water.    

  2012 Beerchasers

We also named a number of individuals or groups as Beerchasers-of-the-Month or Quarter.  They included:

Musician and consultant Forrest Green, Coach Mike Riley and the OSU Football Team, Former OSU and NFL football star, Craig “Dude” Hanneman for his Mt. Everest climb in May, the Crew of the USS Constitution.

Also Portland State Professor of Economics, Dr. John Walker, Oregonian history columnist, John Terry and Princeton Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and author of the brilliant book, On Bullshit, Dr. Harry Frankfurt.

2011 Establishments Visited

Between August 2011 and the end of the year, we visited eight establishments which were a superb commencement of Thebeerchaser Tour of Portland Bars including:

Neighborhood Bars – Gladstone Street Tavern and Brooklyn Park Pub

Dive Bars – Joe’s Cellar and Yukon Tavern

Historic or Classic Bars – Buffalo Gap Saloon

Bars that Defy Classification – Prost

Brew Pubs – Amnesia Brewery Pub, Coalition Brew Pub

2011 Beerchasers

Those honored with this designation last year included:

Crime Novelist James Crumley, retired chemical engineer Harold Schlumberg and four bartenders of the initial bars visited as follows:

Emily – Prost

Dave – The Twilight Room

Natasha – Gladstone Street Tavern

Phoebe – The Brooklyn Park Pub

Please continue to give me suggestions on both public houses worthy of a Beerchaser visit and candidates for Beerchaser-of-the-Month.

And if you are really curious and lack meaningful life activity, the radius of gyration is defined as  “the name of several related measures of the size of an object, a surface, or an ensemble of points. It is calculated as the root mean square distance of the objects’ parts from either its center of gravity or a given axis.”  An explanation and the formulae can be found at the above link in Wikipedia or any good engineering textbook!

Thanks to the 40 “followers” on this blog and we are encouraged with the increasing number of visitors that averaged about 800 per month in the second half of 2012.

Happy New Year!