Excellent Draft Beers at Astoria Brewing Company’s Wet Dog Café in Astoria
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.
Former Portland Mayor Bud Clark, Attorney Jim Westwood and Oregonian Columnist John Terry at the Goose Hollow Inn
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.
A Question of Priorities
The Embers Brew House and Pub in Joseph, Oregon added venues 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……..
Critical advances in chemistry by Robert Boyle with alcohol experiments….
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.
Joseph Priestly used this equipment in experiments with beer in the late 18th century.
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.
If you read one book in 2013, make it Dr. Harry Frankfurt’s “On Bullshit.”
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:
Getting the Boot from Emily the Bartender at Prost in 2011
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
The Yukon Tavern – one of the proverbial Dive Bars visited in the first year of The Tour
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
Natasha – A Great Bartender from the 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!
So many establishments and so little time!!
Thebeerchaser 