Cultured in Oregon

So the Oregon Cultural Trust has proclaimed the first week in October the "Oregon Days of Culture." When we think of Oregon Culture, the Kesey family and Nancy's Yogurt are the first things that come to mind!

Obviously that's not what the Trust had in mind...

Unfortunately, Salem's not playing the game very well, and the Salem offerings (you'll have to sort the entire table on the city column - the web interface is pretty clunky) leave us mostly uninspired. The good stuff's in Portland.

So we recommend a different microbial culture - yeast culture!

There's a good post-event discussion of the beer and cider festival over at DSS. It was a great start, and next year will be even better! In the meantime, do your part to support great Oregon Culture with a pint at your favorite establishment!

Support the class programming and make your own culture (shock) at Clockworks Cafe. The September schedule has a few October dates, but look for a new one soon.

The Library's Uniquely Oregon lecture series looks interesting. Next up, on Tuesday, October 12th, is OSU essayist and philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore on environmental ethics. Microbial diversity is an important part of the ecosystem!

Moving up to the macro level, fall brings rain, and brings to mind water and the river. Over at the Conference Center is the 4th Annual Oregon Artists Series show. Two of the paintings show the river, one a rural aerial view, with cotton-candy blue water, and fields in flood; the other, an urban scene, with slashes of electric color against the purple and grey of a rainy day. The Johanson, especially, captures our ambivalence about fall and the wet - depressing sometimes, but also mysterious with possibility. Both of them are too beautiful, really, but together they say something about the wet and water here in the Willamette Valley.

(Water Reaching for Itself, Willamette Flood #3, April Waters)

(Rain and River*, George Johanson)

And there's always Carl Hall's paintings of the Willamette River and Salem hills at Hallie Ford. These seem like authentic expressions of Oregon Culture, too.

*It might be Rain and River #5, but we can't recall...will update later.

Typographer, OSU Marine Biologist win MacArthurs

The MacArthur "genius" grants are out, and a typographer, Matthew Carter, and an OSU marine biologist, Kelly Benoit-Bird, are among the 23 winners.

Carter's types are everywhere! Here's a Boston Globe piece from last week and the British Council on Carter.

Don't know a thing about Benoit-Bird, but she's a local! Her faculty page says:

In the ocean, most resources are heterogeneously distributed and highly dynamic. I am interested in how changes in resources over time and space affect trophic, competitive, and behavioral interactions of oceanic organisms. Because these interactions occur primarily below the surface waters, I am using a combination of remote techniques, including passive acoustics, active acoustics, and imaging optics complemented by net trawls to observe and quantify resource patterns. These data are used to generate and test energetic and behavioral models and to directly elucidate the importance of temporal and spatial structure in biotic relationships.

(Well, maybe she's not a writer...Paging Lewis Thomas!)

The research and specialties of the winners are fascinating. Take a moment to google someone and something new!

Anyway, to the winners a toast: Prost!

To Autumn, by William Blake

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained
With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit
Beneath my shady roof; there thou mayst rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,
And all the daughters of the year shall dance!
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

"The narrow bud opens her beauties to
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
Till clust'ring Summer breaks forth into singing,
And feather'd clouds strew flowers round her head.

"The spirits of the air live on the smells
Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round
The gardens, or sits singing in the trees."
Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat;
Then rose, girded himself, and o'er the bleak
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.

(Hops Picking Portrait: Oregon State Library)

Three Mid-Valley Fests offer Tastes of Beer and History

Saturday is a great day for beer lovers! There are great beer festivals in Salem, Independence, and Corvallis this weekend. Ones in Independence and Salem even make a happy nod towards our hoppy history.

The Salem Beer and Cider Festival is at Mission Mill. It is $15, and includes a sampling glass and 5 tokens, additional drink tokens also $1.They'll have:

Gilgamesh Brewing
Seven Brides Brewing & Vitis Ridge Winery
Migration Brewing
Captured by Porches Brewing
Pale Horse Brewing
Fearless Brewing
Lucky Labrador Brewing
Cascade Brewing
Alameda Brew House
Klamath Basin Brewing
Golden Valley Brewing
Wandering Aengus Ciderworks
Carlton Cyderworks

In honor of the fest, over at Poetry and Popular Culture, Professor Mike has a terrific set of riffs, hermeneutical and historical, on the 1911 Salem Beer acrostic and the "sale on ale in Salem." That's a dactylic treat!

The Independence Hop and Heritage Festival is also Saturday. They've got ghost tours, music - and beer. Rogue is a lead sponsor, and according to Brewpublic

The Rogue Shuttle will depart from the Festival Beer Garden in downtown Independence, Oregon every hour on the hour, and take festival attendees to the Micro Hopyard just six miles away.

Chatoe Rogue will host the following events:
* Free tasting of Chatoe Rogue Wet Hop Ale
* Tours of the Hop Bed, Chatoe Rogue Tasting Room, and 55,000′ hop processing facility
* Ribbon cutting and ground breaking of Chatoe Rogue Farmstead Brewery at 3PM on Saturday
* Homebrewing demonstrations on Saturday
* Helicopter tours for fly-overs of Rogue Micro Hopyard
* Picnic in Rogue’s private beach on the banks of the Willamette River across from Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge

(For more on the Rogue farm, see our expedition notes!)

And if you can't get enough, and have a devoted designated driver, Septembeerfest is in Corvallis, at the Benton County Fairgrounds. Ninkasi, Block 15, and Calapooia headline. Admission is $10 and includes a pint glass and two drink tickets, additional drink tickets are $1.

So go taste something new this weekend!

Chill Thursday with the Electro-Lounge Sounds of Kandinsky Effect

Anxious about Chickens? Doomy about the dark and damp?

Here's an unexpected pleasure: The Kandinsky Effect, a jazzy electronica-inflected trio comes to Willamette University on Thursday night.

They're from Paris, even!

Well, that's no guarantee they're great, but you can sample their music at myspace, and maybe you'll agree this is not something you'd ordinarily hear in Salem.

On the way or back, stop in at the Ram. Their Maibock won a Bronze at the Great American Beer Festival this past weekend.

That should stave off some of the gloom!

Chemistry and Labor: Sorting at the Hop Harvest

The rains make us think of rot and sorting. Like wine grapes, hops can suffer from fungus, disease, and other pests. The modern quest for efficiency has stressed monoculture, vast tracts of single crops, but loss of diversity (at micro-levels, like genetic, and at macro levels like row-on-row of a single plant variety) rendered the crops even less hardy and increasingly dependent on fertilizer and pesticide.

Over at beervana, Jeff has three notes about organic hops farming (here, here, and here). The farmers growing organic hops will have other ancillary crop material to provide additional biodiversity, and may require more labor-intensive sorting strategies.

The 1933 hop strike was in part a response to increasing chemical levels and increasing demands on sorting.

In this "hops picking portrait," you can see the basket with each individual hop cone - few leaves, vines, or tendrils. Nowadays the hop cones are sorted mechanically.

Many of the very best wines are produced from grapes picked by hand. Machine harvesting can bruise the fruit, and the gentle processes of hand picking and hand sorting will yield the highest quality, intact fruit. During a rainy harvest this can mean the difference between a good wine and an average or even defective wine made with diluted or rotten grapes.

The quality of individual hops may not be as critical to making beer as the quality of grapes - as a proportion of the total beverage, hops are a much smaller ingredient. Still, the ideas of beer terroirs grow and mature, it might be that the very best beers will be made from organic and hand-harvested hops.

In any event, the cool summer and rainy fall will make harvest more exciting than most farmers will like. We toast farmers and harvesters: Prost!

(Hops Portrait: Oregon State Library)

Weekend Fun: Oktoberfest, Septoberfest, Gilgamesh Dinner

[updated with Septoberfest] The weather is, if not exactly crappy, then certainly taking a turn to fall. But other beery diversions await!

All weekend: The Oktoberfest in Mt. Angel.

Saturday: Gilgamesh Dinner. It's in an RV Park, which is kinda odd, but that's apparently the home base for Loustic Catering.

UPDATE: Oh, yeah! Seven Brides has Septoberfest. Thanks to K&N for the reminder!

Confidential to Gilgamesh: Next time see if you can do the dinner in an old hall or church near a hops field!

(Hops Picking Portrait courtesy of the Oregon State Library)