As far as Autumn brews go I really have a thing for porters. Stouts are nice and creamy and all, but I like the hoppy smokey essence of a good dark porter.
My favorite is Black Butte Porter, with Anchor Porter coming in a very close second.
Let me tell you about Black Butte Porter. Pull up a stool whydontcha cuz it's a mightyfine story.
I discovered Black Butte Porter on a mountain biking road trip to Oregon in 1996 when some buddies and I rode a lap around Newberry Crater, in the Deschutes National Forest near Bend. The group I was with had a habit of partying late into the night around the campfire and then starting the ride much too late in the day - often doing the big climb in the heat after lunch.
That ride was no exception and we started out around noon in a clockwise fashion, working our way to the northern rim up through the grey volcanic ash mixed with black ash from a recent forest fire, up to a trail that encircled the rim of the caldera.
On the first short drop in the trail one of our party (let's call him "Phil") went over the bars in a spectacular fall face first into the ash. He came up with a newly dark complexion and was none too happy about it. The cause of Phil's fall was quickly diagnosed as a broken handlebar, which we fixed with a pocket knife, whittling a pine branch down to fit snugly as a splice in the center of the aluminum tube that made up his bars. We then shifted his bar slightly off center and clamped the stem down over the break and the core of pine and sent him limping back to camp. Now mind you this was 1996? Did I say '96? Maybe it was '97. In 1997 I was sporting the finest technology known to man or woman for mountain biking - a Rock Shox Judy suspension fork. My friend Phil had a Girvin linkage fork and while I won't speculate as to the cause of his bar failure perhaps his fork didn't quite, shall we say, "suspend" him over his bike.
Anyway with the superior technology mounted on the front of my Stumpjumper, I was so very confident I was equipped for the rest of this adventure that I didn't volunteer to bail with Phil to join him on his return to camp and left him (so heartless we were) on his own.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. The loop around the crater. The rest of our group continued up and down and up and down along the rim until we got to the south side. By that time it was LATE and we had been baking in the summer sun for hours. We were completely wiped out in the heat. So we debated taking a "short cut" which among my friends almost always meant something close to a near death experience. So of course I said "Sounds good to me" and we took a right turn on a narrow singletrack and dropped down into the crater along an ancient river of obsidian. I have no idea how I didn't get a flat tire. Perhaps it WAS that superior technology. I just remember focusing with all my might on riding clean and not falling into the black glass on either side of the trail.
We somehow made our way back to camp without lacerations either to skin or tire and found Phil alive and well and very hungry. We were hungry too!
So we locked our bikes up and headed into Bend for some grub, and found ourselves at the Deschutes Brewery Public House, where we had to make our beer selections. I had just returned from a trip to Germany where I had made it my mission to sample every Doppelbock I could get my hands on. So I ordered the Black Butte Porter and hoped it would compare.
We also - - ordered pizza.
Now as if cheating death on the obsidian flow wasn't enough, my good friend and tent partner "Naj" decided to order the chipotle pizza. My friends, nobody in Bend OR except the Public House's chef new what chipotle was in 1996 (or was it '97? I can't remember), including our server. We didn't know what it was and furthermore we couldn't pronounce it. But it sounded cool even mangled into some sort of gringo pronunciation so we ordered it anyway.
My DOG that Black Butte Porter was the perfect compliment to the smokey red devil on that pie. I can't even remember what else we ordered but I do remember that the pizza was covered with these brick red chipotle peppers and Naj was sweating buckets.
Now it's a couple decades later and we have a restaurant named after that vegetable. In case you still aren't sure what it is, a chipotle is a smoked jalapeno pepper. Smokey, red, and delicious. But also stronger and sweeter than the green version of the fruit. Poor, dear Naj. Oh boy. Naj really liked spice but it would make him sweat. Like, pour from his pores sweat. Rivers of sweat. Napkin saturating, eye stinging, copious, ominous, mysterious, awesome rivers of sweat began pouring off of his brow. And Naj was hungry. So he soldiered on, and ate another piece.
We called for backup napkins, and I think someone had the good sense to order another batch of fries, and another round of beer, and after a while Naj had enough calories in him to replenish from the day's activities (but I think maybe he was having trouble in the hydration department as it kept running out of him as fast as it would go in).
I won't tell you about the bathroom at camp or the fact that I slept outside that night having decided that the tent was no place to spend a night with the oozing pores of that man.
But I have always, always, remembered the awesome chipotle-cutting powers of the Black Butte Porter.
So cheers, raise your glass to Naj and have a toast to the end of summer and long rides around black volcanos, will you?
