The Great Notion Conundrum
I have begun an active survey of Portland breweries in preparation for my annual Best Breweries post. Yesterday I popped into Great Notion, and for the first time came to terms with the challenge this brewery presents. It’s not just a buzzy little brewery making unusual beers young people love—for many people, it’s an existential crisis.
Great Notion is a polarizing brewery. It is the first destination for most beer tourists, and easily the brewery with the most trade value among those who swap brightly-colored cans. It’s also regarded with suspicion and derision by others who admire tradition. The issue? In a refreshing change from the political world, partisans on both sides agree on this point.
Perhaps the best example is Great Notion’s kettle-soured mainstay Blueberry Muffin. Holding that beer under my nose, eyes closed while inhaling deeply, I am transported back to the before-times when I drove a Broadway Cab through the mean streets of Portland. One of my regular treats was a Plaid Pantry blueberry muffin, which were popular enough you had to grab them pretty early in the morning. They were as big as a softball, pillowy, and smelled precisely like Great Notion’s liquid version. In the beer, Great Notion’s use of kettle-souring is an excellent choice, because it adds a bit of structure to a beer that tastes almost miraculously like it smells. And that is exactly where the controversy lies.
Great Notion achieved a rarified and sustained level of buzz when it debuted based largely on its hazy IPAs—really the first serious treatment of them in Portland. They still do hazies, though trying Juice Jr. again yesterday, I was reminded how sedate and beer-like it is compared to where hazies have gone. Now Great Notion is far more associated with beers like Blueberry Muffin, where the flavors of deserts and patisserie are rendered into liquid form. Other famous creations include (but are far from limited to!):
Double Stack, a stout made with maple syrup and coffee.
Key Lime Pie, another kettle-sour made with key limes (natch), vanilla beans, coriander, salt, brown sugar and lactose.
Orange Creamsicle, an IPA made with orange puree, vanilla, and lactose.
Fruit Mochi, a series of IPAs made with toasted rice, vanilla, and fruit (various iterations include Guava Mochi, Passion Fruit Mochi, Lychee Mochi, etc).
The guys at Great Notion are unpretentious and likable. They have broad tastes. One of the more surprising recent beers is a pilsner that will be part of the regular lineup. It’s a straightforward German example with not the least hint of funny business. There’s currently a rauchbier pouring at the Alberta location that is spot-on good. It’s one of the better American examples I can remember encountering. I’ve no doubt that in their exuberance, someone tossed out the idea to make a rauchbier in the same breath someone else tossed out the idea for a “sherbet IPA” that became Cloud Hands, also pouring. That’s how they roll: the answer to most beery propositions seems to be yes.
But let’s be clear: no one goes to Great Notion for the pilsner. People show up for beers that taste like muffins. And here we come back to the issue of polarization. Everyone agrees the beer tastes like muffins, and even critics would be forced to admit it’s an uncanny recreation. The debate, instead, is this: should beer taste like muffins?
There are many people in the world, and certainly readers of this blog, who believe that beer has a fixed, permanent, and knowable essence. It has a defined scope. Beer should taste like beer. At the risk of alienating 80% of my readership: this is an ahistorical view. Beer can and has tasted like anything. Brewers, over the course of 12,000 years, have put everything in it you can imagine (including things you can’t imagine, and things they shouldn’t have). Even within the scope of what those same folks would consider the acceptable canon are beers that either require asterisks because they’re so weird or that once themselves were hugely polarizing. A beer that tastes like a blueberry muffin is an abomination right up until the moment it hits a tipping point and becomes a paragraph in the sacred text of beer.
Great Notion is a challenging brewery because it forces us to consider what we think of beer. I find it hard to believe many people find Blueberry Muffin objectionable on the grounds of flavor. It might not be the beer for every occasion, but is perfectly toothsome on its own merit. I definitely crave such a beer from time to time. No, we dislike Blueberry Muffin contextually; that is, because our definitions don’t include beers like this, so it must somehow be wrong.
I’ve been writing about beer long enough that I know that many of the products I extolled in 1997 would seem poorly-made, old-timey, or otherwise not up to scratch to my 2020 tongue. Fashions change, and they do so a great deal faster than we imagine. Through it all, I’ve tried to adopt an approach in which I judge the beer on its own terms. I may not like Black IPAs, but I understand what a brewer is shooting for, and I get why some people do like them. In understanding a beer on its own terms, I can begin to evaluate whether it’s good. Not in some absolute, permanent World Classic kind of way, but in the fashion it was intended—as a beer of a particular profile meant to please people who like such things. That applies as much to helles as it does to whatever we’ll eventually call Blueberry Muffin.
Anyway, I think Great Notion is doing these beers at an extremely high level; better than anyone else I’ve encountered. You may not like these beers, but I would recommend Great Notion to anyone who wanted to understand them and their potential. And, again, at the risk of alienating some folks, I’d add this: keep an open mind. Beer is supposed to be fun. We always talk about how beer is so cool because it brings people together in a happy, convivial space where they can enjoy each other’s company. Stop into a Great Notion and look around. Hard to argue that’s not exactly what they’re doing.