El Niño’s Messing With My Vibes

My friend’s goats, basking in the sun over the weekend.

I am a seasonal drinker. Give me something dark and hearty in January, pale and crisp in June—and please do not get cute and reverse them. Beer is a drink, obviously, but it’s also a ritual. A freshly-poured pint completes a setting (or as the dreaded marketers say, an “occasion”), scenting, flavoring, and anchoring a moment in the collected years of experience. You have your Christmas nog, I have my Orval.

Except that the blasted weather is throwing me off. Two nights ago, Sally and I strolled over to Baby Doll Pizza, which is owned by Old Town Brewing. It’s one of my favorite stops, a New York-style by-the-slice pizzeria on one side (lots of young people in black buying $5.25 pepperoni), and a dive bar, unexpectedly, on the other. The dive bar portion is inky-dark 12 months a year, providing a sense of coziness in the winter, and cool in the summer. There’s never not a good time to visit.

So anyway, I am standing at the bar looking at the beer list, and I am confronted with a new confusion, one hounding me these past weeks. Amid the requisite IPAs I might choose a pilsner or a vintage 1990s 4.9% brewpub porter. These are excellent choices and typically the calendar would dictate my selection. But on that Wednesday, late into October, I was confused. I should have wanted the porter, because it should have been cold and wet outside. Instead, the sunny day reached the mid-70s, even though it gets pitch black by 6:30. Confused, I stammered, delaying the decision by ordering Sally’s pilsner. (She is ruthless about beer and ignores seasonal cues.)

The unholy El Niño that has been roasting the planet is messing with my vibes. In the face of the 50,000 who lost their lives in the summer European heat, I realize I don’t have anything to complain about. This summer was the hottest on record for the planet—not especially newsworthy, since the past three were all the hottest, too—setting places ablaze that usually don’t burn, melting infrastructure, boiling reefs and fishes. And in fact, this protected little pocket of the Pacific Northwest, so often out of step with the rest of the world, was somehow spared the sun’s wrath. We had a historically normal year, with just one modest heat wave that only reached the mid-90s.

So no complaints about the weather here—except, you know, vibes. Summer arrived in May rather than July, and it seems to be hanging around until November. And while the sun’s rays may not have been punitive in Portland, they were weird. I feel like I accidentally moved to California. No doubt it’s been good for our local beverage purveyors, though, who sell more beer to patio-pilsner drinkers than porter-drinking weirdos who cherish the dark and wet. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. (The weather app says we’ll get rain this weekend, so a boy can always dream.)

On a passingly serious note, a warming planet is going to change drinking habits, sometimes for the better, but mostly for the worst. I can’t imagine Germany’s amazing beer gardens had such a good summer. This is true for drinking, but also growing the raw materials we need to make the beer. This year, that heat wreaked serious havoc on European hops. But let’s not get too heavy here—this is a post about vibes.

I get that people live in other places where rain, cold, and dark don’t arrive reliably in October. Somehow they manage to bear up in Kona and struggle through the grim, unrelenting sunshine of their winters. People are calibrated differently. But I have become calibrated to Oregon, and this doesn’t feel like Oregon, and by god, I’m going to blog about it.

Oh, in case you’re wondering, I got the porter. Screw you, devil sun!