Great Notion

I’m dying to know what you paired with haggis. Or that it was an autocorrect and you were at Higgins.

 

Oatmeal stout?

 

Me neither. I thought it was rarity that made for the tastiest beers.

 

Yeah seems to be a reasonable expectation to just walk-in buy your cans and walk out and not expect people to be waiting for a highly anticipated release. Which if you had shown up 45-60 mins after they went on sale you would have been able to do just that walk-in and out.

 

highly anticipated release = GN opening their production facility

however not worth squabbling over.... back to obscurity for me

 

The hype for Great Notion has gone national, and crowler arent quite as trade worthy as legit cans.

I think it will calm down but people are also just wanting to be a part of the first official can release of GN.

However who knows?

 

i mean, a FB trading group popped up immediately and seems pretty busy... i bet the hypelotion keeps growing.

 

Being from the east coast coming in and seeing what everyone’s saying is confirmation that I live on the wrong side of the country. I seem to be the only guy trashing hype and lines in the mid Atlantic. Anyway cheer west coasters. Until next time.

 

Well cans being available for days on end at the brewery seems to suggest that availability might help it die down a bit.

A whole lot of traders only care to try something once for those untappd check ins or insta posts then move on.

I'm sure each new first canning will stay pretty big but after that not so sure. Still popular for sure but there seems to be more than enough to go around of each batch and are doing 2 a week.

 

I was in Vancouver, WA last week, and I got to visit Great Notion ... twice. Checking the taplist the afternoon after my first visit to see four new beers warranted my second visit.

I'm no longer on the hazy hype train as much as I was a year or so ago, or at the very least I'm just in the caboose now, and make frequent stops for Bodhi, Bits & Bobs, and everything else we're spoiled with up here. In other words, any ol' murkbomb won't spellbind me the way one might have before.

That said, I really enjoyed Great Notion. Food was solid, staff was go-out-of-their-way friendly, and I really enjoyed the majority of beers I tried:

• Blueberry Muffin was more than just a blueberry sour, balancing sweet and sour, nailing the muffin vibe on the aftertaste sans cloying.
• I really liked Hop Waffle, which was a maple-infused hazy IPA. I was at first thankful that my taster of it was just five ounces - until I tasted it. Those flavors have no business together, but damn it worked. I got a full pour the next night I returned. I'm still not sure how maple fit in an hazy IPA, but I think I loved it because I am a **** for maple bars. To each his own though, as my co-worker who visited the next day was not a fan, though he enjoyed their other wares.
• Speaking of maple, I got a taster of Double Stack. I'm the oddball in that I don't like dark, heavy, thick, sweet imperial stouts and would rather have a barleywine, saison, IPA, or wild ale. Maybe my soft spot for maple factors in again here because I enjoyed this quite a bit.
• I had other beers, but another that stood out was Orchard Reserve, which I honestly thought was a kriek when I tasted it until later learning it was a saison aged in pinot noir barrels on cherries with a sour culture. I was not expecting anything like this on their taplist. It was delicate and delicious, and it had me rethinking my preconceived beard 'n' flannel haze-brah notions of this establishment.

All in all, I could see how their food menu-inspired beers polarize, especially when magnified by ever-present the hype that surrounds them, but I thoroughly enjoyed Great Notion. I don't get down to PDX more than once a year or two, but I look forward to my next trip.

 

I'll throw my hat in the ring re: can releases.

A few qualifications for my response:
- I'm in Southern Oregon, so accessibility is a factor
- My wife is a past work colleague of the wife of one of the owners, so bias may be at play
- I'm not very price sensitive, so I buy with a focus on quality and flavor, and buy less quantity as a result.

All that to preface that I, for one, am excited about can releases. I'm not excited about all of them, as my preference for IPAs relates more to the hops used and less to the opacity. I prefer Citra to Mosaic as far as my palate is concerned, so I would spend 18-20 on a 4-Pack of Ripe, for instance, but would not for any of the Juice's. I also like sweet, adjunct laden stouts, so Double Stack is a no-brainer for me. I'd likely cough up for Blueberry Muffin as well. I regularly spend $18 on a 750 of De Garde, and although I know they are completely different styles and production methods (and therefore leagues), I'm happy to spend that much on a beer I enjoy, as I do Blueberry Muffin. I find it more unique and appealing from the "muffin" perspective than the "blueberry" one, for instance (it really tastes like a damn muffin), and thus would pay for it. I also have friends in Nor Cal who would love to try these beers, so would pick some up on their behalf.

I would not stand in line for them. I'll wait for them to be more readily available when I visit Portland (which I do a few times annually for work, play, etc). I have never stood in line for beer and never plan to. Tickers gotta tick. I just know my palate and like good beer, which is available without a line.

Finally, in regards to the hype, I tend to disparage the hype mongers, not the brewers themselves. I feel badly for the brewers that have to apologize for the reaction they elicit from the haze-bros. It's a problem with beer culture and brewers seem to be victimized for it, imho. Great Notion appears to me to be a very humble operation that has a hype problem, and I happen to enjoy the beers they make, so I wish them the best of luck.

Cheers,
Brandon

 

Well put, from my experience these guys have not let beer fame go to their heads and remain super friendly and humble.

 

I think Juice Jr and Juice Box are all Mosaic FWIW

 

And thus, the next Grape Lotion beer name was born.

 

People always sleep on their sours, which is unfortunate and I hope it doesn't eventually cause them to stray away from making them.