I’ve never cooked bok choy, but I’m always drawn in to the bok choy booth at the Eugene Farmer’s Market. Two platters of bright, colorful greens draw me in with their sweet garlicky wafts and sesame-seed polka dots, and I can never resist.

This week, I actually bought some bok choy to see if I could make any of that magic at home. I didn’t buy the seasoning packets offered from the bok choy stand, because, well, I’m not that in to seasoning packets. This recipe is inspired by what my taste-buds remember from those platters, but also by springtime, nostalgia for New Mexico, and a fierce grumbly tumbly.

Bok choy isn’t particularly flavorful by itself, so strong flavors get their chance to shine. A sweet, spicy, spine tingling combination of ginger, New Mexican chile powder, garlic, cumin and onions underlies this dish. It is further accented by chopped peanuts that add crunchy satisfaction and protein richness. Baked baby potatoes are an excellent carrier for the spicy veggies, but rice or any other grain that is fairly neutral-flavored and has some sauce-soaking potential will do.

Ingredients:

½ onion

1 clove garlic

1 inch knob of fresh ginger, minced

1 Tbs New Mexican red chile powder (or some other kind of chile powder, or some chopped jalapeno)

1 tsp cumin

1 head baby bok choy

¼ cup chopped peanuts

1 T olive oil

Process:

1. Chop the onion and mince the garlic. Plop them in a dry pan over medium-high heat and add the spices and ginger with a hefty pinch each of salt and pepper.
2. Let the onions exude their liquid. When things start sticking to your pan, add the oil.
3. After about 5 minutes, add the chopped peanuts.
4. Add your bok choy, chopped up into bite-able pieces.
5. Keep cooking and stirring the mixture for about 10 minutes. The bok choi will release a lot of water and cook down. If things get sticky, add more oil.
6. Serve over carbohydrate of your choice!

The Life & Death Issue, March 16…

Glenn Ohlsen, a mild-mannered second generation Dane, grew up in rural Oregon in the early 1900s. He always felt like he was born a century too late. He wanted to be one of those pioneers of the frontier, bravely slugging across the country in a quaint but efficient covered wagon. He never went to college, preferring to spend his time working in the woods.

Later in his life, Mr. Ohlsen and his wife and three kids moved to the bustling hot spot of Eugene, OR. One cannot imagine that he was too happy with city life, but he was taken over by one innovation that the globalizing 20^th century had brought in to his life. He called it Pih-Zuh.

The bustling city Mr. Ohlsen encountered

About 50 years later, this Ohlsen is back in Eugene, continuing the family tradition of being happy in the woods, pronouncing things incorrectly, and eating pizza. It is doubtful that grandpa Ohlsen would like this pihzuh at first sight, as it embraces an unconventional combination of toppings. Roasted garlicky butternut squash, kale, and caramelized onions bathe in gooey blotches of goat cheese atop a hearty crust. After a teeny taste, it’s fairly certain that even the most diehard pihzuh fans would cave and add this combo to their favorites.

Crust:

1 ¼ cup warm water

1 packet Instant Rise Yeast

1 tsp olive oil

1 tsp honey

a hearty sprinkling of salt

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup buckwheat flour

1 ½ cups white flour

cornmeal

Recipe for the dough:

1. Dissolve the honey, olive oil, salt, and yeast in the warm water. Let it sit for five minutes.
2. Mix the flours together.
3. Knead the water into the flour until the dough doesn’t stick very much to the sides of the bowl. I use my mixer for this, so if you don’t want to invest in very much hard labor you might just want to buy pre-made crust dough. But the buckwheat flour is damn toothsome.
4. Cover your hands in oil, then handle the dough so it gets slimy all over. Cover it in a bowl with a towel, and leave it in a warm spot for an hour.
5. When you’re ready to bake your pizza, stretch and roll the dough into your desired pizza shape, and put it on a pan sprinkled with cornmeal.
6. Bake with toppings at 400 F for about 15 minutes.

Toppings:

Butternut squash (a wee one), cubed

Minced garlic (5 cloves)

Yellow onion

Kale (one bunch, chopped)

4 Tbs butter

Goat cheese (an 8oz log)

Mozzarella cheese (about a cup, shredded)

Recipe for the toppings:

1. Toss the squash with the minced garlic in a roasting pan, and scatter 3 tablespoons of the butter in there. Put it in the oven at 375 F for about 35 minutes, or until the squash has deep brown edges.
2. While the squash is in the oven, slice the onion in two, and then in thin slices. Put them in a dry pan over low heat and sprinkle with a little salt and pepper.
3. The onions will emit some liquid, but when they’re drying out, add the remaining butter. Stir occasionally for about 30 minutes, or until the onions have shrunken down into delicious little brown snakes of flavor.
4. Steam the kale for about 7 minutes, and drain it before you put it on the pizza.

Assembly:

Scatter the kale accross the dough first. Then artistically arrange the squash and onions. Dot the masterpiece with circles of goat cheese and a snowy strew of mozzarella.

Bake the pihzuh for about 15 minutes, or until the cheese is bubbly and irresistible.

Scones are generally what I long for when I peer into any worthwhile pastry cabinet. The oversized, sugar-glazed, crumbly American scone is guaranteed to sit heavily in my tummy. There are always those lardful days for heavy scones. For other days, these Seedy Power Scones get me out of bed (they smell real good) and keep me going afterwards.

The scones have whole wheat flour to give them a healthy depth, but the health factor is outshined by crunchy seeds and a tinge of golden sweetness. The buttermilk lightens them up, so they aren’t little hard blocks of health food. They get crispy on the outside, but retain a soft and pillowy interior. I put them through the ultimate good food test of running immediately after scone consumption. I ran seven fast, unencumbered miles.

Since the scones have very little sugar in them, you have a number of options in how you go about consuming them. I like them simple: warmed with butter and honey. They are also excellent vehicles to scoop up some scrambled eggs, or served with some good jam or fruit butter. Fresh out of the oven, they don’t really need anything except a steaming mug of coffee or tea.

Ingredients:

1 and 1/3 cups whole wheat flour

½ cup all purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

½ cup brown sugar

6 Tbs butter

2/3 cup buttermilk*

1 tsp vanilla extract

6 Tbs mixed seeds (sunflower, pumpkin, sesame, flax, poppy)

*No buttermilk? Just add a tablespoon of lemon juice to regular milk and let it sit for five minutes. Boom.

Recipe:

1. HEAT YOUR OVEN to 400˚ F.
2. CUBE THE BUTTER. Cut the butter into cubes about the size of Monopoly houses. Spread the cubes out on your cutting board and put them in the freezer while you continue prepping.
3. MIX THE DRY INGREDIENTS together in a big bowl.
4. MEASURE THE SEEDS. You can use any mixture, but chop up the bigger seeds, so they don’t dominate any biteful of scone.
5. ADD THE BUTTER to your bowl of dry ingredients. Use a fork to smush the butter into smaller pieces. Continue smushing until there are no pieces of butter bigger than a pea, or until your arm is really tired.
6. POUR BUTTERMILK into the butter-flour bowl. Give it a stir or two.
7. ADD THE SEEDS. Do your best to get all the flour and seeds mixed in evenly. The dough is going to be tough.
8. FLOUR YOUR CUTTING BOARD, and plop the dough onto it. Flour your hands, and lovingly pat the dough into a circle. Then flatten it out, so that it’s about 10 inches wide.
9. CUT THE DOUGH in to 12 slices, like you’re slicin’ pizza. A floured knife might help if you’re dough is sticky.
10. BAKE THE LITTLE BABIES on a greased or parchment papered cookie sheet for about 17 minutes, or until they’re golden brown.
11. OPTIONAL TOUCH OF LOVE: When they come out of the oven, sprinkle them with some good ol’ white sugar.

It’s been a week of perpetual wetness, and the general state of things is soggy.  It is easy to slip into a dangerous state of chilled, gray sky irritability. It’s also easy to whip up a batch of tomato soup and slurp your sorrows away.

This roasted tomato and red pepper soup is warm and cozy, best spooned out of big mugs and sopped up with crusty bread. Roasting the tomatoes and peppers brings out their mellow sweetness, which is deepened and seductively enriched by whole garlic cloves and onions that roast cozily in the same pan.

The recipe made its way into my repertoire recently, and since the soupy weather looks as though it will persist, I see many batches in my future. The color of the soup is romantic, so if you get excited by Valentine’s day, it’s probably fitting for that. If not, it will warm your belly and make you feel safe and well, even if the gods and goddesses upstairs are crying incessantly.

Ingredients:
5-ish tomatoes (anything but Roma is usually safe)
2 red bell peppers
2 little yellow onions or 1 big one
5 garlic cloves
½ cup olive oil
salt, pepper, rosemary, basil

1.    OVEN TO 400˚
2.    CUT YOUR VEGGIES UP. Quarter the tomatoes and put them on a baking sheet, skins touching the pan. Cut the bell peppers into thick slices and wash them to remove their seeds. Place them skins up on the pan. Cut the onions in sixths, and peel the garlic cloves. They go on the pan too.
3.    SEASON THOSE PUPPIES. Drizzle the olive oil evenly over everything. Sprinkle salt and pepper across the vast red sea of veggies. Strew some fresh sprigs of rosemary and roughly chopped basil in the mix. Dried herbs work too, use about 3 tsp of each.
4.    GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY. Scootch everything around the pan, so no little tomato is left sad and hung out to dry.
5.    TURN UP THE HEAT. Put the pan in the oven for about 50 minutes. After every 15 minutes or so, check to make sure nobody’s getting too black. Turn them over if they are.
6.    PICK YOUR STOCK. Scrape the roasted beauties into a bowl, making sure you pour all the leftover juices from the pan in there too. Add 2 cups of any kind of stock, or use water with some more salt and pepper.
7.    BLEND. If you have an immersion blender, use it. If you don’t, you should. You can also use a regular blender (blend the soup in batches), or just mash everything up with whatever you can find (a potato masher?). If you added cold stock, you might need to put the soup in a pot on the stove for to heat it up again.
8.    BOWL TIME. I like to sprinkle Parmesan cheese on the soup and have some nice, hefty toast to clean my bowl with. Goat cheese is another option – a nice daub in the middle of the soup will get silky-soft and smooth.

VEGGIES, BEFORE AND AFTER:

This recipe was inspired by Heidi Swanson’s Roasted Tomato Soup from 101cookbooks.com.

words JACK WASHER
art TAYLOR JOHNSTON

Antechinus, the Self-Sacrificing Dad

These tiny little marsupial mice are the most tenacious little fuckers in the animal kingdom — literally. Once the male finds a mate he will have sex non-stop for 12 hours until he dies from a combination of over-exertion and starvation. This dad burns so much energy during the process that his little body has to produce tons of steroids to keep death at bay for as long as possible.

Stickleback Fish, the Bachelor Pad Dad

Here’s a fish that knows how to get hella domestic. A native of the PNW shores, the stickleback creates a cozy little love nest made from his own sticky kidney mucus (yum!) and lots of ornate looking rocks and twigs to lure any potential female. He then posts up outside his crib and dances (vibrates) for the ladies, flashing his bright red belly while grinding all up on them until they are thoroughly seduced.  Once the deed is done, he kicks them out and raises the hatchlings on his own. What a boss.

Rheas, the most Fucked-Over Dad

Life for these ostrich-looking birds starts off pretty great. A polygamous species, the male rhea will run around with a harem of three to 12 females, copulating all the time. Kinky, right? But all the while, these females are totally getting pregnant, and instead of each of them raising their own young, they leave all their eggs with Dad so they can run off and get knocked up again. Gold diggin’, if you ask me. The male rhea is then left to raise upwards of 60 hatchlings on his own for two whole years! But it’s OK, he totally loves them.

Emperor Penguin, the Zen Dad

For some dumb reason, emperor penguins make Antarctica their home. After the penguins mate, the male is rewarded with the prize of one large egg that he must balance on his feet in the freezing cold. During this time, all the penguin males huddle together for warmth while their female counterparts go on a two-month feeding sabbatical. Once their eggs hatch, they muster whatever food is left in their empty bellies and throw up into their young’s mouth.

Seahorses, aka Mr. Mom

If male seahorses were any better at being dads, they’d be moms. They are the epitome of role-reversal because when these little sea creatures mate, it’s the awesome dads who carry the offspring, all 1,000 or so of them. The male will proudly flaunt his massive brood pouch during the gestation period until, after 50 days, thousands of teeny tiny miniature baby Seahorses emerge.

Mufasa, Father of Simba, Mate to Sarabi, and Exalted Ruler of the Pride Lands

Undeniably the best dad in the whole universe. Mufasa is the perfect amalgamation of disciplinarian and loving father. He is the balance and harmony that is the circle of life incarnate, or should I say inanimate? After seeing The Lion King, every time I look at the stars I see the great kings of the past looking down upon us. Enough said.

Bonobos and Dolphins

Can I have some more sex with that pleasure? Bonobos like sex — a lot. It doesn’t matter what kind, and they’ll do pretty much anything to get off. Ranging from male on female, female on female, sword fighting, scrotum rubbing, and all kinds of freaky positions. They match humans on every level and then go even further by removing any societal taboo surrounding sexuality. If we had sex as frequently as Dolphins do, we’d be having sex four months out of the year. For these magical creatures, sex is the ultimate form of social bonding and indicates how this species is the smartest animal on the planet.

Dear Gingerbeard,

It’s my third year in college and I still don’t know how to make myself sit down and study for my difficult classes. I find that I spend the four hours I reserved for learning doing anything else. At least my apartment is clean and well-decorated. You seem like a gentleman and a scholar, please tell me how I can overcome my stubborn avoidance without drug dependence? 

-Academic Dish Doer

Well, ADD, if you’re really hoping to reform your study habits, you still shouldn’t completely discredit how you currently use your time. On the bright side, you’ve chosen the moderately efficient, big-kid task of cleaning your living space to avoid your studies. Many of us fall into the rut of becoming slaves to much more menial activities. This could include scanning Facebook albums for unrealistically fat-looking photos of friends, investigating a YouTube timeline of the work of Soulja Boy, or perhaps just laying around drinking on an empty stomach. In short, you are on the right track.

What I’ve found to be an important factor in completing my work is the integration of personal rewards throughout a night of studying. For example, two pages of writing earns me the divine privilege of one episode of The Wire (with roughly 15 minutes of wiggle room to catch up on overly ambitious, religiously-inspired young marriages on Facebook). In light of your current preferred use of time, I would suggest different forms of custodial rewards. Three chapters read would earn you, say, a perfectly white, stain-free toilet or a fridge that doesn’t smell like booty butter. Essentially, it’s just important to maintain checkpoints and goals for yourself, even throughout a single night. In addition, even though you’re hoping to avoid this route, I recently heard that one tablet of Excedrin is equal to like, three cups of coffee, dawg. More on this after midterms.

Dear Gingerbeard,

What do you think about the possibility of life on other planets? And what do you think will happen on December 21st, 2012? I heard some crazy funky shit.

-Pretty Eyes

Well, Pretty Eyes, my illustrious predecessor, I had a suspicion that there would be a question of this nature in this edition of the Oregon Voice. The 2012 New Years Eve party scene was a bitter-sweet occasion for many, including the Voice staff. Without pointing fingers, I will say that even some Top Dawgs here at the Voice have been on edge, finding themselves slipping into conversations reminiscent of those you might hear from unstable locals at the downtown bus station or the alley outside Minit Mart. You know, topics like planetary alignment chaos, solar storms, intergalactic bee extermination, and the ever-present and left-wing nonsense that “science” refers to as “global warming.” Though I myself will not settle on one specific date or process of Earth’s demise, I will say that I hope (fingers crossed), that extra-terrestrials and the violent destruction of humanity are intrinsically related. Maybe I’ve seen Alien vs. Predator a few too many times, Pretty Eyes, but the idea of aliens chillin’ with Latin America’s indigenous people in the past really warms my heart. If our intergalactic babysitters think we need a permanent time-out, then so be it.

Dear Gingerbeard,

Your volunteer occupation as an advice columnist will end as soon as you graduate. What will you do then? Tell me.

-Gingerbeard’s Red-haired Advice is Doomed

Although this question was meant as a personal one, I feel that it pertains to many students at the University of Oregon, dutifully trudging through their last one or two years of classes to earn a bright, shining, deceivingly useless liberal arts degree. Therefore, GRAD, this question provides an excellent space for a discussion of the options for Duck alumni shortly after graduation.

The first, most non-committal option is that of achieving the official rank of Townie. Not only would I have the ability to stay in Eugene’s culturally rich environment and party with younger, less pathetic friends, but I would also have the right to describe my undergrad major using past-tense, nostalgic language at all of my favorite local haunts when approached by strangers. Also, each fall would bestow upon me a slew of naïve California freshmen.

The next, most sensible post-college lifestyle lies in the confines of Portland. A liberal arts major’s wet dream, Portland offers a myriad of options for me to waste my time and defer loans. Perhaps the highest rank one could achieve here is the status of “Portland famous.” Beginning with a cashier position at, perhaps, Elephant’s Delicatessen, an ambitious and lucky twenty-something like myself might soon find great pleasure in being the guy everyone on the whole east-side knows as “that Stumptown barista who wears a boy scout uniform to shows.” Oh, and I could own a motorcycle.

Finally, I could always apply ahead of time for internships and volunteer opportunities that make myself more competitive for grad school, but… Meh.

words MARGARET APPEL

First and foremost, welcome to the OV’s latest cinematic blog installment: “Livin’ The Stream.” Each week I’ll be reviewing one (or more?) movie/television series featured in Netflix’s “Instant Watch” section, so as to help you sift through all the “straight to instant watch because it sucks” material, and pan for the true gold hidden beneath the stream. This way, the next time you’re perusing the nausea-inducing scrolling feature Netflix hasn’t managed to change yet, you can throw a flick in your queue based on something more than the “this-movie-must-be-good-because-it-has-a lot-of-those-movie-festival-branches” theory.

To get things started off with a bang, today I’ll be recommending 2007 documentary Please Vote For Me which can be found under the ‘Foreign Documentaries’ classification. Directed by Weijun Chen, the film takes place in Wuhan, China and centers around a third grade classroom holding an experimental democratic election for highly respected position of ‘class monitor.’ Of course, being that the students are unfamiliar with democracy (love that Communism!) and are a mere eight years old, the election process proves both lightheartedly hilarious and eerily reminiscent of the USA’s current race for the Republican presidential candidacy. Devoid of any narration, the film is 57 minutes of raw political debauchery from extremely cute third-graders.

The film features maniacal laughter and campaign sabotage, well-groomed rat tails, spontaneous group crying, hyper-involved parents, and one candidate who refuses to wear clothes in the home. The anticipation builds as each student makes different attempts to foil the campaigns of their competitors and woo classmates, and the final moments are filled with heated in-class debates that would certainly leave Rick Perry speechless.

Peep the trailer:

Rated: Birkenstocks out of Crocs

interview NOAH DEWITT

Oregon Voice: It sounds like you come from a pretty “groovy” background.

Henry Church: You’re talking to the dude with tie-dye sneakers.

OV: How did you go from studying shamanism at NYU to being in this band?

Mickey Church: Yeah, it’s always interesting talking about it in hindsight because to me it was always separate. Shamanistic ritual kind of was happenstance. My advisor was the teacher of shamanistic ritual at NYU, so I just decided to take a course that my advisor was teaching, not even knowing what it was… Because he happened to be a Ph.D. in shamanism, or whatever you want to call it, and he was a shamanista himself, I took the class and really connected with it and connected with him. On the first day of school, it was a bunch of nervous kids who are in New York City for the first time, and we’re sitting in this classroom for our first class of our first day. And the teacher is nonexistent. And 10 minutes go by. Fifteen minutes go by. And after 15 minutes, this crazy guy bursts through the door, covered in dust with a  doctor’s mask on and a flashlight on his head, with his friend who had these crazy, piercing blue eyes, who’s also covered in dust. And he says, “True story, true story: We just got back from Burning Man. True story: Janis Joplin was in eagle form flying over the RV the entire way home.

By the next class a lot of the kids had dropped it, like, “I’m spending my tuition money on this?” But the people who stayed in the class are some of the only people that I became friends with in the entire university for the entire four years I was there.

That’s just one thing that happened that led me a certain way, but it could have easily not gone that way.

OV: What about your name? Is it an archery thing, or is it more like a computer mouse white arrow?

MC: It’s actually neither, or both if you guys want it to be. It’s just abstract, and whatever meaning it had when we came up with it — it’s kind of always changing based on what people assume it is or ask what it is. So I kind of like to keep it as abstract and free-formed as possible. If people want to take it literally, they can.

OV: I know you two are brothers. Are you all family?

MC: J.P.’s a half-brother by blood. We’re like cousins. And we all met through friends, and it was pretty kismet. Like how rare is it to find people, especially later in life, who are all on the same page as you. It’s like past the age of 16, I’ve made maybe 10 friends in my life, two of which happen to be likeminded individuals who want to play a similar kind of music and have the same outlook on life and the journey.

OV: How written are your songs when you step into the studio? Because your songs are really intensely produced.

MC: We write as we record. It’s all home studio stuff.

Andrew Naeve: We just write and record, and what needs to be rerecorded later, we’ll touch up after the song is written. We’ve probably recorded vocals like three different times, before just tossing it and starting over.

JPC: It’s like one of those gem tumblers, where you put in all the geodes and precious rocks, and you just tumble it and tumble it and tumble it. It takes a long time, and they turn into these beautiful smooth rocks.

OV: You’ve referred to yourselves as tropical crunk music?

HC: Many times.

OV: What aspects of crunk do you guys adapt to your style?

MC: Mostly the dancing.

AN: Mostly nothing. Besides the vibe. We don’t have crunk cups.

HC: I do.

words WILL STEVENS
photo COLLETTE LEVESQUE

Walking into a house party on a crisp autumn evening, you find a place in the corner of the dimly lit room. The incense fails to mask stale Pabst and yesterday’s quinoa, and the end result is more cinnamon fart than welcoming. In the adjacent corner stand two tall gents, each holding 22-ounce brown bottles. They’re trading sips and giving that diagonal nod that says, “I understand you, my brother.” When the exchange is over you realize you’ve been gazing creepily at this fraternal mating ritual for far too long.

You’re at another mediocre party, and although dumbfounded by the site of two college-aged beer snobs, you know deep inside you wish you could talk to them. After all, what’s happening with beer these days isn’t just a trend. It’s a revolution of party culture altogether.

“Younger people are starting to realize that craft beer is a whole different phenomenon from the Bud, Miller, Coors that our parents and grandparents grew up drinking consistently,” said Matt Van Wyk, Brewmaster at Eugene’s Oakshire Brewing.

That’s right. In Eugene, one of the west coast’s most delightfully puzzling of cities, quality beer has finally trumped the light lager standby. Leading the charge are the two surging breweries Ninkasi and Oakshire. Aside from both being founded in 2006 and concocting damn good beer, the two companies share little in common.

Ninkasi is undeniably the leader of Eugene’s beer renaissance. Named after the Sumerian goddess of fermentation, the company’s booming success is due mainly to its intense hopping, a trend among microbreweries today. Its ingenious marketing has also helped, particularly its presence in the Eugene music scene. Not only has the brand defined itself as rebellious and sharp, similar to that of Rogue Ales from Newport, Ore., but also its logo and overall design emulate the boldness and leisurely essence that is Eugene. It has grown to be the closest thing the city has to a mascot (except maybe for that quack in a duck outfit).

But any craft brewer will tell you that regardless of sexy ad campaigns and trendy marketing, the beer is what sells itself. Ninkasi’s flagship brew is the Total Domination IPA, a beer that, while on the hoppy side, finishes smoothly with a kick of citrus. It’s the beer that you’ll initially criticize for being too strong, too heavy, too this, too that, but by the time your tirade is finished, you’re running back to the bar for a refill.

Other notable Ninkasi brews include their Tricerahops Double IPA, the Believer Double Red Ale, the Oatis Oatmeal Stout, and the current winter release Sleigh’r.  All of these beers are exquisite, but drinkers beware: These shouldn’t be treated like pawns in your Thursday night drinking games. Just one pint of any Ninkasi beer will redden your face and you’ll start cracking inappropriate jokes or futzing with your friend’s iTunes, looking for that perfect track to bump full blast in effort to make sense of your fast-fleeting sobriety.

The intoxication with Ninkasi isn’t restricted to the Willamette valley either. It’s now regional. Last month, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission charted Ninkasi third in Oregon-owned beer sales, trailing only statewide giants Deschutes Brewery and Widmer Brothers Brewing. Ninkasi is currently bottling to four states, and the facility had to acquire adjacent property to store brewing equipment after seeing exponential sales growth through three consecutive years.

Amidst the hoopla surrounding the state’s new darling, Ninkasi brewers will tell you with frank modesty that they’ve simply had a good run and can only hope the ride continues.

“Ever since I started working here, it’s just been about making beer we’ve wanted to make, doing it in our own way, and then sharing that experience,” said James Book, marketing director at Ninkasi.  “The challenging part is being able to maintain that core culture moving ahead.”

If Ninkasi is your trendsetting, rebellious older brother (yes, we are personifying beer when it’s this good), Oakshire would be your friend’s dad who is often more fun to hang out with than people your own age. The stoicism of this brewery cannot be overstated: It claims to have no marketing strategy, and doesn’t seem to mind being the little guy relative to its cross-town compadre Ninkasi.

Oakshire’s signature craft is its amber ale. In general, ambers are popular in the northwest, though Ninkasi has never attempted one. Oakshire’s amber is the perfect beer to get your foot in the door when embarking on a long night of drinking. It’s rich, but crisp, and that one-beer lethargy won’t happen. Probably because you’ll soon be reaching for another one without hesitation. Oakshire’s amber is much less hoppy than Ninkasi’s signature beers, which makes it more drinkable for the casual bar-goer.

Oakshire also differs from Ninkasi in its brewing philosophy. While Ninkasi prides itself on its signature year-round beers plus the seasonal ale, Oakshire is much more experimental. They cultivate over 40 types of single-batch brews, which are distributed around town at various Wtimes of the year.

It is becoming increasingly popular, and soon it could easily taste the success Ninkasi has experienced. Last month, Oakshire inked a distribution deal with Maletis Beverage, a Portland bottling and distribution company whose clients include Anheuser-Busch, Widmer, Red Hook, and Ninkasi.

Now that Oakshire is increasing sales, one wonders how long it will maintain that small-time novelty. Will it lose its local following much like that of an overblown indie band? Brewmaster Matt Van Wyk, a teacher-turned-beer-innovator, insists that the focus of his company is on creating the perfect selection of beers, not playing catch-up.

“We’re big fans of what Ninkasi and other northwest breweries are doing, but we’re different in that we’re more experimental and don’t want that factory feel,” he said. “Our goal is to offer a wide variety of quality beers, and that’s what younger people seem to want.  People in their twenties usually order different types of drinks because they want to try lots of things, and we identify with that desire for diversity.”

So which brewery is king in Eugene?  It’s tough to say, especially because a head-to-head comparison of the beers would be limited to just two varieties: IPA and pale ale, and the subjectivity of beer criticism is an endless spiral.

“More often than not, people reaching for an IPA are going to go with Ninkasi, but Oakshire always seems to attract people with its new stuff,” said Colin Mulligan, server at 16 Tons Beer and Wine.  “The pale ale is going to be the standard for judging beers, but people shouldn’t think of the two companies as competitors, because there’s so much camaraderie between them.”

Mulligan and others did note the trend among young beer drinkers to gravitate towards the lesser-known brands, because as we all know, once the masses catch on and start drinking, that beer is no longer appealing. Right?

“We’re aware of the natural dynamic of hipster-ism, and we can’t be new forever,” Book said.  “Our only concern is the beer.  Beer is love.”

Mulligan agreed. “The real winners are the places like [16 tons], the Bier Stein, Valley Vintner, and other places that are all about spreading the passion of good beer. In the end, Brewgene wins.”

Good riddance to the days of beer inadequacy, and hello to a better brew to warm the coming frosty nights.  The beer gut was always inevitable, and sources say chicks dig it.