That’s A Dawg Of A Different Color
After all the billboards, all the television ads, Red Dog has finally arrived, with Red Wolf hot on its heels.
By the time you read this, both beers - Red Dog, a golden lager from Miller, and Red Wolf, a reddish lager from Anheuser-Busch - should have followed the trail to Spokane store shelves.
We’re getting Red Wolf at the same time as most of the rest of the nation. Until now, it’s been available only on the Eastern seaboard and in Oregon.
But Washington is the 50th and final state to receive Red Dog, although we’ve been inundated with the advertisements like everyone else.
The reason why is a twisted tale that involves the two largest breweries in the United States and one of the smallest: the tiny Onalaska Brewing Co. in tiny Onalaska, Wash., nestled in the netherlands south of Olympia.
“I would never have imagined that the two biggest brewers in the nation would come knocking at my door,” says Onalaska’s Dave Moorehead.
They did, because Moorehead makes an amber ale called Red Dawg, with a picture of the pooch on its label. The name, of course, is similar to Red Dog’s; the logo is similar to Red Wolf’s.
Moorehead suddenly found himself in a bidding war between the beer giants, both of whom wanted to buy the rights to Red Dawg so they couldn’t be accused of trademark infringement.
“I had a lot of sleepless nights,” Moorehead admits. At one point, he considered selling the name to Miller and the logo to Anheuser-Busch, but that didn’t fly.
After a falling-out with Miller, Moorehead ended up selling both to Busch, which in turn agreed to allow him to keep distributing Red Dawg in Washington, Idaho and Oregon.
Busch and Miller subsequently reached an agreement - good luck getting anyone to discuss the details - allowing Miller to market Red Dog (which, like Icehouse, appears under Miller’s designer label, Plank Road).
Moorehead came out of the headspinning experience with enough money to buy some new equipment, which he says will help him make better beer.
And, he adds: “I have been looking at sailboats.”
Seeing red: Grant’s Yakima Brewing Co. has gone to court over what it claims is trademark infringement by Rainier’s recently released red beer, Yakima Red.
“We don’t want people to think it’s our beer. That’s embarrassing,” says Sherry Grant, Yakima Brewing’s president. “And we don’t want people to think we’re going in the direction of the mass-market breweries.”
The last straw was when one of her employees visited a Yakima tavern where the bartender insisted Yakima Red was a new Grant’s product.
“I don’t like to sue anybody, but it’s confusing to people and we had to do something about it,” Grant says. “We built this market.”
By the way, she says a major brewer inquired last week about buying one of Grant’s brands, although she can’t reveal any names. (The offer would probably pay for a decent sailboat, but not much more.)
Eating Redhook: Chef Dave Hill of Hill’s Someplace Else restaurant and pub in downtown Spokane has firmed up plans for his Redhook brewer’s dinner, and it sounds like another winner.
The Seattle brewery is bringing not only a cask-conditioned version of its Winterhook holiday ale, Hill says, but a seasonal honey stout and one of only 60 quarter-barrels made of Redhook’s first-ever barley wine.
The lineup for the Feb. 21 feast includes an appetizer of chicken, hop-smoked mushrooms, roasted peppers, Winterhook and cream in puff pastry; a shrimp and ESB (extra special bitter) bisque; a main course of salmon marinated in and glazed with the stout and a dessert featuring raspberries in a chocolate and barley wine sauce.
Each course is accompanied by a glass of the beer used in the dish. Cost is $16.95 per person. The dinner is filling up fast; call 747-3946 for reservations.
Parting shot: Former Portland mayor Bud Clark, on having his face appear on the label of BridgePort’s Old Knucklehead barley wine (as told to the Associated Press): “They said, `Do you want to be Old Knucklehead?,’ and I said, `Hell, yes.’ It’s a lot better than being Bud Light.”
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