Only Here For The Beer!
Written: Aug 15 '01 (Updated Aug 15 '01)
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Pros: Half the draft beer served in Portland is craft brewed.
Cons: It's great beer, but it all tastes roughly the same.
The Bottom Line: This is a fabulous town for the beer tourist. Lots of breweries to visit, lots of good beer in every bar. Beautiful town. How can you miss?
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| beerfly's Full Review: Portland |
Portland is a beer-soaked city.
I mean that in a most congratulatory way. I think it's fabulous that 1 of every 2 draft beers poured in Portland are microbrews. Every bar I went to had at least three great micros on tap. The airport bar had 36 taps, and only three were national brands. There is a strip club, the Acropolis that has forty taps. Er... I hear that's true, anyway.
Portland is dotted with brewpubs and microbreweries, almost 30 of them, an astonishing number for a city this size. They range from biggies like BridgePort, Portland, and Widmer to little specialty outfits like Hair of The Dog, a tiny brewery that produces HUGE beers. There are some great breweries here, although after a while you realize they're almost all making minor variations on the same hoppy beers. (When you get tired of that, try Hair of the Dog, Portland Brewing, or the Rock Bottom.)
And that's why I went to Portland in July, for the Oregon Brewers Festival and to tour breweries. I got to eight: Widmer, Full Sail's Pilsner Room, McMenamin's Edgefield (technically outside of Portland, see my review at http://www.epinions.com/content_35939782276), Rock Bottom, Old Lompoc, BridgePort (see my review at http://www.epinions.com/content_36292300420), Hair of the Dog, and the Rogue Public House. I also got to some bars like Kelly's Olympian, the Rose and Raindrop, and Belmont Station. Oh, and two distilleries: Edgefield and Clear Creek. Well, I was there for six days!
But the main point was to be there for the festival. The OBF is an established and well-attended fest, at about 80,000 people, it's the biggest beer fest in the U.S. There are six semi trailers sprouting taps (and holding ice, kegs, CO2 tanks, etc.) lined up along the Willamette River right downtown, and people wander from tap to tap, sampling or filling right up.
It's a great festival, and the people are very friendly. I was on both sides of the bar. Friday I wandered, sampling beers (the knockout was Widmer's Double Alt, like a hoppy glass of chocolate milk), then Saturday I got behind the bar as a volunteer and poured Ramstein Blonde Hefeweizen for a few hours. I ran into one eejit the whole time, a little dork in a black leather jacket who gave me a hard time about my precise, to-the-line pour. I glowered, and he went away.
One of the best things about the fest is that it draws people from all over. I actually saw someone with a brewpub T-shirt from my hometown (Lancaster Malt Brewing, in Lancaster, PA), and took a picture with them. I also hooked up with about a dozen people from all over (California, Washington, Illinois, North Carolina, the UK, Holland) who I knew from Internet beer newsgroups like rec.food.drink.beer and had all come to Portland for the festival. It was a perfect place and occasion for beer geeks to meet.
Portland itself was stunning. From the awesome presence of Mt. Hood ("We're all pretty proud of it, even though we had nothing to do with it being there," noted a native I got to know) to the graceful and purposeful spans of the bridges over the Willamette to the tree-lined streets alive with pedestrians and smart, efficient mass transit sytems (yes, plural: Portland has buses, light rail, and a new streetcar system), Portland won me over in about half an hour.
This is a small town with a big city feel, a city with a small town atmosphere -- teetering on the edge and not overly concerned. Very smart restrictions on sprawl have made Portland pretty, walkable, and crowded with small businesses. I was lucky enough to be with someone who knew the transit system inside-out (he works for them), and also to have a pair of stout boots: I walked to a number of places, sometimes as much as two miles, and never had any problems more serious than a few friendly panhandlers.
Tips for the beerdrinker: get a map and walk or transit. There's a streetcar stop right in front of BridgePort, for instance, and you can easily walk from brewpub to bar to brewpub, some of which have great views of the river. Be prepared to climb if you're on the west side, this side of the city sits on a gradually steepening hill. If you've heard about constant rain, well... it can be true, but it's not bad in the summer.
Don't count on taxis! You cannot hail taxis from the sidewalk for some regulatory reason, they all have to be dispatched after calling the cab company. Get a card from Radio Cabs early on if you want to do this.
Whatever you do, don't go just for the beer. I was really only kidding about that. Stroll, pause, shop, take pictures, talk to people. Portland is a very relaxing town, where everyone seems to be willing to take a minute or ten to talk.
They're probably ready to have a beer, too.
Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Friends
Best Time to Travel Here: Jun - Aug
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Epinions.com ID:
beerfly
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Member: Lew Bryson
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Reviews written: 88
Trusted by: 82 members
About Me:
One bourbon, one Scotch, one beer, eh? I'll take Kentucky Spirit, Scapa, and HopDevil.
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