Ah Portland. My former home and a place I have come to love and hate in just about equal measure. However, I will exclude the hate from this post and talk about one of the reasons I love Portland so very much: beer! It is one of the American beer meccas and with good reason. It has 75 breweries and counting within city limits and some of the biggest names in the industry work, or have worked, for one of Portland’s breweries. I mean they call the city Beervana for a reason. You get it.
In short, Portland is all about the craft beer and this is the first of what I assume will be many Portland Hop Trips. So let’s get going!
Why Camas?
Our first stop isn’t technically in Portland but as it is counted as part of the Portland Metro area I’m going to include it. Camas is a smaller city on the eastern side of Vancouver, Washington and comprises part of the Portland Metro that resides on the Washington side of the Columbia River. So why Camas? Two reasons: my sister-in-law lives there and there’s beer. My husband’s youngest sister lives on the edge of Camas in the middle of nowhere (because she hates people and wants to make it very difficult for people to come see her-sorry, Mary, but it’s true) so our Hop Trip started there to see her and get in some baby cuddles (her son is a year and a half).
While you may not guess it driving around Camas (especially with the paper mill which likes to stink up the entire area if the wind is blowing in the right direction) there are a couple of top notch breweries in town. Our first stop was a place I’d been before in the heart of downtown Camas (which is like 3 blocks long): Mill City Brew Werks. It looks like any other pub style restaurant (i.e. not terribly exciting) but don’t let looks fool you, these guys make some quality beer. They also have an adorable intro video you can watch here. This place is not about fads and tend to stick to more Germanic beer styles (the last time I was here the owner told us all about the yeast strain that their family brought over from Germany so I suppose that focus makes sense). As such we stuck with those styles in our sampling: I had the Kolsch while my husband went for the Hefeweizen. The Kolsch was crisp, clean, and absolutely perfect since it was way too fucking hot that day (more on that later). I also recommend their food which is all sourced locally and pretty damn delicious.
