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.
Next up we headed to Grains of Wrath, a new Camas brewery that opened earlier this year. This brewery is the brain child of Mike Hunsaker, the former head of brewing at Fat Head in Portland (which has now become Von Ebert Brewing which we also visited later that day), Brenden Greenen (owner of Camas tap room and bottle shop Caps N’ Taps), Shawn Parker, and Brenden Ford (both of Fuel Medical). Together they have renovated an old auto shop and turned it into a metal and punk themed brewery (when I saw the Motorhead flag on the wall of the brew floor I knew that it was the place for me). Between the clean, modern space, excellent soundtrack, and quality beer list this is a great place to hang out and spend a lazy afternoon. While there I sampled the Lulu (which smelled and tasted like sour peach candy, in a good way) while my husband went for the Papermaker Pale which was also enjoyable. While the tap list focuses on IPAs (this is the PNW after all) they also had a few German style beers, stouts, and the golden ale I sampled. I’m very curious to see where this brewery will go from here and plan to visit the next time I’m in town.
On to Portland
After visiting Grains of Wrath we boogied across the Columbia River and headed to northeast Portland to visit Great Notion Brewing. Before I dive into what I thought of the brewery I want to note two very important caveats to this review. One, Portland is not a city built for heat. I know after having lived there for eight years that when the temperature gets above 90 degrees that city becomes miserable mostly because there is about a 50/50 chance a place will have air conditioning. Two, I am a pasty-ass white girl who doesn’t do well in the heat. Like at all. My ancestors were from northern Europe and my body likes to remind me of it on hot days. Take both of these things in mind when reading the rest of this review. End caveat. Great Notion Brewing is along a nice section of NE Portland’s Alberta Street with a gorgeous outdoor seating area. However, if you sit inside (which is also a lovely space) on a hot day it can be stifling. Like I felt like I was going to pass out and needed to leave after one beer stifling. Despite all of my whining I can say this: their beer is really good. Ditto with their food. I had the latest in their Luminous series, a dry-hopped IPA fermented with Lactobacillus (the bacteria that makes sour beers sour) which was sort of like a smoothie in beer form. We also had their Buffalo Tostone (fried green plantains with buffalo sauce) which were super tasty. So while I didn’t have the best time I would recommend Great Notion Brewing and hope to go back sometime when it is not stifling outside.
Next up, we decided to head to an old favorite that we hadn’t been to in a long while and one of the OGs of Portland craft beer: Widmer Brothers Brewing. I hadn’t been to their taproom since they closed their old pub late last year to change it from a full-service restaurant to a taproom with snacks. The new space has twenty-seven taps, over half of which are beers from the 10 barrel “innovation” system they recently installed next to the taproom. Like many beer nerds I am always excited to see what bigger breweries do on the experimental side so this was a welcome change in my book. I tried one of their innovation beers, called LA Haze (a hazy IPA if you couldn’t guess from the name) which was very refreshing on a hot day. The new space has a very open, modern look but I didn’t get to do much exploring of it because it was a zoo. Why? My excellent sense of timing and I had managed to stumble across the 100th anniversary party of FH Steinbart, the oldest homebrew supply store in the United States. As such, the taproom was full of beer nerds, home brewers, and professional brewers which was pretty damn cool.
After a brief break to do some work (alas, this is not my job, yet) and have dinner (at Mi Mero Mole, which if you like Mexican food I cannot recommend highly enough) we made our final stop at the (kind of) new Von Ebert Brewing in the Pearl district. Up until recently Von Ebert was Fat Head’s (the Portland location of the Ohio-based brewery) until the owner of the franchise decided to break out on his own, enlisting the help of one of the Portland Fat Head’s brewers and the former head brewer of the dearly departed The Commons Brewery, Sean Burke. The result is a large, gorgeous space with the brewing floor on display (a thing I always enjoy) and a line-up of German style beers and IPAs. I tried the Pilsner which I was not super excited about but knowing the magic Sean Burke can create I am curious to see what beers they produce down the line. I also learned prior to writing this that they are already working on a second location near the Glendoveer Golf Course on the outskirts of Northeast Portland which will focus on sours, saisons, and Belgians (oh my!).
Heaven is a Place on Earth
Our final day in Portland was spent in two of my favorite places in the world: Powell’s City of Books and John’s Marketplace (we also had breakfast at Gravy on Mississippi which I also highly recommend if you’re looking for a delicious breakfast).
While Powell’s is not strictly beer related (although it does have a nice section of beer books) if you like books and are in Portland, do yourself a favor and go. The five story, one city block long monolith is an independent bookstore legend and for good reason. It is a browser’s delight (if you don’t get too overwhelmed, which is possible) and you could literally spend all day looking at what they have on offer. The moral of the story is that it is great, it is one of my happy places, and you should go.
The second location is much more beer-related. In fact, I often refer to John’s Marketplace as a beer mecca because, well, it totally is. Their website puts it this way: “the beers we carry…pretty much, if we can get it here in Oregon, then we have it.” This is not a lie. John’s Marketplace looks like your run of the mill convenience store on the outside but once you get inside it becomes beer land. The back half of the store is shelves and shelves of beer and cider from all over Oregon, the Pacific Northwest, the United States, the world…freaking everywhere. Basically, if you want it they probably have it. This is a dangerous place for me to go, and like Powell’s, I usually end up spending way more money that I should but it is so worth it. See below for the haul that my husband and I brought home from this trip. Anyways, if you haven’t been, go. Your wallet may regret it but you won’t it (and tag me in any haul pictures, I love seeing what other people pick out).
That’s all for now, my dears. Happy travels and happy drinking! Prost!
