Day 1: Portland
I feel a little unoriginal writing about Portland so often but with the number of breweries within its city limits, it should hardly be surprising. So without further ado, here are the places I visited this time around:
Breakside Brewery (Dekum location) is an old favorite that I haven’t been to in awhile (I used to live within blocks of it). They have had a solid and award-winning line-up of beers since they first opened in 2010, and the beer quality remains top-notch. Their restaurant is also excellent, and I cannot recommend their blue-cheese fries highly enough.
This time around I went with their classic Pilsner (one of the better ones produced in the northwest) and one of their experimentals, called Basic Witch. This saison, while slightly high in ABV for that style (6.4%), was very light overall with flavors of honey, rose water, and pepper. The pepper almost turned me away from ordering it as I have sampled pepper saisons where that’s all you can taste and it has made me a little leery of the style. However, the pepper in this beer is very subtle and you really only taste it on the back end.
Cascade Barrel House might be the love of my beer life. That designation has probably been held by other breweries from time to time but whenever I visit Cascade, I am always reminded that my heart belongs to one of the best sour programs in the country. They always have a standout selection of sours, which you can order in tasters of 2,4, or 8 ozs. Also, if you’re not into the whole sour business and have been dragged here by some sourhead friends, they have a strong selection of beers outside the sour designation. While there I sampled the Framblanc 2017 (a light and delightful blend of blond sour ales with white raspberries, the Honey Ginger Lime (a ginger and lime flavored sour with a rye beer base that makes a great summer beer), and the 2016 and 2013 versions of Bourbonic Plague (a blend of sour imperial porters aged in bourbon and wine barrels). Both are excellent example of what Cascade’s sour program is capable of and the 2013 had mellowed in a way that was truly delightful.
Modern Times’ Belmont Fermentorium was our next stop, a location I have been avoiding for a little while. Why? As a fan of farmhouse beers, I was a big fan of the Commons Brewery and its taken me awhile to accept that fact that someone else had taken over their taproom (no offense to Modern Times btw). However, since we were right up the street at Cascade, I figured that now was the time to go see Modern Times’ take on the space. Turns out, its not really all that different. The architecture is all the same, and the brewhouse looks unchanged, but they did change the décor and turned the Portland up to 11. Again, not a bad thing, simply a distinct thing.
Anyways, onto the beer. Hazy IPAs are their jam and it shows. I tried both of the hazy’s my husband sampled and I can say they are worth the hype. I, being the contrarian I am, I went for two non-hazy beers. First up was a dark lager called the School of Shadows which was a really good example of the style and a nice palate cleanser for all of the sours I had just drank. I also drank a Keeper of Secrets, an altbier brewed in collaboration with Fair State Brewing in Minneapolis, because I’m going through a German beer thing right now.
Bridgeport Brewing was our last stop of the day, and the most important one. As a craft beer nerd in the PNW, Bridgeport was one of my starter breweries (along with Widmer and Deschutes) and since I was going to be in Portland I needed to bid a fond farewell to this craft beer legend. For anyone who is unaware, Bridgeport Brewing announced on February 12th, seemingly out of nowhere, that they would cease brewing operations immediately and close their brew pub in Portland’s Pearl district on March 10th 2019. It was seriously sad news for the beer community to lose a legend in the industry (the second craft brewery to open in Oregon 35 years ago), which has long been representative of beer in Portland and created one of the first widely distributed IPAs. I won’t get into why it happened (Jeff Alworth covers it nicely here). The announcement saddened me and others in the craft beer community and so I took advantage of being in Beervana to visit one of the best representatives of the name one last time.
Walking into the Bridgeport Brew Pub on a Friday night, you would never have guessed that this place had just announced its demise. The place was packed, and I mean at least thirty minute wait for a table, have to push your way through a throng of people to get to the bar, busy. It lent a slightly confusing air to the evening and made me wonder if this was due to the news of the closure or if it was always like this. I’m not sure which answer I would prefer. We ordered a couple of nitro Kingpins and headed to our table. The brew pub itself has not changed in years (possibly part of the problem) and it was a serious nostalgia moment being there again. The food was good and we had a couple original IPAs and a pub porter. I also spent the entire time wanting to ask the staff about how they felt about the news, but not wanting to poke at a fresh wound. It was at least nice knowing they would all be getting severance, unlike some other Portland breweries that have closed recently.
It was good to see the legend one last time.
And before we move into Day 2, I need to share a photo of this super creepy mural that was in the hotel bathroom. I liked you otherwise, Hotel Vintage, but this was a bit much.
Day 2: Astoria
The next day we headed to Astoria, OR for the true purpose of this trip: Fort George’s Festival of the Dark Arts 2019. I am a huge fan of Fort George in general as they make one of my favorite IPAs (Vortex) and one of my favorite stouts (Cavatica) so when I originally heard about the Festival of the Dark Arts, the brewery’s all stout beer festival, I knew I needed to go. Unlike a lot of beer festivals, this isn’t a show up and pay your entrance fee event. Fort George only sells a certain number of tickets (understandably so, since a good portion of the festival takes place inside the brewery) and they went on sale on Black Friday. I was on that shit and I had been looking forward to it ever since, for both the beer and a good wintery Oregon coast weekend (probably my favorite time to visit the Oregon coast).
The Festival of the Dark Arts is not only a beer festival devoted entirely to stouts, it is also an exhibition of music and various weirdness. What do I mean by various weirdness? Well, you can watch people get a tattoo, you can have your Tarot cards read, listen to throat singing, have your mind read by a mentalist, see belly dancing and contortionism, among other things. There is also a giant statute of Cthulhu. If you’re into weird stuff like me, it is in a word, awesome. Oh, and there’s also about 70 different kinds of stout to try.
Which leads me to the beer. I drank a lot of it. So much in fact that I think it will be a little while before I have a craving for a stout again. But there are worse problems to have, right? The styles of stout ran the gamut from regular American stouts to dessert stouts to oyster stouts to all kinds of barrel-aged nonsense. It was stout heaven. The stouts we sampled included:
- Peanut Brother, Great Notion Brewery: Imperial milk stout aged on peanut butter and raw chocolate
- Bourumkin, Fort George Brewery: Aged in bourbon and rum barrels with roasted pumpkins
- 2019 Matryoshka, Fort George Brewery: Russian imperial stout aged in bourbon barrels
- Dodgy Fool, Level Beer: Dry Irish Stout with coffee, vanilla, and strawberries
- Gretel’s Delight, Grains of Wrath Brewing: Cinnamon, coffee, and chocolate stout
- Regicide, Fort George Brewery: Bourbon barrel aged rye chocolate stout
- 2018 Midnight Still, Holy Mountain Brewing Co.: Imperial stout aged in Kentucky bourbon barrels from 18 month, 12 month, and 9 month stock
- Lost Love, Crux Fermentation Project: Imperial stout brewed with an obsessive amount of malted rye and banished to rye whiskey barrels
- Barrel Aged Wood and Wire, Bale Breaker Brewing Co.: Aged 9 months in bourbon barrels adding a touch of whiskey, wood, and charred vanilla character
- Murky Pearl, Fort George Brewery: Oyster stout
I can also honestly say there wasn’t a bad one in the bunch. Even the oyster stout tasted the way an oyster stout should (and I feel I can say this having tried a few really bad ones). If you can get a ticket to next year’s festivities I highly recommend it. Also a few words to the wise:
- Unless you have an iron stomach, I recommend going for a few hours either early in the day (when everything is still available) or at the end of the day (when it’s less busy). We went early and came back but didn’t last long on the return trip.
- Drink ALL of the water
- Eat! Most of the beers were above 10% ABV and if you don’t eat you will be wasted in a flash.
- People watch. Some of the people who go to this festival go all out with costumes and its pretty great.
Thanks for reading! Now, I’m off to mark my calendar for when tickets go on sale for 2020. Prost!
