Where to go in Portland, Oregon

I'm heading out to Portland later this week. I've got a couple of afternoons and nights at my disposal. I've been to Portland before, but not since I got into brewing and really good beers. I'll be staying near downtown and am looking for any recommendations of places where I shouldn't miss the brewing scene and beers. Any thoughts about which locally-produced and only locally-available beers I should sample when there would be most appreciated.

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

Some of my faves:

Laurelwood Alehouse (awesome beer and food)
Raccoon Lodge (Cascade Brewery, tremendous sour beers)
John's Marketplace or Belmont Station are amazing bottle shops
Horsebrass (beer bar)

http://beeradvocate.com/beerfly/city/16

Will you have a car or are you limited to public transportation?

Horse Brass is great if you make it to SE. If you make to the Horse Brass, walk up 45th about 3 or 4 blocks on on the right will be The Belmont Station, also a must-see for beer lovers. Also the Green Dragon is a little closer in, closer to downtown.

In the downtown area, there's a Rogue brew pub, a Deschutes brew pup, New Old Lompoc (definitely recommend this place), Bridgeport, and there's a good brewpup on 2nd near Alder but I can't remember the name right now.

There's McMenamin's everywhere, and they look like they'd be good, but don't be fooled. The beer is mediocre.

Kilted Brewer said:

Will you have a car or are you limited to public transportation?

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I won't have a car, so will do public trans. or cabs. I'll be located near Lloyd Center.

Thanks to the other posters. I'll look into those suggestions.

Keep 'em coming!

jbambuti said:

I won't have a car, so will do public trans. or cabs. I'll be located near Lloyd Center.

Thanks to the other posters. I'll look into those suggestions.

Keep 'em coming!

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That's great, you can take the Max to downtown really easily, or to Hollywood transit station. You can walk (or take the 75 bus) from Hollywood Transit Station to the Horse Brass in probably 30 mins or so.

OK, so you're on the east side...If you're around on Friday check out Upright Brewing. Doing some great stuff with Saison Yeast and open fermenters. tasting room is only open Friday - Sunday and the evenings where there's a home Blazer Game.

The Widmer Gasthaus is a MAX ride away.

Horsebrass has been mentioned. Probably a cab ride for you (I dont' know the bus lines too well).

On the west side you can hop on the MAX and street car and hit up Deschutes, Rogue, Bridgeport (all within a few blocks of each other).

Hop in a cab and head over to Hopworks if you can.

You've also got Roots, Lucky Lab and a few McMenamins in the area.

Or if you're looking for a guide, let us know. Maybe we can get a few PDX HBTers together and do a little crawl.

PS:...Migration Brewing just opened up 2 weeks ago and finally has their first beer on tap (they'll be doing "guest taps" until they can fill it out with their own).

My sister lives in Portland. Beer is everywhere

I don't know much about where to go for beer, but there are two restaurants I highly recommend:

One is Thai food (and is amazing): http://pokpokpdx.com/

The other is the best pizza I have ever had: http://www.apizzascholls.com/

They have good beer too!

In the downtown area, I really like Bailey's & Higgins

http://www.baileystaproom.com/?page_id=8
http://higgins.ypguides.net/page/o30f/Beer_Menu.html

I went to a place called Henry's that had a ton of beer on tap. Eventually we left and went elsewhere, but I wish we had stayed there the whole time. Recommended.

Laurelwood and Hopworks are the best breweries IMO. I happen to like Amnesia a lot as well. Widmer often has some interesting stuff on and pretty good food.

Green Dragon is my favorite beer bar, they have most of the Rogue stuff on (Rogue owns it) so if you go here you can probably skip the Rogue public house in NW (although it is pretty close to Deschutes).

Horse Brass is a great beer bar although when I lived in PDX I almost never went there due to smoking. Post smoking ban it is awesome.

Walking Man in Stevenson WA (less than an hour drive) is a special place if you have the time.

Last but not least, the Higgin's bar (or dining room, but get a reservation and expect to spend $20+ on an entree). Great bottled beer selection and very good if modest sized draft selection. If you eat in the bar, get the charcuterie plate, it is all house cured. Seafood plate and the hazlenuts are great too.

This list is probably worth a look
http://www.ratebeer.com/Places/FindPlacesByCity.asp?SortBy=2&CountryID=213&StateID=37&City=Portland

remilard said:

Laurelwood and Hopworks are the best breweries IMO. I happen to like Amnesia a lot as well. Widmer often has some interesting stuff on and pretty good food.

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I'm going to have to back to Hopworks. I went there nearly two years ago, and thought their beer was average.

you will be fairly close to Amnesia - no more than 5 mins by cab. Definitely check it out. About 10 mins in the opposite direction is HUB- also worth a stop. As far as variety, Green Dragon, Horse brass and Belmont Station are all worthy of going out of your way. Happy drinking!

I took a trip to portland in september for the sole purpose of drinking beer.

Roots, Hopworks, Lucky Labrador, Laurelwood, New Old Lompoc, Bridgeport, Rogue, Deschutes, Widmer, Full Sail (Riverfront).

Decided to then head down to Hood River and do some sightseeing, and stumbled across the huge Full Sail establishment, and Double Mountain.

It's a lot of fun, and I just walked to most of the places, otherwise cabs were damn cheap.

Horse Brass is worth a visit too.

Are you a physicist heading for the March Meeting?

+1 Horse Brass. I lived in PDX for 9 years and that was always my favorite. They have a lot of taps, somewhere over 40 from what I remember. And they're pretty much all good beers. And they used to have 2 or 3 casks too. It's a comfy sorta worn in pub, not all shiny and new. We used to go there all the time. It's the kind of place where you're more likely to run into a firefighter than a stock broker ( no offense intended to any stock brokers here! ;-) ). It's a nice place to sample a lot of beers from various breweries, rather than just going to a brewery and only having their beers. And they used to always have some special beers, often on cask, that you just wouldn't see anywhere else.

And, you CAN take a bus up there. I can't remember the bus line as I left there 8 years ago. But from memory, there's a bus that runs up Belmont. You just get off around 45th and it's there. You should be able to look up the bus online or something, then just walk down to the bus streets and take it from there. Locals who still live there can likely help you with this precise info. I guess it's probably a 15 minute bus ride from downtown.

Erythro73 said:

Are you a physicist heading for the March Meeting?

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No, I'm not, but that sounds like a lot of fun.


Thanks to everyone for the in-depth recommendations. I'll only have a couple of nights, so I'm looking through the posts to pick 3 or 4 places. Happy hours look good at lots of places, too. Good food and good beer is a great combo.

I'll post back when I return.

If you only have a couple nights, I'd recommend this list. It's probably your best shot at good beer in a short amount of time.

1. Horses Brass and Belmont Station. HB is an old English-style bar. BS is one of the best bottle shops in town, plus a dozen taps of pretty hard to find or rare stuff. Go to HB first. Once done, head north on 45th to Belmont Station on SE Stark. Do this first so you have good beer to drink in the hotel room.

2. Inner SE Portland: Green Dragon, Roots, and Distillery Row. GD is a bar with a top notch tap selection. Roots is a brewpub. Distillery Row is a collection of 5 local small distillers. You should call for tours if you're into that kind of stuff. Worth a trip.

Tri-Met will help you plan a trip on mass transit. HB is at SE 45th and Belmont. Green Dragon is around SE 9th & Yamhill.

Another +1 for Horse Brass. I could hang out there all day.

Definitely go downtown (actually the "Pearl District") and definitely check out the Deschutes Pub. It's kinda spendy, but the beer is great and the building in incredible. Just down the street is Henry's, located in the old Weinhard's brewery. Decent selection but spendy. They also seem to over-chill their glasses, so ask for a room temp glass for most of their beers.

I agree that McMenamins beers are rather mediocre, but the buildings are pretty damn cool. A trip out to the Edgefield or Grand Lodge is worth it. The Terminator stout is OK, especially when playing a round of frisbee golf.

Wherever you go, be sure to try Ninkasi and Hair of the Dog if you haven't seen them in your area, two of the best breweries in Oregon in my opinion.

Horse Brass and Bailey's Tap Room.

To HB:
Take the MAX line east to the Hollywood NE 42nd stop. Hop on the 75 bus south to Belmont and SE 39th. Walk the final way.

Baileys- take the free MAX line across the river and hop off at the Skidmore Fountain MAX Station. Walk north up Burnside until you get there.

Get some Voodoo doughnuts afterwards.

Have fun.

Once again, from what I hear at least, Portland isn't much of a "beer" town. You'll probably be disappointed. If only you were heading to San Diego!!

Thanks all. I've got a lot to go on and you've saved me lots of searching. I'm looking forward to a little beer-cation. There will be some work to do also, but I won't let it get in the way of the fun. This will also be the first time I'll be leaving my 2 and a half year old and wife at home in a long time. One of the things I'm looking forward to most is a quiet hotel room and no one needing my attention. And the beers, of course.

+1 to Bridgeport Brewery.

I really enjoyed the atmosphere, the in house made bread and the Black Strap Stout. Overall a really good place to drink.

Review of Bridgeport Brewery

I also hit up a place called Amnesia and Green Dragon. Amnesia was great. However, I don't remember much about it lol! I was a bit toasty at the time. I do know there is a great pizza place just down the street from it.

Have fun!

Update:

I got back from Portland last Sunday evening. Although the weather was cold and rainy most of the time, it was a good trip.

I ended up hitting the Laurelwood Public House on Thursday night. Had a great burger and a couple too many pints of their wonderful ales. Workingman's IPA was a highlight. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that cabs weren't as ubiquitous as they are in Chicago. I walked out of the pub and walked a ways down the street in the pouring rain looking for a cab. I guess I could have gone back and told them to call me a cab, but the extra pints were talking, I guess. I ended up walking back to the hotel (at least a mile and a half). By the time I got back, my brain was clear again. Oops!

On Friday night, I met up with an old friend for Thai food. She said she knew a great place to go for beers afterward. Lo and behold, we ended up at Horse Brass! She was surprised I had heard of it. I had several good local IPA's and DIPA's. We were there too long to stop at Belmont Station, so it'll have to wait until next time.

Saturday, I had lunch at Kenny and Zuke's. My god, the pastrami!! I was wiped out by dinner time, and so went to Toro Bravo for some red wine and Tapas, but managed a bomber of Deschutes Hophenge afterward.

All in all, a great drinking and dining trip. I'll have more to explore the next time. Thanks for all the good rec's.