Christmas in Oregon – The Beers, Part 1

We spent the week from Christmas to New Year’s Eve out in Portland, which has a well-earned reputation as an excellent beer town. In our 7 days there, I drank a grand total of 53 different beers, at least 40 of which were new to me. My liver is grateful that the majority of those 53 beers were sampler-sized pours at various brewpubs and brewery tasting rooms.

We landed in Portland late on Christmas Eve and my first beer of the week was a few hours later when Martha’s brother handed me a bottle of Ninkasi’s Sleighr, which they describe as a “double dark alt.” It was massively malty and the perfect fortification for helping to assemble our nephew’s new toys. The label scored bonus points with us thanks to its play on Slayer’s logo. Later that day, I had Ninkasi’s Spring Reign Ale, which was a pleasantly hoppy and refreshing pale ale that paired well with the first ham sandwich of my life.

Monday we caught the season opener for the Trailblazers. There was talk of trying to make it to Upright Brewing for their pregame tasting room hours, but that was not to be. We did bring a bottle of one of their beers, a hoppy saison featuring all Pacific NW ingredients. I was curious to try their beers as they had been using the Wyeast 3711 French Saison yeast as the house yeast, which is my saison yeast of choice for my summer saisons. The Upright Five was easy-drinking with a hint of funk and a bit of sharp sourness that reminded me of the hoppy saison I made last summer. I wonder if the 3711 just doesn’t play well with hops.

At the Rose Garden, where the Blazers play, the beer situation was the inverse of almost every other sport venue in the country. Nearly every concession stand had at least one craft beer on tap, and all of the large bars were local(ish) microbreweries. You had to make an effort to find Coors Light or Bud Light. Win! I hit up the Laurelwood stand twice, once for their hoppy red ale and once for their porter, which was decently roasty, super drinkable, and not too sweet, unlike many of the porters I had later in the week.

The first proper pub of the week was the Deschutes pub in the Pearl District. Sadly, I had a cold at that point so much of the beer experience was lost on me. The Abyss, their imperial stout, was excellent as always, while their Chainbreaker “white IPA,” a witbier hopped like an IPA, did nothing for me, though I’m not much of a fan of witbiers in the first place. Later in the week I had a cask-conditioned double IPA there called Hop City II, a nod to Rip City, one of Portland’s nicknames. Big and fruity with the healthy bitter kick you expect from pale ales in the Pacific Northwest. The Yellow Belly Burger, a hamburger with (house made) root-beer braised pork belly, candied yellow tomatoes, and jalapeño puree was a thing of wonder.

Later in the week we walked across the Morrison Bridge to visit Hair of the Dog. The sampler revealed nothing new (Adam is still my favorite beer of theirs), but the bottle list is where the true treasure is found. It features various barrel-aged versions of their beers which can be difficult to find outside the brewery, especially on the East coast. We tried the 2009 Cherry Adam from the Wood, a version of Adam which spent several months on cherries in bourbon barrels. It was awesome — malt, tobacco, and subtle cherry flavors abound in a beer so rich it took most of an hour to drink a 12 oz bottle.

Little did we know that we were only a few blocks from the Cascade Brewing Barrel Room, which features a variety of sour ales alongside more traditional NW craft brews. We found our way to Cascade’s brewpub, Racoon Lodge, on Saturday. By that point, I found myself beered out, much to my surprise. So it goes. At any rate, I found the highlight of the visit to be the Sang Noir, a sour red ale aged in whiskey and pinot barrels, then blended with cherries. Quite tart and refreshing, with a welcome dry finish.

The final beer of the week was a Deschutes Inversion IPA at the Portland airport. I chose to enjoy a glass there, though there are multiple bars in the post-security sections of the terminal that offer growler fills for sale, just in case you need some fresh beer for the flight. Cheers!