PORTLAND LOVES CRAFT BEER
FIFTEEN TINY GLASSES OF BEER SWIRLED in a spiral in front of us, each one carefully placed over a number on a round black tray. It really was a glorious sight. Golds in every shade, from sunny amber to the palest flaxen, plus little glasses of liquid chestnut, copper and mahogany.
The beers were foamy and cold, so we were compelled to start sipping, matching the numbers to what we were tasting — a crisp pilsner, a kolsch, IPAs, ambers, ales, a Belgian, a saison and a stout.
It was our second day exploring Portland's craft beer scene and we marvelled at how the entire town seemed to revolve around the frothy beverage. This youthful, creative city has more craft breweries per capita than any other city in the world and brewpubs are in every neighbourhood, making walking to the corner pub for a pint an easy and popular after-work activity.
But any brewery worth its hops also makes it easy for Portland's bike-riding masses to pedal on over and tip back a glass or pick up bottle to take home in one of the bicycle beer-bottle carriers we saw around town. Nowhere did this overlap of beer and bike culture seem more pronounced than our 15-taster stop — Hopworks Urban Brewery — where the ceiling is festooned with rows of colourful bike frames and tap handles made of bike parts pull the beverage into waiting glasses. Parking spaces for 60 bicycles are at the ready out front.
We'd started our beer investigations on foot the day before with a guided ‘Brewvana' walking tour of three downtown breweries in the Pearl District, a proud piece of urban renaissance that was once a dilapidated neighbourhood of abandoned warehouses and railroad tracks and now brims with galleries, cafés, trendy shops and restaurants. We could have taken one of the Brewvana's bus tours, but since we were staying downtown we liked the idea of walking to get the lay of the land.
Two of the brewpubs we visited, Deschutes and Rogue, were venerable Portland outposts with excellent beer — we'd enjoyed it bottled on many occasions. But our third stop, Pints Urban Taproom, was new to us. Brewmaster Alan Taylor had studied his craft in both Germany and the US, and the story behind his version of a Berliner Weisse, a tart wheat beer from Berlin, was particularly intriguing. On Taylor's most recent visit to Berlin, he tasted a beer so memorable that he slipped the empty bottle into his suitcase to take back home so he could culture the yeast and the lactobacillus that gave it its distinctive flavour. Working with Wyeast Labs near Hood River, Oregon, he recreated them and used them in his spin on the German classic. Sharp, tangy and bright, we liked his Amerikaner in Berliner Weisse so much we returned for another glass a few nights later and then ordered a glass of his delicious dry-hopped, unfiltered IPA — another standout.
When our Brewvana tour was over we walked back to our downtown hotel, The Monaco, just in time for their daily free wine and beer social hour, where hotel patrons gather in a jolly group in the lobby. We had intended to save ourselves for more beer tastings over dinner, but when we saw what was on tap — an IPA from local Widmer Brothers — we decided to split a glass just to try another Portland favourite.