Pelican Brewing, 1371 South Hemlock Street, Cannon Beach, Oregon
Cannon Beach Hardware and Public House, 1235 South Hemlock Street, Cannon Beach, Oregon
McMenamin's Sand Trap, Gearhart Hotel, Gearhart Golf Course, 1151 North Marion Avenue, Gearhart, Oregon
Last summer, when I met my friend Rick in Portland for a week, we hired a car and drove over to the coast for a night. We stayed in Seaside, which is not only my mother’s home town but also one of the places where my parents had a retirement home. But Seaside is only part of the rather stunning Oregon coast, and Rick and I did make it out of town for some pints.
On our first afternoon I suggested driving down past Tillamook Head to a place my family always enjoyed visiting, Cannon Beach. Located south of Ecola Beach nine miles south of Seaside, this area was originally home to the Tillamook people, who called it Ehkoli, the Tillamook word for “whale". After the Lewis & Clark expedition arrived in 1805, the white settlers called it Elk Creek. The name Cannon Beach came from a short cannon that washed onto the beach in 1845.
Today Cannon Beach has a population of less than 2000, and the main source of income is from tourism. The city hosts an annual sand castle-building contest as well as the Stormy Weather Arts Festival. But I think its main claim to fame is the iconic Haystack Rock, which is a sea stack standing 235 feet tall and often accessible at low tide. It’s located near the Needles, which are two tall rocks that jut vertically out of the ocean. Several memorable films have been partly shot in Cannon Beach including Free Willy, Kindergarten Cop, The Goonies, Twilight, Point Break, and Hysterical.
Our first destination was the Pelican Brewing Company, a large restaurant of a brewpub with spacious outside decks that were pretty much fully occupied. It was a pretty breezy afternoon, anyway, so we decided to sit inside at an empty table with a view of the open kitchen and the pizza oven. We were immediately shooed away by the woman behind the bar, who told us the tables were only for diners and we had no intention of buying food. This seemed a bit strange, as there were very few diners inside the pub at the time.
Fortunately there were a couple of stools at the bar that we were allowed to take. So not feeling terribly welcome, we decided to just share two half pints before moving on.Our first half was Beak Breaker (9.0% ABV, Pelican Brewing Company, Cannon Beach, Oregon), which was an Imperial IPA. Described on their menu as “inconceivably drinkable", this was kind of nice, but the flavour was a bit on the sweet side. Our other half was Beak Breaker Tropical (8.8% ABV, Pelican), also an Imperial IPA but which was described instead as “unbelievably drinkable". This one definitely had a peachy mango character; but both of us felt that, as the seasoned beer tasters we were, we had the right to make our own decisions about the drinkability of our beers--and we were already a bit put off by the dictatorial nature of the place.
But as we sipped our halves and I jotted down notes, I noticed a man sitting just down the bar from us who was staring intently at us with a big smile on his face. It turned out his name was John and he was in the wine industry down in Chile, and he’d come up to Oregon to check out some of the local wines. Obviously he was interested in beer as well, and he asked if the two of us were in the brewing industry. Anyway, we had a fairly animated conversation with John. Meanwhile the couple sitting at the end of the bar, Kevin and Tracy, joined in, as they’d just arrived from Tampa Bay, Florida. And Kevin was very much into his beer, so much that he gave us one can out of a sixpack of a very special beer he’d brought with him from Florida.
In the end, we enjoyed our conversations with the customers more than we enjoyed the atmosphere of the pub. But that’s not a bad thing. And the beer was perfectly all right.
There are three other Pelican Brewing outlets, down the coast at Tillamook, Pacific City, and Siletz Bay. And the food menu looks very tempting, featuring clams, oyster shooters, fish and chips, crab mac and cheese, and beefburgers, chicken burgers, and salmon burgers.
Rick and I then moved on to a more interesting place on the north end of Cannon Beach called the Cannon Beach Hardware and Public House. And this is indeed a hardware store, with a big sign outside announcing “Screw and Brew". Since both of us enjoy hardware stores, this seemed like the best of both worlds to us. We browsed through the hardware side for a bit, checking out some of the wares, before we finally seated ourselves at the short bar. We both went for half pints of Riparian Intelligence IPA (6.5% ABV, Binary Brewing Company, Beaverton, Oregon). This is a Northwest IPA with late additions of Citra and Mosaic hops followed by Citra hops, and it offered that wonderful combination of citrus and pine, which is like a magnet to my palate. Considering we were sitting in a hardware store, chatting with the young barman who seemed fairly knowledgeable and looked a bit like a surfer, we were definitely enjoying these halfs much more than our previous halfs. So all I can say is Cannon Beach Hardware rules! If they’d only had a t-shirt with that on it--in a size XS, of course--I would definitely have purchased it.
The food here sounds pretty good as well, Cajun tater tots, house smoked pastrami Reubens, a range of sandwiches featuring turkey, meatloaf, or grilled cheese, hot dogs, oyster shooters again, halibut ceviche, calamari, fish and chips, prawn and chips, halibut or prawn burgers. And there is a beer garden outside as well, which is just what one would expect in a beach town. On their website they say there’s a great story about how they became Oregon’s first hardware store to serve beer and wine, but that you’d have to come visit to hear it. I wish Rick and I had thought to ask them about that.
(Apparently AI, or ChatGP or whatever it is, has told me that they opened in 2010 and started out with three beer taps, expanding to six in 2012. But even it doesn’t seem to know how the three taps started. But Beer Advocate fills in the details a bit: they opened because Cannon Beach needed a hardware shop, but since they were having trouble with the operating costs, they decided to sell beer as well. Apparently 75% of their sales are now “wet".)
The next afternoon, before we drove back to Portland to return the car, I suggested we drive three miles up the coast from Seaside to Gearhart, where my parents had taken me out for a nice lunch years earlier at what must have been the Gearhart Hotel. Back then the three of us sat out on the deck of the restaurant, where we had a view onto the Gearhart Golf Links. And it was here that I tasted my very first Gardenburger which, back in the 1990s, was about the best vegetarian burger you could get.
Actually, the Gearhart Hotel has quite a confusing history. Originally built in 1890, the hotel burned down in 1913. Another hotel was built on the site which opened in 1923 and was torn down in 1972. Apparently it was the fourth version of the hotel, built in 2001, that was taken over by McMenamin’s in 2012. So I’m not sure which version it was in which my parents and I had lunch, but that’s irrelevant right now, because in 2024 Rick and I managed to find our way to the Gearhart Links and McMenamin’s Sand Trap at whatever version of Gearhart Hotel it was.
It was too cold and damp on this day for us to sit on the patio, so we seated ourselves inside at a tall window table with a view out onto the patio and the golf course just beyond. And we also had a good view of a black labrador who was patiently waiting out on the deck for his people to finish their meal and drinks. The place was full of golfers, both well-to-do retired duffers and younger couples. I recall the golf club itself was quite expensive to join, so my dad, who viewed playing golf as simply a social activity, was very content with the free rounds of golf at the woodland setting of the Seaside golf course located across the road from my parents’ home.
Rick and I shared pints of Goblin Shark Hazy IPA (6.58% ABV), described as juicy, dank, tropical, and citrus. It was very fruity indeed, like a lychee raincoat. Our other pint was 33rd State IPA (6.97% ABV, McMenamins Brewery, Portland, Oregon), which was nicely bitter, with a tropical citrus character, and it was a great refresher before our drive back up Highway 26, in the opposite direction of the Memorial Day Weekend traffic racing to get to the seacoast. Our timing was unintentionally ideal.
The food menu of the Sand Trap includes steaks and frites, beer-battered fish and chips, ahi tacos, pizzas, burgers, various fish dishes, sandwiches, seafood appetizers including oyster shooters, salads, and snacks. Before we left we took a look at the items for sale near the Reception desk. These included some of McMenamin’s own Edgefield wines and spirits, including Monkey Puzzle and Billy Wheat Whiskies, Three Rocks Spiced Rum, and Longshot Brandy. There was also an orange liqueur and a coffee liqueur, both with cats on the labels. Because I travel light I didn’t buy either of these, but I did make sure I took photographs to send to my cat-crazy sibling group in Bakersfield.
Related Links
- While you’re on the North Oregon coast, you simply have to check out the Tillamook Cheese Factor (Tillamook.Com)
- If you’re a birdwatcher or you just like nature, check out this guide to the birds, including tufted puffins, on and around Haystock Rock (Simple View)
- Speaking of cool hardware stores in America, these are definitely the coolest: Ace Hardware
- And here’s your handy-dandy locator for your nearest Ace Hardware in America...and in the rest of the world