Treebeerd's Taphouse, 822 Southwest 2nd Avenue, Portland, Oregon
Breakside Brewery, 1570 Northwest 22nd Avenue, Portland, Oregon
As part of my visit to America a few months ago, I arranged to rendezvous for a few days with my Bay Area friend Mistah Rick in Portland, Oregon to spend a few days exploring breweries, coffee roasters, and other esoterica. The biggest city in Oregon, Portland sits on the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers and at one point was considered one of the most dangerous port cities in the world. But things soon mellowed, and by the 1960s it was popular with hippies and social activities. More recently it’s been associated with not only technological growth and innovation but also an abundance of breweries. And of course that was the main reason we were here.
After a surprisingly long flight day for me from Austin, Texas and through Phoenix, Arizona, complete with an hour’s delay, I finally arrived at the airport where I was met by Rick, who had flown in earlier. From there we took a tram downtown. And before we even checked into our accommodation for our first two nights, our very first stop straight off the tram was a quite interesting place: Treebeerd’s Taphouse, in the southwest quadrant of downtown Portland. This family-owned bar features 36 craft taps and also a small snack menu featuring things like handmade pretzels and cheese boards, but customers are invited to order food from outside and have it delivered which, as we were both quite hungry, is what we decided to do. But first things first: we found a place to park our stuff at a long tall table so that we could go peruse the beer menu. We both went for pints of Illusion IPA (7.2% ABV, Baerlic Brewing, Corvallis, Oregon), with Citra, Simcoe, and Mosaic hops which turned out to be a very good choice. Sipping this beer produced a gorgeous washing wave over the palate, suggestive of redundant gorgeous gorgeousness: a dry honey nectar dream of golden caresses around the sides of my tongue. I suppose that describes it best; I had just experienced an overly long travel day, so bear with me.
Once we got our drinks sorted we could relax and catch up on things, specifically my week just spent in Rick walked across the road and ordered a couple of shrimp pho bowls from a Vietnamese restaurant called Luc Lac, while I ordered two more pints. The first of these was Flower in the Kettle (6.7% ABV, Wayfinder Beer, Portland, Oregon), a New England hazy with Mosaic, Amarillo, and Simcoe hops which went great with our pho bowls. The other pint was Beta 35.5 (Fort George Brewery, Astoria, Oregon), another New England hazy IPA almost coconut in character. Rick wanted to drink the whole pint down. With Simcoe, Mosaic, Columbus Cryo, and Mosaic Cryo hops, and Rahr Pilsner, GW Premium 2 Row, and Weyermann Acidulated malts, this brew was named for the fact that it’s a beta test for Wayfinder’s next IPA. This seemed quite appropriate for me and Rick, as we’re former computer programmers who used to write beta test plans for our software. Sure, we’ll be happy to run it through some tests!
Having opened in 2022 by a family from Wisconsin and partially inspired by the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Treebeerd is a very hip type of place. While we were there, very interesting music was playing, while one TV screen aired basketball playoffs and the other screen a film. (And no, it wasn’t The Fellowship of the Ring.)
On our first day in Portland, after walking across town to visit the breathtaking Portland Japanese Garden, Rick and I decided to have lunch up in the Slabtown neighbourhood, so we walked to the Breakside Brewery. This place is very big, with lots of outdoor seating in front and large murals all over the outside walls, and the inside seating is on two levels. As is often our choice, we decided to sit at the bar with a good view of the 16 beer taps, including plenty of IPAs. They also offer a couple of pilsners, a couple of stouts, and a sour--but it was the mostly gorgeous sounding IPAs that caught our eyes.
While we forged our way through the extensive lunch menu, we shared two pints. The first was Catching Tigers West Coast XPA (6.5% ABV), which offered a nice stripey character of dank grapefruit which the menu described as “allium and overripe peach”. The other pint was Thriving Metropolis West Coast IPA (7.0% ABV), also with a nice dankness reminiscent of an earthy teakwood fruit bowl full of guavas, melons, and peaches. Ooh, what a gorgeous place to be, right there at that moment in my mouth. After a great walk through redwoods and some peaceful meditations in the rain, brought on by the statue of Sacajewea which we passed twice, this beer was pretty much heaven. Both of our pints were served in “nucleated” glasses which produced a whirlpool of bubbles. Rick had never seen this before, and I told him about the importance of using this type of glass for carbonated beers and a smooth-bottomed glass for cask ales. For once I actually knew something about beer that Rick didn’t, because I’ve learned so many things from him over the years.
I have to admit I loved the Metropolis--but then again I’m a city girl.
For lunch we shared a plate--sorry, tower--of enough black bean nachos to feed a crowd, as well as a massive Caesar salad, and it was far too much food for two normal-sized people to even make a dent in. Just as we were starting to regret not having packed any crampons or pitons to help us scale the Nacho Mountain that stood temptingly in front of us, we noticed a row of little toys displayed behind the beer taps: a mini Etch-a-Sketch (just like one I have at home), a little camel (again like one I have at home), a Hello Kitty-style bunny rabbit, and a shark. And up the stairs we could see the brewery. At least these details got our minds off of our mutual failure to extract tortilla chips from our Jenga tower without knocking black beans and jalapeno slices all over the place.
Breakside Brewing was started in 2010 by Scott Lawrence as a small brewpub and restaurant in Northeast Portl and. As the wholly employee-owned brewery grew in size, five more locations were opened in Portland as well as a taproom in Astoria, with the Slabtown location having opened in 2017. Along with the pints and food, Breakside also offers 34oz or 64oz Draft Beer Fills to take away, as well as cans, bottles, growler bottles, and pint glasses.
Considering we hadn't even been in Portland for an entire day yet, these two venues definitely promised a rewarding few days to come.
Related Links
- For those beer-drinking non-programmers, here's an explanation of Beta Testing (Product Plan)
- And for those visitors to Breakside who want to order the nachos, here's a basic guide to mountain-climbing equipment
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