The Great American Ale Trail (Revised Edition) Read online

It’s a beautiful sight, even though we all know not all will survive. Few breweries have closed since late 2011, but a few that shall not be named have been swallowed by huge corporations. Why? Isn’t good beer worth exploring regardless of ownership? I argue that when it comes to beer, company size and local ownership are relevant. The dreamers who doggedly pursued the art and craft of brewing for years, to get us where we are now, are the heroes of this book, not corporations with $100 million war chests. The Great American Ale Trail is a road map of intentional communities and the roads in between, a chart of the ties that bind beer lovers to their favorite places. Some of those now-corporate owned breweries that were featured in volume one were solid, even great, for their time. And I congratulate them on striking it rich. But I won’t be writing about many of them in this new edition. This document of the craft beer adventure unfolding is all about the small axes still chipping away, batch by adventurous batch, at the robot-powered factories that continue to churn out—millions of flavorless gallons at a time—90 percent of America’s beer.

  Like the first edition, this book wanders from region to region, from the forests of the Pacific Northwest where I grew up all the way to the mangroves and palm trees of Florida, where a terrific beer scene is gathering force. In 2015 alone something like fourteen breweries opened in L.A. County. It’s a tidal wave of beer. I’ve traveled as much as I could since the book first came out. What I have found out there is nothing short of amazing. The craft beer revolution has spread to every state, every large city, and to zip codes where, just a couple of years ago, the only beer you could buy came in thirty-six-packs.

  Even Portland, Oregon, with about ninety to date, continues to welcome new outposts. And thus, in this primer, there are many more breweries included, but, no matter what, naysayers will have a field day. What about X, and why hasn’t he included Y, Z, and the other 300 flavors of the moment? Readers, hear my plea. Please do not glance in these pages and declare your glass half-full. To cover all the breweries in America, you’d be reading a twenty-volume collection—which would be pointless (and quickly outdated).

  Instead, raise a glass to our beery good fortune. The breweries and beer bars included in these pages were selected for outstanding beer, first and foremost, and for breaking trail in areas where craft beer was once unheard of. Many have won recognition at the World Beer Cup and Great American Beer Festival (GABF) and have a tap handle or three in the most discerning beer bars. Others have taken their ambitions into the barrel, dedicating entire operations to the art of aging beer in oak casks, once a niche, experimental side of beer. As for those cut from volume one, some simply closed, sold out to faceless corporate owners—removing some of the appeal, for a small-town guy like myself—or never really evolved. Others were still good but simply had to be cut to make space for the dozens of worthy new destinations I include—almost 150 new spots. Was it easy? Not on your life. It’s agonizing to choose between great beer scenes. But with almost 500 places to whet your thirst, I hope you’ll crack the book and say, “Wow, what a great selection. Where to start?”

  A wonderful thing happens when you travel with beer in mind: the world opens up in a more friendly way. During my travels, I met hundreds of dedicated, inspiring American brewers, barkeeps, chefs, and beer lovers, every one in love with the art and science of brewing. There’s a bit of luck and joy in all this, but there’s also a lot of hard work. So wander and bring a map, too: in this book, spots are organized in clusters, generally speaking, but not always. And talk to people: in every single one of the places in this book, you’re going to meet pilgrims hitting the road for the love of beer. You’re not likely to meet warmer and more friendly people. And along the way, I hope The Great American Ale Trail will help posit a new definition of craft beer: The growing love of artisan-made brews isn’t because beer is becoming more like wine. It’s becoming more beer-like.

  Think of this humble offering as a heartfelt, if necessarily nonencyclopedic, roadmap of inspiration. If you’ve been to many, or even half of these, toast that, too. Then hand off the book, dog-eared and beer-stained, to another beer lover. Celebrate the abundance of this unique era by reading, sharing, and exploring, making your own ale trails, tasting your own way to a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the alchemy of malt, hops, yeast, and pure water. Brewing goes back to our Founding Fathers, and eons earlier, when Sumerians recorded beer batches as prayers in clay tablets. We’re tapping into something ancient, something necessary. To the lucky ones who know, it makes perfect sense. And I hope that with this book, you’ll begin your own search. The only question is: Where to go first?

  —Christian DeBenedetti

  Newberg, Oregon

  December, 2015

  The PACIFIC NORTHWEST and ALASKA

  OREGON

  THANKS TO A BAND OF BOLD BREWING PIONEERS STARTING IN THE LATE 1970S AND early ’80s, the entire state is blessed with hoppy wonders, with Portland as its shining beer capital. Today, there are no less than 90 breweries and counting in and around the small city of 600,000 known to many as Beervana. Some say it’s the rain driving drinkers indoors; others point to the tough, timber-country ingenuity and independent spirit ingrained in the gene pool. Either way, craft beer is so popular throughout the state, you can pick up an artisan brew at the gas station.

  The history of this good-beer revolution is well documented, but suffice it to say that Portland embraced craft beer early, becoming the brewing epicenter of the Northwest—and arguably the entire United States and even the world—by being both aggressively provincial and always innovative. With access to top-quality grain and regionally grown hops (and relatively inexpensive real estate), brewers thrived amid a population that loves to drink beer as much as it loves to climb, ski, surf, roast fair-trade coffee, build exotic bikes (and ride them around naked—why not?), and forage for mushrooms. It didn’t hurt that in the 1970s and ’80s the Oregon wine country emerged as a world-class destination amid the stirrings of Oregon’s gourmet-inclined Slow Food movement. Throughout the state, from tiny upstarts to established regional and national brands like Widmer, there’s no town too small for an excellent brewpub these days. With snowy peaks, smart cities, and verdant forests, what other excuse do you need to visit?

  ITINERARIES

  1-DAY Portland: The Commons, Cascade Brewing Barrel House, Bailey’s, Gigantic, Higgins

  3-DAY Portland plus wine country and the Columbia Gorge: one-day itinerary plus Wolves & People, Breakside, Belmont Station, Double Mountain, Full Sail, Logsdon, Edgefield

  7-DAY One- and three-day itinerary plus Fort George, Buoy, Deschutes, and Ale Apothecary

  Portland

  APEX

  1216 SE Division St. • Portland, OR 97202 • (503) 273-9227 • apexbar.com • Established: 2010

  SCENE & STORY

  Built in a small industrial garage-like space by former New Belgium Brewing sales representative Jesse McCann, Apex is a squeaky-clean beer bar, which perfectly captures the lifestyle of Portlanders circa 2015: single-speed bike parked out front, barrel-aged Belgian ale in hand. Smoking? Never—that’s so last year. Table service? Nope, stretch those legs. (Dogs, kids, and credit cards are also ixnayed.) But lest the scene sound too doctrinaire, it’s ideal on a sunny day when you can bike there (you can even borrow a lock from the bar’s own stash), grab a taco from the little place next door (no food is sold at the bar), and maybe shoot some pinball. Easy does it, except for the (often) blaring heavy metal.

  PHILOSOPHY

  Serious about beer—intense, even, but not joyless. “I’ve been told I keep my beer too cold,” says McCann, speaking of scolds, with a wry chuckle. But there are beers that are simply better cold—ice-cold—especially when it’s ninety-five degrees in the shade (rare in Portland, but not unheard of). So, thank heavens for one little nod to an older, less uptight mode of beer drinking: amid the list of esoteric brews is a lone “Cheap, Cold” Hamm’s can for $2.50—a nice, if ironic, touch.

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sp; KEY BEER

  McCann brings in bonafide rarities and displays an impressive forty-two-tap selection on a flat-screen TV over the bar, so simply peruse the fast-changing list, try some samples, and engage the beer experts at work behind the bar. There are beers here no other bar in Portland can even think about getting, like Moonlight’s Working for Tips, a garnet-colored 5.5% ABV ale spiced with redwood tips instead of hops that’s only seldom spotted outside of the Bay Area.

  HORSE BRASS PUB

  4534 SE Belmont St. • Portland, OR 97215 • (503) 232-2202 • horsebrass.com • Established: 1976

  SCENE & STORY

  It was with heavy but grateful hearts that thousands of fans (present company included) turned out for the wake to honor Horse Brass founder Don Younger in January of 2011 when he died at age sixty-nine from complications related to being a wise, hard-drinking old buzzard. To hear the gray-bearded, long-haired, raspy-voiced Don tell it between puffs on his ever-present smoke, he woke up one day smarting from a big night of beer (and whiskey, which he loved dearly) and discovered he had bought the bar with his brother, Bill, the late Bill Younger.

  What happened next helped make Portland the great beer town it is. Bringing in scores of rare and hard-to-find beers, and championing the first efforts of the brewers in town, the Youngers’ Horse Brass became one of the most famous and respected beer bars in the land. When Don drove a gray ’72 Rolls around town, he did it in a T-shirt. And there was something else about Don: without fanfare, he loaned or simply gave money to a number of earnest young Portlanders trying to get a leg up in beer, in life—Duane Sorenson, founder of Portland’s famous Stumptown Coffee Roasters, for one—and never made a fuss about it.

  PHILOSOPHY

  Generous and communal. The motto of the Horse Brass (“If it were any more authentic, you’d need a passport. . . .”) is apt, because it looks as if it were airlifted stick by stone out of old London. But Don also loved to say something a bit cryptic, too, something worth considering only with a beer in hand. “It’s not about the beer. It’s about the beer,” he’d say, and then order you another round—on the house.

  KEY BEER

  There are fifty taps and seventy-five bottled selections, but before you drink anything else, order the always-on Younger’s Special Bitter (YSB), named for Bill, who died first, and raise a toast to the Youngers.

  THE COMMONS BREWERY

  630 SE Belmont St. • Portland, OR 97214 • commonsbrewery.com • Established: 2011

  SCENE & STORY

  In 2010, soft-spoken local founder Mike Wright, with almost clairvoyant business sense, decided to expand his garage-based Beetje (meaning “small,” in Flemish) 1bbl nanobrewery into a 7bbl system based on a quiet street in southeast Portland. In 2011, Germany-trained, Oregon-native brewery Sean Burke joined the team, and with their superb, Belgian-inflected beers and strong word of mouth, that 700 percent size increase soon proved insufficient. By the middle of 2015, Wright and Co. moved into a stunning, 100-year-old industrial building with massive beams and rafters overhead, and added a 15bbl system and several new fermenters. But all this growth, paradoxically, has seemed, to outsiders at least, unhurried. In the airy, sun-lit taproom with exposed brick and shining, but not showy bar, beer lovers feast on creations like Biere Royale (a yogurt-fermented sour ale with currants) and Myrtle (a citrusy, mimosa-like farmhouse ale) that have won the hearts of beer lovers and judges over and over again. Local cheese impresario (fromager, if we’re being fancy) Steve Jones installed a kiosk for small cheese plates, an ideal companion to the Commons’ Belgium and France-inspired farmhouse-style beers. No visitor to Portland should miss it. And with the “House of Sour” Cascade Barrel House, and multitap, beer-garden blessed Green Dragon pub up the street, the southeast Belmont area of Portland is fast becoming a world-class brewery district.

  Summer is the ultimate season here, and no weekend says it better than the one known locally as “brewfest”—the OBF, or Oregon Brewers Festival, around the end of July—when upward of 80,000 revelers gather in the city’s sprawling Tom McCall Waterfront Park under massive, beer-filled open-air tents, and, every ten minutes or so, spontaneously start cheering like fans at the Super Bowl, glasses held high. 2015 marked the festival’s twenty-eighth year.

  Chalk the good cheer up to the setting: With the city and its Willamette River as a backdrop, some 100 breweries from around the country show up to pour their latest. Guest brewers are flown in from Denmark and New Zealand. Live bands jam on stages as local-fave restaurants like Horn of Africa proffer healthy, spicy, beer-friendly fare. Trading wooden nickel tokens for tastes, imbibers mingle good-naturedly, old friends reunite, and, as the sun goes down, those cheers grow longer and louder, and, well, a heck of a lot more infectious. When the kegs run dry—sic transit gloria mundi—downtown taprooms fill with beer lovers celebrating the bounty until the wee hours. Go early in the day; lines for the buzziest brands form immediately. And keep an eye out for growing, but cozier Portland summer events like the Portland Fruit Beer Fest, which pack a punch in a much smaller format. (oregonbrewfest.com)

  SOUR POWER 101

  INSIDE THE ART OF SOUR, BARREL-AGED BEERS

  To speak beer-ese in Portland, or just about anywhere else these days, you’ve got to know what makes sour beers pop the way they do. Simply put, they’re usually made by fermenting beer with a complex grain bill (for long, slow, layered fermentations) with Lactobacillus and/or other superactive, benign bacteria and wild yeasts, and aging them. This can happen in stainless steel and it can happen in oak barrels that once contained wine, port, sherry, absinthe, rum, whiskey, or bourbon, occasionally with fruits and other flavorings added. After a period of, say, three months to three years, the acidified brews are blended with one another in a stainless-steel tank to taste, at which point fresh fruit additions or brewers’ sugars are occasionally added again. Lastly, they’re kegged or bottled like Champagne, often with a cork and wire cage. Executed well, these acid-forward ales echo the heft of certain big wines (meaty tannic reds, bright whites, and tawny old ports), and pair well with rich foods like cheese, charcuterie, and pork belly. One look at the beer lists in Portland’s top restaurants confirms: sour is the new black.

  PHILOSOPHY

  Gather around beer is the Commons’ mantra, officially. Unofficially, one employee tells me, the modus operandi is “kick ass quietly.” They do it well. In a sea of new breweries competing for attention with aggressively hopped beers and thumping heavy metal in the taprooms, the Commons stands out for its methodical, thoughtful, and above all excellency-minded approach.

  KEY BEER

  Urban Farmhouse, a spicy, classic saison, put the Commons on the map (and pulled down medals including a prestigious World Beer Cup bronze). It’s delicious, with a balanced, grassy, peppery bite. Also look for Flemish Kiss, a GABF silver medal–winning Brett pale ale, which has a fruity funkiness made for soft cheeses. Then work your way through their ever-changing list of tart and wild ales, esoteric lagers, and other farmhouse-inspired rarities.

  BELMONT STATION

  4500 SE Stark St. • Portland, OR 97215 • (503) 232-8538 • belmont-station.com • Established: 1997

  SCENE & STORY

  Founded by Carl Singmaster and the late, legendary publican Don Younger of the Horse Brass in that bar’s tiny adjacent alleyway in southeast Portland, Belmont Station was an idea far ahead of its time. With thousands of imported beers, glassware, and other beer-related gifts, it was a hit with locals who would wander in after a pint and perhaps a chat with the irascible, inimitable owner Don Younger, who died in 2011. (Disclosure: By the good graces of Younger, I worked at Belmont Station briefly in its earliest days, helping ship beer, something the place no longer does. I was enormously grateful for the gig.) Since then, the shop has moved a block north to Stark Street and has expanded to include its own bar with 20 taps, 1,200-plus bottles stored behind UV-filtered light, regular tastings, and brewmaster appearances. They even hold their own
festival in July: Puckerfest is a weeklong celebration of sour beer.

  PHILOSOPHY

  Know thy beer. Belmont Station’s employees know a ton about beer and are glad to share their wisdom, sans attitude.

  KEY BEER

  The best beer is the one you taste fresh off one of the twenty taps as you wander the aisles, which is a lot of fun. Simply put, the selection here is incredible: up to date, varied, well cared for, and organized.

  UPRIGHT BREWING CO.

  240 N. Broadway, Ste. 2 • Portland, OR 97227 • (503) 735-5337 • uprightbrewing.com • Established: 2009

  SCENE & STORY

  You know you’re in a serious craft beer town when NBA fans cram into your subterranean taproom for every home game and sip barrel-aged beers before heading to the stadium. Alex Ganum’s Upright Brewing Company is located a few paces from the Rose Garden arena, home of the Portland Trail Blazers. Ganum moved to Portland (he’s from Michigan originally) for culinary school but fell in love with the beer scene instead. After an internship at the celebrated Brewery Ommegang in Cooperstown, New York, he drew up plans for Upright, and these days his beers are all over town, and his brewing capacity is maxed out.

  Still, the brewery (named for Charles Mingus’s stringed instrument) remains low-key, with just six wall-mounted taps, a couple of picnic tables, and barrel racks of aging ales to admire as you sip away. Be sure to check out the open steel fermenters behind glass. The five year-round beers are Four (4.5% ABV; light, wheaty, and lightly sour), Five (5.5% ABV and markedly hoppier), Six (spicy and caramel tinged at 6.7% ABV), Seven (8% ABV and floral, aromatic), and the delicious, draft-only Engleberg Pils (5.5% ABV). My advice: order a tasting tray and try every one.