The Great American Ale Trail (Revised Edition) Read online

  KEY BEER

  Like an amped-up dubbel, Belgian strong dark ales are all about grain-given flavors of plum, toffee, and raisin. They’re also a bit higher in alcohol and tend toward a peppery tang and dryness, ideally, balancing those richer, sweet notes. Pfriem’s is arguably their most complete offering yet, with fulsome waves of malty flavor. It’s a superb example of the style.

  DOUBLE MOUNTAIN BREWERY & TAPROOM

  8 4th St., No. 204 • Hood River, OR 97031 • (541) 387-0042 • doublemountainbrewery.com • Established: 2007

  SCENE & STORY

  After hiking waterfalls in the Columbia Gorge you’re going to have a wicked appetite, so get yourself to Double Mountain to set things right with a fresh pint and tasty pizza. Named for a local viewpoint where you can see both Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams (two of the many impressive Cascade Range peaks), the family-friendly brewpub was founded by Full Sail brewery alumni Matt Swihart and Charlie Deveraux, who met working in production and began a series of tactical brainstorms masquerading as long nights of drinking. Pinned with demand immediately after opening, the Double Mountain pub is close to Full Sail and Hood River’s main drag, with a cool sage-green interior, living room couches, offbeat local artworks, and the odd live band. A recent expansion added much needed table space for beer, pizza, and music.

  PHILOSOPHY

  Hop lovers to the hilt, the Double Mountain team goes for huge additions of whole flower hops and minimal handling of the beer, for a powerful but not overly aggressive character, followed by long conditioning rests and no filtration.

  KEY BEER

  The 6.5% ABV India Red Ale (“I.R.A.”), a scarlet, malty beast with the hop profile of an IPA, is a good match for the piquant pepperoni pizza. Or take a pull off the Vaporizer, a dry, golden-hued pale ale with pilsner malt and Challenger hops, grown in Washington’s Yakima Valley (6% ABV). Recently, cherry-driven sours such as Tahoma, Devil’s Kriek, and Rainier Kriek are gaining many ardent fans.

  FULL SAIL BREWERY & TASTING ROOM & PUB

  506 Columbia St. • Hood River, OR 97031 (541) 386-2247 • fullsailbrewing.com • Established: 1987

  SCENE & STORY

  Early settlers here braved Hood River’s wind-tunnel conditions, and the fruit orchards they established thrived and made it famous. Fast-forward 200 years: today, the quaint Columbia River–side town of 6,500 located an hour east of Portland still boasts the same majestic views of Mt. Hood and fertile fruit trees. But thanks to that steady wind, it’s now regarded as one of the world’s top destinations for windsurfing and kiteboarding. Since 1987 it’s been a beer town, too, home to the once-tiny, now huge Full Sail, where you can drink a beer and watch the speeding sails embroider the waves. (This is preferable to attempting actual windsurfing, which, for most of us, becomes an infinite wipeout.)

  PHILOSOPHY

  Progressive and green-minded. In 1999 Full Sail became 100 percent employee-owned, and employees work four ten-hour days to save resources (and make the most of powder days up on Mt. Hood and winds on the Columbia, no doubt). In 2015 those employees decided to sell a controlling stake to Encore Consumer Capital, a San Francisco-based private equity group.

  KEY BEER

  If you’re visiting in the fall (a beautiful season to be in the area), look for the fresh hop ales—there’s often two or three on at a time, made with huge quantities of just-picked hop flowers. “To get a comparable extract out of the hop (compared to the dried version), you have to use about five times the amount, and when you add that much more, you get more of a green, chlorophyll, leaf, and vegetative matter flavor,” says former Full Sail brewmaster John Harris, who has made many in his day (and check out his latest creations at Ecliptic, in northeast Portland). The rest of the year, try Full Sail Amber, the company’s flagship and Oregon’s first craft beer in bottles, which came out in 1989 and won a gold at GABF the same year. It’s 5.5% ABV and on the sweet and malty side, with a light touch of Mt. Hood and Cascade hops.

  The Columbia Gorge—a short drive east from Portland on highway I-84 toward Hood River—is braided with postcard cataracts that lure masses. Multnomah Falls, at 620 feet, is the nation’s second-highest waterfall after Yosemite. Hike 800 feet up to stroll past the more serene Wiesendanger and Ecola Falls, invisible from ground level. Marginally tougher to reach (but far lesser known) is Oneonta Gorge, a gloamy slot canyon lined with neon-bright lichens accessed by fording a logjam (one that, thankfully, discourages the faint of heart) merely a quarter of a mile away. (oregon.com/hiking)

  LOGSDON BARREL HOUSE & TAPROOM

  101 4th St. • Hood River, OR 97031 (541) 436-0040 or (503) 720-0689 • farmhousebeer.com • Established: 2015

  SCENE & STORY

  Plenty of American brewers these days claim to brew “farmhouse” ales (meaning the refreshing, yeast-driven beer that was traditionally brewed in the Belgian and French countryside for local consumption) but there’s just one problem: no farmhouse. Not so for Oregon’s Dave Logsdon, who was the founding brew-master of Full Sail, and went on to found Wyeast Laboratories, a hugely successful wholesale and retail yeast company for the wine and beer industries. With a former partner, experienced brewer Charles Porter, Logsdon opened the brewery on his family’s beautiful working farm outside of Hood River, complete with a big red barn (where the kettles, tanks, and barrels currently live), pets, horses, and highland cattle, in 2011. Unfortunately, the farmhouse setting is no longer open to beer pilgrims. Following lengthy debates with county zoning officials, Logsdon opened the tasting room in Hood River proper in 2015. It was a period of change for the young company. In late 2015 head brewer Charles Porter decamped to begin his own (to be announced, as of this writing) brewery, and Logsdon sold the company but stayed aboard to help guide the brand. Plans to move or alter production, as of fall 2015, were unclear.

  PHILOSOPHY

  Purist. “How do you make a farmhouse beer if you’re not in a farmhouse? That’s a really important part of the definition for me,” says Logsdon, who grows his own schaerbeekse kriek (cherry) trees imported from an orchard in East Flanders to use in barrel-aged beers. The ingredients are all certified organic. With his wood-aged beers, he’s going for a smidge less sourness than some of the more intense Belgian ales: “I try to create a lot of maltiness to carry the acidity but also to keep the acid in check, so it makes it a nice drinking beer—tart and thirst quenching at the same time.”

  KEY BEER

  Seizoen Bretta (8% ABV), a traditional malty, yeasty saison with an addition of Brettanomyces adding fruity notes, acidity, and woody, earthy, almost leathery flavors.

  The Oregon Coast

  DE GARDE BREWING

  6000 Blimp Blvd. • Tillamook, OR 97141 (503) 815-1635 • degardebrewing.com • Established: 2013

  SCENE & STORY

  The Oregon coast is a mix of sublime geology and charming towns (Manzanita, Cannon Beach) and, well, a few less-than-charming towns. But with five rivers converging in Tillamook Bay—primo steelhead and salmon habitat—there’s some rare air there. Former Pelican brewer Trevor Rogers and his wife, Lindsey Hamacher, are making the most of it, relying, they say, on airborne yeasts for their primary fermentation. It’s been an art form in Belgium for centuries, but here in the United States, the art of spontaneous fermentation is just beginning to catch on. From Maine (Allagash) to the Texas Hill Country (Jester King) and even Tulsa, Oklahoma (Prairie), some very daring brewers are exposing their unfermented beer to air (while held in a shallow cistern called a coolship) in hopes that the naturally occurring wild yeast aloft will result in pleasing tastes (instead of face-contorting acids and other off-flavors). Until recently, no one would have suspected Tillamook, Oregon, to be on the list of successful zip codes for the method, but De Garde has done well, fast becoming a collector favorite. While the brewery keeps its coolship indoors in a windowless room, and also has used plenty of lab-grown yeast (as is standard in breweries worldwide), any successful reliance on spontaneous fermentation earns bragg
ing rights.

  While it started as a garage project, today De Garde occupies a larger industrial space near a famous old hangar from World War II, which housed airships used by U.S. military to hunt Japanese submarines along the coast. There are five sour beers on draft for four dollars per twelve ounces, and the mostly out-of-town clientele often stocks up on bottles to go. Bottle releases are crowded affairs (check newsletters and social media).

  PHILOSOPHY

  Relying on a coolship is a game of Russian roulette, but when it works, the result is truly special. Think about good homemade sourdough, which succeeds by similar metrics. De Garde is using a lot of local Oregon fruit, too (including pinot noir), making for an array of brews that run the gamut from the merely tart and angular to extremely sour and vividly colored.

  KEY BEER

  The best known product is Bu Weisse, a 2.3% Berliner weisse that really pops with tart and lemony notes. But look for any of the dozens of variations on saison, fruited sour, and other wild ales they’re doing, with everything from cranberry to nectarine to apricot, blackberry, and peach added. What you’ll find when you arrive depends on the brewery’s many fans that beat you to the beach.

  Astoria

  FORT GEORGE BREWERY & PUBLIC HOUSE

  1483 Duane St. • Astoria, OR 97103 (503) 325-7468 • fortgeorgebrewery.com • Established: 2007

  SCENE & STORY

  Astoria, positioned at the mouth of the Columbia River as the Oregon Coast’s northernmost town, began as an outgrowth of Fort Clatsop, the settlement established by Lewis and Clark upon reaching the Pacific. For years, Astoria was a roughneck port—in the 1920s it was deemed the most dangerous town in America because so many unsuspecting tavern-goers were shanghaied onto fishing vessels never to be seen again. Today, the town is still a bit gritty, a mosaic of nineteenth-century canneries, warehouses, and craftsman homes but with an indie-rock appeal. Visitors should check into the eighteen-room Commodore Hotel, which was renovated a few years back with a Wes Anderson–like attention to detail; Plus, it’s walking distance to Fort George Brewery.

  Brewery founders Jack Harris and Chris Nemlowill, too, have a near-obsessive attention to detail, and took over the derelict Fort George building they’d first toured in late 2005, which was built on the site of the city’s old fort and a healthy spring. After opening in 2007 to steady crowds, the duo arranged to buy the whole block with help from a city loan. The twelve-tap brewpub is classic Northwest, with heavy exposed beams and big windows looking out to the streets. Order up a fresh beer and some house-made sausages or perfectly ungreasy fish and chips, and you’ll taste the wisdom of their plans.

  PHILOSOPHY

  Classic local brewpub, with big ambitions (hence a new canning line added in 2011). And they love their stouts: February is always “stout month” featuring their own stouts on tap and a bunch of guest handles, concluding with a stout-and-oyster pairing dinner.

  KEY BEER

  Vortex IPA (7.7% ABV), served right out of a mason jar, honors the original brewhouse, which was transported through a tornado en route to Oregon from the Midwest. Now available in sixteen-ounce cans, it’s a juicy twister of lemon, grass-hops, and sweet, fruity graininess.

  No trip to the Oregon coast would be complete without a serious seafood and beer fest, and there’s no more classically Oregonian place to do it than Jetty Fishery, a ramshackle seafood shack and campground on Nehalem Bay just north of Rockaway Beach on Highway 101 (800-821-7697; crab from nine dollars per pound). If you’ve got the time, rent a boat and go out with some crabbing pots to get your own haul (seventy-five dollars for two hours, up to five people), then have the guys at the pier clean and cook it on the spot while you swig post-expedition brews. Short on time? There’s plenty precaught grub, too. Grab a sixer, some hot sauce, and paper napkins from inside the little store, then sidle up to the old yellow picnic tables outside by the water’s edge and a fire pit while you wait for fresh-as-fresh-gets grilled oysters, steamed clams, and mussels, or Dungeness crab boiled in Nehalem Bay seawater. Word to the wise: try to go on a midweek afternoon. Weekends get crowded and crazy, especially when the owners fire up their 10,000-watt karaoke system for locals, RVers, and assorted campground yahoos.

  After Jetty Fishery, you’ve got options. To the south, look for Yachats Brewing, housed with a picturesque farm store and headed up by former Logsdon brewer Charlie Van Meter, who makes a range of well-crafted beers from extra pale ale to saisons and stouts (yachatsbrewing.com). Or head north up to Manzanita, nine miles north on Highway 101, a 564-person town that used to be just a blip on the map. Perhaps because of this anonymity, Manzanita has started to draw in creative types, just as Big Sur, California did back in its heyday, and it’s got a peaceful, progressive vibe. Down on the main drag of Laneda Avenue, pop into the relaxed San Dune Pub (sandunepub.com) and sip a juicy, intense Inversion IPA from Deschutes with an oyster po’boy and warm up by the fireplace.

  North of Manzanita, 101 unwinds like a wire, bending around headlands and plunging into cathedrals of Sitka spruce and Douglas fir. Empty beaches emerge unexpectedly, the most striking of which is at Oswald West State Park (503-368-3575). The sandy stretch has become famous for its protected break, and you’re likely to see some surfers braving the frigid waters. The short wooded path down to the beach is worth the trouble, without question.

  After a day of crabbing, surf scoping, and beach walking, you’ll be ready for some sea-borne comfort food again before long. And if Manzanita is Oregon’s Big Sur, then Cannon Beach, ten miles north, is its Carmel, a stretch of Cape Cod–style homes with not a chain store in sight. Best bet: perfectly icy G&Ts on the patio at the Driftwood (541-988-4384), or beers at Bill’s Tavern & Brewhouse (503-436-2202), a sunny and cheerful spot with bright murals on the walls and a good, pet-friendly patio. Wind up your afternoon with some fresh, flaky, beer-battered halibut fish and chips and a pint of fresh-brewed beach beer, like the Duck Dive Pale Ale (4.8% ABV). Mission complete.

  Bend & Central Oregon

  THE ALE APOTHECARY

  61517 River Rd. • Bend, OR 97701 • the.ale.apothecary.com • [email protected] • Established: 2011

  SCENE & STORY

  Brewer Paul Arney, descendant of an apothecary, left his position after six years as R&D/head brewpub chief of the legendary Deschutes Brewery to start his bold, 500-square-foot, wilderness-based brewery that remains one of the nation’s most unusual. Instead of stainless steel, Arney brews in open oak barrels, harnessing wild yeast aloft in the woods. He’s even employed a hollowed-out spruce tree that was hauled through the woods on horseback, in homage to the Norwegian tradition of mashing in with a kuurna, or hollowed juniper tree lined with juniper branches. Every beer is a statement of his purist ideals and wild creativity from grain to glass. His brewery has always been an appointment-only affair, but now that he’s got a tasting room coming together in Bend proper, it could be somewhat easier to spot the mystic at work.

  PHILOSOPHY

  “My beer-brewing philosophy is the same as my life philosophy, I suppose,” Arney told me. “I feel our contemporary culture pushes us to a ‘destination’ or to fulfill specific goals—retirement, consumerism. I brew beer in the manner that I try to live my life; to push back against this force and focus instead on the mystery of the experience. . . . As long as people are curious about the unknown, our beer should have no problem finding a market.”

  KEY BEER

  The vinous, 9.8% ABV Sahalie wild ale is a revelation. With intriguing layers of earthy, angular flavors derived from wild yeasts and a full year of barrel aging in oak, as well as from a month of dry-hopping (in the barrel!), it’s a beer of remarkable intensity of flavor, with flavors and aromas recalling lime, grass, and apricot. Amazing stuff.

  DESCHUTES BREWERY

  1044 NW Bond St. • Bend, OR 97701 (541) 382-9242 • deschutesbrewery.com • Established: 1988

  SCENE & STORY

  Making their debut in 1988 at Gary Fish�
�s little Bond Street brewpub in Bend, the beers were good—really good. There was—and still is—something ideally calibrated about Deschutes’ juicy, quaffable Mirror Pond Pale Ale. Is it the prismatic Cascade hops, perfectly applied? Jubelale, a malty and warming winter seasonal, was also an instant smash hit in bottles (the first Deschutes beer packaged in glass). It seemed the brewery would never be big enough for demand.

  Today, Deschutes has also opened an upscale little brewpub in Portland’s swank Pearl District—often packed and playing host to a summer street fair and high-profile cooking events. Its former head brewer, Veronica Vega, a serious cyclocross racer turned brewer, was just named assistant brewmaster of the entire company. The production brewery, in a massive industrial building on Simpson Avenue, offers free, forty-five-minute walking tours with four samples on the house. They’ve expanded the little old Bond Street pub, too (ask about changes when you’re there). From ski-bum hangout to industry heavyweight the company is currently ranked around seventh in the United States for sales volume.

  PHILOSOPHY

  Success hasn’t come at the expense of quality. The more states that pick up the beer (some thirty at this stage), the more brewers seem free to experiment on the side with barrel-aged stouts like the Abyss and sours like the Dissident, a Flanders-style oud bruin aged in oak barrels with cherries, both of which are excellent.

  KEY BEER

  Deschutes has pulled off some exceptional Belgian styles like the Dissident, but their area of domination is truly in the British-style ales, IPAs, porters, and stouts. Black Butte Porter deserves a victory lap. It’s a little-known fact that Guinness Extra Stout debuted under the brand Extra Superior Porter and remained so for forty-one years, a stronger, darker version of the dark-hued London-born drink. Today the style has taken on many forms of its own around the world, from purist English versions to hefty Baltic variations and even American riffs that incorporate peppers and sour notes. In Deschutes’ formula, tangy Northwest hops come to the fore with finesse, balancing its cocoa, coffee, and toffee notes from its blend of roasted malts. And, at 5.5% ABV, it’s a touch lighter than the old Extra Superior.