I recently returned from spending eight days in Portland, OR. My wife and I went there to visit our daughter Fiona and son-in-law Marrek. They moved there last June, a few days after their wedding. This was our first time visiting them in Portland. It was spring break at the University of Toledo where I work, so it seemed like a good opportunity to take a trip to the Pacific northwest. Our visit also coincided with Fiona’s twenty-first birthday, so we had an added incentive to make the trip. This was my fifth trip to Portland. My last visit was in November 2015. You can read about that trip here.

Portland, of course, is a craft beer drinker’s heaven.  As of 2016, there were 114 craft breweries in the Portland metropolitan area. Only Seattle, WA (123) and San Diego, CA (115) had more. Portland has been dubbed the “world’s best beer city”. However, the absolute number of breweries is not the only measure of the popularity of craft breweries in a place. Controlling for size of place is important. So, when it comes to the number of breweries per 100,000 population, Portland with eleven, only ranks sixth in the country. The number one position, using this measure, belonging to the other Portland, the one in Maine. Brewing in Portland, OR dates back to 1852, when Henry Saxer, a German immigrant, opened Liberty Brewing. The modern-day craft brewery movement can be traced to 1984 and the opening of Columbia River Brewing (now BridgePort Brewing Company) by Richard and Nancy Ponzi. In visiting  Portand, you have to wonder why it was that the city emerged as an early leader in the American craft brewery movement. Joe Cortright, an Oregon-based economist, may have part of the answer. In a 2002 paper, published in Economic Development Quarterly, Cortright addresses that very question. It is, according to Cortright, the result of the interplay between a number of different factors. In summarizing the reasons behind the early emergence of craft brewing in Portland, Cortright states that:

“the industry’s growth in Portland was triggered by the following factors: a concentration of home brewers, higher than average imported-beer consumption, an eclectic band of entrepreneurs who wanted to do something different, the willingness of local consumers to try local products, and the example of a thriving boutique wine industry.”

As noted above, Portland’s first modern-day craft brewery was opened by Richard and Nancy Ponzi. Long before the Ponzis were brewing beer, they were producing wine at the Ponzi Vineyards, just southwest of Portland. Ponzi Vineyards were established in 1970. This seems to give credence to Cortright’s belief that the region’s wine industry had a role to play in craft beer’s emergence.

If you are a beer festival aficionado, Portland is the city for you; 2018 will see over forty-five held in and around the city. Some of these festivals are quite specialized. There is a festival devoted to imperial stouts, another to barrel aged beers, and yet another to farmhouse and wild ales. The list goes on, ad infinitum. My goal while in Portland was not to attend any beer festivals; rather I set myself a target of visiting a craft brewery per day, which equates to a total of eight during my visit. When all was said and done I visited nine (call me an overachiever). These were:

• 10 Barrel Brewing, Portland
• Basecamp Brewing Company, Portland
• Deception Brewing, Dundee
• Hair of the Dog Brewery, Portland
• Little Beast Brewing, Beaverton
• Max’s Fanno Creek Brew Pub, Tigard
• McMenamins John Barleycorns, Tigard
• Vanguard Brewing Company, Wilsonville
• Wayfinder Beer, Portland

Four of the breweries I visited were located inside the Portland city limits, while the other five were in the neighboring municipalities of Dundee, Beaverton, Tigard, and Wilsonville. While I enjoyed visiting every one of the breweries, there were a couple which were more interesting than the others.

As I was poking around the Internet looking for breweries near my daughter and son-in-law’s apartment I came across Little Beast Brewing. It was only three to four miles from the apartment. However, it was only open to the public for four hours every week, between 3:00pm and 7:00pm on Friday. But we made it there. Upon arrival, we entered a small rectangular room, with a temporary bar set up in one corner. There were number of bottles of beer sitting on ice, and a whiteboard on the wall with available brews listed. There were half a dozen or so customers standing around (there were no seats), enjoying one of Little Beast’s brews. I tried two of them – Bes, a 6% tart wheat ale and Ferme Rouge, a 7.5% ABV tart red ale. I particularly enjoyed the Bes, and purchased a 750ml bottle to take back to Toledo. I chatted briefly with the bartender and discovered that, within the next month or two, Little Beast would be moving into their own barrel house  and beer garden on SE Division Street in  Portland. I look forward to checking it out, on my next visit.

Another brewery that I got to visit while in Portland was McMenamins John Barleycorns in the city of Tigard. Tigard, located just south of the city of Portland ,  is a community of ~48,000 inhabitants. McMenamins has been a mainstay of the Portand craft brewing scene since the mid-1980s. The company is run by brothers, Mike and Brian McMenamin. Today, the McMenamins oversee an empire comprising over fifty locations in western/central Oregon and Washington. These include both bars and brewpubs. Twenty five of the McMenamin facilities are breweries.  The McMenamins specialize in what is termed adaptive resuse – taking old buildings and retrofitting them so that they take on a new life, often in the form of a bar or brewpub. For example, their Fulton Pub and Brewery in Portland dates to 1926, when it was a “Prohibition-era hangout serving home-cooked meals, pinball games, stogies, candy and ice cream”. Another McMenamin’s property is Wilsonvile Old Church and Pub. The building was once a church, constructed in 1911.

When I stepped into John Barleycorns, my first reaction was that this was another example of adaptive reuse. But, a quick conversation with Luke the bartender, and I discovered that it is not. The building is, in fact, a reproduction of an early twentieth century pumping station that caught Mike McMenamin’s eye during a vacation in Hawaii in the early 1990s. Over the years, I had read a lot about the McMenamin’s pubs and breweries, but this was my first visit to one. With so many brewpubs in Washington and Oregon I was curious as to how much standardization there was in terms of the beers brewed at the various McMenamin’s locations. Another quick conversation with Luke and the answer was revealed. All of the McMenamins brewpubs, produce some standard beers that are brewed at all of its breweries. Beyond that, each brewmaster at each facility has the latitude to brew beers that are unique to that particular brewmaster and, hence, that particular location. While at John Barleycorns, I tried their Ruby Red Ale. This is a classic McMenamin’s brew which, in fact, was celebrating its twenty-fifth birthday later that month (on March 21 to be precise). It did not disappoint.

I also had an opportunity to visit Fido’s Tap House which bills itself as “the world’s first dog tap house”.  My daughter and son-in-law have a fourteen week old Great Dane puppy, so finding dog-friendly venues around the Portland area is high on their list of priorities. Fido’s opened in February, 2018 in the city of Tigard. When I first heard of Fido’s I thought that perhaps it was a gimmick; but with forty craft beers, ciders, and wines on tap it is the real deal. On the  day that I happened to visit thirty-five of the forty taps were devoted to Oregon beers/ciders/wines. Fido’s also functions as a foster house for shelter dogs; the tap house has an adoption room, which, at any point in time, will have six or seven adoptable dogs. Patrons can sit at a twelve-foot long window and enjoy a beer, while watching the dogs. Alternatively, for a small fee ($4 for thirty minutes) patrons can enter the room and interact with the dogs. My visit to Fido’s brought back memories of my trip to Wellington, New Zealand in November 2016, when I had a couple of beers at Black Dog Brew Co. Black Dog was a very dog-centric craft brewery. You can read about my visit to Black Dog here.

This was my fifth visit to Portland. I am sure that it will not be my last. Each time I visit, I explore new parts of the metropolitan area and, as a result, develop an enhanced appreciation for what the city and its surrounding communities have to offer. The craft beer drinker can never feel tired of Portland. The variety of craft beer and places to drink craft beer is astonishing. It was the eighteenth century English essayist, Samuel Johnson who wrote, “when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life”. I will paraphrase Johnson and suggest that, “when a craft beer drinker is tired of Portland, he is tired of craft beer”.

Further Reading:

Cortright, Joe. 2002. The economic Importance of being different: Regional variations in tastes, increasing returns, and the dynamics of development. Economic Development Quarterly, Volume 16, Issue 1, pp. 3-16.