Local Portland Brews

Not much beer around here. We gave it up and we're all drinking wine these days.

How long are you going to be around, and what kind of place do you like? Where will you be? Driving? Taking the bus/light rail?

Great selection: Horse Brass, Imperial pints, very pub-y, very very smoky most times

Full Sail Pilsner Room, kind of posh, good selection, especially since they have Full Sail beers not released into the general trade; unreal cheap appetizers during happy hour

Bridgeport Brewpub (the one on NW Marshall, the original) informal, fun, delicious ales

Widmer Gasthaus, decent food, a little stuffy, worth visiting for the non-standard Widmer beers (try the Ur-alt)

BJ's Lloyd Center, get there for happy hour for cheap cheap appetizers and their non-standard beers

Lucky Lab brewpub on SE Hawthorne; very very informal, cheap eats, decent beer

New Old Lompoc brewpub on NW 23rd; good eats and surprisingly good beers

Kennedy School, part of the McMenamin's empire of brewpubs, a converted old school, with a movie theatre, restaurant and several bars (including a couple of good places for a cigar); beer is adequate

Edgefield Manor is another McM's place worth seeing; huge place, huge grounds (better in the flowering season), several options for food and the usual erratic McM's beers

That should get you started; there are about a billion more.

Feel free to e-mail me directly (remove spamming blockage) for further details. Nick Bruels may well chime in with a website and a map.

--Jeff Frane

Just as long as it ain't that evil Freedom wine, ya subversive.

Higgins, good tap selection, killer Belgian beer selection, pub-y in the back bar, not smoky at all - and it's downtown

Also Portland Brewing's brewery/pub, up in the northern fringes of Northwest Portland.

My favorites:

BREWPUBS Laurelwood Old Lompoc Fulton Kennedy School Old Market Widmer Port Halling Alameda Hazel Dell Bridgeport (Pearl Dist., not the one on SE Hawthorne)

PUBS Horse Brass Dublin Rose & Raindrop Flanders Street (Rogue)