Portland's Best Underrated Breweries
Next week I will post my annual list of best Portland breweries—a selective guide I offer to visitors, new and old. I’ve been on a whirlwind post-Covid tour of Rose City breweries, scribbling notes and guzzling pints. Each year this gets harder, as breweries at the top continue to improve their portfolios. The list has another downside I’d like to rectify with this post. It’s important to use selectivity as a way of sharpening our thinking—but it has the effect of marginalizing smaller operations that brew great beer outside the limelight. A lot of great breweries get lost in a country with 9,000 of them, and the best of the hidden gems deserve some attention.
Below are seven of these underrated winners. They all make great beer, and most are doing something interesting you won’t find elsewhere. They enrich Portland’s beer scene and offer a great change of pace when you’re looking for something new.
The criteria I use in creating my regular Best Breweries list is focused entirely on the beer—I don’t include food, ambiance, or other factors in my calculations. That’s not the case here. While I only considered breweries making good beer, in several cases, part of the brewery’s charms lie in their physical space, unusual lineups or focus, and these are inseparable from their charm. Portland has something like 75 breweries, depending on how you count those things, and these get lost in the herd. Well, they shouldn’t. Go give them a visit.
(One caution: I’m including current hours. Many breweries haven’t gone back to regular, pre-Covid schedules, but they may in coming weeks, so check before you visit.)
Assembly is one of those breweries you can’t help rooting for. It arrived on woefully underserved Foster Road in Spring 2019. Founders George Johnson and Adam Dixon had a great vision of a classic brewpub, with American pub ales made by Johnson along with the Detroit-style pizzas developed in his home town. George has a throwback approach and he’s not going to be making artisanal seltzers or slushee sours anytime soon. But his dark ales are always bang-on, and on a recent visit he had an excellent kölsch pouring that was as bright and sunny as the day outside. As you might expect, the ambers, pales, and wheats are sessionable, tasty, and familiar. The pub is bright and airy and features an amazing mural across one wall. (That’s George stirring the whirlpool in the photo at top.) I can’t speak to the pizza’s authenticity—Assembly’s is the only I’ve ever had—but man, is it good. The neighborhood can really use a place to assemble, and now that Covid is waning, I hope the citizens of Foster-Powell gather at Assembly.
Brewpub Location: 6112 SE Foster Rd. Hours: Open all days 4p-8p. Food: Detroit-style pizza.
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One of the great things about having so many breweries is that it creates a space for some to specialize. Enter Away Days, originally an offshoot project of English soccer pub The Toffee Club, which has been closed for over a year because of Covid. It made sense to support an England-centered pub with the proper libations, and so Away Days came along as a purveyor of classic styles like bitters, milds, and summer ales. While not all the beers are sold on cask, some are, and you can bet they’re fresh and in fine form. Of late the brewery has begun to lean into sessionable lagers as well. As you can see from the photo, the brewery is sun-washed and bright—though if you’re looking for a more British setting to enjoy a pint, you’ll be able to pop around to the Toffee Club when it opens this weekend.
Taproom Location: 1516 SE 10 Ave. Hours: Thurs 4p-8p, Fri-Sun noon-8p.
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Some breweries open a taproom as an afterthought. Others create the best environment they can out of provisional space. Montavilla’s Michael Kora, another Detroiter, reversed this equation and built a brewery to service a proper pub experience. It’s the kind of place that encircles you like a pair of fleece-covered arms and keeps you cradled there for hours. Kora’s beers are conceived to support pub-going (before Covid they were only draft), so they’re sessionable and balanced—though if you’re looking for a specialty pour, he has a few of those, too. It’s in the eastside neighborhood of Montavilla (mont-uh vill-uh), and caters to locals who sit in the cozy bar or outside in the enclosed courtyard. Portland has always been a great pub town, and this is one of the best. For a fuller account, here’s a piece I wrote a couple years ago.
Taproom Location: 7805 SE Stark St. Hours: Tues-Thurs 3p-8p, Fri-Sat 3p-9p, Sun noon-7p.
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Portland has a growing number of breweries focused on lagers and/or German beer, but few do it as comprehensively as Rosenstadt (German for “Rose City”). Founders Nick Greiner and Tobias Hahn fell in love with the beer and drinking tradition of Germany—the former experiencing it through marriage, the latter through birth. They lead with their flagship Helles, and feature all the classics: kölsch and altbier, festbier, weissbier, pilsner, dark and maibock and more. Unusually, they pursued a contract-brewing model when they launched almost seven years ago, and have borrowed the mash tuns of a number of breweries over the years (The goal has always been to buy a brewhouse.) Hahn, a Ph.D. in immunology/virology, coordinates the brewing and he does a good job—the beer manage to taste quite consistent no matter where it’s brewed. They do have a landing place you cans find many of their beers on tap: Olympia Provisions on Southeast Division. And, thanks to a not-so-gentle nudge by the pandemic, they now package their beer for stores as well.
Olympia Provisions Location: 3384 SE Division St. Hours: Mon-Weds: 4p-9:30p,Thur: noon-9:30p Friday: noon-10p, Saturday: 10a-10p, Sun: 10a-9:30p. Food: full menu.
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Threshold is the ambitious and evolving project of the married team of Jarek and Sara Szymanski. Jarek, the brewer and a native of Wloclawek, Poland, launched Threshold with a well-regarded line of modern juicy IPAs. Those still attract the most attention. They’re varied, interesting, and well-made. Over time, though, Jarek has leaned into his Polish roots, and this is what sets Threshold apart. Last winter they began selling a mulled preparation called grzaniec. He also makes a great Baltic (or more properly, Polish) porter and just released a grodziskie. To add more verisimilitude, they recently started offering a Polish sandwich called zapiekanka to their small menu of food. I’ve been impressed with the way Jarek has transcended his homebrewing roots to bring consistency and growing mastery to the beers, and I expect Threshold to start drawing more and more fans out to east Portland. (As a bonus, Montavilla Brew Works is just around the corner.)
Brewery and Pub Location: 403 SE 79th Ave. Hours: Tues-Thurs 4p-8p, Fri 4-9p, Sat 3-9p, and Sun noon-6p. Food: Zapiekanka and small plates.
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West Coast Grocery opened with a bang, winning a medal in the Oregon Beer Awards for a fresh-hop saison. They had a great line of sessionable beers, including an excellent house pils, Peck Chillzner. Unfortunately, the brewer harassed women on staff and the young owner handled the fallout inexpertly. Many put the brewery in a penalty box, but it’s clear they deserve to be restored. Owner Charlie Hyde fired the brewer, and WCGC has avoided further missteps. Meanwhile, the beer continues to be impressive across the board. Current brewer Christian Engstrom, formerly of BridgePort, adeptly manages classic session beers (the pale and Pilsner impress), but shows his chops with hazy IPAs and the “Bodega” line of wild ales. The location itself is bright and welcoming, and the brewhouse is smack dab in the center of things.
Brewpub Location: 1403 SE Stark St. Hours: Mon-Friday 3:00-10p Sat-Sun noon-10p. Food: Small menu includes sandwiches, burgers, and small plates.
Website
No brewery’s rep needs more rehabilitation than Unicorn’s, the tiny operation nested in a homebrew supply and u-brew operation. Before current owner Zach Vestal took over, the beer coming out of the basement brewery’s 1.5-barrel vessels was … variable. To a person, everyone I’ve spoken to has curled their nose and mumbled something about how bad the beer was before adding, “but I haven’t been there in a long time.” Well here’s my advice: go! Zach is making some really impressive beers, including, improbably, a line of lagers that are always perfectly clean and well-made—no easy trick on the system there. The brewery is further hampered by its association with the homebrew element, and few people have bothered to step into the incredibly charming English-y pub where you can easily while away a few hours. Unicorn usually has a few traditional beers on tap along with at least one IPA (including the exquisitely-named Unicorn Juice, the co-flagship with Pilsner.) if you’d like to hear more, we interviewed Zach on a recent podcast.
Pub Location: 6237 SE Milwaukie Ave. Hours: Tue-Sun 11a-7p, Food: San Felipe Taqueria next door.
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