Summer in Oregon
Oregon continues to find new, formerly beer-less spaces to dampen with pints of IPA. We are on day one of a heatwave in the Pacific Northwest, but on Saturday it was perfect weather. Sally and I—and by the looks of it, everyone else in the state—decided to get outside while the gettin’ was good. In what might be called an “Oregon Saturday,” we scheduled the day to start with a hike through gorgeous woodlands, building a thirst we would slake later on. I was anxious to get to the new pub-in-a-hop-field near Woodburn, so we decided to begin the day at Silver Falls, one of Oregon’s most precious treasures—a day-hike loop that visits ten falls, four of which have paths passing behind them.
For those of you who visit Oregon, I highly recommend this as a part of your beer tourism. The insides of taprooms don’t vary much city by city, so you need to get outside them to get a sense of place. If you visit Portland, you can take day trips west to the Coast, east to the Columbia River Gorge, or south to the Willamette Valley—and in each case you’ll find extraordinary natural wonders and great beer. It’s hard to beat the experience we had, though, so put this on your list.
Silver Falls is just about an hour south of Portland, near the town of Silverton, in the heart of Oregon’s hop country. The state park is 9,000 acres, and has all kinds of dappled glades and stone shelters for camping, picnicking, and even marrying (I have attended one such event!). The highlight is the 9-mile loop that takes you to each of the ten falls—though most people opt for shorter circuits. The falls all have different shapes and forms, from gouts to curtains to rocky descents. One of the most impressive is South Falls, which is not far from the parking lot, so you don’t even have to work very hard for a postcard selfie.
After you conclude, it’s a 45-minute drive north back toward Portland to Woodburn. Just north of the city is Crosby Farms, one of Oregon’s most visible growers. A couple years ago, in the grim depths of Covid, Crosby decided to cut a notch out of a field of Centennials, plant a lawn, and serve beer. The concept, and it’s an excellent one, is to highlight the hops grown there by serving beers that use them. The acres of trellised fields crowd around the beer garden like emerald buildings, and drive home the way agriculture and terroir play starring roles in the beers we love.
This is something of a change. As recently as the late aughts, farmers treated them like any other commodity crop. I did a tour of three farms in 2007 and asked the growers which hops were their favorites. Uniformly, they gave me an answer based purely on agronomics: they liked the varieties with the greatest yield and disease/pest resistance. That was a year before InBev bought Anheuser-Busch and took their contracts to Idaho, leaving local growers in the lurch. They retooled by forging close relationships to local brewers, a connection made easier when they all came calling in the fall for fresh hops.
Now farmers drink the beer made of their hops, and are deeply invested in the “craft” side of the business. For decades, industrial breweries cared only about alpha acid percentage, interested in jacking it up so they would be forced to buy as few as possible. They just needed a tiny bit of balancing bitterness; they used too few to contribute any aroma and flavor. That is very different from the way local breweries now use their bounty. Today, when growers crack a can of Crux, and the aroma of their Strata and Citra waft out. They definitely do have favorites now, and while they’re not blind to agronomics, they’re at least as curious as the average beer geek to see what breweries do with their little green cones.
When you visit, you’ll find some pretty spectacular beers. Sally and I did a pretty hefty hike, and while it was pleasant, it was still summer. I was parched, and I wanted lager. Crux’s pilsner was just the ticket. (It uses Crosby’s Sterlings, along with Czech Saaz.) But they also had Russian River’s Pliny the Elder and Block 15’s Sticky Hands—two of the most accomplished IPAs made in the US. The vibe is very mellow, and dogs and children romp around while parents and grandparents enjoy a cold one. I don’t know how often they have live music, but we happened to visit on the second anniversary, so they had a great cover band doing folksy tunes. At one point the space in front of the band was filled with parents and toddlers rocking out.
There aren’t many places you can see multiple large waterfalls, and possibly only one where you can drink beer in a hop field. All you have to do is come to Oregon. I recommend it.