Portland: The beer scene goes to 11

In Oregon you can’t fill your gas tank without help from an attendant. So when my sister said, “There’s a gas station down the road that fills growlers…” something didn’t compute.

A what? Where? Growlers? Are you kidding?

A couple hours later we were in the car, driving from her place that sits conveniently on the edge of the Willamette Valley wine country, to a nearby Shell station that instead of junk food and soda signs outside sported placards for beer advertising “We now fill growlers!”

Don’t believe it? The photo is the growler fill installation, inside the Shell gas station, somewhere along Hwy. 99 in Sherwood, Oregon. There are eight beer taps, from San Diego’s Green Flash to big Widmer hefe and other Oregon craft beers. We chose the excellent 10 Barrel Brewing Co. IPA (from Bend). Turns out you can’t fill your own growler at the gas station either, but a kind woman behind the counter did it for us, just $12.50 for the fill. No tax in Oregon either, natch.

And thus began my latest NW Weekend Beer Adventure, though that’s not what I went to Oregon for. It was for a family visit, and the family is great. But so are the area beers and I always enjoy sampling the local flavors whenever I’m in town. Not that the Bay Area/California scene is any slouch when it comes to great beer experiences, but Oregon just continually blows most of it away.

In addition to the taps, the Shell station had a small fridge in back with nothing but Oregon craft brews. So I picked up a couple of 22 oz bottles, including some Pelican and Ninkasi Maiden the Shade, which has the best metal-inspired label this side of their great Sleighr winter ale. Then we went to Safeway for some groceries and OMG another NW craft beer section. I bought a bottle of Elysian Loser pale ale (from Seattle, a partnership with Sub Pop records featuring a great anti-corporate Kurt Cobain-inspired label), another Pelican and a Burnside IPA. For the record, I’ve had Burnside before and it’s the best IPA I’ve had from the region.

Let’s pause for a second. If Portlandia isn’t making a growler-fill sketch or episode ridiculing the beer scene, then they’re doing it wrong. Also doing it wrong is the state of California, where you’re lucky to get a growler fill anywhere you haven’t bought a growler from. Despite recent efforts to loosen up, the state law is still ripe for change. I’m not asking for gas station fills, but we’re behind the times. And let’s not get started with the silly Russian River policy. I digress…

The next day, we headed to Base Camp Brewing Co. They distribute a couple of their beers to the Bay Area (a surprise to Joe our beer pourer), so they’re not totally unfamiliar to me. However, I was totally unprepared for their awesome tasting room, which made me want to go camping and rock climbing and canoeing and rafting. It’s one of the most beautiful brewery taprooms I’ve ever set foot in. We ordered falafels from the food pod parked outside, and went through the 10 beer tasting “log.” All the beers were great but the touch with the hand-roasted marshmallow with the S’more Stout was ridiculously yummy.

For a couple years now, I’ve wondered what Portland’s response to sour beers would be. Of all the beer I’ve seen and had from the Portland area, I’ve never seen a sour. And then my brother in law told me about Cascade Brewing Barrel House which oh, by the way, is a couple blocks away from Base Camp. So we walked over and it’s not like they have a couple of sours, they have about a dozen of them, from light and fruity, to wild, to weird to wonderful and intense. And that’s in addition to the other ales they serve. So does PDX get sour beer? YES.

But we weren’t done. On the way home we stopped in at another supermarket with a “real” beer section. Actually, it has two. The biggest and best beer selection I’ve ever seen in a supermarket. So we picked up a few more bottles to take over to dad’s house, to enjoy while watching the 49ers fall to the Seahawks. In all, I tasted and shared a ridiculous number of great beers that day (I won’t list them all here). And since it’s the Big Year in Beer, I was committed to putting some points on the board.

The next day we toned things down a bit and toured around the up-and-coming NE Portland Alberta Arts District. We ended up – surprise! – at The Mash Tun brewpub for lunch. After the previous day, I couldn’t stomach a sampler of their half-dozen beers, but had glasses of their very good IPA and porter. I had a couple other tasters at home from the bottles we had bought, and began getting ready to leave town.

I bought a few sours from Cascade, which my parents will kindly deliver next time they drive down to visit the Bay Area. You can’t get bottles of beer through airport security, but at PDX one can buy bottles of beer (and wine) in the terminal after security. All beer’d out, I decided to pass on a to-go bag.