The Great American Ale Trail - Christian DeBenedetti [3]
ITINERARIES
1 – DAY
Hopworks, Cascade Brewing Barrel House, Upright, Higgins
3 – DAY
One-day itinerary plus Belmont Station, Double Mountain, Full Sail, Logsdon, Edgefield
7 – DAY
One- and three-day itinerary plus Fort George, Deschutes, and Terminal Gravity breweries
Portland
APEX
1216 SE Division St. • Portland, OR 97202 (503) 273-9227 • apexbar.com • Established: 2010
SCENE & STORY
Built in a small industrial garage-like space by former New Belgium Brewing sales representative Jesse McCann, Apex is a squeaky-clean beer bar, which perfectly captures the lifestyle of Portlanders circa 2012: single-speed bike parked out front, barrel-aged Belgian ale in hand. Smoking? Never—that’s so last year. Table service? Nope, stretch those legs. (Dogs, kids, and credit cards are also ixnayed.) But lest the scene sound too doctrinaire, it’s ideal on a sunny day when you can bike there (you can even borrow a lock from the bar’s own stash), grab a taco from the little place next door (no food is sold at the bar), and maybe shoot some pinball. Easy does it, except for the blaring heavy metal.
PHILOSOPHY
Serious about beer—intense, even, but not joyless. “I’ve been told I keep my beer too cold,” says McCann, speaking of scolds, with a wry chuckle. But there are beers that are simply better cold—ice cold—especially when it’s 95 degrees in the shade (rare in Portland, but not unheard of ). So, thank heavens for one little nod to an older, less uptight mode of beer drinking: amid the list of esoteric brews is a lone “Cheap, Cold” Hamm’s can for $2.50—a nice, if ironic, touch.
KEY BEER
McCann brings in bonafide rarities and displays an impressive forty-two-tap selection on a flat screen TV over the bar, so simply peruse the fast-changing list, try some samples, and engage the beer experts at work behind the bar. There are beers here no other bar in Portland can even think about getting, like Moonlight’s Working for Tips, a garnet-colored 5.5% ABV ale spiced with redwood tips instead of hops that’s only seldom spotted outside of the Bay Area.
HORSE BRASS PUB
4534 SE Belmont St. • Portland, OR 97215 • (503) 232-2202 horsebrass.com • Established: 1976
SCENE & STORY
It was with heavy but grateful hearts that thousands of fans (present company included)—including some from abroad—turned out for the wake to honor Horse Brass founder Don Younger in January of 2011 when he died at age 69 from complications related to being a wise, hard-drinking old buzzard. To hear the gray-bearded, long-haired, raspy-voiced Don tell it between puffs on his ever-present smoke, he woke up one day smarting from a big night of beer (and whiskey, which he loved dearly) and discovered he had bought the bar with his brother Bill, the late Bill Younger.
What happened next helped make Portland the great beer town it is. Bringing in scores of rare and hard-to-find beers, and championing the first efforts of the brewers in town, the Youngers’ Horse Brass became one of the most famous and respected beer bars in the land. While Don drove a gray ’72 Rolls around town, he did it in a T-shirt. And there was something else about Don: without fanfare, he loaned or simply gave money to a number of earnest young Portlanders trying to get a leg up in beer, in life—Duane Soreson, founder of Portland’s famous Stumptown Coffee Roasters, for one—and never made a fuss about it.
PHILOSOPHY
Generous and communal. The motto of the Horse Brass (“If it were any more authentic, you’d need a passport . . .”) is apt, because it looks as if it were airlifted stick by stone out of old London. But Don also loved