The Great American Ale Trail - Christian DeBenedetti [8]
SCENE & STORY
With the exception of one ill-fated USFL (United States Football League) team, the Portland Breakers, Portland has never had anything approaching professional American football to cheer about (the MLS Timbers, on the other hand, are a different story). So it is incredibly refreshing to walk into Wisconsin native Sarah Pederson’s northeast Portland shrine to the Green Bay Packers and beers of every era. Overhead, check out the vintage signage and bottle cap murals as intricate as any ancient Roman mosaic—and settle in for some down-to-earth conversation, or take in a gridiron game on TV. Before you head out, take a little shopping spree through the 250-plus international beers in cool old green vintage coolers. Saraveza—a play on Pederson’s name and on the Spanish word cerveza, for beer—has nine beers on tap, homemade soups, and those made-from-scratch pasties—try the Nater, a delicious blend of braised beef, potato, carrot, rutabaga, and onion. It doesn’t matter if you’re not into rushing stats and field goal attempts; you’re just here to soak up some good old-fashioned, unironic Midwestern hospitality.
PHILOSOPHY
Pederson has assembled the best bar staff in Portland, helpful and open-minded, a major selling point in the occasionally too-cool-for-school city of “Beervana.” Brewers and purists might cringe at the thought, but certain bartenders here (Jonathan Carmean, to name the starting quarterback) are experienced and confident enough to hand you a blend of tap beers of different origins and profiles. Want a little more zing and hops in your malty Belgian tripel? Done.
KEY BEER
The beer list is superb; up-to-the-second, heavily local on draft and Low Countries-focused in the coolers, as good as it gets. Look for complex, handmade beers from Block 15, in Corvallis, Portland’s Upright, McMinnville’s Heater-Allen, Hood River’s Logsdon, and Boneyard in Bend. Or, to go Saraveza native, don’t be afraid to order the pride of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, an icy-cold mug of Hamm’s (4.7% ABV).
GET FRESH with your ALES
Every fall in the Pacific Northwest, America’s cradle of hops production (second only to Germany), ripened hops’ tall, leafy trellises begin to sag with the weight of millions of flowers. On the best back roads, the air in Oregon’s Willamette (say “Will-am-ett” dammit) is redolent with the grapefruity smell of the delicate pinecone-like flowers, which are soon picked, dried, and packaged.
But not all hops make it to the temperature-controlled storehouses where they’re monitored to avoid spontaneous combustion (true!). Some are hauled off the lines and added directly into unfermented beers in nearby breweries, creating a fresh—and fleeting—genre of beer, interchangeably referred to as fresh-hopped or wet-hopped. Brewers in the south of England have long called them harvest ales, always an excuse for a roaring party. (Portland’s first big fresh hop festival kicked off in 2010.)
How it works: Working with growers, brewers time their arrival to a farm to coincide with a batch of beer nearing the boil stage. Then they race back and plunge the flower cones directly into what’s called the whirlpool step. In the best years, this translates into pure brewing magic, with floral aromas that hit your nose within milliseconds of cracking a finished beer open.
The only drawback to fresh hop ales? Now you see them, now you don’t. Brewed only in the fall, these beers don’t age or travel well. What’s more, they tend to drain from kegs faster than Keystone Light at a tailgater. Fresh hop ales are catching on around the country, but Oregon leads the pack, with fifty-seven different commercial fresh hop ales in 2010. Look for them from Laurelwood, Deschutes, and Full Sail on tap (and sometimes bottled, like Deschutes’ Hop Trip). Whatever you do, don’t miss the freshest beers of the year.
BAILEY’S TAPROOM
213 SW Broadway • Portland, OR 97205 • (503) 295-1004 baileystaproom.com • Established: 2007
SCENE & STORY
Unlike hilly Seattle, Portland’s downtown is wonderfully walkable, with airy park blocks leading