Visiting Portland - Summer 2017 update

Oregon treated us well once again this year. Highlights were Ft George, Great Notion Brewing, Crux, Cascade Barrel House and Stammtish. Was interesting to see a bunch of NE IPA's out west..haha!

 

In Portland for the weekend and have Culmination, Ex Novo, Baerlic, and maybe Great Notion in my sights. I know GN is kid friendly, Baerlic's website says they are until 9, but I couldn't find any info on Culmination or Ex Novo. Although, I might just ditch the fam for a couple hours and walk to Culmination as it's really close to our hotel.

 

Culmination is kid friendly up to 7 pm and Ex Novo 9.

 

Nice. Many thanks!

 

This thread is extremely helpful, so big props to @guajolote for maintaining it. I'm hitting Oregon in August for the first time and will definitely make use of all this Portland info.

Quick DeGarde questions for you guys given that their website is pretty sparse:

• Are there generally limits on bottles per person?
• What price range are the bottles typically?

Also, if I were to use one of the Portland shops to ship back to the east coast, any guess as to what a 12-bottle shipper would cost me?

Thanks!

 

Yes, there are limits on specific bottles. Prices range from $8-$20 or so. de Garde does a really nice job of keeping their taplist and bottle list up to date on Facebook.

 

You, sir, are a hero. I will be in touch!

 

Gotta give a quick shoutout to Higgins in this thread. Had a fantastic meal, and without any fanfare or reason here is the taplist for a random Thursday in July

Founders KBS
Ft. G - 3 way IPA
pFriem frambozen
Blue Dot IPA
Chimay Triple
Deschutes obsidian on Nitro
Pilsner urquell
Lindemans Framboise

Prices are a little high, but the bar is cool, the service is A-1, and the vibe is mellow .

 

Chimay White is my all time favorite beer. Any place that has it draft gets my seal of approval.

 

Higgins is top notch! I have hosted a couple of business dinners there with great results.

 

Has anybody been over to Level Beer? I plan to stop at quite a few places when I am in town in a few weeks so I'm trying to decide if it's worth going a little bit out of the way to check them out. I've read some decent press but I would love to hear what you all have to say.

 

Went to Level on Saturday afternoon. I was a frequent shopper of the Barn and excited to see how Level reworked the space. Well they didn't do a whole lot to it besides removing the produce. The place had a definitely family friendly vibe lots of children and lots of teens and very busy. Beer wasn't quite there yet cold and easy drinking but felt rushed. Seeing as the beers are all collaborative I have to compare them to Zoihgalhaus and Wayfinder and their collab beers were better with pretty much same brewers. Check it out maybe in the evening when the youngsters are at home as I will be doing in the future. Also happy to see a place open up so far outside the Portlandia bubble.

 

@81tillinfinity Thanks for the feedback. If we swing by, it would likely by mid to late afternoon next Thursday so I imagine that would be a reasonably quiet time. I'll check back over the next week or so to see if anyone else has feedback. Since it may be the only time I ever make it to the Portland area in my life, I definitely need to get my priorities right!

 

agreed. and of course, they only waited until 6 years after i move out of the 'hood......

 

Overlong Trip Review for this last week with my wife:

Sun: Lardo for dinner, Commons for a bunch of farmhouse/sour stuff. Both great places, but it was too hot/stuffy in Commons and too much food at Lardo to do more that night.

Mon: Brunch at Tasty N Sons. Had the Burmese pork stew, which was very good. Walked around Boise and Alberta a bit with Grain & Gristle in between for about 5 Upright beers, all good. They also had pineapple margaritas going and that was pretty perfect for the heat. Caffeine and then some Salt & Straw on Alberta for some really amazing ice cream and almost no line (this time). It's much better than anywhere in Austin trying to do the same thing and much better than 50 Licks. Then to Great Notion for a couple really good beers and some controversial IPAs. I hated all of them. I had been so excited. YMMV. I really liked the other stuff I had though. Rest, then dinner at Han Oak for their dumpling and noodle night. Very long wait, so I missed out on Culmination since they were about to close by the time we finally got out of there. The food was good, but not really worth it overall. Their prix fixe is probably great though if you can get in on a weekend.

Tue: touristy stuff + Bamboo Sushi downtown, which was also good. Hair of the Dog for a flight. We also shared a bottle of Otto. Good stuff, but was overshadowed by Cascade, which came next. We did about 12 different things there, good to great. The Honeycot 14 or 15 was a big highlight. Manhattan 14 also, among others. I've only had a few Cascades over the years due to the price and thought they were very good, but not the very top tier, but this visit kind of changed that. I still passed on buying bottles to take home though.

Wed: After some serious rental car shenanigans (fuck Enterprise), we had lunch at Pambiche (good) and went out to see some waterfalls and a visit to Pfriem for a flight of farmhouse/sour beers mostly. It was hot as hell, but the beers were great. Got several to-go bottles. Back to PDX to Pok Pok for dinner (very good), Imperial for some more bottles and we looked at this location of Salt & Straw's absurd line and went home.

Thu: Pip's Original for breakfast (very good) and then out to Cape Kiwanda. Got a good burger at Pelican and had the Udder Tugger, which was pretty good. Almost killed my wife making her climb the hill at Kiwanda, but it's a pretty great place. Did some driving/sightseeing and eventually to De Garde for more really great beers and bottles to go. Back to Portland to Nong's Khao Man Gai, which was good, but was expecting more. Two sauces, at least, should be the default. Belmont Station to round out my case of large bottles and a can of Sticky Hands, which was another highlight of the trip. Also, 50 Licks, which was totally fine, but is pretty light compared to Salt & Straw and their prices for the portions were pretty laughable.

Fri: Picked up a shipper at Rose City (thanks for that information! They were very helpful!) Screen Door for brunch after a pretty bad wait. Had a Pfriem Wit to round out the trip. There is a lot of beer for sale at the airport, but couldn't really pull the trigger on anything. When the check-in person at SW asked if my box was wine and I said beer, she said, "Yeah, you don't have any good beer in Austin. I can say that since I'm from there." She didn't have to rub it in

Stray thoughts:
Service across the board was really great and friendly/helpful. Even my fiasco at Enterprise was made better because the people in the office were overly nice.
We used Lyft a lot and I think every single driver either talked about Austin being your sister city or referred to how the cities are so similar in an excited way. Do you guys learn that in school or something?
We drank very local for pretty much the whole trip and even out of 17 bottles I took home, it's almost all Oregon and we still barely scratched the surface.

As always, thanks for this thread!! Between this forum and Eater, we were pretty set for recommendations for drinking and eating.

 

Does Great Notion release crowlers on set days of the week or is it random? I haven't been able to see any release calendar on their website / social media accounts. Thanks!

 

I'm heading out in September and might take you up on this as well!