Beer in PDX

Check out Belmont Station. You can see fairly live bottle list online. They sell many in singles if you so choose (but not all).

 

Beermongers has plenty of 12oz bottles and cans, so don't rule them out. They don't upcharge like Belmont Station for splitting a 6 pack either. You also can't split a 6 pack of cans at Belmont Station, only bottles.

 

A little bit, yeah. While I understand your desire to maximize the bottles and brands you can take back with you, there just aren't that many Oregon breweries that offer 12-ounce bottles. Off the top of my head, I'm coming up with Laurelwood, Hair of the Dog, Hop Valley, Pelican, and Ninkasi. If you go up to 12.7 oz. (375 mL), you'll get tasty offerings from Logsdon and a few from Crux.

Beyond that, you're looking at stuff like Rogue, Full Sail, and Deschutes, which are widely distributed and might be available in your region, or brands with an AB-InBev link like Widmer, 10 Barrel, and Elysian.

Now, if you add 12- and 16-ounce cans into the mix, you'll get a whole bunch more options.

Finally, if you're completely against larger format bottles, you are cutting yourself off from some really terrific breweries, including (but by no means limited to) Breakside, The Commons, Upright, de Garde, Heater Allen, and Gigantic.

Unfortunately, we don't get Odell beers here.

 

I would also recommend any New Seasons. You can pull apart their 4 and 6 packs to buy singles.

Breweries that sell in smaller formats:

• Fort George*
• Deschuttes
• Breakside (limited to Kolsch)
  
• Laurelwood*
• Occidental*
• Basecamp
• Alameda
• Oakshire*
• Ninkasi (lagers*)
  
• Caldera
• Hop Valley
• No-Li*
• Backwoods
• Bison
• Crux*
• Double Mountain*
• Goodlife*
• Hopworks
• Logsdon (375ml)*
• North Coast
• Payette
• Pelican
• Sixpoint (not sure if you get this in Illinois)*
• Three Creeks
• Trinity (expensive but great)*
• Worthy
• Uinta

*The ones I asterisked are the breweries that I would go for. Of course that is subjective; there might be a few people on here who would do it differently.

As others have noted, the best beers out here come in 22oz bottles or draft only (one of the few detriments of this city). I really wish I would get a 6 pack of Heater Allen Pils or Breakside IPA... or a 4 packs cans of Urban Farmhouse or Bu Weiss - that would be the dream.

Hopefully by the end of the summer we will have Block 15 Sticky Hands in cans - and then I will go broke.

Edit: I should mention some of the above list are in cans not bottles (not sure if that makes a difference).

 

My only moderately productive addition to this thread is if you go to Portland to buy Uinta, you're doing it wrong.

*Not that Uinta is bad. Some is very good. But why not explore some of the 220+ Oregon breweries?

 

never heard of uinta...

 

@Phobicsquirrel

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/1416/

 

Being somewhat partial to my adopted home state, I would suggest that OP take a quick trip across the bridge and hit a store in the 'Couv for some WA stuff that doesn't get across the river.

 

Yep, get some Fremont and Bale Breaker. Plus, there might be a big box liquor store (Total Wine, BevMo) that sells singles if that's what you really want.

 

OK, in the PNW finding good beer is no kind of chore. If ya don't feel like lugging a bunch of beers around with you, whatever stores are near where you're staying will plenty of tasty, new options for you to choose from. Enjoy your visit.

 

Eh, if you're not out west often and Uinta doesn't distribute to the area, it makes sense to get some regional beers as well. I know whenever I'm back home in Nashville I'm just as eager to try other East Coast stuff that's hard to find here as I am all the burgeoning new breweries in town.

 

In that case, you might check out Seaside Brewing, or the McMenamins Gearhart up the road a mile or two. And what the heck, you might think about a 30-minute drive into Astoria to visit Fort George Brewing and Buoy Brewing.

As @beertunes pointed out, "In the PNW finding good beer is no kind of chore."

 

Just go to Belmont Station and be happy. No need to run around town.
No sales tax in Oregon which is nice and Belmont offers a discounted price for cash. Or increased price for credit however you look at it. They might even have something good on tap.
A must stop when I go to PDX

 

Elaborating slightly. Here's the scenario. You come to a place renowned for their beer and beer culture, with 220+ breweries, many of which hardly distribute out of that city, let alone out of the state, there may be 100+ beers that fit the criteria (small package size), and your suitcase / stomach / wallet are all finite. What do you choose?

Picking up Uinta doesn't make you certifiably insane, but I still say it's the wrong choice. It's like choosing door number 2 and winning a really nice vaccum when there was a BMW behing door number 3.

 

In fairness to OP, he only knows what he knows. Nobody knows jack about Gigantic Brewery in the midwest. He knows about breweries that are large enough to post press releases and have thousands of ratings per beer on beer advocate.

I came out here once from the East coast before moving and spent hours researching local beers to get, cross referencing ratings with the Belmont Station list and still passed over dozens and dozens of excellent to world class beers. When beers that would hold up against the best of the best from other regions or areas only have a handful of ratings or are mentioned in passing a few times on this forum (don't have entire threads devoted to them), it's easy to miss them. I truly had no grasp of the scale or quality of the beer scene here as a visitor, and I'm still continually surprised/blown away having lived here for years.

 

Beermongers is pretty legit for larger format as well as other local/hard to find stuff. Imperial, a few blocks away, also has a good selection of in cooler and shelf singles to choose from. As mentioned above, most grocery stores will have at least a few good options. Any New Seasons, Whole Foods, Zuppan's, and most Fred Meyer and QFC are good places to check out.

 

Has Bale Breaker made it to Vancouver? The closest shop to Portland that stocked Bale Breaker that I could find was a little coffee shop/cafe thing in Home Valley, WA.

Might? I'm going to assume you purposely neglected to include a sarcasm emoticon.