My cousins goin to Oregon the first week of August. I'm relatively new to craft beer, little over a year and a half, and I'm hooked. Already had some of the "greats", but just like everybody I'm limited geographically by what I can get my hands on. So basically...what are some west coast legends he can try to bring back for me? Said he'll be around Portland and Newport. Thanks in advance. I'm not to picky about types of beer either, but prefer stouts and porters. Just mainly looking for rarity+greatness that I'm never going to see here in NJ.
You should have him try to grab some beers from Crux, Breakside, Upright, Gigantic, Cascade, Commons and Laurelwood. They are all great Oregon breweries. Laurelwood workhorse is a quintessential west coast IPA. Caldera Mogli is a great porter. I don't often recommend Hair of the Dog, however HoTD Adam is a classic and may fit well with your tastes. Also just FYI, we don't give much of a shit about rarity around these parts.
Great stuff, certainly, but it is not bottled, and never available for growler fills. (If they did growler fills of that, my wife would have a dedicated glass set aside for that beer.)
Well, the man speaks the truth. A lot depends on one's definition of "rare". If I were traveling to NJ, for example, most of the local/regional stuff would be rare to me, and I'd be ecstatic to be able to drink a lot of Carton's brews. For us in the NW, great beers are common, and we don't tend to get excited over one "rare" thing or another, because there's another one next to it.
Exactly, any brewery over there is rare to me for the most part, although I've had a few deschutes beers, which were awesome, but I'm talkin about the stuff that's never seen the east coast. The first part of that reply was great and appreciated. Not exactly sure how much he's gunna be able to bring back so I wanna make sure he gets the best beer possible.
And I'm actually goin up to Carton and Kane brewing this Sunday beertunes. Had a few beers of each so far, lookin to go through whatever they have on tap.
