I'm sad about them because I never got to go to Portland while they were functioning. I have had some beers from most of them (except Upright), but I had always hoped to do a proper beer tour of Portland and these were places I wanted to go.
if you wanted a belgian tripel or quad, it was pretty much the only game in town. and they were one of the only breweries doing barrel aged 'clean' beers that were not a syrupy, flat mess... and they were open early 7 days a week which was ideal for industry drinking schedules. service was good in a restaurant way but nobody knew anything about beer which, for me, was great. it was hard to get food there though because all portions were giant and priced accordingly.. that aspect was SO WEIRD for pdx i have to disagree based on my experience. i didn't ever go with any of the flagships, but tried a lot of the pdx-exclusive ipas and dipas. i found those ones to be very light on the malt side, reminiscent of pizza port/russian river-type ipa structure. this is definitely a style that mike continued up at GoW. but i still to this day have never tried a head hunter which im sure is maltier.
I had some of the worst service of any beer establishment I've ever visited at that place. Doesn't sound like my experience was exactly typical, but I wasn't surprised when they went belly up.
Fairly certain I've brought this up in similar threads... but: Pre-Pearlification Bridgeport. It's how I was really introduced to PDX beers back in '99-'00, and many fond memories of many pints of IPA and Blue Heron and all the free pretzels you could eat.
i always valued the people, the location (especially the first), and the craft nerd customer scene over the actual beer of the commons. it was strange to me how they got away with doing essentially the same tricks as upright but about 60% as good. with the exception of a couple of unusually outstanding batches of flemish kiss, i rarely went in for their beer. also, i love belgian dark strong ales and they tried and tried and simply never had flavor success with that style which was disappointing for me. when you look at where their alum ended up as head brewers (pfriem, von ebert, fat heads, foreland, hercules, etc) you don't see a heck of a lot of beers that look anything like commons beers and i think there's a good reason for that! ultimately, mike's legacy will be having taken a chance on a lot of passionate people with little-to-zero brewing experience, who almost all went on to be beer industry superstars.. not running a successful business or making great beer. just my humble opinion and nothing but love for all those cats.
Plough Monday ..small farmhouse style place in Veneta. They didn't do "farmhouse" ales just great English style ones in wine bottles.
I visited family in Portland, maybe yearly, from the 70s to the 00s. I looked for interesting beer on those trips. Cartright Portland Beer. Mactrail and I bought a six pack of the beer, then dropped by the brewery and met Charles Coury. Beer wasn't great but we had a glimpse of the possibilities. Returnable bottles using recycled Guinness bottles. A nod to McMenamin's still operational Highland brewpub which was just around the corner from my mother's suburban home. The beers below stood out for me. They aligned with my palate, all with a good malty body. Draft Widmer Pale Bock at the B. Moloch outlet downtown. Bottled Pyramid Pale Ale (Kalama brewery). Bottled Grant's Scottish Ale (maybe brewed at Portland Ale brewery?) Bridgeport cask Porter at their Northwest Brewery. Lucky Lab (Hawthorne) cask (stout or porter?). Still there!
