OK this is a thread for tiny out of the way, hidden or hardly mentioned breweries in Oregon. 1. Bine Valley in Salem..guys do great beer often in unfashionable styles...if you can find them you are a GPS expert! 2. Misty Mountain in Brookings..really nice beer in a LOTR fashion! 3. 1188 in John day..wonderful beer and a really nicely decorated restaurant. 4. Arch Rock in Gold beach dont do much different beers but what they do is great. 5. Steens Mountain..OK havent been there but Burns is on my radar for the summer.
I must caution you that the beer should not be your primary reason for visiting Steens Mountain. The most recent beer I had from them was better than any of the previous, but it is still not worth traveling to Burns for. If you're in the area for something else, great, but the cost/benefit ratio for just the tick is pretty high.
I like all the out of the way places. I feel that Oregon reviews are very metro centric..so i try to make a difference I also like cheap camping ..and thats usually far out of the "Valley"
I don't love Terminal Gravity's beer, but I really enjoyed their taproom/pub the one time I visited while out that way. Beautiful country out there. Would definitely stop back in once we have returned to some form of normalcy.
Most out of the way one i have been twice. Tiger Town in tiny Mitchell OR pop. circa 150. Everyone but me thinks they are marvelous..i found their beer..shall i say ordinary at best. But will visit anyway when camping..these little places need to stay open if just for the grub.
I always liked their beers, especially the IPA. TG IPA 6ers were even semi-regularly available up here until a few years ago. Shrug.
I have found some of TGs beers quite nice others like you, not so much. They serve a purpose..same as Barley Browns used to..before they took off.
Seems a bit odd to see someone mention Terminal Gravity in this thread. It's probably appropriate in the current time frame... I rarely see TG beer on tap or in bottles around town any more. When I first moved to PDX back in 2004, Terminal gravity was a pretty big deal. Even my local Pizza parlor over on SE Alberta St. had their IPA on tap as a mainstay (and I believe it was their biggest seller), and the bartender I used to speak to over at the Horsebrass always told me it was his favorite IPA. Seemed like just about everyplace around town had the TG IPA on tap back then (of course this was back in the day when Walking Man beers were all over town as well). Not sure just when that all changed...
I frequently see their bottles at supermarkets. Their beers still show up on draft at the new taphouses that had been popping up around Hillsboro/Aloha/Beaverton over the past couple years. (The kind of places where local nanobreweries are able to get a couple tap handles.)
To be clear, while I don't love TGs beer, I also don't dislike their beer. I think they make good beer, but given the plethora of other great options on the shelves (or on tap) these days, they're not a brewery I gravitate towards. They came to mind because they strike me as a fairly small, rural brewery (perhaps I'm wrong regarding their size). Maybe not exactly what OP had in mind, though.
In the corner of southwest Oregon I spend the most time in Yachats brewing is absolutely slaying it. Chetco brewing is also a regular stop for us, never really been blown away by anything but they always have a good diversity and everything is very much enjoyable. Super nice folks too with a great small town local bar vibe in the taproom (although I do think they moved to bigger digs recently so that vibe might be gone?)
They're not really on my radar any more, so I may not have noticed if there were bottles available at my local Safeway or Fred Meyer. Draft is another story. Belmont Station had a keg of the IPA some months back and I immediately ordered a glass. It had been years since I'd last had a glass, and I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen it on tap anywhere. Back in 04 and 05, I kid you not Eric, this beer was practically everywhere in PDX. The Horsebrass had a dedicated tap handle for it, and many places in town, if they just had 3 or 4 tap handles and one IPA, often as not it would be the Terminal Gravity IPA. Honestly, it's really not a style of IPA I like all that much, but just for old times sake, I wouldn't mind having a glass every now and again. Good to here it's still showing up at some taphouses in the PDX metro area.
My local Fred Meyer used to carry TG six packs. No idea if they still do, as I'm not really looking for it. Ditto for Belmont Station and BeerMongers. Despite how others may feel about their beer, they do unfortunately strike me as a semi-legacy brand that may be slowly disappearing from Portland shelves and taps.
Mrs. vurt has mentioned the same thing numerous times. TG IPA used to be her go-to, and she still enjoys one every now and then.
This just has me remembering those early days of TG IPA vs Total Domination. The last TG I had (no clue when it was) just seemed so overly sweet to me, but it was definitely a solid go-to back in the early 00's.
