Visiting Portland (Spring 2016 update)

Vancouver, WA:
Sadly, By The Bottle is no longer a bottle shop. They've pretty much now only an events space for the Old Ivy Taproom & Brewery. But Ben's Bottle Shop is well worth going out of your way for.

 

Thanks Jouer. I will check Ben's out asap.

I also forgot to stop at some Costco's. Am I missing something, or is there not a lot of Costco's near Portland? I visited a Costco east of Portland out by the Columbia River last year, but can't remember if they had a decent selection. Any recommendations on best Costco to visit near Portland for beer selection? I keep hoping to find a Costco with a beer variety like some in Denver and Northern California. Allways figured Seattle & Portland would kick butt with their Costco selections.

 

Property in the city is probably too expensive for them to justify a location in town, but there's several of them scattered around the metro area. In addition to the one out by the airport that you visited, there are locations in Clackamas, Beaverton, Hillsboro, Tigard, Wilsonville, and east Vancouver, but I'm not sure if any of them have a decent beer selection.

 

Hit me up next time you're headed to Ben's, we can do a meet and greet if you're down. I assumed there were almost no people from Vancouver on here.

 

Almost none, but a few people. I work from home so it makes sense for tax reasons and I can still be at the airport in 15 minutes. Some other Vancouver places I would put on my visit list (I like Ben's, though their Cuban doesn't have mustard...WTF?):

Ghost Runner - Haven't had a bad beer from them. (good owners too) Make one of the few reds I like, but their IPAs are solid.
3Peaks Public House and Taproom - At Pacific Northwest Best Fish Company. (OK, technically just north of Vancouver.) Great tap selection and good food. Dog and kid friendly with a large outdoor lawn.

 

The Vancouver Costco had Bourbon Barrel Abominable back in December and a few other nice finds.

 

The Costcos in Oregon do not have a good selection like the ones in WA or CA. I'm not sure why, but it's mostly Rogue and the like. They usually have Breakside but their beers are cheap enough already that you don't save much by getting them there.

 

The only noteworthy beer I've seen at the Costco in Beaverton was Rodenbach Grand Cru. A whole damn pallet of it. Priced to move at around 8 bucks a bottle, if I remember correctly. But that was over 2 years ago.

 

Arriving (very) early tomorrow morning Can't wait!

 

Costco has regional offices with Buyers responsible for the non-BMC stuff: the NW office is part of the HQ in Issaquah and buys for WA and OR, and there are separate offices for NoCal and SoCal. I don't know if the Buyers for the CA offices are personally interested in beer, but the few times I met the NW Buyer (assuming it's still the same guy) I got the impression he was more interested in wine and spirits.

Wine is a bigger seller than beer, and while we move a fair volume of the Deschutes/Ninkasi/SN cases, the 22oz section is a small piece of the pie. If a few cases of specialty beer falls into their laps, the Buyers will allocate it to their pet locations and move on, but they don't have the bandwidth to actively seek it out. Meanwhile, the beer distributor has enough demands on the specialty stuff that they're probably not going out of their way to continually present small volume one-offs to Costco. In a business constructed around high volume, whalez are viewed as a lot of legwork for not very much in the way of sales, and the Buyers don't know the difference between a sure-fire hit and something like those Widmer/Cigar City Gentlemen's Club shelf turds from a few years ago.

TL,DR: the business model, Costco's member demographics, and the Buyers' personal preferences are working against Costco becoming much of a beer destination. Since we don't have a regional office in OR that could benefit from a Buyer's special attention, we're even worse off than WA or CA.

 

As I mentioned at the time, one of the Costco stores up here had the Rodenbach sit. Finally it was down to $2.80 a bottle. My friend and I picked up some for ourselves and other friends. Walked out with 76 bottles of the stuff. I think I have about a case left.

 

HA! I thought that someone in this forum walked out of there with a metric crap-ton of bottles at Crazy Gideon prices, but I couldn't remember exactly who it was. Well done!

 

Well Green Dragon is pretty busy despite the hail storm...

 

Hello Portlandians - Can anyone recommend local (other than Cascade) brews that might be on the shelf right now at John's Marketplace? I have a friend staying nearby who is willing to pick up a few beers for me. Not looking for whales, but any unique/seasonal/semi-rare beers that don't see broad distribution would be great. Thanks!

 

Portlanders*. We're Portlanders.

 

2nd page/weekend bump

 

Does anyone know of any winery tour busses that will come pick my wife and I up from downtown Portland area?

My wife LOVES Twilight. It looks like the place we'll be staying at isn't too far from the Carver Cafe. I was thinking about surprising her and taking her there for lunch on our anniversary. Is it hard to get a table there?

 

Invaluable thread! Been monitoring this (and the forum) for a bit. Got in Portland today and starting with IBUsive. Fun few days ahead!

At some point hitting Apex, Beermongers, Great Notion, Belmont Station, Breakside, Cascade, Commons...

Anything I shouldn't miss?