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2568 SW Orchard Court, Gresham, 503-310-8113. Open by appointment only.
"Wastewater engineer" is only a pretty word on very specific occasions. After a tsunami, say, or when you're talking to a guy boiling a one-barrel kettle of coconut porter in his home garage at the end of a south Gresham cul-de-sac. "It just smells so nice," says Hop Haus brewer and wastewater engineer Steve Wesley, and he's right. Wesley expertly treats and regulates the pH on his water like very few garage brewers can, and it shows: He makes a real clean beer, every time, with nary a flaw in the eight beers we tried in his garage while a neighbor stared at us from the opposing lawn. The golden pale is almost crystalline in the purity of its grain flavor, and his helles is so bright and bready Wesley says it roused the spirits of a traveling pack of excitable Germans. If there's ever a flaw at Hop Haus, it's that the beers are sometimes as understated as Wesley himself, with balanced and malty but somewhat muted IPAs. On an oaked grapefruit-zest IPA, at least, this wasn't a flaw but a feature. There are three permanent taps at Gresham Italian spot Spinella's off the Wall, and it rotates in at Bar Maven on Southeast Foster Road, but a good portion of Wesley's brews go to office parties and to tailgaters.
Drink this: That helles is damn lovely—as is a beautifully rich and deep 7.4-percent-ABV imperial chocolate stout.
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This Year's Guide Is Dedicated to Dean Pottle
An Oral History of the Horse Brass
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