Skip to main content.jpg?smart=true&auth=__replaceMehttp%3A%2F%2Fstatic.wweek.com%2Fimage-archive%2F15534%2Fbg2014%28shops%29.jpg__&width=800&height=450)
Saraveza
1004 N Killingsworth St., 206-4252, saraveza.com. 11 am-midnight daily.
North Portland's favorite spot to watch a Green Bay Packers game, Saraveza is a supremely warm and comfy place. There are nine rotating taps—plus a 10th handle devoted to Hamm's—and hundreds of bottles in the vintage pistachio-green coolers. The hearty menu skews Midwestern, with free bacon the second Monday of every month.
Moon and Sixpence
2014 NE 42nd Ave., 288-7802. 3 pm-2:30 am daily.
This Hollywood pub is a dim and convivial spot for darts and drinks, with a multipage beer menu that spans from Old Speckled Hen on nitro to Green Flash hop-bombs. Musicians play traditional Irish tunes on Mondays. The back patio is prime real estate come summer.
Tin Bucket
3520 N Williams Ave., 477-7689. 2-10 pm Monday-Thursday, noon-11 pm Friday-Saturday, 11 am-9 pm Sunday.
Tin Bucket's bottle selection is respectable, but the 40 taps are the stars. The proprietary pressurizing nozzles spread along the back bar look more like a spaceship's stasis chamber than a standard tap handle. Once pressurized, growlers stay as fresh as a bottle or can, so that saison you just bought will still be tap-fresh tomorrow—if you can wait that long.
Bridgetown Beerhouse
915 N Shaver St., 477-8763, facebook.com/bridgetownbeerhouse. Noon-10 pm Monday-Thursday, noon-11 pm Friday-Saturday, noon-9 pm Sunday.
There are only five taps, but Bridgetown Beerhouse's coolers stock nearly 500 bottles and cans. You're likely to find owner Mike Waite dispensing recommendations in this laid-back hangout with brick walls smudged black by a fire. Bring food from one of Mississippi Avenue's food carts.
Oregon Public House
700 NE Dekum St., 828-0884, oregonpublichouse.com. Noon-10 pm Tuesday-Thursday, noon-11 pm Friday-Saturday, noon-9 pm Sunday.
At the nation's first nonprofit pub, bartenders pour your pint—11 taps include Bear Republic and Georgetown—then ask who you'd like to support. Aid for people living in Nicaraguan dumps? Emotional expression for marginalized youth in Portland? Your call.
–REBECCA JACOBSON.
Westside
Bailey's The Upper Lip
720 SW Ankeny St., baileystaproom.com/the-upper-lip. 5-10 pm Tuesday-Friday.
Bailey's is perhaps the best beer bar in Portland, but it's also one of the most crowded. Beat the crowds at the Upper Lip, the hidden second-floor event space now open as a bar. Exit the front and walk around the corner—you can't take your beer with you—to a door marked with a bottle. Upstairs, you'll find six well-chosen taps and a massive case of bottles ranging from Belgians to small-batch bourbon stouts. Keep it like a secret.
Pearl Specialty Market & Spirits
900 NW Lovejoy St., No. 140, 477-8604, pearlspecialty.com. 9 am-10 pm Monday-Saturday, noon-8 pm Sunday.
The terribly neat rows of beer lining Pearl's shelves are comforting in their variety, but disorienting in their dedication to order—this is a booze shop for a man who shaves every day. One of the few shops in town licensed to sell liquor along with beer and wine, they take it a step further with celery root bitters, Pok Pok drinking vinegars and Dolin Blanc.
John's Market
3535 SW Multnomah Blvd., 244-2617, johnsmarketplace.com. 7 am-10 pm Monday-Thursday, 7 am-11 pm Friday, 8 am-11 pm Saturday, 8 am-10 pm Sunday.
Oh, man: John's is a store, but it's also a tradition bordering on familial. Hell, it's also the state fair. Bragging of the city's largest selection—there's no reason not to believe this—the store is a beautifully ramshackle flea market for beer. With relationships that go deep, the store usually stocks the hardest-to-find beers in town; sometimes, arcane filing systems mean it also carries the oldest. Luckily, among serious beer shops, it also has some of the cheapest. What a place. Ask the guy on hand what he's excited about in the store, and he'll excitedly tell you.
BrewStop
1425 NW Flanders St., 971-400-5950. brewcycleportland.com.
Tucked behind a showroom of bicycles built for 15, the Brewcycle beer touring company's new Pearl District bar is a cleanly cut zigzag in hardwood and concrete, stocked with a smattering of local liquors and 14 taps from Upright, Pelican, Barley Browns, Breakside or Pfriem. Somewhere along the way, bike fitness and craft brews converged in the local imagination, and so the clientele is every bit as streamlined as the décor, awash in the bull-headed cheeriness one associates with state-school athletics and good childhood orthodontics. The bar is open Wednesday to Sunday, with pub trivia each Wednesday.
–MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
Outer Southeast
N.W.I.P.A.
6350 SE Foster Road, 971-279-5876, nwipapdx.com. 2 pm-midnight Monday-Friday, noon-midnight Saturday-Sunday.
In the changing FoPo neighborhood, where Infowars bumper stickers and theaters full of furry-booted ravers are giving way to board-game shops and mussel plates, this self-consciously rough-edged taproom beckons with resin sculptures of mounted deer heads, hardwood floors and a bar lined with books about beer. They keep it gangsta with at least one IPA.
Horse Brass Pub/Belmont Station
Horse Brass Pub, 4534 SE Belmont St., 232-2202, horsebrass.com. 11-2:30 am daily. Belmont Station, 4500 SE Stark St., 232-8538, belmont-station.com. 10 am-10 pm Monday-Saturday, noon-9 pm Sunday.
No longer connected physically or contractually, this legendary Belmont Street pub and its spinoff bottle shop remain spiritually connected. As the old money of the local beer scene, this laid-back British pub and the Belmont shop that would now better be called Stark Station are favored by craft-beer veterans and are must-visits for out-of-towners.
Roscoe's
8105 SE Stark St., 255-0049, facebook.com/Roscoespdx. 11 am-2:30 am Monday-Friday, noon-2:30 am Saturday-Sunday.
True story: A contributor to this very guide once deemed Roscoe's "scary." While this Montavilla faux dive's rugged exterior scares off suburban mooks, inside it's now a warm den of wood and brew. Look for sampler flights, tap takeovers and special tastings on the last Friday of the month.
Beer Bunker
7918 SE Stark St., 254-8200, facebook.com/BeerBunker. 3-11 pm Monday-Thursday,
3 pm-midnight Friday, 1 pm-midnight Saturday, 1-10 pm Sunday.
This concrete-floored cafeteria of beer sits across from Roscoe's in Montavilla. Coolers and the restroom to the right; taps and tables to the left. The beer selection is good, if unfocused.
Hawthorne Hophouse
4111 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 477-9619, oregonhophouse.com. Noon-11 pm Monday-Wednesday, noon-midnight Thursday, noon-1 am Friday, 10-1 am Saturday, 10 am-11 pm Sunday.
Outer Hawthorne is a cornucopia of commerce. Thus, this branch of the two-trunked Hophouse tree (the other is in Irvington) sits next to a pizzeria, a head shop and a branch of H&R Block. Bring your growler for Boneyard RPM (page 14), the only permanent tap here. While they're filling it, grab a pie, rolling papers or that wolf depredation tax credit form.
–MARTIN CIZMAR.
Inner Southeast
Bazi Bierbrasserie
1522 SE 32nd Ave, 234-8888, bazipdx.com. 3-11 pm Monday-Thursday, 3 pm-1 am Friday-Saturday.
Belgophiles know Bazi as our foremost bastion of Trappist ales, stoemp and frites. Owner Hilda Stevens opened this nook in 2011 to offer a tightly curated collection of beers, but Bazi isn't priggish, so you'll also find a few Northwest IPAs on tap.
Apex/Beermongers
1216 SE Division St., 273-9227, apexbar.com. 11:30-2:30 am daily. 1125 SE Division St., 234-6012, thebeermongers.com. 11 am-11 pm Sunday-Thursday, 11 am-midnight Friday-Saturday.
These beloved beer bars sit only a Frisbee-throw away from each other—and that's where the similarities end. Apex is a cash-only scenester bar with a mile-long draft list to fuel a patio packed with flirting 20-somethings and a lead bartender who answers to "the sheriff." BeerMongers is low-key man cave with bottle limits on sought-after seasonals and a few taps to provide pints for guys who stop in for tap takeovers or to play cards.
Imperial Bottle Shop & Taproom
3090 SE Division St., 971-302-6899, imperialbottleshop.com. Noon-10 pm Monday-Thursday and Sunday, noon-midnight Friday-Saturday.
Imperial is the first beer bar in town to employ a Wine Well to chill shelved bottles, a welcome innovation next to the familiar digital beer board, jazz soundtrack, heavy wood seating and an IPA-heavy tap list. Growlers are filled with foam-free wands, but if you want the ultimate to-go brew experience, check out nearby Clinton Market (page 54).
Beer
1410 SE Stark St., 233-2337, facebook.com/BeerPortland. 11 am-11 pm daily.
Meat Cheese Bread owner John Stewart outdid himself with this year-old bar two doors down from his sandwich shop. It's a tapestry of dark wood and collected breweriana with a tap list that favors Eugene more than most Portland bars. Oh, and perhaps the best sandwiches in town.
Green Dragon
928 SE 9th Ave., 517-0660, pdxgreendragon.com. Sunday-Wednesday, 11 am-11 pm. Thursday-Saturday, 11 am-1 am.
Rogue owns this Quonset hut on the edge of the inner eastside industrial zone (home to Buckman Botanical, see page 27), but its tap lines are neutral turf. The Dragon is a full-service restaurant, but we like it best for large groups.
–MARTIN CIZMAR.
Cider
BushwHacker Cider
1212 SE Powell Blvd., Suite D, 445-0577, bushwhackercider.com. Noon-11 pm Sunday-Thursday, noon-midnight Friday and Saturday.
Nothing will stop Bushwhacker's Jeff Smith from maintaining his encyclopedic cider collection. Last year, Square Mile Cider, owned by the largest craft beer companies in the Northwest, cut a deal with Safeway, the second-largest supermarket chain in the country, to offer its new line of cranberry apple cider exclusively. And yet, a few bottles found their way to this shop on Southeast Powell. Such efforts are secret to this unremarkable plaza-bound bar's success. Bushwhacker is to Portland cider today what the Horse Brass must have been to beer in 1982.
Fifteenth Avenue Hophouse
1517 NE Brazee St., 971-266-8392, oregonhophouse.com. 4-11 pm Monday-Friday, noon-11 pm Saturday, noon-10 pm Sunday.
Speaking of special events, the premier cider event of the year in 2013 was held in the parking lot of Irvington's Fifteenth Avenue Hophouse. This pub and its sister on Hawthorne usually have at least two ciders on tap and will fill happily growlers to go.
Cheese Bar
6031 SE Belmont St., 222-6014, cheese-bar.com. 11 am-11 pm Tuesday-Sunday.
Beer and wine geeks argue about which beverage pairs best with cheese. Sorry, you're both wrong. Come here, pick any two ciders off the small but well-assembled shelf and ask cheesemonger Steve Jones or one of his henchpersons to load up one of the shop's log boards with cheese from the case to complement it. Expect to be wowed, and remember to thank us.
Primrose & Tumbleweeds
248 E Main St., Hillsboro, 703-8525, primroseandtumbleweeds.com, 11 am-8 pm Monday, 11 am-10 pm Tuesday-Thursday, 11 am-midnight Friday, 11 am-midnight Saturday, noon-8 pm Sundays.
Hillsboro's Primrose & Tumbleweeds prides itself on offering the world's largest selection of Oregon wines. Thankfully, there's also a side room with an almost as strong selection of beer and cider. The bar features 10 taps, with three going to cider. Local ciders dominate the shelves of the side room, but there are a few offerings from England, France and Spain. If you get lucky, you just might find a rarity like the Duke from Carlton Cyderworks—last bottled in 2012—we spotted amid the bottles and cans of the cider fridge. The trek to Hillsboro may seem daunting for townies, but this bottle shop, just a few blocks away from the final Blue Line stop, will help you feel right at home with charcuterie from Olympic Provisions and some fantastic cider. Corkage is on the house.
–MARTIN CIZMAR AND JOHN LOCANTHI.
Portland-Area Breweries from A to Z | Beer of the Year | Favorite Beers #2-10
Portland-Area Cideries | Top 5 Ciders of the Year | Beer Bars and Bottle Shops
Local Growler Makers | Surprising Growler Fills | Homebrew Shops
Restaurants With Great Beer | Local Beer and Liquor Pairings
An Oral History of BridgePort IPA | Beer Events Calendar | Beer Tours
Day Sips: North Oregon Coast, Hood River, Eugene, Seattle
WWeek 2015