Beer Guide 2015: Fat Head's

By MARTIN CIZMAR

Fat Head's

131 NW 13th Ave., 820-7721, fatheadsportland.com. 11 am-11 pm Monday-Thursday, 11 am-midnight Friday-Saturday, 11 am-10 pm Sunday.

[FAT EVERYTHING] Fat Head's channels the spirit of suburban Cleveland, and that's not a knock. There's a lot to love about this big, doughy operation, the first offshoot from a much-awarded brewery of North Olmstead, Ohio. The beer is solid to excellent, including a squeaky-clean Czech Pilsner and the state's best new weizenbock. That weiz is the deceptively smooth 8.7 percent ABV Alpenglow, a glorious pig pile of clove and banana that took gold in Denver last October. Then there are bun-busting sandwiches and burgers, including the super-stacked Southside Slopes—a whole kielbasa, halved, topped with fried pierogis, onions, American cheese and spicy horseradish sauce. It's all pretty damned good, and it's plenty big. Now, the embiggened includes Alpenglow. When the Portland location opened, bartenders were pouring it into a wee snifter instead of a bulbous Bavarian weizen glass. "We told 'em, you've gotta put this in the proper glass," recalls head brewer Mike Hunsaker. "They said, 'But it's 8.7 percent!' and we said, 'Well, it's how they do it in Germany and how we do it in Cleveland,' so the glasses changed."

DRINK THIS: Alpenglow in the proper glassware, the famous Headhunter IPA or any of the stellar German lagers.

WWeek 2015

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