A Nostalgic Look at the Horse Brass Pub

I don’t remember a thing about my first visit to the Horse Brass Pub, Portland’s most thoroughly British bar. Not for the likely reason—too many pints or too much whiskey—but I did have to be carried out. I can picture it, though: The air would have been thick with tobacco haze. My dad, working the bar, would be doing his best to avoid conversation with the regulars, while my mom would be socializing with everyone, introducing them to her new baby (that would be me). It was my first public social appearance, just a few weeks after I was born. My mom placed a miniature beer stein toothpick holder in my tiny fingers, and I clung to it. It was 1986, so no phone camera captured the moment, but in retrospect it would have been a perfect snapshot of my future career, visiting bars and restaurants as a food and beverage writer. 

It took me 21 years to return to the Horse Brass, still thick with cigarette smoke and regulars. (My dad abandoned his bartending side hustle after a promotion at TriMet.) The Oregon smoking ban was still a couple of years out, and while I loved the real metal darts with felt boards and the English cask ales served by the proper pint (20 ounces), I didn’t love having to wash the smoke from my inundated clothes after each visit. But that, too, was core to the bar’s identity, according to its late proprietor, famed publican Don Younger. A surly iconoclast, avowed libertarian, and heavy smoker, Younger was a vital patron of the nascent Oregon beer world. Between my first visit and the ones when I could drink, the state’s brewing scene had erupted, and no small part of that was thanks to the Brass.

Though originally heavy on mass-market lagers like Henry Weinhard’s Blitz (a Younger favorite), in the late 1980s and early ’90s the Brass was critical to the emerging microbrewery scene, pouring all manner of Oregon beers on draft—Rogue, Widmer Brothers, BridgePort. Younger’s bar gave these breweries a foothold where they could get their beer to the public. The architects of the local beer scene would crowd in regularly, chatting with each other, sampling the newest hoppy concoctions, and planning a bright future. Beyond beer, Younger
helped shape Oregon’s coffee world: He acted as benefactor to Stumptown founder Duane Sorenson, providing him with a literal roll of twenties to purchase his first espresso machine and open his first café. For years, a portrait of the long-haired, bearded bar owner hung at the SE Division Stumptown location.

Despite my connection to the Horse Brass, I never did meet Younger. He wasn’t at the bar during my early visits, and at 21 I moved to Eugene for college; when I returned home in 2011, he had just passed away at the age of 68. But this intersection of the personal and the communal is what makes the Horse Brass so special to me, and I know I’m not alone. Even with dozens of trendy new taprooms and beer halls, the pub still fills nightly, and many of the folks knocking back ESBs and amber ales have been doing so for years, decades even. Though less frequently than I’d like, I still make the time to visit, maybe grabbing a turkey Reuben and a cider, maybe throwing a few darts. The smell of cigarette smoke has finally faded into memory. But the Brass is still the Brass: a bit curmudgeonly, more than a bit old-fashioned, and as warm and welcoming as ever.