The Best Breweries in Portland, Oregon
The airy, sun-soaked patio at Breakside’s Slabtown brewpub.
First, COVID closed their taprooms. Brewers scrambled to find new ways to get their beers into customers’ hands—doorstep delivery, drive-throughs, impromptu parking-lot patios. Then, consumer habits fundamentally shifted: Many cut back on alcohol following initial lockdown overindulgence. Now, breweries are contending with economic unpredictability—potential tax increases and near-daily-changing tariff announcements that could raise prices on staples like aluminum and malt. That’s all resulted in a particularly challenging five years for the craft beer scene in Portland, which many characterize as world-class thanks to its quality and sheer number of breweries. In the past decade, the city has seen many of those businesses close.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty about what the beer landscape, what the entrepreneurial landscape, is going to look like for us over the next three or four years,” says Breakside brewmaster and Oregon Brewers Guild board member Ben Edmunds. “If you don’t know what your goods are going to cost next week, or if you don’t know about some major regulation coming down the line, it’s going to impact your ability to price your beer competitively. That just makes it hard to strategize and plan for the future.”
But one thing we know is true of Portland’s first-rate breweries is that they know how to innovate—whether that’s adding new twists to old styles (sometimes inventing completely novel categories) or shifting business models to contend with an infectious disease. The city is still home to some of the country’s best producers, who are fermenting effervescent lagers, resiny West Coast IPAs, bold hazys, and pupil-dilating sours. Portlanders are spoiled for options, which makes selecting the best of the best no easy task. After assessing the scene, however, we’ve nailed down the top 12 breweries serving up suds right now.
Baerlic’s bustling Southeast pub.
Baerlic Brewing
Hosford-Abernethy, Concordia, Rose City Park
It’s hard to remember a time when Baerlic didn’t occupy the 6,000-square-foot warehouse-like building adjacent to its original, much smaller taproom. Of course, that was prior to 2020, which might as well be eons ago. The brewery expanded next door that fall, transforming former sports bar Blitz Ladd into an indoor beer garden in 2020, with founders Ben Parsons and Richard Hall moving the string lights and faux foliage curtain from their temporary pandemic patio to the new location while keeping Blitz’ wood-burning fireplace. Ranch Pizza now runs the kitchen, serving its thick-crust, square pies to the masses. That’s in addition to the brewery’s Alberta Arts District pub and its Northeast Portland food cart pod. All that growth can be attributed to the talents of Hall and Parsons, who started brewing in a home basement, racking up awards as amateurs, and used that momentum to go pro in 2014. Since then, they’ve produced reliably good staples and one-offs. Perhaps best known for their flaked corn pre-Prohibition-style Dad Beer, the brewers pulled off a similar lightness with the Eastside Oatmeal Pilsner, silken and round thanks to the addition of Bob’s Red Mill rolled oats. And it’s always worth ordering a small pour of any beer from Baerlic’s barrel-aged WoodWorker series, like the Invisible Ghost Stout, essentially a chilled Mexican hot chocolate that could be garnished with a flaming marshmallow straight out of a campfire.
2239 SE 11th Ave, 2223 NE Alberta St & 6035 NE Halsey St
Breakside Brewery
Woodlawn, Northwest District, Milwaukie, Beaverton, Lake Oswego, Vancouver, Astoria
Nationwide beer sales have been in a slump for years, but if you solely followed the developments at Breakside, you’d be fooled into thinking the industry had returned to boom times. In addition to operating three breweries—on NE Dekum, in Slabtown, and at the mammoth Milwaukie production facility—the company has launched satellite taprooms in Astoria, Beaverton, and Lake Oswego.
A big cause for its expansion: Breakside makes damn fine beer, with dozens and dozens of medals to prove it. This includes clean yet complex lagers, inventive barrel-aged stouts, fruit-conditioned sours, and an ever-changing lineup of IPAs, including collabs like the Turbomachinery IPA, a piney, tropical quaff with pops of stone fruit. Still, we couldn’t blame anyone for faithfully sticking to the flagship IPA, which nabbed the brewery its first gold at the Great American Beer Festival in 2014. This past February, the brewery announced plans for its next growth spurt: putting down roots in wine country by acquiring Dundee’s Alit Wines, and jumping the state line with a new Washington space.
820 NE Dekum St & 1570 NW 22nd Ave, Portland; 5821 SE International Way, Milwaukie; 12675 SW First St, Beaverton; 120 A Ave, Lake Oswego; 700 Washington St, Vancouver, Washington; 1355 Exchange St, Astoria
The “scorched church” pub at Brujos.
Brujos Brewing
Northwest District
Sam Zermeño’s career began the old-school way: first as a homebrew hobby, then a professional side project, and now at his own brewpub in the reaches of Northwest Portland, in the old Hammer & Stitch space. But nothing about his actual brewpub screams conventional. At Brujos, which is Spanish for “sorcerers,” it looks like warlocks have taken over a chapel to stew potions in partially shrouded tanks behind the pews. Gothic candelabra-style chandeliers hang above thronelike bar chairs and lurking grim reapers. This is Zermeño’s “scorched church,” where he concocts his elixirs: West Coast IPAs with a wide variety of hops, buoyant lagers, barrel-aged stouts, and hazys, which the bartenders say the brewery has become known for. One early standout? The imperial TDH Mulciber, which is like licking down to the center of an orange Tootsie Pop. “My parents would often tell me stories of their paranormal encounters whenever we’d gather around a bonfire, and it’d give me goosebumps,” Zermeño says of the origins of the brewery’s aesthetic. “I’ve loved mythical sci-fi and horror films from a very early age. Ironically enough, the Bible is what sparked my interest into more occult writings.”
2377 NW Wilson St
A Gigantic IPA at the Robot Room.
Gigantic Brewing
Reed, Montavilla, Sunnyside
No other brewery in town has worn Portland’s badge of bizarreness as loudly and proudly as Gigantic. From bold and kaleidoscopic label art to its beer series paying tribute to local personalities (think drag queen Poison Waters), founders Ben Love and Van Havig have established a distinctive and beloved brand over the last 13 years. You can now find its beer at the brewery’s SE Hawthorne pub and its Robot Room in Montavilla, as well as at the OG locale in Southeast Portland’s industrial hinterlands. No matter which Gigantic you end up at, you’re sure to find the crackery Kölschtastic, the crowd-pleasing Sassy Pony Pale, and the classic eponymous IPA, but always ask for something rare and a little weird.
5224 SE 26th Ave, 6935 NE Glisan St & 4343 SE Hawthorne Blvd
Grand Fir’s pub on SE Stark Street.
Grand Fir Brewing
Buckman
Grand Fir was the most anticipated brewery opening in 2022—on the first day, a line of eager customers formed outside the business long before the doors were unlocked. As anyone familiar with award-winning brewmaster Whitney Burnside and her husband, Top Chef finalist Doug Adams, would expect, it’s lived up to that hype. The intimate space, with a ground-floor brewery and mezzanine bar, features nods to Burnside’s Pacific Northwest roots and Adams’s Lone Star State upbringing: Cut and stacked grand fir sourced from Burnside’s father’s Whidbey Island property adorns one wall, while literal longhorns are mounted on another. As Burnside’s beers were when she was at 10 Barrel, the pours here are uniformly exceptional—from Honky Tonk Nighthawk West Coast Pilsner, which calls to mind a Doug fir forest freshly slicked with rain, to the Lichen IPA, which offers a squeeze of pomelo quickly snuffed out by dankness. And the Heart Island Coconut Stout will have you swear you’re drinking liquefied German chocolate cake (in a good way).
1403 SE Stark St
Great Notion’s Alberta brewpub.
Great Notion Brewing
Concordia, Northwest Industrial, Beaverton
What did whirlwind, widespread success in the brewing industry look like prepandemic? A lot of slow-moving lines. Not long after opening in 2016, Great Notion became one of those breweries that saw processions of beer traders on special release days and hordes of eager drinkers queued at its booths at events like the Great American Beer Festival. While the lines might have dissipated in this post-COVID environment, Great Notion is still pioneering hazy IPAs in the Northwest, recreating the flavors of breakfast sweets, and operating multiple locations in three states (including three Portland-area spots). Yes, you can find a pilsner or a Japanese rice lager, but you come here for what are now classics, like the sunny Ripe New England IPA, with its mandarin juiciness, or Double Stack Imperial Stout, which possesses the magic of Wonka’s infamous chewing gum in its ability to serve up a meal—this one a pancake breakfast, complete with coffee.
2204 NE Alberta St & 2444 NW 28th Ave, Portland; 230 NW Lost Springs Terrace, Beaverton
The bar at Living Haus is always busy.
Living Häus Beer Co
Buckman
Modern Times may have left the Belmont Fermentorium three years ago, but two of its best brewers remain in the building. Mat Sandoval, who moved from California to open Portland’s Modern Times, and Conrad Andrus, a Culmination Brewing alum, banded together to launch Living Häus in the same spot. Gone are the former’s retro desert hues, yarn-bombed hallway, and heavy focus on hazys. In their place: an entire nursery’s worth of plants, rustic live-edge tables that Sandoval and Andrus finished themselves, and a focus on elegant lagers and West Coast IPAs with a clean (never cloying) finish. On the lighter side, you can’t go wrong with any pilsner—Italian, Bohemian, New Zealand, or otherwise. The flagship Pils Dolores, named for Sandoval’s abuelita, is bright and surging with an underlying bitterness—a lawnmower or shower beer to be sure, but one that would wake you up midtask. Meanwhile, Harris West Coast IPA—brewed in tribute to Andrus’s grandfather—employs four hop varieties to deftly balance pine resin and bitter orange preserves. Don’t overlook the Bartleby grodziskie because it sounds a little strange: Also known as “Polish Champagne” for its popularity in toasting special occasions, the oak-smoked wheat brew gently wafts a smoldering leaf burn across the palate.
630 SE Belmont St
Ruse Brewing
Brooklyn, Northwest District, Vancouver
Not so long ago, Ruse didn’t have four walls it could call its own. Before any expansions, buzzy collaboration releases (like Fort George 3-Way), or sell-out Detroit-style pie pop-ups at the brewery, founders Shaun Kalis and Devin Benware began experimenting with Ruse batches at now-shuttered Culmination Brewing, eventually moving the fermentation equipment to the sprawling Iron Fireman Collective building. They turned what was little more than a concrete shell into a neighborhood hang and destination brewery; now the brand is poised to become a pizza-and-beer mini chain with an always-pulsating Brooklyn neighborhood flagship and two new restaurants: one at the gleaming waterfront development in Vancouver, the other in Slabtown. Initially known for remarkable farmhouse ales, Kalis and Benware eventually phased out their barrel-aging program to focus on hop-forward beers, and the move has served them well. Ruse is among the best IPA breweries in the city, executing pillowy hazys and piney West Coast versions like Mirror Maker; the latter’s two types of flaked rice and pilsner malt cause it to vibrate and finish crisp, proving there are still new things to be done with this tried-and-true style.
4784 SE 17th Ave & 1505 NW 21st Ave, Portland; 650 Waterfront Way, Vancouver, Washington
A sunny day captured at Threshold Brewing & Blending.
Threshold Brewing & Blending
Montavilla
Even the most seasoned beer drinker can be thrown for a loop when confronted by Threshold’s tap list. The catalog of options—typically around a dozen beers on draft with an additional two on a newly acquired cask pull—seems impossibly large for a brewhouse crew of two inside what must once have been Montavilla’s tiniest auto shop. Head brewer and co-owner Jarek Szymanski is clearly having fun experimenting, cranking out a wide variety of beers with outsize personalities, 1,000-square-foot taproom be damned. That includes a lemon ginger pastry sour—a bright, slightly acidic sick-day beer if there ever was one, given its comforting swirl of tart fruit and warming spice—and the Jack Knife milk stout with all the indulgent pleasures of a Dairy Queen hot fudge sundae, sans spoon. Beers for purists also please, like a true-to-style Baltic porter and the Tragbier Polish light lager—a guzzler that pays homage to Szymanski’s home country. Pair the latter with something from the growing Polish-food menu, like zapiekanka, a beloved street food that resembles French bread pizza.
403 SE 79th Ave
Upright Brewing’s Cully location.
Upright Brewing
Lloyd, Cully
Skim the names on pretty much any “Most Underrated Portland Breweries” list and you’re sure to find Upright among them. For more than 15 years, the brewery has influenced some of the state’s top brewers while keeping a low profile—literally. Visiting the original taproom, burrowed in the basement of the Leftbank Building, meant navigating the dimly lit subterranean halls to discover what felt like a secret club. Listening to jazz on vinyl, drinkers sat on a hodgepodge of furniture among the barrels, sipping the legendary saisons undulating with stone fruit, tartness, and funk. It’s moved up a floor since, to street level, and there’s a satellite spot in a former gas station in Cully. And while founder Alex Ganum still brews saisons, there aren’t as many—he’s added more IPAs, English-style ales, and dark brews to the mix. So if you see something like Foeder Saison, get it: The beer was fermented in its titular vat with some second-use nectarines for a month, resulting in a gentle tannic quality and a welcome rush of fruit.
240 N Broadway & 7151 NE Prescott St
Von Ebert Brewing
Boise, Hazelwood, Beaverton
There’s been a fermentation-tank-size hole in the heart of the Pearl District ever since Von Ebert shuttered its flagship pub in the spring of 2024. But now, with its new monolithic brewery in Ecliptic’s former facility just off N Mississippi, Von Ebert has ramped up production, stocking grocery coolers with six-packs of customer favorites like the Great American Beer Festival gold–winning Volatile Substance. Hands down one of Portland’s best IPAs, it tastes as if brewmaster Sam Pecoraro and his team shoved a spigot into a pine tree and fermented its juices. They also fill taps at the Glendoveer Golf Course location (a smaller brewhouse there tends to be reserved for experimental batches) and the taproom in the former Ecliptic brewpub—though don’t go looking for the restaurant on the Mississippi lot. That’s been converted to make room for more shiny silver tanks and gallons and gallons of Von Ebert Beer. “The Pearl was where we got our start and where we came up with most of these recipes,” says Pecoraro. “But if we were going to evolve, we needed to make a big change. While we miss the Pearl in some ways, there are so many positives to this move that we’ve kind of already forgot about it.”
825 N Cook St & 14021 NE Glisan St, Portland; 11800 NW Cedar Falls Dr, Beaverton
A row of taps at Wayfinder.
Wayfinder Beer
Buckman
A stretch of the Central Eastside Industrial District might not be where you would expect to find a portal to Bavaria, but Wayfinder’s nearly 9,000-square-foot, century-old former warehouse has many of the hallmarks of a classic German beer hall—albeit one filtered through a Pacific Northwest lens. Oversize windows bathe Wayfinder’s exposed brick walls with natural light, while long communal tables and string lights practically bellow “Pass the boot!” Wayfinder’s helles, brisk with just a murmur of citrus, seems custom-made for the brewery’s version of a beer garden—an elevated knotty-blond plank patio (perhaps the best conversion of a parking lot since the creation of Pioneer Courthouse Square). However, the tap list isn’t limited to German-style lagers: Founding brewer Kevin Davey won industry and consumer praise with everything from an Italian-style pilsner, which delivers a delightful buckshot of bitterness, to the Cold IPA, a new subcategory of the style. Davey has since left to launch his own brewery, leaving Wayfinder’s program in the accomplished hands of former Breakside R&D brewer and Great American Beer Festival award-winner Natalie Rose Baldwin. Baldwin’s Czech-style dark lager, rippling with dark chocolate and caramel, is only a coconut sprinkle away from tasting like a Girl Scout Samoa. Keep an eye out for scheduled solstice-release Midsommar, a pale lager made with rose petals that provide notes of soft red fruit and black pepper.
304 SE Second Ave
Share this content:
Author: Hey PDX
Hey PDX Team
Post Comment