An ale-drinker's guide to US microbreweries

This is part II, a look at various brewpubs of the USA. Part I was a general introduction to the US Brewpub scene.

part II - the brewpubs

Just outside Sedona town centre there is a small mini-village of art galleries, restaurants etc., which goes by the strange name of Tlaquepaque. Right in the centre of the village is the local brewpub, Oak Creek Brewery. Its location is stunning, and the beers are excellent, so I would thoroughly recommend a visit if you are fortunate enough to be passing through this area.

Continuing with our vacation this year, we drove south to the Phoenix area, where we visited Four Peaks, whose main brewpub is in Tempe, not far from the airport. They also now have another outlet for their beers a few miles away in North Scottsdale, but this is just a retail establishment as all the beers are brewed in Tempe. A better bet near Scottsdale is the Rock Bottom outlet in the large Desert Ridge mall, where they always have a cask conditioned ale on, served by traditional hand pump. When we were there, the cask beer was called, for some reason, Happy Javalina, and was an "English style Pale Ale", brewed using Simcoe hops. It was pretty good and at just $2 a pint, very good value, even allowing for the fact that the US pint is 20% smaller than an Imperial pint. (In fact, many places in USA offer to serve the beer in a variety of 12, 16, 20 or even 24 fl. oz. glasses).

Our daughter and her family reside in Grants Pass, in the heart of the Rogue Valley, southern Oregon, and that was our next stop. It's a fairly small town by U.S. standards, but it has a local brewpub, called Wild River. They have the usual selection of ales, but some of their seasonal ones are interesting, like the Summer Solstice Ale, which we tried. It had an interesting description/recipe:

"Belgian Farmhouse (Saison) ale brewed with 30% wheat. Spiced with coriander and aged Saaz hops. "Dry Hopped" with chamomile flowers and whole flower cascade hops. Fermented with a Belgian Ale yeast. O.G. 1.047. T.G. 1.010. 5.8% abv. "It's yellow and hazy; you'll love it!!!"

It was actually surprisingly good!

The Rogue Valley has a brewery by the same name, and there is also a small brewery called Caldera, located in Ashland, which is a college town and a bit of a cultural centre, with its own year round Shakespeare theatre. The local brewpub there is called Standing Stone.

From southern Oregon, we drove north to the beer mecca of Portland, which is a reasonable sized city, with a multiplicity of breweries and brewpubs. We visited the Widmer Brothers brewery. It's a fairly well-known name, and it sells what must be the West Coast's leading brand of Hefeweizen. The brewing operation is now a fair size and could probably now be more properly described as a "regional", rather than "micro". (right, Ian deep in reseacrh at Widmer Brothers)

Our favourite stop in Portland, however, was the Bridgeport brewery (http://www.bridgeportbrew.com) , which is described as Oregon's oldest craft brewery, established in 1984 and located in a large red brick former industrial/warehouse building, now attractively ivy-clad. They have live hops growing on the side of the building, which is on the National Register of Historic Buildings.

Bridgeport is an excellent brewpub which had two cask-conditioned ales on hand pump when we visited. One of them was their Pale Ale, which they supply to many Oregon supermarkets, bottle-conditioned. The other cask-conditioned ale on was Old Knucklehead, which was a brain-numbing 9.1% abv! They only serve it in half (US) pints and no more than two per person!

We were recommended to try the Horse Brass, which is reputedly an English style pub with the largest selection of ales in Portland, including a number of cask-conditioned ones, but regrettably ran out of time.

However, we did manage to squeeze in a last-minute trip to an interesting development by the McMenamins group before we left town. It's at the old Kennedy Elementary school, which they've developed in to a multi-purpose leisure/cultural centre. They have rooms, restaurant, cinema and a series of small bars, all using the original lay-out of the school, and also maintaining the character, feel and history of the original. Of course, they also brew on-site. It's definitely something a bit different and worth a visit if anyone happens to be in the area. (left, the exterior of McMenamins old Kennedy School)

Our last port of call this year was New York. The Heartland Brewery has four outlets in the Big Apple and we had visited one of them a couple of years ago. This time, we went to the Radio City one at 6th. and 51st. It's quite "pubby" and the beers are OK, but nothing like as good as many of the places we visited on the West Coast. The only other micro brew we tried was at BB King's Blues Bar, and it came as a recommendation from the waiter - Fat Angel from the Magic Hat brewery- which I'd never previously heard of.

And that was that - at least for another year. In the last few years, we have been to many breweries and brewpubs in various cities and towns in a number of different states, and have thoroughly enjoyed the experience, also taking dozens of photographs as mementos as we went along. The above gives some idea of how we spend our holidays, but there are many other places I could tell you about - perhaps another time?