West Coast Road Trip Part 5: Portland

We spent two nights in downtown Portland exploring the downtown core, waterfront, Oregon Brewers Festival and a couple of fabulous restaurants.  Kurtis had arranged a Portland Brewcycle tour which is tour of the city on a bicycle built for 14 riders.  Our tour was with a corporate group from HP and we had a blast exploring three breweries as we peddled our way around Portland.  The breweries themselves were nestled into little residential areas of the city.   I would love to have access to a  brewery like one of these in my community, would make a great local.

The beer festival was a little disappointing, as there were no brewers in sight, and all of the beers were poured by people who did not know anything about the beer.  Kurtis was particularly interested in talking to the craft brewers about the process and product.  I tried a number of interesting beers, but nothing that really stood out.  One remarkable omission from the festival was the presences of any stouts or porters.    I could not find a dark beer at all, heaps of IPA’s and reds though.

In Portland we had two remarkable meals.  The first at  the Oven and Shaker where we had awesome salads and pizza.  Then a pretty amazing tapas meal at Henry’s on 12 Street where we had some pretty tasty Gorgonzola smothered waffle fries, wings and salads.

Wanting to have a taste of the C.W. Irwin bourbon again we ventured west of the city to the Pope House Bourbon Lounge which offers over 100 bourbons.  We got to wet our whistle again on the wonderful C.W. Irwin bourbon. Pope House also had some far cocktails most notable the “Skew It” bourbon cocktail which contains bourbon, creole shrub, brown sugar, peach bitters and a bbq rub.

Portland is a neat city but more time would be needed to fully explore.  I would love to go back for a few more days to explore outside of the downtown core.