Microbreweries Become Toast of Northwest

At Captain Neon’s fermentation chamber in the rear of the Hillsdale Brewpub, 1505 S.W. Sunset Blvd., Conrad Santos, brewer and philosopher, carries forth on the joys of live beer.

Hillsdale--and a few other small breweries--has made it easier for Portlanders, at least in the beer category. They have a selection of eight to 10 “live” beers brewed on the premises, part of a growing trend in the Northwest and elsewhere to get back to the basics in brewing.

Small commercial breweries--microbreweries as they are called--dot the northwest terrain from Seattle to Victoria, B.C., and from Portland to eastern Washington. They are popping up all over the country.

What distinguishes them from major commercial breweries is their size (theoretically, they are limited to 10,000 barrels a year). A more important difference is their fanatic devotion to making a high-quality product using primarily four ingredients: malted barley, hops, water and yeast.

Land of Beer Lovers

If you like beer and want to try some brews that are only available in local markets, on a neat little swing through the Northwest you can taste scores of beers and ales brewed in about 24 breweries. It takes you through Oregon, Washington and British Columbia.

In the Seattle area three small breweries make beer and, although none of them serves it on the premises, some pubs and restaurants do.

Kufnerbrau, 112 N. Lewis St., is truly a mom-and-pop operation in Monroe, Wash. The brewery is in a long, narrow storefront lined with sacks of malted barley and kegs. A stainless-steel brew pot towers in the back.

Robert Kufner, a German-born brewmaster who has brewed beer in Germany and for Anheuser-Busch, fondly refers to the beer as “she” as he tends to the equipment. About 95% of his product is bottled, unlike most of the Northwestern micros, and he and his wife, Kathy, bottle, cap and label the beer by hand.

Thomas Kemper Brewing Co., 7869 Day Road, West Rolling Bay, Wash., is on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound--a short ferry ride from downtown Seattle. The boat trip offers some magnificent views of Mt. Rainier and the Olympic Mountains.

Kemper does not have a pub, but the public can taste either the fresh light or dark Munich-style lager at a tap inside the front door. The fact that they brew only lagers--a dunkel (dark) and a helles (light)--makes Kemper different from the majority of Northwestern breweries.

Oldest, Largest Brewery

One of the oldest microbreweries in the Northwest, and the largest in the nation, the Independent Ale Brewery, 4620 Leary Way N.W., Seattle, produces brews in its relatively spacious and well-appointed quarters, including Redhook Ale, Ballard Bitter and Blackhook Porter. It also comes out with a Christmas ale called Winterhook.

The company, in the Ballard district of Seattle, offers organized tours of the plant on Saturdays at 4 p.m. and at other times by appointment.

All the breweries will show you around if you ask, but if you would rather just taste, some superb taverns in Seattle serve these brews. Among the best are Murphy’s, 2110 N. 45th St., and Cooper’s, 8065 Lake City Way N.E., under the same management and specializing in microbrewed beers. Most of these establishments will give samplings of various beers upon request.

Murphy’s has 12 beers on tap and is a beer drinker’s bar--friendly, dark, wooden and filled with a jumble of kegs in the back. You’ll get live folk music most nights. Cooper’s has 17 micros on draft in a mildly ‘50s atmosphere: tiled floor, chrome stools and a couple of jukeboxes. Four dart boards line the back wall.

Perhaps one of the most enjoyable stops on the beer circuit is Spinnaker’s Brewpub, Lime Bay, in Victoria. Victoria is reached by ferry from Seattle or Port Angeles, a lumber town on the north side of the Olympic Peninsula. The crossing time from Port Angeles is 95 minutes and there are four round trips a day during summer. The fare for a walk-on passenger is $5.50.

Spinnakers serves British-style beers and grub in a wood and fern, red-tile floor atmosphere, with a view of Victoria Harbor.

Visitors Welcome

The beer is brewed in the back of the pub in Victoria West Brewery. Aside from Abbot’s Ale and Spinnaker Ale, the brew pub also produces a stout, a bitter (don’t let the name scare you) and several specialty beers. It brews about 2,800 liters a week and the brew crew is happy to show visitors the operation.

At least seven brewing establishments thrive in the Portland area, most of which serve their product on the premises. The Hart Brewing Co. in Kalama, Wash., north of Portland, makes Pyramid Pale Ale, a wheat beer, and Pacific Crest Ale. It doesn’t serve its brew on site, but ships it to both Seattle and Portland as well as smaller cities.

Within five blocks of each other, in an old industrial section of Portland, are three microbreweries: Columbia River Brewing, 1313 N.W. Marshall St.; Portland Brewing Co., 1331 N.W. Flanders St., and Widmer Brewing, 1405 N.W. Lovejoy St.

Columbia River Brewing operates the Bridgeport Brewpub, open since March 1, 1986, with its banner Bridgeport Ale and several other ales and a stout on tap. The decor and atmosphere is upscale wood and fern, and it is open every day except Mondays when the brewer, Karl Ockert, and his assistants play soccer.

A few blocks away is Portland Brewing Co., a brew pub that has been open since Jan. 15, 1986. One can see the brew kettle, representing part of a $200,000 investment, through a glass wall in the pub. Portland Brewing is the only microbrewery that has been licensed to brew another microbrewery’s beer; it makes and sells Grant’s Scottish Ale and Imperial Stout Ale.

Family-Run Business

Between the two brew pubs is Widmer Brewing, a family-run operation that turns out German-style altbier ( alt means old), a wheat beer and some seasonal beers such as bock. The company was started by brothers Kurt and Robert Widmer, along with dad Ray Widmer.

They don’t have a pub yet, but plan to add a beer garden where customers can sample the beers in German style.

Robert Widmer stresses that the locals are proud of local products and that, combined with an average consumption rate of 25% draft beer compared to 4% draft beer in New England, makes it easy to sell their barrels.

Off Capitol Highway in southwest Portland is Hillsdale Brewery and Public House, one of three brew pubs owned and operated by Mike McMeniman.

Hillsdale serves many locally microbrewed ales as well as its own assortment of “unbelievable, unequaled and unreal” ales, brewed in Captain Neon’s Fermentation Chamber, which is visible through a window from your bar stool. The emphasis in Hillsdale is on the laid-back ‘60s.

Besides the microbreweries, pubs serve local ales and lagers. A good one is Produce Row Cafe, 204 S.E. Oak St. near the Willamette River in an industrial section of Portland, where glass cabinets are filled with dusty bottles of obscure foreign beer and old books line the walls.

Produce Row Cafe has been around for at least 30 years, and Max Struble, bartender at the worn eating-and-drinking establishment, proclaims “Northwesterners are beer drinkers.” By his estimate, 35% to 40% of the beer it sells is microbrewed.

From Portland, Seattle is a four-hour drive up Interstate 5, but Olympia is not a stop to miss on the beer circuit. It is on I-5 about three hours from Portland and an hour from Seattle.

Home of Olympia Beer

Olympia, a city with a major brewery (Olympia Brewing Co. in the suburb of Tumwater) is without a microbrewery, although it has a couple of great taverns, and even the Safeway supermarket has a beer selection to be proud of.

One of the best retail stores for specialty beers is the Cork ‘n Crock, Capitol Village at 400 Cooper Point Road. This deli stocks 150 to 200 brews--about the biggest selection in the area.

For taverns in Olympia, try the 4th Ave. Tavern, 210 E. 4th Ave., and Whiskers, 3447 Mud Bay Road S.W., both of which proudly push the local beers. At the 4th Ave. Tavern, Hale’s Ale, Redhook (from Seattle) and the Pyramid Wheaton are the most popular.

According to the bartender, about 50% of their business is in local beers, although when I was there, most beer drinkers seemed to go for the imports, with micros and domestic commercial beers split about evenly.

The 4th Ave. Tavern is a loose, fun bar, with live R & B music on weekend nights. If you can fight your way through the throngs of Madonna clones who hang out nearby, it’s a good place to sit and taste a beer or two.

Whiskers Tavern, formerly the Two Mile House (a post-Prohibition roadhouse), is a friendly, diner-like pub whose patrons qualify for the World Tour Beer Club by drinking one of all the beers the place serves.

Forty-six bottled beers and 11 drafts are served at Whiskers, and don’t try to join the club your first night. A member of the World Tour Beer Club gets an official T-shirt and certificate and his name on a plaque.

It’s an effective marketing gimmick for Whiskers--about 300 people are working on the list now, according to pub owner Ron Krause, whose gray beard reputedly inspired the tavern’s name.

Demand Is Here

In addition to the breweries I visited in Portland, Seattle and Victoria, there are operations in Yakima (Grant’s Brewing & Malting Co.) and Colville, Wash. (Hale’s Ales), as well as others in British Columbia. Given the ambition and palate of the Northwesterners, there are certain to be many more in operation soon.

“I think there’s something for almost everybody,” Conrad Santos says of the burgeoning microbrewery business. “We’re in a totally different ball game than the big lager houses. We’re not after millions of dollars. We’re after a product we believe in. That’s very important to all of us.”

He stands in the middle of a cramped kitchen and points at the open fermentation vats in a separate room. “We like the idea that the public can see what’s going on in the fermentation process.”

The point is that this is what beer tasted like before hype and mega-volume took hold. They’re different. They’re real. One Seattle brewer put it best: “Beer is a concoction of mistakes that makes a distinct flavor.”

For more information: Washington Tourist Promotion Division, 101 General Administration Building, Olympia, Wash. 98504.