The festival was held on the waterfront of the Columbia River, ancient carver of the Columbia River Gorge, a canyon decorated with roaring waterfalls, babbling streams, lush rainforest, and breathtakingly scenic overlooks of the mountains and valleys—not to mention some of the best breweries in North America. The gorge is also something of a wind tunnel, and on that day, a crisp and steady early-October gust was pulling wetsuit-clad windsurfers and kiteboarders on the water, as well as blowing over trash cans and carrying off plastic tasting cups on the nearby event grounds.

The setting is more than just a backdrop for the legendary beer that springs forth from this place—it’s the source. Brewers here draw their water not from the river, but from the Hood River watershed, which comes from snowmelt in the 14,000-foot Cascade Mountains, filtered through volcanic basalt rock to create a soft, clean base rich with minerals. Throw in some of the freshest hops in the world from the nearby Willamette Valley and you have a formula for something truly special.

It’s no surprise, then, that the relatively tiny town, just over 8,000 strong, might have the most quality beer per capita of any place on Earth. Every day in Hood River is a veritable beer fest. Start just feet from this blustery riverfront at pFriem Family Brewers, a regional powerhouse that emerged from this Gorge in 2012. At their riverside tasting room, you can get fresh-hopped versions of classic styles such as their refreshingly floral and crisp Pilsner or a magnificently bready Czech Dark Lager. Just a few doors down, grab some gorgeous gorge views from the broad open-air deck at Ferment Brewing Company, a more modern brewery that uses a farmhouse technique to capture the local terroir, as they do to fruity perfection in their Lost in Fragaria sour ale made with Oregon strawberries.

A little farther up the bluff, visit downtown’s legendary Full Sail Brewing Co., an OG craft brewer that unfurled its mast in 1987. While you can still enjoy a Willi Becher pint glass of classic, malty-spicy Full Sail Amber Ale, the establishment has evolved with the times and produces on-par West Coast and hazy IPAs. Just around the corner sits Double Mountain Brewery, a Hood River institution since 2007, where I enjoyed a tuna melt washed down with a citrusy Fresh Hop (Strata) Iowa Bar Fight IPA.

Also downtown are two new additions to the scene. Opened in 2023, Hood River Brewing Company is a pleasant stop with an eclectic selection of brews. I opted for a rich Fiesta Mexican Amber Lager, with a smooth caramel finish. And in 2025, Kings & Daughters Brewery launched an elegant public house dubbed The Walled Garden, which offers a nice selection of hazy IPAs and lighter lagers.

But for (in my opinion) some of the best lagers in town, head to the top of the hill to Working Hands Fermentation. In addition to a renowned smash burger, this operation specializes in the bottom fermenters, and I could not say no to the Night Shift Schwarzbier, a light-bodied dark lager with a hint of smokiness.

All of this was packed into less than two full days in town—a brief but unforgettable experience before I followed the river west, through the Gorge, back to Portland.

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At the moment, I’m backstage, down a long hallway at the building’s industrial rear, behind a nondescript door in a windowless room that more closely resembles a secret hunting lodge. I’m leaning on an actual barrel head, sipping festbier, a golden German lager, by candlelight staring at a taxidermied rattlesnake in the lamplit shadow of a majestic stag’s head.

This is The Bitterroot Club, Grand Fir’s weekly supper club where the brewery’s co-owner, Doug Adams, flashes the culinary skills that made him a Top Chef finalist and semifinalist for the James Beard Rising Star Award. The prix fixe menu features seasonal and locally sourced ingredients paired with the beer crafted by his co-owner and wife.

Whitney (Burnside) Adams is a pedigreed vet of the Northwestern beer scene, including jobs at Portland pillar Upright Brewing, Seattle’s Elysian, and brewmaster at regional powerhouse 10 Barrel Brewing Company. Tonight, I’ll be pairing her aforementioned bready Tamarack Fest festbier with Doug’s Columbia king salmon with lemon, fig, and basil, adding some malty sweetness to the rich, savory fish. Next, a charcoal-grilled porkchop with Nardello peppers and hazelnuts provides a salty smokiness that is cut nicely by a crisp and clean-finishing Bandit Run Mosaic American IPA. And then a light-bodied, citrusy Fresh Hop Strata complements lemon buttermilk pie for dessert.

The Bitterroot Club is certainly a premium attraction (the prepaid reservation is $135 per person), but it’s also an extension of the Adamses’ ethos when they opened Grand Fir in November 2022. Even the regular brewpub menu features artistic twists such as jalapeño Old Bay tartar on a shrimp roll, garlic buffalo sauce on a fried chicken sandwich, and caramelized onions on the wildly popular double-patty Grand Fir Burger. “The word ‘elevated’ has been overused a lot, but it does suit us,” says Whitney. “We wanted people to not only get the experience of my beer, but to use Doug’s background to create an equally good food experience. I felt that if I were to just open up a brewery, I honestly don’t think it would make it. You need a certain angle these days to be successful.”

This, of course, is a common refrain from brewers all over the country, scurrying to attract on-premises patrons in a shrinking marketplace. But for a bona fide brewing badass such as Whitney to say this is more than modesty or even a reflection of the nationwide post-pandemic struggles. Yes, brewers across the country are transforming their spaces, installing dog parks and arcades and pickleball courts to bring people in and maintain a foothold in an increasingly slippery marketplace. But while Portland has certainly not been untouched by economic woes and shifting tastes, in this city and this state, the issue is less that there are fewer beer drinkers than that the drinkers here are more discerning. After all: This is Beervana.

A Love for Beer

“There’s a special relationship between brewers and drinkers in Oregon and Portland in particular,” says Ben Edmunds, brewmaster at Breakside Brewing. “There are consumer expectations. People feel like they can find good beer everywhere here.”

They certainly can. In just two days there, I bounced from world-class brewery to world-class brewery, each with its own distinctive personality. There was the lager-centric Wayfinder slinging the Cold IPAs (brewed with lager yeast) it helped popularize; the heavy metal hazy house of Brujos Brewing; the more experimental hipster hangout Living Häus Beer Company; the standard-setter for the citrusy-piney Northwest-style IPA, Breakside Brewery; Portland-born regional pastry sour powerhouse Great Notion; and longtime local-turned-national stalwart Deschutes, which has recently invested heavily in meticulous NA versions of its core beers like Black Butte Porter and Fresh Squeezed IPA. There are so many more amazing places that I just didn’t have time to make it to.

“People here are passionate, they’re fans. They have a good pulse on what’s happening with each brewery,” says Whitney Adams. “I feel like we have a savvier group of beer drinkers here, too. That’s what holds us together. It’s not just the brewers themselves; it’s the customer base. It’s the love we all share for beer.”

Portland’s long affinity for craft beer makes perfect sense when one considers the proximity of the fields of the Willamette Valley, home to some of the world’s most coveted hops. The valley sits not too far from Yakima, Wash., the birthplace of Bert Grant’s hop-packed American IPA, the beer that still defines craft in the U.S. But according to at least one PDX beer luminary, the city is a haven for independent beermakers as much because of the roots that didn’t grow in its silty clay soil.

“The area is really geographically isolated, so Miller and Budweiser have always had a minor presence up here,” says Van Havig, master brewer at Gigantic Brewing, which he co-founded with Ben Love in 2012. Havig says that because Big Beer never bothered the early brewpubs and local distributors in Portland, they were left to dominate the local market. “No one uses the term ‘craft beer’ or ‘microbrew’ in Portland,” he says. “Here, it’s just beer.”

Havig had attended Portland’s Reed College between 1988 and 1992, witnessing the dawn of brewpub culture in the city before moving to Minneapolis, where, after dropping out of a PhD program in economics, he started brewing commercially himself. (In fact, the term “Beervana” in reference to Portland’s budding brewing culture was first coined by Willamette Week, a local alt-weekly, in 1994.)

Havig returned to PDX in 2000 to head up the city’s Rock Bottom Brewery, an experience he remembers as “intimidating.” “It was like walking into the big leagues,” says Havig. “Portland in the 2000s was the most developed craft market in the country. Where’s the center of the craft beer world? Other places, like Colorado, have relevance. But it’s Portland—it’s always been Portland.”

Expanding Palates

It wasn’t just taprooms and brewpubs. Havig remembers that someone could walk into the most squalid-looking dive bar and find a tap of Pabst Blue Ribbon ironically standing beside five or six local brews. In fact, he remembers six omnipresent labels that spanned the spectrum of styles: Widmer Brothers’ Hefe, Deschutes’ Mirror Pond Pale Ale and Black Butte Porter, Portland Brewing’s MacTarnahan’s Amber Ale, Full Sail Brewing’s Amber Ale, and BridgePort Brewing Co.’s iconic India Pale Ale.             

The latter, a blast of citrus, floral, straw grass, and a touch of pine from five local hop varietals, was introduced in 1996. It quickly became one of the templates for what came to be known as the Northwest-style IPA—a brash, in-your-face hop bomb that, back then, flummoxed outsiders, included Havig’s regional manager.

“It was 2006 or 2007, and we and Seattle were the only Rock Bottoms with an IPA on tap,” he remembers. “The manager was like, ‘This is really aggressive.’ I told him, ‘I understand your concerns, but you need to understand that you are somewhere different now.’”

By the turn of the 2010s, Portland palates had expanded beyond the standard IPA. Havig and Love opened Gigantic in 2012, providing the in-demand hop-forward ales, but also trying to stay slightly ahead of the curve with Belgian ales, lagers, and wild inventions such as a pink beer with Japanese black rice and plums. “You could make anything, and it would sell,” he says. “You could make a smoked hefeweizen and sell 135 barrels. People here were super experimental.”

The way Portlanders drank was shifting, too. Beyond the basic dichotomy of traditional brewpubs and straightforward production breweries, specialized beer bars began popping up, and breweries found they could combine distribution (exceeding 10,000 barrels) with a taproom that could grow the brand while allowing eager patrons to drink from the source. By the mid-2010s, grocery stores and even convenience stores tapped into the zeitgeist.

“There was a real growler phenomenon,” says Edmunds, who moved to Portland in 2007 before helping found Breakside Brewing three years later. “There were dedicated beer shops and every gas station and grocery store put in a draft tower and added a bar. The creation of all that new draft real estate provided a once-in-a-generation opportunity for new and small breweries.”

Meanwhile, Breakside and Gigantic and the slew of new breweries that would emerge over the next 10 years kept pushing experimentation. For tipplers tired of ambers, porters, and even (gasp) maybe a little embittered with NW IPAs, they began barrel-aging programs, launched kettle and pastry sours, and started dry-hopping their IPAs to unlock flavors beyond pine and grapefruit.

The continued innovation has been driven in part by the only trend Portland has seemingly been behind on: Cultivating a brewing family tree. Edmunds says that for the first few decades of Beervana, brewers tended to stay put instead of leaving to start new ones. This gave interlopers like him the opportunity to enter the market with fresh takes. But now, that’s largely changed as longtime Portland brewers such as Whitney Adams have branched off to start their own establishments. “This influx of new blood keeps the scene vibrant,” Edmunds says. “These places like Grand Fir, Great Notion, Ruse, and Living Häus are being opened by people who are experienced and have well-regarded pedigrees from the city and state. And they all make high-quality beer.”

That doesn’t mean Portland isn’t facing its share of challenges. Real estate prices are skyrocketing. Things are tough for any small business. “But our resilience is strong,” says Whitney Adams. “We still support each other. People show up and go out and support these breweries.”

Edmunds says that’s largely because, after three-plus decades, craft beer is engrained in the culture of Portland and Oregon. People here want beer, need beer, and live beer. This is still Beervana. “The wildly different thing about Portland is that no one says, ‘Would you like to get a craft beer with me today?’ You just say, ‘Let’s go get a beer,’ and it’s a craft beer,’” says Havig. “It’s normal; it’s what we drink. The reality is, this is where craft beer won.”

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It’s a scene directly out of an English country pub—precisely as Hill intended it to be when the North Yorkshire-born engineer and carpenter built Broad Ripple Brewpub in the namesake bohemian neighborhood of Indianapolis in 1990. What was unintended was Hill essentially creating Indiana’s craft beer culture from the studs up. He just knew that it wouldn’t be a pub without the maltier, lower-carbonated English ales that were hard to come by in Central Indiana.

“I knew nothing about brewing, didn’t even homebrew,” Hill says. “I knew Gil Alberding, who went on to become a muckety muck at MillerCoors. He knew how to brew, and I knew what it should taste like. I didn’t want to taste them all, but I had to.”

With a tap list built on full-bodied English-style ales like the Monon Porter and the epic-if-simply-named ESB—but that also branched out into fruitier wheat beers, pale ales, and IPAs—and a hearty menu of classic UK comfort food and ahead-of-their-time vegan dishes, Hill introduced Hoosiers (as the state’s natives proudly refer to themselves) to the brewpub culture that was only just starting to bubble up on the coasts. Bangers and brown ales aside, the emphasis was on a warm and welcoming atmosphere with roots in the insular Broad Ripple community. “It was a big hit at the beginning,” he says. “There was nobody else around doing it.”

Of course, that changed as the 1990s progressed, with corporate brewpubs such as Rock Bottom, RAM, and Alcatraz coming to town, and a few local mom-and-pops popping up like Barley Island, Oaken Barrel, and Circle V. Even though Hill was the unwitting godfather of Indy craft beer, he didn’t shirk that responsibility. He supported all competitors, even when they started sprouting up in Broad Ripple just a few blocks away. Hill founded the Indiana Brewers Guild in 2000 and has since watched it grow to more than 200 members. 

Along the way, distributors, would-be investors, and even patrons have all tried to tempt Hill into opening satellite locations, franchising, and packaging. But he wouldn’t budge. “I said, no, you can’t. You can’t recreate this. It’s just a feeling,” he says. “Plus, I was too lazy to do it.”

The Dawn of Sun King

Hill’s devotion to the neighborhood model left something of a void in Indy’s burgeoning craft beer scene. Brewpubs continued to flourish throughout the metro, but most of them stayed small. While 3 Floyds Brewing (Munster) and Upland Brewing (Bloomington) built national reputations in other parts of the state, the capital city still didn’t have a signature label.

“We looked around and said, ‘Major cities have a production brewery, and there isn’t one here,'” says Dave Colt, who spent the late 1990s and early 2000s with one foot in craft brewing at Circle V and the other at the corporate RAM. “Maybe we could be those guys.”

The other half of “we” was Clay Robinson, whom Colt knew as a brewer at Rock Bottom. By 2009, the two seasoned (and slightly embittered) corporate brewpub veterans wanted to go independent—and they didn’t want to mess with food. After cashing in their savings and 401(k)s, with the help of some thirsty investors they launched Sun King Brewery, the city’s first production brewery since Indianapolis Brewing Company kicked in 1948—its lager only recently reborn as a Sun King year-round release. They started pumping out kegs of their flagship Osiris Pale Ale and two malt-forward flavors that seemed geared toward the local palates cultivated by Hill: Bitter Druid ESB and Wee Mac Scottish Ale.

Sun King’s breakout star, however, was a bit of a surprise—at least to its creators. Their first summer seasonal was Sunlight Cream Ale, a crisp and refreshing hot-weather crusher that served as a true gateway for Indy’s craft curious. “It was not intended to be our flagship, but we don’t always get to decide,” says Colt. “It’s what people wanted. It sold out; we made another batch. It sold out.”

By the end of its first year, Sun King was all over the city and had spilled over into nearby college towns like Muncie, Lafayette, and even Upland’s territory in Bloomington. Bars were quickly demanding kegs, which Colt and Robinson were still delivering personally. They produced 5,000 barrels their first full year of operation, 10,000 the following year as they started canning tallboys, and two years later, 20,000. Today, they’re the second-largest brewer in Indiana (tops is 3 Floyds), and they’ve opened a satellite location in Sarasota, Fla.

Exponential growth aside, Sun King hasn’t abandoned its hands-on, face-to-face approach. Robinson has moved to Sarasota to personally oversee that offshoot. Colt is still in Indiana, where he currently serves as president of the Indiana Brewers Guild. “The longer your tail gets, the more stuff gets lost,” he says. “There’s a diminishing return in full-on distribution. You don’t have much control over the product, with less and less control the farther away the beer gets. If you have a model where you’re hyper-local and can take care of your neighborhood, you’re in a much better position.”

Call it Kismet

When Nicole Oesch, two beers in at Upland’s South Broad Ripple satellite, declared “F–k it! We’re going to open a brewery!” her husband, Ryan, thought it was the alcohol talking. Then the permit applications from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau showed up in the mail.

Nicole forgives her husband for thinking Kismetic Beer Company was a far-fetched idea. It was 2020, and even before pandemic shutdowns sent the beer industry (like all industries) into chaos, craft beer had already seen a dramatic slowdown in growth and a retraction in volume. Forces were afoot that would shutter dozens of Indiana taprooms and breweries in the coming years—15 in 2024 after 13 closures in 2023, including Indiana City Brewing, the brewery where Nicole cut her teeth in management and where she met and hired Ryan as a bartender.

Ryan was raised in Northeastern Indiana, but he was steeped in Central Indiana beer. His college landlord was head brewer at Upland, which was his introduction to local craft beer. He started homebrewing and moved to Indy, where Broad Ripple Brewpub introduced him to community brewpub culture and more full-bodied, malt-forward ales that weened him off macro lagers. By the time Sun King came around, Ryan was a fanboy in waiting. “I followed them wherever they went,” he says. “I’d travel for a Sun King beer. They had these limited releases, firkin pours, things you felt lucky to get a snifter of.”

Meanwhile, Nicole was living in California, where her beer horizons were broadened by Sierra Nevada. When she returned to Indiana, she left her corporate career to start a food pop-up called Broke Chicks Chili that would set up at area breweries and serve chili and walking tacos. “I fell in love with taproom culture,” she says. She picked up part-time work at local breweries to supplement the pop-up, but beer soon became her full-time occupation.

By the time of Nicole’s 2020 declaration of intent to open a brewery, both she and Ryan knew what they wanted to do—and what they didn’t want to do. They wanted to stay small in terms of production, with Ryan sticking to a 3.5-barrel system that allowed him to experiment and be nimble in rotating styles and flavors, while also giving them more control over the quality of product. And they wanted to be an old-school community taproom, so they invested in the long-neglected, formerly industrial Twin Aire neighborhood on the east side of Indy, near where they lived, that was starting to show signs of life.

Most of all, Nicole wanted to emphasize the taproom. They wanted a place that was welcoming to women and people of color—groups that hadn’t necessarily felt included in the Hoosier beer scene. “We wanted to be the brewery for everybody else,” says Nicole. “We thought that if you can make a high-quality experience for cocktails, why not beer?”

Kismetic is the embodiment of that sentiment, with throwback retro-futuristic décor; low, leather lounge booths; and a dominant centerpiece bar that wraps around, making it virtually impossible to avoid conversation with bartenders and fellow drinkers. Ryan has leaned into the cocktail theme with beers such as Martini Spruce Kolsch or Amaro Saison that miraculously balances a light licorice taste with other subtle spices. For purists, his Schwarzbier and Italian and French Pilsners are doggedly true to style. “We’re just making what we like,” says Ryan.

In other words, one of Indy’s newest breweries is embodying the ethos of its first modern brewery, opened by John Hill in 1990 because he wanted a place to drink cask ales and watch football on the telly.

“I don’t know if this approach will save craft beer,” says Nicole. “But we’re buying into the neighborhood pub atmosphere, that vibe that you have to go to the taproom to get.”

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