Vancouver, Whistler & Vancouver Island - Washington, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest - page 870

Beervana & Beyond
Pacific Northwesterners like to say that surviving the long, gray, rainy win-
ters hinges on two things: beer and coffee. It's fitting then that American
craft beer and artisan coffee, as we now know them, were born in these
parts. But that's not all. There are also a booming wine industry, indie distil-
leries and a growing number of cider makers - businesses all born from the
hardheaded Northwest drive to do things right.
Two of Portland's greatest passions meet in the guide Hop in the Saddle: A Guide to Port-
land's Craft Beer Scene by Bike . The slim title offers customized bike routes to the city's
hottest beer spots.
Beer
While many West Coast breweries claim rights to the early roots of the craft-brewing
movement, there's no doubt Northwest brewers greatly influenced the evolution of this
country's craft-beer scene. In the early 1980s, a few intrepid brewers started selling their
beer commercially in Portland, including Brian and Mike McMenamin, brothers who
opened the first post-Prohibition brewpub in Oregon in 1985. The McMenamin chain now
includes 57 locations in the Northwest - historic hotels, bars, restaurants, movie theaters
and 24 brewpubs. Check them all out at www.mcmenamins.com .
Other still-operating pioneers include BridgePort Brewing and Widmer Brothers Brew-
ery in Portland and Elysian Brewing, Pike Brewing and Hale's Ales in Seattle. All of these
breweries started out making small-batch beers in a variety of styles, a strong deviation
from the bland, mass-produced commercial beers that dominated the market at the time.
Craft brewing allowed brewers to get creative, and many of them started making beer
inspired by traditional European styles before creating riffs of their own. Take the English-
styled India Pale Ale (IPA), which once included hops as a preservative to keep beer fresh
aboard long sea voyages between England and India. Northwest brewers added copious
amounts of hops to create IPAs that taste and smell like everything from pine trees to
grapefruit rinds.
Highly hopped beers have come to define the Northwest, which is appropriate consider-
ing 90% of the nation's hops are grown in Oregon and Washington. But it's not just the
hops that local brewers say make their beers special, but pristine water, locally grown and
malted barley, and a willingness to experiment with new styles and techniques.