Dor & Bob's Reviews

Jan 12 / 4:40pm

Review of Firestone Walker Brewing Co., Paso Robles, CA

by Bob

Firestone Walker Brewing Co.
1400 Ramada Drive
Paso Robles CA 93446
(805) 238-2556

www.firestonebeer.com

Overall Score: 95.0

Selection: 5 | Service: 4.5 | Atmosphere: 4.75 | Food: N/A

Firestone Walker is in a warehouse district south of downtown Paso Robles. From the street, you can pick out the the brewery by large grain silos. The tasting room is a pleasant, good sized space in the front of the complex. It is divided into three sections. The first is the gift shop and the bar, which has a brushed aluminum top with corrugated aluminum beneath and no chairs. The same aluminum forms the bar back. Also in this section is a large window that gives a view into part of the brewery. You can see the brewkettle and fermenters in a large room.

The second section has double high ceilings and clerestory windows. A walkway with dark wooden railings runs along the perimeter of this space on the second floor, giving brewery employees a path through. The bar continues into this section and there are a few tall dark wooden chairs. The rest of the area has dark wooden tables and chairs and on one side a long padded bench with tables. The third section opens through a large slide-up glass garage door. This section is small, is lined with windows, and has the same dark wooden chairs but with aluminum tables. Floors are concrete throughout.

There were twelve beers on tap on our visit, covering Firestone Walker and Nectar Ales brands (both brewed here). The quality of the beers is quite good and it’s a good range of styles as well. Refreshingly, the half pint price is half that of a pint, rather than the more typical higher price per ounce, making it more economical to taste a broad range of beers. 4 ounce sampler trays and growler fills are also available.

Food is minimal: chips, pretzels, and some flat bread “pizzas”.

Parking is available in a large lot in front. Tours are available (but not on the day we visited).

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Oct 28 / 6:44pm

Review of Half Moon Bay Brewing, Half Moon Bay, CA

by Bob

Half Moon Bay Brewing
390 Capistrano Rd.
Half Moon Bay CA 94019
(650) 728-2739
website

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Overall Score: 78.3

Selection: 4 | Service: 4 | Atmosphere: 3.75 | Food: 4.25

Half Moon Bay Brewing occupies a sprawling light gray wood-shingled building. The brewery itself is in a separate but similar building in the back. An expansive brick patio with plastic tables and chairs and many outdoor heaters is occupied mostly by tourists. A barrier made of clear glass panes helps cut down on wind from the ocean while still permitting a nice view of the bay and marina across the street. This outdoor space has a classic beach feel.

Inside, in the bar area, there are mostly locals. The bar itself is wood and copper and is in a long narrow U-shape in the middle of the room. Tall chairs are set up alongside it. The floors are worn stained concrete and the walls are unfinished wood. Various tall and short wooden tables are distributed around the bar. Full sliding glass doors line one side of the room and provide easy access to the patio outside.

The dining area is in another fairly large room that has an aquarium with tropical fish and windows that look out on the bay.

The beer selection is a fairly standard set of house-made brews, mostly pedestrian choices, but well made. On our visit there were Bootlegger’s Brown Ale, Harbor Lights Ale (a European light ale), Pillar Point Pale Ale, Amber Ale, Princeton-by-the-Sea IPA, Sandy Beach Blonde Hefeweizen (Bavarian-style), and Green Gold IPA. The later was a decent British-style summer IPA.

Much of the food is seafood related (fish tacos, shrimp louis salad, etc.), but burgers, sandwiches, and various other entrees are also available. The fish tacos and seafood fajitas we tried were good.

Plenty of parking is available in a lot on one side.

You can get a growler filled (Note: Currently in California, a growler container can only be filled by the brewery whose name and address is printed on it.)

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Oct 28 / 6:37pm

Review of Upright Brewing, Portland, OR

by Bob

Upright Brewing
240 N Broadway
Portland OR 97227
(503) 735-5337
website

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Overall Score: 91.7

Selection: 4.5 | Service: 4.5 | Atmosphere: 4.75 | Food: N/A

Upright Brewing is in the basement of an attractive new building in an odd location between I-5 and the Willamette River in Portland. It’s challenging to find (enter the lobby through the wooden doors on Wheeler and take the elevator to the basement), but a fun place to visit. The “tasting room” is a corner of the daylight basement brewery. There are a few tall tables without chairs, a couple of picnic tables, and a metal stand with t-shirts nestled amongst wooden barrels (presumably aging beer). Soft music plays from an actual vinyl record player with a nearby bin of records. You can also walk up to and around the brewing area and see more casks in an area further back from the small windows. The floors and some of the walls are concrete and the ceiling is high and has exposed joists and a multitude of pipes, ducts, and conduits. Walking around gives a really good view into a small production brewery.

The beers are highly unusual, generally farm-house style, but very good quality. We particularly liked the “Seven”.

There is no food except for pork rinds with mustard.

You can get a growler filled.

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Oct 27 / 9:56am

Review of Alameda Brewing, Portland, OR

by Bob

Alameda Brewing
4765 NE Fremont St
Portland OR 97213
(503) 460-9025
website

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Overall Score: 95.0

Selection: 4.75 | Service: 4.75 | Atmosphere: 4.75 | Food: N/A

Alameda Brewing has an inviting street presence with a brick facade and an awning shading tables on the sidewalk. Behind two nice tall oak doors, you enter a fairly large, two-story high room. The front wall is brick with full windows all across and the remaining walls are cinder block. The ceiling is silver-colored insulation with hanging gray metal light fixtures and the floor is concrete. Black beer-related designs (hops, brewing tools, etc.) decorate burlap wall hangings on both sides. Overall, it feels modern, relaxed, and comfortable.

A very long curved corrugated aluminum bar with a light wooden surface and lined with black padded chrome bar stools divides the left half of the room from the dining area, which is filled with light wooden tables with metal tops and matching wooden chairs. In addition, an attractive series of tall structures fashioned from long 2x2‘s along the right wall forms a row of booths with padded benches.

Behind the bar is a fairly small brew kettle and mash tun (no glass separation), and further back is a refrigeration room with the serving tanks.

There are six regular house-made beers: a golden ale, a pale, an IPA, an imperial IPA, a porter, and a stout. They also have four rotating seasonals. On our visit, the El Torero IPA and Cascadian Coal CDA were quite good.

Growler fills are available.

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Oct 27 / 9:32am

Review of Burnside Brewing, Portland, OR

by Bob

Burnside Brewing
701 E. Burnside
Portland OR 97214
(503) 946-8151
website

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Overall Score: 95.0

Selection: 5 | Service: 4.5 | Atmosphere: 4.75 | Food: 5.0

Burnside Brewing occupies a fairly generic one-story retail building with a parking lot. Eight picnic tables with umbrellas out front in the parking lot constitute the outdoor seating.

Inside is a large room with full store windows along the front and half of one side, so it’s quite bright. The ceiling is double height and has exposed joists and two massive solid beams. Fans and modern metal wagon-wheel shaped lighting fixtures hang from the ceiling. The floors are dark brown concrete. The L-shaped bar has a very wide surface of dark and light wood and is flanked by tall black padded chairs. The “bar back” is the open kitchen. The rest of the room has wooden tables and chairs and a few padded booths.

Eight house-made craft beers and 4 guest beers were on tap on our visit. The house-made beer selection is quite wide-ranging: IPA, Oatmeal Pale, Sweet Heat (apricot and scotch bonnet wheat), Stock Ale, Stout, Virgil Rye, Alter Ego Imperial IPA, and Graetzer (Mesquite and Applewood smoked wheat beer).

The food is gastro-pub - pricy but quite special.

You can purchase a growler or have one filled.

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Oct 27 / 9:07am

Review of Raccoon Lodge and Brewpub, Portland, OR

by Bob

Raccoon Lodge and Brewpub
7424 SW Beaverton-Hillsdale Hwy
Portland OR 97225
(503) 296-0110
website

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Overall Score: 83.3

Selection: 4.5 | Service: 4 | Atmosphere: 4 | Food: N/A

The Raccoon Lodge looks like a large gray house off the highway, but it turns out to be a large, spacious, clean, open restaurant upstairs and an over-21 “den” below.

Upstairs, the space is divided into two parts by a large wooden frame forming two rows of booths. There are plenty of good-sized windows on this level, so the spaces are fairly bright. On the right are wooden tables and chairs, more booths and a large stone fireplace in the back topped by a stuffed deer head. More lighting is provided by large glass hemispheres hanging from the very high midnight blue ceilings. On the left are more of the same tables and chairs and a fairly small U-shaped wooden bar with tall wooden chairs. Additional lighting on this side comes from simulated kerosene lanterns hanging from the ceiling. The padded seats and backs in the booths are covered in a Pendleton-style, Indian blanket motif fabric. The walls are painted a dark sea-foam green and the floor is covered with brown tiles.

In the back behind the building is a covered outdoor patio with picnic tables, a lawn with trees and more tables, and a huge outdoor smoker/barbecue. There is also a row of seating on a deck on the upper level outside the restaurant area in the front and along one side.

There were nine beers on our visit, covering an unusual range, including 2 IPAs, a Gose (traditional German spiced summer wheat beer), and a light farmhouse ale. The Summer Solstice IPA was great and the Razberry Wheat has wonderful fruit flavor. A fine choice of aged fruit beers (bottled) is also available.

The food is traditional pub fare - fried appetizers, burgers, and sandwiches.

The “den” downstairs has very much a basement feeling (office-like ceiling tiles and fluorescent lights), but it has the same deep sea foam green walls and full windows along one side overlooking the brewery, the serving tanks, and the aging barrels.

There is plenty of parking in a lot on the side.

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Oct 26 / 11:36am

Review of Paradise Creek Brewing, Pullman, WA

by Bob

Paradise Creek Brewing
245 SE Paradise St.
Pullman, WA 99163
United States
(509) 338-9463
http://paradisecreekbrewery.com/

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Overall Score: 83.3

Selection: 4.5 | Service: 3.75 | Atmosphere: 4.25 | Food: 3.75

Paradise Creek Brewery occupies a nice historic (1930) post office converted to a brewpub. The space is both grand and down-to-earth. Marble steps lead up from the street to a large marble-lined lobby with a high ceiling and several skylights. There’s a bottle shop on the left, the restrooms are on the right, and straight ahead is the large main room that houses the restaurant and small bar. Inside this room, the ceilings are also quite high and grand, and the serving bar is made from white marble, but the tables, chairs, and several comfortable couches are more characteristic of basement den/nicer college dorm decor. The tall, multiple-pane windows on three sides are elegant and have tapestry curtains. The walls are half wooden paneling and half painted purple. The floor looks like it could be the original oak floor.

A small wooden bar with tall wooden tables occupies one corner and there is a fireplace on the long wall opposite the entrance. A large screen that can be raised and lowered as needed is at one narrow end of the room and is used with a ceiling projector that shows sports or movies on some evenings.

There were eight house-made beers on tap on our visit, covering a good range of styles, though more on the lighter end: Blond, English, ESB, 2 IPAs, Dunkel, Porter, and a seasonal. The (tiny) brewery itself is in the basement and is visible through windows from the street.

Food is standard pub fare: appetizers, burgers, sandwiches, and salads. The burger we had was nicely grilled.

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Oct 26 / 10:50am

Review of Mt. Helena Brewing Company, Middletown, CA

by Bob

Mount St. Helena Brewing Company
21167 Calistoga Street
Middletown, CA 95461
United States
(707) 987-3361
Facebook Page

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Overall Score: 78.3

Selection: 3.75 | Service: 4.25 | Atmosphere: 3.75 | Food: N/A

Mount St. Helena Brewing occupies a stuccoed building with large windows on the main street in the old hot springs resort of Middletown. It’s very much a locals’ place with local high school sports awards and team photos on the walls, and it has a relaxed, family-friendly environment. The entrance leads into a large room with dining seating and a partially open kitchen. To the left is another smaller room with the bar and bar area seating. All the floors are covered with large earthy-color tiles, the walls are knotty pine panelling, and the high ceiling is an old looking ceiling of white painted planks and it is equipped with several fans. All the tables are all wood-edged green formica and the chairs are light wood with red padded seats.

Outside, a small patio occupies a narrow space between this building and the post office next door and there are a number of metal tables and chairs with umbrellas.

Unfortunately, they were between brewers when we visited, so the only selection was other local craft beers, but the range was good (8 taps and a cider). You can see the brewery through windows at the back of the dining room.

The food specialty is pizza, and there are also sandwiches and pasta dishes. We didn’t have time to try anything, so haven’t given a score.

Parking is available on the street.

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Oct 23 / 10:34am

Review of Palouse Falls Brewing, Pullman, WA

by Bob

Palouse Falls Brewing Co
1335 SE Bishop Blvd
Pullman, WA 99163
United States
(509) 334 6427
www.palousefallsbrewing.com

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Overall Score: 95.0

Selection: 4.75 | Service: 5 | Atmosphere: 4.5 | Food: N/A

The overall impression of Palouse Falls Brewing is of an unfinished warehouse that is nevertheless a comfortable place to hang out and enjoy the beer. It’s well worth a visit.

This is not an easy brewery to find. It is located in an actual warehouse at the extreme southeast corner of the college town of Pullman. Neither Google Maps, nor our GPS could correctly locate the address. (The map above should be correct, though.) The brewery is on the West side of Bishop Boulevard, between SE Bleasner Drive and SE Johnson Road. The building is set back from the street behind another business, so look carefully for the signs placed out by driveway on Bishop.

In front of the building there is a fenced-in concrete patio with tables and chairs. Inside is the tasting room with the brewery in back. A simple black two-sided bar is in one corner of the tasting room. Several wooden tables and chairs and a small open office area occupy the rest of the space. At the back of the room, a very large sliding door with windows gives a view into the clean and fairly large brewery.

There was a nice range of beers on our visit, 4 regulars, and two seasonals: Idaho Au (cream ale/Kolsch), their best seller Crimson Pride (red ale), Kamiak IPA, Steptoe Stout, Spring Thaw (strong golden), and Whitman (wheat with coriander and orange peel).

There is no food (besides pretzels), but you can bring your own or order in. You can buy beer in growlers to go.

There is a gravel parking lot in front. There is also a community hiking trail just behind the brewery, and you can follow it North along the river to Main Street. Ask at the bar for directions.

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Oct 22 / 3:02pm

Review of Saraveza, Portland, OR

by Bob

Saraveza
1004 N Killingsworth St
Portland, OR 97217
United States
(503) 206-4252
www.saraveza.com

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Overall Score: 90.0
Selection: 4.5 | Service: 4.5 | Atmosphere: 4.5 | Food: N/A

Saraveza is in an old brick building on a corner in North Portland. The atmosphere is relaxed, casual, and comfortable. The most striking feature you see as you enter are the two bright green, mid-century refrigerated cases. They hold a superb selection of bottled Belgian beers as well as a sampling of regional craft beers (both 22 ounce “bombers” and 6-packs). You can drink the beer in the bar or buy it to go.

The front is all windows, so it’s quite bright inside. In this area are two booths with padded seats and three small, tall wooden tables with worn black padded stools. Further back is the bar and more booths and small, tall tables. The table tops throughout are decorated with different patterns of used bottle caps covered by glass. (The same technique is used creatively in a framed mosaic depicting an elk.) Further decorations include old beer memorabilia such as cans, lighted signs, etc. The floor is an old, nice, but worn wood floor. The ceilings are high with a fan and 1960’s era hanging lamps.

A few tables and chairs outside on the sidewalk serve for outdoor seating.

The draft beer selection (10 taps) is quite a ranging selection of regional craft beers, Belgian, and European imports (e.g., Stiegel lager from Austria, Liefman’s Cuvee Bruit Kriek), and oddly, Hamms. Growler fills are available.

The food specialty is pasties but there are also soups, salads, and special entrees. We didn’t try anything, however.

Parking is on the street.