[From E+D, the Mercury‘s new Spring Eat & Drink Guide!]
RIGHT NOW, you might need to use your imagination a little as you approach Wayfinder Beer. The brewpub is still a few weeks from opening in the space next door to the former Branx club—just around the corner from Produce Row Café, the beer bar and restaurant that opened in the Central Eastside Industrial District 40 years ago. But soon enough, you’ll be sitting in Wayfinder’s 120-seat beer garden, perched under an umbrella, peering out at the Portland skyline from SE 2nd with the whir of vehicles speeding or perhaps inching onto I-5 from the Morrison Bridge. To keep you company, you’ll have a chewy house-baked pretzel and delicate Wayfinder pilsner served in a Seidel mug—those dimpled, rounded mugs where the width softens up the beer’s free-range carbonation bubbles and keeps the huge, foamy, white head perfect.
The ambitious Wayfinder Beer, scheduled to open later this spring, aims to be a hybrid of a German beer hall and a Northwest gastropub. Rather than one marksman shooting for this target, the project has three partners and a capable brewmaster who are all well versed at hitting the bull’s-eye.
Wayfinder found its roots in Charlie Devereux’s search for his next beer project after departing Double Mountain Brewing in Hood River. He quickly teamed up with Sizzle Pie’s Matt Jacobson, who he describes as a “serial entrepreneur.” The third partner is Podnah’s Pit’s Rodney Muirhead. Yes, the menu calls for amazingly prepared meats, including house-ground sausages.
To wash down those sausages, Kevin Davey will keep 16 house beers on tap. Of those, expect eight of them to be lagers. That’s right in Davey’s wheelhouse.