In Portland, there’s good beer everywhere you look. Even the rundown mini-mart on the corner has a cooler filled with craft brew, and the chain grocery stores usually have at least one good 12-pack on special for the weekend. But Portland’s also got plenty of specialized beer and bottle shops where the selection’s impeccable and the staff operates at genius level, so be sure to check out these terrific places to find the perfect gift for the beer lover on your list—even if that beer lover is you.
Belmont Station
Portland’s ultimate beer den has expanded greatly from its days as a hidey-hole next door to the Horse Brass (back in the days when it was actually located on Belmont). Now located on Stark, Belmont Station is a veritable compound of all things beer, with their 34-tap Biercafé adjoining a selection of more than 1,400 different kinds of bottles and cans, and more coming in each week. This is the place to score the newest, freshest, rarest thing to drink, but be sure to stop in often, because limited releases can disappear off shelves in a matter of days. There are also tons of tastings, tappings, and special events on their calendar, and they even collaborate with breweries for special Belmont Station beers you won’t find anywhere else. (4500 SE Stark, belmont-station.com)
John’s Marketplace
An old grocery store that’s been stuffed to the gills with beer, John’s Marketplace has one of the city’s biggest selections; wandering through its shelves is like getting lost in a musty, stack-filled bookstore, except with beer. They’ve got a great selection of kegs for sale, too, plus a huge amount of wine (if your household swings both ways), and there’s a deli counter where you can score super-cheap burgers. Keep your eyes peeled for John’s to open their second location sometime in 2020, located on Southeast Powell in the former home of the Original Taco House. (3535 SW Multnomah Blvd, johnsmarketplace.com)
The BeerMongers
Drink your beer here or take it to go: The BeerMongers, in addition to having lots of coolers jam-packed with bottled and canned beer, has a 10-tap bar and a cozy rec-room feel, with TVs, board games, and plenty of beer obsessives to chat with over a pint of something uncommon and good. Located in inner Southeast Portland’s beer nexus, it’s a stone’s throw away from Apex Beer Bar, Grixsen Brewing, Baerlic Brewing, Vagabond Brewing, and lots more, so it can either be part of an epic beer crawl or you can make it a destination in its own right. (1125 SE Division, thebeermongers.com)
Saraveza
In addition to being a bottle (and can) shop par excellence, Saraveza is also a slice of the Midwest in the Pacific Northwest. There’s a menu with things like cheese curds and pasties, and a fish fry every Friday. But the real draw is the beer, whether it be from their well-curated draft list (and you can fill containers of all sizes to-go) or the walls of bottles and cans that line the room, housed in awesome vintage coolers that date from the 1940s. (1004 N Killingsworth, saraveza.com)
Fred Meyer
Look—you should always support local businesses whenever you can, and while Fred Meyer started as a Portland business, it’s now part of the Kroger conglomerate. But since you probably need to go to Fred Meyer anyway (where else can you get an electric toothbrush, a can of tennis balls, a watermelon, a bra, and a bag of charcoal in one fell swoop?), you might as well pick up some beer while you’re there. Fred Meyer’s beer selection is pretty nuts, with an almost unfathomable amount of bottles and cans to take home. There are also growler-fill stations at several of the branches, if that’s your speed. (3030 NE Weidler, 3805 SE Hawthorne, 100 NW 20th Place, fredmeyer.com)
Also, these!
Imperial Bottle Shop & Taproom (3090 SE Division, 2006 NE Alberta, imperialbottleshop.com)
McMenamins 23rd Avenue Bottle Shop (2290 NW Thurman, mcmenamins.com/23rd-avenue-bottle-shop)
Bridgetown Beerhouse (915 N Shaver, bridgetownbeer.com)
Hop Haven (2130 NE Broadway)
The Beer Bunker (7918 SE Stark, beerbunkerpdx.com)
1856Â (1465 NE Prescott, 1856pdx.com)
The Portland Beer Museum (318 SW Washington, pdxbeermuseum.com)
