Hoptrip day 1

The streets of Portland are crawling with brewers. They aren’t screaming through the streets in large groups like an Amsterdam bachelor party. Nor are they dressed as princesses or smurfs. But they are easily recognizable. For one, they are dressed to head to toe in their own brewery merchandize. Second, they walk with the same determination to visit every brewery and tap room in the city (and there are many). Finally, every one orders the same thing: fresh hop IPAs. 

Uiltje is not above this game. We too are dressed in Uiltje merch, we too are determined to visit every brewery and try every fresh hop beer we can find. To maximize our opportunities, we have decided to never order the same beer. Every round is a chance to taste four new beers. Every sip is followed by a long discussion about the nuances of the hop variety, intensity, the yeast. 

Each of us has a role. Mike and Tjebbe have a list of breweries we must visit. They control this list. Paddi has organized all the hop farm visits and collaborations we have planned with Breakside and Deschutes. John is in charge of intel, gathering insights and sneaking away for interviews with the region’s local hop gods. 

We arrived on Day 1 at 11 am. By the end of this jet-laggy day we had tasted several dozen beers at Migration, Wayfinder, Baerlic, Brujos, Function NW and Ruse. We washed it all down with Thai BBQ, Vietnames Pho and Detroit-style deep dish pizza. We are inspired. A couple of times, we are even wow’d. And by the time we head to bed that evening we all agree on one thing: Wayfinder does not serve a single bad beer. So clean, so drinkable. We could have stayed there all night long.