The inaugural beer ride was
awesome. Justin and I had spoken (emailed) the week before about routes and breweries, but I think he did more legwork than I did. I am pretty seat-of-the-pants when it comes to picking out a route - as long as I have a couple of tubes and a way to get air into said tube should I get a puncture, then I am golden. Anyway, we figured we'd head east to I205, then north to Marine Drive then west to St. Johns (and
Occidental Brewing and
Plews Brews), then south back into Portland.
We met up at Justin's house around 11 and we meandered our way east to the I205 bike path and then headed north towards the airport. Bike paths in Portland just get better and better - it's such a rad place to just ride around. Both the weather and the company were nice, and we rapped about kids and mortgages and football and other minutia, finding our way heading west on the Marine Drive path.
We have done this route a few times together, but usually we're heading east on Marine drive, coming from St. Johns, but it has admittedly been a while. Evidentally, there's some construction on a bridge near the edge of "the Horn", so we were forced to back track a little ways.
So after cyclocrossing though a construction zone, we headed down through the Smith and Bybee Lakes park where we headed south on Portland Blvd, eventually making our way onto Lombard and the first of two excellent beer-centric stops,
Occidental Brewing. Now, I am admittedly not a beer nerd. There are beers I like and beers I don't like, but that's about as far as it goes for me. I do really like most beers though, and the two I had at Occidental are no exception. I started with the Cloudy Summer Kölsch-style and then tried the lovely Dunkel. The Cloudy Summer was fantastic, especially the first couple of drinks as it was super frosty and light and delicious. The Dunkel was fantastic as well, but it was overshadowed by the sip of Justin's Albier that I had, which was definitely the winner of the bunch IMHO.
After a couple of pints at Occidental, we hit
Plews Brews, which is a taphouse up on Lombard. Save for a vicously steep ~50 meter climb to get out of Occidental, it was very close by. We had two pints there too - I had a Boneyard Black 13 and a Seven Brides Pilsner, both excellent. I liked Plews a lot, a very laid back, beer and pot nerd paradise, super nice gal behind the counter too.
After Plew's we headed back to our respective homes to prepare for the arrival and beerening of our good friend, Bill, who was visiting from the east coast.
