Portland Brewery Week-Day 5

We conclude our Portland brewery week with a look at Cascade Brewing Barrel House, an older brewery that specializes in barrel-aged sour beers. Cascade was one of the first breweries in the United States to emphasize sour ales and have won numerous awards for them. Although they distribute to some of the major areas of the United States, they feature a number of their beers in their tap room.

The barrel house, called the “house of sour,” is located near several other Portland breweries, such as Hair of the Dog, Lucky Labrador, and Rogue. The barrel house is in a lovely brick building with lots of windows, including clear garage doors. Although the primary structure is brick, the windows, metal accents, and signs give the tap room a rather modern appearance. Inside there is a small tap room with warm colors on the walls. There is a large bar area with barrels built into the wall where the beers taps are located, making clear that the focus is on barrel-aged beers.

The barrel house features around twenty sour beers on tap. Some of these feature different kinds of fruit, others emphasize different types of barrels used in the aging process, and still others focus on both elements. It was difficult to choose just a few to taste. Each of the beers we tried were excellent, with the Sang Royal, a red ale aged in Pinot Noir barrels, and Sang Noir, a bourbon barrel-aged red ale with cherries, particularly memorable.

A visit to Cascade Brewing Barrel House is a fun and interesting experience, because of both the quality of the beers and the unique beers being served. It is well worth the time to go there.