George's Diary of his Trip to the Oregon Hop Selection 2025
The Journey
After a bumpy flight I landed in Portland at 17:30. Having never been to the US before, the first thing I noticed is that everything is just bigger than it is in the UK. The cars, the roads, the people, everything.
Would you believe it... Just two doors down from the Air BnB there is a brewery called Stormbreaker Brewery, and they have 3 fresh hop beers on next door. Perfect.
After some beers there we went off to Loyal Legion. Will (from Brewers Select) had a 4.7 rating on Uber which apparently is a bad thing. Huge beer selection at loyal legion - whole section of menu for fresh hop beers.
Day 1
We went to meet Jim, from Indie Hops, and Gavin, from Hetty Alice Beers, at the Indie Hops office, then went for a breakfast 'biscuit' - effectively a savoury buttermilk scone that is flaky rather than crumbly, typically with bacon, scrambled eggs, cheese, even avocado. I'm vegan so went with the plant based option, it was to die for.
We went with Gavin to collect some green Chinook hops from Coleman's Hop farm just over an hour away, and had a tour of the farm and picking machine. It was almost giving a Wallace and Gromit style mad machine with so many moving conveyors, and shaking motors. Simple and complicated at the same time.
We then went over to Hetty Alice brewery where Gavin brews to catch the fresh hops in the mash tun. Gavin took us through his beer lineup which for a first beers of the day, were good ones to start. The Festbier and West Coast Pils were personal highlights.
After that, we all went to Wayfinder brewery for more beers and some food, then ended up going on a pub crawl back through downtown Portland where we finished the night with frozen microwave burritos from the convenience store, right over the road from our Airbnb.
Day 2
Waking up feeling slightly worse for wear, we walked a minute up the road for breakfast at Just Eggs, then hopped back into the tank that we had rented and headed off to Goschie Farm to meet Jim (Indie Hops) to watch some of the harvesting. The farm had a brand new hop kiln which was really interesting to see.
We walked out into the hop fields to try some of Jim's hops in development. They were smelling great, I picked up on a strong hit of rhubarb...
Post Goschie we headed back to Indie Hops HQ to begin our pub crawl, starting at Baerlic. Another huge space (by England's standards) with amazing beers and the best Detroit pizza I've ever had.
From Baerlic we wandered a block down the road to the BeerMongers bottle shop, where I got to try some cask! It was good, not quite as good as English cask though...
Again, we drank lots of beers then wandered down to the Everywhere Taproom for one last beer before getting a taxi over to Grand Fir Brewing for some more food and beer. It all got a bit blurry...
Day 3
Up and out to meet Jim at Indie Hops HQ. We grabbed a Mexican breakfast from a place down the road whilst we waited for Jim to arrive. We then were lucky enough to choose the UK lots for Strata, Audacia and Lorel. A personal highlight for me was the Strata. Having just released an IPA with Strata as the headliner, it was great to be able to have a part in the selection for UK brewers.
The selection was eye opening. I didn't anticipate quite how much variety there would be between lots of the same hop. My hands were yellow for the next 2 days from the insane amount of oil in the hops.
After selection, we went to Von Ebert for beers and ordered some tacos. The beers there were really good. There was a $3.00 American lager which was the cheapest beer I've seen out here.
We then managed to persuade Jim & Matt to sack off work and come drinking with us (not much push back). We went back to Storm Breaker which is just 2 doors down from the AirBnB and had (for me) the best beer of the trip, a fresh hop Strata hazy IPA. Absolutely dripping with Strata fruitiness. We then continued on another Portland bar crawl.
Day 4
After another huge breakfast and some retail therapy we arrived at Crosby Hops and met Nolan at Crosby HQ where I delivered cans of our Cornish brewers Crosby collab, Big Friendly Comet (Tangent about BFC).
When Nolan suggested doing a single hop Comet West Coast Pils I was a little unsure, but went with it. Since then, it's become my favourite beer we’ve brewed at Bluntrock. West Coast Pils beers aren't well known in Cornwall at all, but since being out here, I've seen how common they are and for good reason.
We did the lot of selection for the UK's Centennial before going on a full tour of Crosby, where we were lucky enough to catch Crosby's hop developer who let us rub three new prototype varieties straight off the kiln.
Day 5
After a relaxed morning we headed over to Pines Brewing to meet for the Crosby bus. After a few beers it arrived and we headed out to Top Rope bar at Crosby for the harvest party.
On arrival we grabbed some beers, said hello to the guys at Crosby and found a table in the shade where we tried to cool off with a cold beer. We were given a pass to head to the Crosby bar, closed off from the general public, where we could try some fresh beers brewed with experimental new hop varieties.
I was particularly impressed by the Crosby staff putting fresh hops in their beers. The end of the evening consisted of drunken karaoke on the bus home...
Day 6
Jim just couldn't say no to a beer... So after a lazy Saturday morning, we met Jim for more beers and another pub crawl... Ending in Stormbreaker.
Day 7
Meeting Jim before flying home AGAIN for more beers... After everyone else left for the airport, Jim took me to all the Portland spots we didn't manage to fit in. Then off to the airport and back to London. What a trip.
THE END
Thank you for reaching the end of the first Bluntrock blog post, going forwards we'll be using this platform to journal more of our beer-scapades here at Bluntrock, so stay tuned in.