Portlanders love their locally-produced brews. The seaside city was a pioneering force in the East Coast craft beer crusade and the brewing scene has only gained momentum. High-profile Portland breweries such as Allagash Brewing and Maine Beer Company have been joined by an expanding collection of upstart beermakers, elevating the coastal community to a premier beercation destination.

(BEER TRAVEL: Plan a Brewery Road Trip)

Beyond Portland’s bustling Old Port is the East End district. A largely residential area, the East End is undergoing a transformation as coffee shops, farm-to-table restaurants and other locally-focused businesses are sprouting like wildflowers, infusing a positive energy through the neighborhoods. A concentration of breweries provides gathering spots for residents, as well as destinations for a growing influx of beer-loving visitors. In fact, the East End has become a hotbed of fermentation as a winery, cidery, meadery and several distilleries have all set up shop here, with more adult beverage businesses in the works. The East End is well-deserving of its nickname, the “Yeast End.”

The brewery walking tour described below begins just east of Portland’s Old Port and takes you across the Portland Peninsula, with visits to four breweries. The total distance is just over a mile.

Shipyard Brewing

A wily veteran of Maine’s craft beer scene, Shipyard Brewing began life in a former shipyard in 1992 and moved to its current large production facility two years later. The business has grown into Maine’s largest brewing operation, and 28th nationally.

The expansive gift shop is evidence of the brewery’s popularity among tourists. Hour-long tours are offered Wednesday through Saturday. While many breweries who are a similar size as Shipyard have installed highly-automated brewing systems, the Shipyard system remains a largely hands-on operation. Of special interest are the rarely-seen open fermenters, ranging in size from 50 barrels to an impressive 300 barrels.

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The tasting room dispenses over a dozen mostly session-strength beers. The brewery’s flagship is Export, an unassuming golden ale originally created to appeal to the many Canadians who vacation on the Maine coast. Shipyard’s largest seller is its seasonal Pumpkinhead, which was first brewed in 1996 and is distributed in 40 states. While the brewery has an old school feel, they try to keep things fresh with new brews such as the recently-introduced line of tea-infused beers.

Oxbow Blending and Bottling

The short walk to your next stop will take you past the Eastern Cemetery, established in 1668. A short stroll through the grounds is a worthwhile diversion.

Oxbow Blending and Bottling is tucked discreetly down a short alleyway adjacent to a brick structure housing a meadery and distillery. Beyond the nondescript exterior is an airy warehouse-like space that’s been tastefully imbued with an artsy look and feel. Picnic tables and a long copper bar populate the large tasting room. A short wall separates drinkers from the production area. Rows of wooden barrels stacked floor-to-ceiling mostly obscure a collection of stainless fermenters lined up along a wall displaying an intriguing graffiti-style mural.

Oxbow’s farmhouse-style beers are brewed on a farm located about an hour north in Newcastle, then trucked to the Portland facility where mixed culture fermentation, barrel-aging, blending and packaging take place. The house beers are an interesting assortment of dry-hopped, sour and fruited saisons, grisettes and other styles that are both approachable and nuanced, making for a rewarding tasting experience.

Rising Tide Brewing Company

In 2010, longtime homebrewer and Portland native, Nathan Sanborn, decided to test the waters of commercial brewing by opening a modest one-barrel nanobrewery. Two years later, Sanborn went full throttle, expanding the brewhouse to a 15-barrel operation, and eventually adding a tasting room. From its humble beginnings, Rising Tide is now riding a wave of popularity.

The brewery’s easy-going ambiance attracts both thirsty locals and out-of-towners enjoying Portland’s vibrant beer culture. A variety of indoor seating options is supplemented by a fleet of picnic tables on the parking-lot-turned-patio, where crowds gather for warm weather imbibing.

Heather Sanborn, Nathan’s business partner and wife, is a former lawyer and past-president of the Maine Brewers’ Guild. Her work helping legalize brewery tasting rooms in the state was an important step in elevating Maine’s reputation as a great beer destination.

Rising Tide’s brewhouse produces beers in a wide range of genres. Maine Island Trail Ale, a hoppy session ale, is a longtime crowd pleaser. Partial proceeds from the beer go to the Maine Island Trail Association, an organization dedicated to protecting the wild islands of the Maine coast.

Lone Pine Brewing Company

Although Lone Pine is a relative newcomer to the local beer scene, it has made a big splash among Maine’s beer devotees. This is largely due to the runaway success of Portland Pale Ale, which drew instant accolades when the fledgling brewery opened in the spring of 2016. The eminently quaffable American Pale Ale is now on tap at 120 locations throughout the state.

Lone Pine specializes in American-style hoppy beers. That’s just fine with local hopheads who flock to the brewery to linger over pints of IPAs, double IPAs and, of course, the pale ale. On Thursdays, brewery fans line up en masse outside the peach-pink building when new canned offerings are released to the public.

On occasion, Lone Pine tones down its hop obsession to brew more esoteric creations featuring locally-sourced ingredients. One example is the Maple Coffee Brown Ale brewed with Maine maple syrup. An earthier formulation is the Chaga Stout, brewed with health-enhancing Maine Chaga mushrooms.

A modestly-sized tasting room is furnished with a few cushy sofas contributing to a relaxed vibe. An assortment of board games encourages you to kick back for an extended stay at your final stop on the Portland East End walking tour.

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Boise is on a roll. Big hotels are sprouting up in the downtown district. Crime and unemployment are low. Real estate is relatively affordable. The city of 200K has many of the cultural amenities of larger metropolises, just in lower concentrations. Boise’s compact downtown district is easily navigable on foot or by bicycle. The sidewalks are spotless and car horns are seldom heard.

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Boise residents are enamored of all things local, especially beer. If the Boise beer scene has little visibility outside of Idaho, this is due more to the city’s geographic isolation than a lack of options. In recent years, the city has quietly amassed an impressive collection of breweries and brewpubs. New brewing businesses are in the works, and recent expansions are evidence of a thriving beer culture.

Boise Beer Travel: Exploring Downtown

A great way to begin exploring “The City of Trees” is with a stroll through Freak Alley. The back walls of a series of buildings along intersecting alleyways sport a sizable collection of murals in an attention-grabbing diversity of styles. In the heart of the downtown district, Boise Brewing opened in 2014 following a successful Kickstarter campaign in which investors received stock in the brewery. Dividends are paid in beer. The interior of the blue and mustard-colored concrete block structure is dominated by the open brewhouse. Tall, stainless steel vessels loom over the bar and tables. The brewery’s rich and roasty Black Cliff’s American Stout has won back-to-back GABF gold medals. If you love talking beer, you’re in the right place. The four female beer servers are all homebrewers.

It’s a short walk to the Bittercreek Alehouse, Boise’s premier gastropub. The food is well-prepared and the 44 draught beers have a largely local focus. In fact, the beer menu lists the distance to each brewery from the restaurant. Also nearby is a great breakfast spot named BACON. The name says it all.

On the fringes of downtown, Payette Brewing resides in a handsome new facility along the Boise River Greenbelt. Since beginning operations in 2010, Payette has grown into one of Idaho’s largest and most respected brewing businesses. It’s hard to miss the expansive modern industrial building with a huge mountain mural painted on an exterior wall. The 60-barrel production brewhouse is visible through a glass wall at the far end of the airy tasting room. Nineteen house beers include three full-time IPAs, reflecting local beer enthusiasts’ obsession with hoppy ales.

North of downtown, Boise’s historic North End is considered “Old Boise.” As you travel between the neighborhood’s two breweries, take some time to explore the leafy side streets lined with lovingly restored century-old homes. Tucked in the corner of a large shopping complex called the “Marketplace,” Cloud 9 Brewery offers a comfy retreat. A pleasant outdoor patio is warmed by space heaters for cool weather imbibing. The back half of the modestly-sized interior consists of the glassed-in four-barrel brewhouse. There’s an emphasis on locally-sourced ingredients for both the made-from-scratch kitchen creations and the half-dozen rotating specialty beers that supplement six full-time offerings.

Highlands Hollow Brewhouse, the granddaddy of Boise breweries, has operated as a brewpub since 1992, but its restaurant roots date from the 1960s. Located at the base of the road to the Bogus Basin Ski Area, “The Hollow” has long been a popular refueling stop following a day of mountain recreation. The atmospheric brick and dark wood indoor space includes a circular fireplace in the middle of the dining room, a collection of vintage ski posters and a well-worn ambiance that can’t be reproduced. The house beers rotate regularly, but are largely styles of British origin.

Boise Breweries Outside the City Center

Boise’s energized beer scene has given rise to a growing number of brewing business scattered in outlying areas. Garden City, despite its bucolic moniker, is a mostly industrial enclave about five miles from downtown Boise. Cheap leases and free water have fueled the opening of a cluster of breweries in recent years. Biking the river trail to Garden City for a tasting session is a popular weekend activity.

For a small mom-and-pop operation, Barbarian Brewing gets a disproportionate amount of attention among local craft beer devotees. Boise’s most talked-about brewery opened in 2015 with a unique focus on sour and barrel-aged creations. The brewery’s two-room tasting area is a small and inviting space to sample an assortment of 15 sour and “clean” house beers. The most popular is Beta Wolf 2.0, a sour IPA brewed with mango and passionfruit. Seven rotating taps feature experimental creations such as Folkvang, a tart Berliner Weisse made with strawberries, cardamom and rosewater. Barbarian is gearing up for the opening of a downtown Boise taproom in summer, 2017.

Just a mile down the road, two-year-old Bella Brewing occupies an unpretentious concrete block structure. A few tables and a bar populate the indoor space, with brewing vessels lined up along interior walls. As is the norm in hop-intensive Boise, the IPA is the most popular of the 13 house beers which run the gamut of pale, amber, dark, tart and fruited fermentations.

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About 10 miles west of the city center, oft-decorated Sockeye Brewing has built an attractive restaurant and imposing production brewing facility. The vast mountain lodge-style dining room features log beams and columns and a spacious outdoor patio. A 15-beer draught collection includes six core beers of familiar styles augmented with seasonal, specialty, sour and barrel-aged offerings. The brewing operation, which is among the state’s largest, is housed in a separate structure behind the restaurant. Sockeye also operates a second, smaller-capacity brewpub closer to downtown.

With a regional mall just a mile away, the dining room of Edge Brewing Company does a brisk business with shoppers and families. Surprisingly, the brewpub’s best-selling beer is the big, burly, 9% ABV Obligatory DIPA. That suits the Edge brew crew just fine. They make no apologies for their fondness for high-gravity, indulgently-hopped ales. At any given time, you’re likely to find three or four 9%-plus beers on tap. If imperial-strength ales aren’t your forte, you’ll find an assortment of more approachable offerings such as the clean and agreeable Vienna Lager.

It’s fitting to call the beers of Mad Swede Brewing Company “well-engineered.” Co-founder and brewer Jerry Larson was a long-time mechanical engineer before he and wife Susie opened what is currently Boise’s newest brewery in 2016. Larson gets the most out of his fine-tuned 15-barrel brewing system, producing bright, well-attenuated, satisfying ales. The eight house beers dispensed in the small cheery tasting room have a bias toward dark styles. As the closest brewery to the airport, Mad Swede is a great introduction to the Boise beer scene, or a final stop if you’re departing the city by plane.

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