Top 10 Vegetarian Friendly Breweries and Brewpubs Across America

My wife and I recently reached our milestone of traveling to all 50 states, ensuring we visit the local brewery in each of the places that we visit. While I am an avid meat eater, my wife is vegetarian. So, the places we choose to eat during our travels had to be well researched in advance to ensure they have a vegetarian menu that met the expectations of my wife, who can be quite a picky eater. Luckily, nowadays, that isn’t hard. Many breweries and brewpubs offer at least one vegetarian option on their menu, to various degrees of success and creativity.

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Fremont Brewing | Head Full of Dynamite v.8

What do you call these hazy IPAs that seem to be everywhere? This style goes by many names; NEIPA, Juicy IPA, Hazy IPA. But whatever you call these juice bombs it seems they’re here to stay and in full effect from coast to coast.
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Portland’s BridgePort Brewing Closing Their Doors in March

Image courtesy of the BridgePort Brewing Facebook page.

The year after I graduated college, I visited Portland, Oregon for the very first time. To celebrate my arrival to the Pacific Northwest, I immediately commenced my visit with a stop at BridgePort Brewing Company. I vividly remember sitting on their outdoor deck, ordering a sampler tray, and blissfully working my way through their varieties – being taken by each brew that I tried.

Six years later after that visit, BridgePort Brewing has announced that they are closing their doors.

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Portland’s Widmer Brothers Brewing Announces Pub Closure

One of America’s founding fathers of craft beer, Portland, OR’s Widmer Brothers Brewing, announced yesterday that they have closed their North Portland pub as of Sunday, January 20. First opened 22 years ago, the full-service restaurant pub underwent a renovation … Read More

pFriem | Bourbon Barrel Imperial Stout

pFriem (pronounced “reem”) Family Brewers is a German and Belgian-inspired brewery in Oregon, a location where breathtaking views of the mountain and rivers make you wonder why you haven’t moved to the Pacific Northwest. Josh Pfriem devoted his career to learning as much as he could about crafting delicious beer and, in 2012, he achieved his lifelong dream of opening an artisanal brewery in Hood River with partners Ken Whiteman and Rudy Kellner. Today, they have several award-winning beers pouring from their taps along with a well-earned, loyal following.

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PorchDrinking’s Best in Beer 2018 | Pacific Northwest

2018 was another exciting year to be a member and supporter of the Washington beer scene. From highly anticipated new openings to heartbreaking brewery closures, PorchDrinking’s PNW team is grateful for the opportunity to cover it all. In honor of our beer-obsessed, flannel-wearing, hop-loving region, we present PorchDrinking’s Best of the PNW Awards for 2018:  Read More

Anchor Brewing | Old Foghorn Barleywine

We’re finally feeling the weather changes here in Northern California. It’s beautiful, and my favorite time of the year. Not only because of the crisp air, but because it’s now barleywine season. Don’t get me wrong, I can drink barleywine anytime of the year; however, it’s difficult to find someone to crush the strong stuff with in the middle of summer. 

I attended the 25th annual barleywine festival at Toronado in San Francisco a few weeks ago. 50 taps flowing, sweaty bodies crowding the bar, and the smell of future hangovers filled the room; I was in heaven. Soon I was sampling with other malt enthusiasts. A ton of great and not-so-great examples of the sweet stuff were tried, but one was particularly delightful. 

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7 Seas Brewing | Boobytraps Cascadian Dark Ale

7 Seas Brewing Cascadian Dark Ale has been one of the premier representations of the Black IPA style within the Pacific Northwest for quite sometime, however it was only recently that this fall gem was packaged for the first time.

Named “Boobytraps” with inspiration coming from the 80’s PNW cult classic film about kids searching for treasure, this Black IPA style beer starts off with nuances of orange marmalade fleeting across the palate. Then a wave of pine and sticky resin comes rushing through with a restrained bitterness and a touch of roasted coffee. From beginning to end this one is velvety smooth.  Read More

The Pike Brewing Company | Space Needle Golden IPA

A few weeks ago, on a cloudy Seattle Friday night, dozens of beer fanatics flooded the basement of the Pike Brewing Company in celebration of the establishment’s 29th Canniversary. Tucked away from the hustle and bustle of the taproom and restaurant, guests mingled amidst the brewery’s fermenters and bottling lines – sipping away on the quintessential Pike brews and slurping down oysters from the Puget Sound. Read More

Georgetown Brewing Company | Manny’s Pale Ale

Readers of PorchDrinking.com, I’d like to introduce you to Seattle’s pale ale. That’s right – in the city with the most craft breweries in the entire country, known for pioneering brewers and enthusiastic hopheads, I’m daring to single out one brew as Seattle’s illustrative pale. Please raise a glass and introduce yourself to Manny’s Pale Ale from Georgetown Brewing Company.  Read More

Modern Times Beer & Pueblo Vida Brewing Company | Arcosanti Fresh Hop IPA

Everyone has a favorite brewery, or a few of them. If the stars ever align and those breweries get together and brew a collaboration beer, then that’s about as good as it gets for a beer lover. In this case, … Read More

Holy Mountain | The Ox

If you’re not familiar with Holy Mountain Brewing out of Seattle, then this beer, The Ox, will motivate you to change that. This barrel-aged saison is brewed with orange zest and Cascade hops, fermented in oak barrels (drooling). I had the pleasure of trying some of their brews for the first time recently and was floored by both the innovation of their brewing and quality of beer, particularly this saison.

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Sierra Nevada | 2018 Oktoberfest

Beer: one of America’s staples. One of the biggest, most popular industries in our beloved country. When you think of beer, you think happy hour, late nights with friends, summer nights, fall nights, unwinding after the kids go to bed or maybe even visiting one of your local establishments to find something new to taste. When I’m joining in on any of those festivities, I think about finding a beer that will satisfy my never-ending quest for delicious beer. I don’t care which craft brewery I get my beer from; I just care that it’s good, and that it was made with the hopes that the craft beer world would enjoy it.

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Fort George Brewery | City of Dreams

Does anyone else feel like mere mortals when walking into an iconic brewery? We put these places on pedestals because it’s more than beer; it’s an art and art should be praised and marveled. Fort George Brewery is one of those places in the Pacific Northwest, having created an epic name for themselves in the town of Astoria, Oregon. A lovely way to celebrate the brewery and its home city is with its City of Dreams New England Style Pale Ale.

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From Bine to Glass: Going Inside This Year’s Yakima Hop Harvest

Come for a drive with me. It will only take two hours or so. We’re leaving Seattle – taking I-90 out of town, going east. Within half an hour or so we’ll hit the majestic Cascade Mountains – one of the countries’ most expansive ranges, stretching from Northern California all the way into Canada. It’s home to some pretty famous volcanoes – Mount Rainier and Mount St. Helens if we’re naming names. But we’re not stopping in the Cascades. We are pushing onward, for another hour, until we cross into Eastern Washington. It’s a vastly different landscape than the wet, lush, rainforest on the other side of the state. Here it’s dry, arid and almost desert-like. A beauty that’s starkly different, but no less beautiful, than the Cascades that we’ve just driven through. Within a few minutes, we’ll hit Yakima – our final destination. Why are we going to Yakima, you ask? It’s an obvious answer this time of year: It’s hop harvest. Read More

Chuck’s Hop Shop’s General Manager Dishes on Seattle’s Craft Beer Scene

If you love Seattle’s craft beer scene, you love Chuck’s Hop Shop—it’s as simple as that. Chuck’s Hop Shop, which has two locations in the Emerald City, has gained a reputation for being the fan-favorite, no-frills watering hole and bottle shop for craft beer fanatics. It’s where you go for an incredible and ever-rotating selection with dozens of beers on tap and hundreds of bottles available to go as well as knowledgeable and approachable bartenders that are eager to give recommendations on what brews simply cannot be missed. As a result, Chuck’s has cemented itself as a pillar of the Pacific Northwest craft community in the four years since its founding.

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pFriem Family Brewers | Pilsner

Pilsners tell the truth about a brewer’s acumen and prowess as there is no place to hide within pilsners; many beer connoisseurs rely on pilsners as a litmus test for a brewery’s overall quality. If beer styles were musical compositions, then pilsners would be the Inventions and Sinfonias of Johann Sebastian Bach. And trust us when we say that discerning beer lovers want to give pFriem Pilsner a careful listen.

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Brewery Showcase | Rogue Ales

Here at PorchDrinking.com, we ran a series in August titled “the OGs of Craft Beer,” in which we featured classic or well-known beers that have helped to define and grow craft beer culture throughout the country. One beer featured in our series was Dead Guy Ale from Rogue Ales, a beer born in 1990 when the craft beer wave was in its infancy. Rogue Ales, established in 1988, is one of the true OGs of craft breweries and we’re proud to be featuring them today. Read More

The OGs of Craft Beer | Widmer Brothers Brewing – Hefeweizen

It was the summer of 2009. Black Eyed Peas’ Boom Boom Pow was blasting on pop radio, the Lakers had just beaten Dwight Howard and the Orlando Magic in the NBA Finals and for the first time in my college life, I wasn’t going home to Montana for the summer. It was also the summer that I had Widmer Brothers Brewing’s Hefeweizen for the first time and that summer I fell in love with craft beer.

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The OGs of Craft Beer | Rogue Dead Guy Ale

Rogue Ales & Spirits Dead Guy Ale first emerged in 1990 during a special November 1 Dia de los Metros (Day of the Dead) celebration at Casa U-Betcha, a Tex-Mex restaurant in Portland, Oregon. For the rest of us, the beer came into our lives in 1994 during the Clinton Administration, the first season of Friends, and 14 years before Facebook arrived. Nevertheless, even after its nearly 25 years of roaming the craft world there’s nothing dead about Dead Guy Ale.

The beer received an extra boost in early 2017 when Rogue decided to can the beer for the first time and update its label artwork. Indeed, the beer has grown so iconic that one will not find the name “Dead Guy” anywhere on the cans because most every drinker knows the beer simply by the Dead Guy imagery. Read More