Oregon has long been a standout state for quality craft beer headlined by suds-saturated strongholds, Portland (PDX) and Bend. Those spots cast long shadows that can obscure the ale-and-lager scenes of other noteworthy locales. Case in point, Eugene, a full-fledged city with small-town charm and over 20 brewery-owned venues, nearly all of which are within easy walking distance of one another. Whether you’re in Eugene to take advantage of its wealth of outdoor-recreation options or perhaps attend this month’s World Athletics Championships at Oregon University’s state-of-the-art Hayward Field, the following guide will help make sure you find a local-beer experience suited to your personal tastes.
BREWERIES
Ninkasi Brewing
155 Blair Blvd
Ninkasi is the nation’s 40th largest craft brewing company and Eugene’s most widely distributed brewery. As such, many beer fans are familiar with the company’s core and seasonal portfolio, but this 16-year-old interest has more going on than ever before thanks to a home-base pilot system pumping out a wide variety of small-batch specialties, allowing the brew crew to have fun and experiment with new and interesting ingredients and styles. Those beers flow exclusively from a whopping 40 taps at Ninkasi’s Better Living Room, a spacious, indoor-outdoor bar and restaurant outfitted in multiple shades of domestic bliss with a side of metal art, flashes of the company’s trademark electric-teal and a three-story wall showing off framed label-art from days gone by.
Pilot offerings range from a biere de garde and experimentally hopped pale ale to a cold IPA and San Diego-style triple IPA, and include collaborations with the likes of Modern Times Beer (saison) and Reuben’s Brews (dry-hopped festbier). Hoppy beers from Ninkasi’s “Wonderment” series like Hazematic Juicy IPA (pronounced essence of mango), and Eclipsosaurus Celestial IPA (strawberry, pineapple, pine) from the “Legends” series are also on tap along with “Retro Taps” resuscitating fan faves from the past. Recent reanimations include Helles Belles lager and the minty-nosed Spring Reign pale ale. Matured stock from a small on-site barrel-aging program also pop up from time to time, like a version of Ground Control Russian imperial stout infused with hazelnuts, star anise and cacao nibs aged in a combination of bourbon barrels from Buffalo Trace and local outfit, Old Elk. It’s a mouthful, and a delicious one at that.
Standout Suds: XP Hop Pale Ale, Single-hop Pale Ale with HQ2015034-023
Pro Tip: Looking for the freshest of the fresh? Show up on Tapping Tuesdays when one or more new small-batch creations debut at the Better Living Room.
Oakshire Brewing
207 Madison St.
In 2006, homebrewers with an award-winning amber ale opened this business to elevate their recipe to the pro ranks. In the years since, Oakshire Brewing’s taproom has evolved to offer one of the most diverse tap lists in town (and at a PDX satellite). Staples like an exceptional dry-hopped, orange-blossom tea-like ESB (UK-style extra special bitter), refreshing Italian-style pilsner and that vaunted amber ale share the beer board with pastry stouts, smoothie sours emulating different flavors of cheesecake (mango-raspberry, pineapple upside-down cake) and just about everything in-between.
Oakshire’s head brewer has a pub mentality and a “take on anything” attitude that keeps around three new beers coming each month (along with core and archived beers). This leads to a lot of one-and-done brews, but balance and head retention are targets he aims for with each beer he produces. On the traditional side, a Helles-style lager mixes minerality with the faintest bit of honey-like sweetness, and Public House pale ale brings a bright bouquet of mango and pineapple followed by flavors of white peach and papaya introduced by Sultana and Mosaic hops. On the other side of the coin, Free Your Soul, a coffee- and coconut-infused pastry stout aged in bourbon and coconut-rum barrels is a confectionery masterpiece. And be on the lookout for new releases from a trio of beer series: Sun Made (fruited sours), Sum Fun (IPAs inspired by STEM concepts) and Fear (bourbon barrel-aged barley wines). Anniversary beers and a highly anticipated bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout called Hellshire (which drops each October) are added draws, as is a sprawling patio and friendly, inviting staffers.
Standout Suds: Dry-hopped ESB, Extra Special Bitter
Pro Tip: Wednesdays are “Oakshire Inspires” nights, where $1 from every beer sold is donated to local non-profit organizations that rotate on a monthly basis.
Alesong Brewing & Blending
80848 Territorial Hwy (Brewery & Tasting Room) | 248 E 5th Ave. (Alesong on 5th)
An outlier geographically and style-wise, Alesong follows the boutique-winery model, bestowing exotic oak-aged beers on its club members and the public at large. Founded in 2015 by top-level brewers from Oakshire, the business is headquartered in a bar-equipped barrel emporium sited in bucolic pastureland 20 miles southwest of central Eugene. A true destination brewery (Alesong also operates a tasting room in downtown’s 5th Street Public Market), it offers a departure from the hustle-and-bustle of everyday life fueled by expertly aged and blended sour and strong ales, and punched up by farmhouse environs, bocce ball courts and views of raptors soaring against rolling hills.
Alesong offers an “essential tasting” that includes a tour of the barrel house and samples of four of the company’s current offerings. A recent tasting included Pacific Bliss, a bone-dry grisette with a lettuce quality brought about by a Motueka dry-hop, and Oregon Sunrise, an intensely tangy sour rested on tangerines and Pinot Gris juice from a local winery. This award-winning outfit’s creativity shines through in Moondance, a gin barrel-aged saison infused with cucumber, lemon zest and butterfly pea flower. The latter renders this out-there beer (brewed to serve at an Alesong employees’ wedding) a lovely purple. Normal-hued but just as impressive is Gose Añejo, a Margarita-inspired sour aged in tequila barrels with sea salt, agave syrup, orange and lime zest. Shareable boards of meats, cheeses, fruits, nuts and pickled items curated to pair with Alesong’s beers are also available along with other food prepared on-site.
Standout Suds: Moondance, Gin Barrel-aged Saison with Cucumber, Lemon Zest & Butterfly Pea Flower
Pro Tip: Guest beers (sours, and a pilsner and IPA), ciders, wine and non-alcoholic beverages from reputable producers are also for sale in the tasting room.
ColdFire Brewing
263 Mill St.
When asked what local operation is doing things right, Eugene’s brewers unanimously point to ColdFire, the product of a pair of best-friend brothers who left careers in the medical industry to follow a shared passion forged over a decade of homebrewing together and a beer-focused tour of Europe. Their backgrounds in microbiology and surgical-area sterilization come in handy in the manufacture of to-style Old World ales and lagers, hop-driven Pacific Northwest (PNW) gems and a variety of barrel-aged beers. That varied stock is served from a shotgun tasting room with clear views of the brewery and cellar, featuring framed Great American Beer Festival medals against a stylish, geometric wood bar backsplash. That space gives way to outdoor areas on each side, including a back lot with picnic benches and its own pod of mobile food vendors.
ColdFire’s founders’ stated passions are “wild ales and lagers” and it shows. Their Czech-style pilsner is snappy, an oak-aged sour blend with peaches and nectarines called Foeder on Peche is spritzy and flavorful, and a saison with rose hips and Citra Cryo hops that’s aptly named Hips and Hops balances restrained tartness with earthy, green notes. But solid craftsmanship extends beyond bottom-fermentation, bacteria and barrels. A Chinook, Citra and lot-selected Mandarina Bavaria-hopped pale ale called Songbird bursts with sweet citrus evened out by the perfect level of piney bitterness. A soft-textured hefeweizen is evocative of banana cream pie; while flavors of pineapple, grapefruit and orange pith are the hallmarks of flagship IPA “Thursday Friday”; while petrol, peach and papaya share space in a pint of Cumulus hazy IPA. Bottom line: there’s not a single subpar beer here.
Standout Suds: Songbird, Pale Ale
Pro Tip: ColdFire doesn’t include its barrel-aged beers on its main menu. Check the side of their to-go beer fridge for an obscure list taped up for in-the-know patrons (like you).
Claim 52 Brewing
1203 Willamette St., #140 (Kitchen) | 1030 Tyinn St., #1 (Brewery & Manufacturing Facility)
Though a decade old, Claim 52 Brewing boasts a fun, youthful exuberance conveyed through bleeding-edge, ultra-modern beers, the likes of which largely didn’t exist just a few years ago. In pushing the envelope to satisfy younger drinkers’ tastes, it has captured their imaginations and interest, leading to big turnouts when new beers drop. It’s not simply that Claim 52 is brewing haze-bombs, smoothies and pastry-boi fare. It’s the fact they’re doing it well and on a consistent basis that’s led to this level of fandom. But waiting in line with can-clamoring enthusiasts isn’t a mandatory step to checking out this brewery’s wares. Simply chart a course for its restaurant on the south end of downtown, where a constantly shifting menu awaits.
Claim 52’s beers are broken into a plethora of series that kicked off with “THICC” (pronounced “thick””), a line of smoothie sours that are sweeter than they are tart (raspberry lemonade, orange cookies). “Stuffed” includes dessert-flavored (e.g., lemon meringue pie, raspberry caramel funnel cake), higher ABV lactose sours, while “Splash” is made up of sour IPAs (piña colada, POG) countered by similar beers made without hops under the heading “Weekend Whip” (watermelon Margarita). Rounding things out is the “Schticky” family of pastry stouts (maple coffee cake, tiramisu) and barrel-aged beers debuting under the header “Emerge”. Though the above is what Claim 52 is known for—along with “THICCerita” beer cocktails—straightforward beers like Rich Girl dry-hopped lager, Groundswell Northwest pale ale and Staring at the Sun Belgian-style quadrupel are top-notch sans-adjuncts stars.
Standout Suds: Schticky Maple Coffee Cake, Imperial Milk Stout with Coffee, Maple, Cinnamon & Coffee Cake
Pro Tip: Like beer and boba? Claim 52 has a boba machine and will pour its smoothie sours over those chewy pearls for a unique dual-interest beverage.
Falling Sky Brewing
1334 Oak Alley (Brewpub) | 790 Blair Blvd (Pourhouse & Delicatessen)
This ten-year-old interest, which includes both a downtown brewpub and tap-equipped deli in West Eugene, was sold in late-2020. The new owner—a longtime fan of the business—made a brand refresh his first order of business, followed by a strategic pivot from a purely pub-brewing mentality to an approach that will keep beer flowing at Falling Sky’s locations while allowing for a greater presence at nearby retail establishments. Core beers are now being canned for distribution with recipes for future year-round products being developed and tweaked for the big show. Beyond the beer, from-scratch food remains at the forefront for Falling Sky, from burgers and sandwiches to soups, salads and snackable fried fare, including pickles, cheese curds and wings.
The aforementioned core lineup includes the thirst-quenching Cloudbreak Helles, caramel-tinged StormWalker Irish red ale and Rain Gauge, an IPA hopped with Strata, Bru-1, Comet and Citra, resulting in alluring cantaloupe, orange, peach and mango aromatics. Rain Gauge garnered the most customer votes in an in-house battle between four West Coast IPA prototypes. Beyond the year-rounds, German beers win style points here behind the nutty, low-roast Space is the Place Schwarzbier, a floral kölsch and the biscuity Barometer Maibock, which makes for an outstanding, versatile food beer. Falling Sky also offers several series of beers: kettle-sours, stouts and spruce-infused beers such as Robert the Spruce, a Scottish ale rendered lightly minty thanks to the addition of fresh spruce tips.
Standout Suds: Space is the Place, Schwarzbier
Pro Tip: Falling Sky offers a hearty, beer-friendly weekend brunch featuring homemade breads, biscuits, English muffins, sauces and house-cured meats.
Gratitude Brewing
540 E 8th Ave.
Bringing beer to a once desolate part of the city connecting downtown with U of O, Gratitude Brewing opened shortly before the onset of COVID 19. Its name took on new meaning during the pandemic, when fans of the fledgling operation showed up in force to keep the business afloat. But it was about quality, not charity. Locals didn’t want to bid adieu to the excellent beers being produced by Gratitude’s head brewer, a veteran of Bend area ops Three Creeks, Worthy and Immersion Brewing. Nor did they want to see the newcomer’s corner-pub tasting room, with its mix of outlandish bric-a-brac and beer paraphernalia, vanish from their community. As pandemic conditions have improved, Gratitude’s supporters have returned in greater and greater numbers to enjoy the space and the beers.
While hop blends and fruit additions are key to Gratitude’s brewing MO, I’m a Farmer, a super-dry American wheat with lemon-rind character from Lemondrop hops, is as much a testament to the craftsmanship here as any IPA or sour. That said, a pair of IPAs—a hazy with Galaxy, Citra and Cascade that smells of Sauvignon Blanc and passionfruit while tasting of stone fruit and guava, and the antithetical Lovin’ It Out West, which sees C-hop pine notes balanced by citrus from El Dorado hops—shine, as does a grapefruit-infused IPA. Classic American hops bring a green contrasting note to the roast and anise of Elusive Stout, while the blueberries, blackberries and raspberries in an over-fruited sour called Boogie Patrol Express make for a mixed-berry explosion on the taste buds. It’s a mixed bag of well-made beers.
Standout Suds: I’m a Farmer, American Wheat Ale
Pro Tip: Come Friday, its “Gratitude hour” all day at the tasting room, with all beers discounted by $1 (including the day’s new releases) and free live music.
Manifest Beer Co.
700 Willamette St.
This small but noteworthy brewery has been through a lot in its 11 years, including a change to its current moniker in 2016 and the closure of a short-lived downtown restaurant that was done in by the pandemic. Still, Manifest’s owner and brewmaster keeps on trucking from a small brewery on the north end of downtown, crafting an array of IPAs, lagers and fruited sours. Those beers are available exclusively at the brewery on Saturdays only, though there are plans to start canning beer to sell to retail accounts.
Hop Valley Brewing
990 W 1st Ave.
As the name implies, hops are the name of the game at this tasting room and beer garden-equipped facility—which was acquired by MillerCoors in 2016—in Eugene’s Whiteaker neighborhood. All manner of IPAs crowd the lengthy beer menu, including a “Stash” series of beers made using Yakima Chief Hops Cryo Hops, a cryogenically processed hop product presenting concentrated lupulin from whole-leaf hops. Hop Valley now also produces Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve, a “Northwest-style” lager brewed with Cascade hops.
Elk Horn Brewery
686 E. Broadway
It’s from a humble food truck that a husband-and-wife duo simultaneously spring-boarded into the restaurant and beer business, opening this two-story huntsman’s lodge of a brewpub with deer heads on the wall and a downstairs area offering pinball, shuffleboard and assorted games for youngsters. House beers run the gamut from IPAs to stouts, lagers to kettle sours, and are produced in-house along with ciders and sodas. Next up for the marrieds is a second restaurant with a brewery, distillery and rare whiskey lounge in nearby Coburg, Oregon.
Community Fermentation Union
1313 Pearl St.
This spot for wood-fired Neapolitan-style pizzas and flatbreads boasts its own brewing system, the beers from which are released at a rather unpredictable pace. As such, Community Fermentation Union keeps its taps supplied with local beer, cider and kombucha from other local producers. And the fermentation aspect of the business overflows beyond the beverages and into the pizza dough, which is topped with locally sourced ingredients.
The Wheel Apizza Pub
390 Lincoln St., #101
Stop us if you’ve heard this somewhere before, but there’s something special about the dough at this combination pie-and-pint place. The head brewer uses the same yeast used to ferment his array of ales in the production of the bready foundation for The Wheel’s New Haven-style pies. Those coal-fired delicacies pair with an ever-changing assortment of mostly modern IPAs, fruited ales and stouts, which are available as dine-in accompaniments or in cans to-go.
Steelhead Brewery / McKenzie Brewing
199 E 5th Ave.
Opened in 1991, Steelhead Brewery (which makes its beers under the name McKenzie Brewing) has a bit of a throwback vibe that extends beyond its sports-bar motif to the beer list, with older takes on reds, stouts and IPAs making up the majority of the menu.
OTHER BREWERIES
McMenamins
22 Club Rd. (North Bank) | 1243 High St. (High Street Brewery & Café) | 1485 E 19th Ave. (East 19th Street Café)
Eugene sports a trio of sudsy spots from Pacific Northwest history-with-a-side-of-quirk hospitality outfit, McMenamins, including the Willamette-abutting North Bank restaurant, the recently renovated High Street Brewery (Eugene’s oldest, pictured above) and the quaint 19th Street Café just south of U of O and Hayward Field.
Viking Braggot Co.
520 Commercial St., Unit F (Brewery Taproom) | 2490 Willamette St. (Southtowne Pub)
If fermented honey brews are your thing, you will not be disappointed by this niche operation’s modern takes on an ancient adult beverage combining Scandinavian tradition with today’s craft-beer nomenclature.
Sunriver Brewing – Oakway Pub
329 Oakway Rd, Eugene
This furthest flung outpost from a central-Oregon suds standout provides an authentic taste of its award-winning beers along with a menu of eclectic, updated pub grub and a kids menu.
BJ’s Restaurant & Brewhouse
1080 Valley River Way
One of numerous Northwestern links in a national brewpub chain, this restaurant sticks to a game plan based on approachability where its beers and crowd-pleasing comfort food are concerned.
BEER-CENTRIC EVENTS
Terroir Festival (September 24)
AleSong Brewing & Blending, 80848 Territorial Hwy
This one-of-a-kind event presents collaboration wine-beer hybrids produced by a handful of breweries participating in Paso Robles-based Firestone Walker Brewing’s Terroir Project.
KLCC Brewfest (February, pictured above)
Lane Events Center, 796 W 13th Ave
The undisputed champion of Eugene’s beer events, this festival—which includes live music and competitions for pro and amateur brewers—is poised for a post-COVID comeback, and when it happens it’s going to be a fest for the ages.
Zwickelmania (February)
Various Locations
Each year, breweries throughout Oregon invite patrons into their cellars to pour them beer straight from their cellar tanks. It simply doesn’t get any fresher than this!
Sasquatch Brewers Festival (June)
Ninkasi Better Living Room, 155 Blair Blvd
Join dozens of PNW breweries tapping beers brewed exclusively for this event, which raises funds for the Glen Hay Falconer Foundation, a non-profit providing educational opportunities for brewing professionals.
Eugene Beer Week (June)
Various Locations
Visiting Eugene’s breweries is always fun, but even more so during this seven-day span when many of the city’s tasting rooms go the extra mile with special beers, events and promotions.
RECOMMENDED LODGING
EVEN Hotel (pictured above)
2133 Centennial Plaza
This wellness-focused hotel features in-room exercise equipment and a state-of-the-art athletic studio counterbalanced by a bar serving local beers. Best of all, it’s just a short walk to downtown Eugene and its wealth of breweries and brewpubs for those whose exercise regimens involve continuous lifting of one-pound weights (i.e., pint glasses full of beer).
Campbell House Inn
252 Pearl St.
Campus Inn & Suites Eugene Downtown
390 E Broadway
Express Inn & Suites
990 W 6th Ave.
The Gordon Hotel
555 Oak St.
Hayward Inn
1759 Franklin Blvd
Holiday Inn Express & Suites Eugene Downtown
2117 Franklin Blvd
Hyatt Place Eugene / Oakway Center
333 Oakway Rd.
Timbers Inn
1015 Pearl St.