Saturday 18th June 2011

Bob Thompson

After a good eleven hours sleep, ridding myself of jetlag, I felt awake enough to tackle a gruelling tour of the Portland brewpubs that had opened since my last visit to the city less than two years earlier.

Geographically it was pretty simple as they were all on the East side of the Willamette river, which is the other side to the downtown area.

From the Doubletree Hotel getting to the first pub couldn't have been easier, a MAX transit train to downtown, then a 15 bus to the Belmont/9th Avenue stop brought me to the Green Dragon (photo above) at 928 SE 9th Avenue.

Looking from the outside a bit like a car repair shop (it probably once was), this large pub has two bars, serving no less than fifty beers between them! See the photos of the wall-mounted menus for proof.

I had a pint of Green Dragon IPA as I wanted to sample a beer from the home side and I liked it.



Of course, you could spend several days here, but I had to move on out into the rain as I had set myself a considerable target for the day. It had been raining almost continuously since I started out and went on and on. This is not unusual in this part of the world as the north-west has a temperate climate as we do in the UK. The position of the Pacific Ocean and the prevailing winds mean that it's very damp. Daytime temperatures rarely went above 20C and some were as low as 13C.

Important Information:

Green Dragon Bistro & Brew Pub, 928 SE 9th Avenue, Portland OR. 97214. Tel: 503 517 0660

Open: Sunday to Wednesday 11.00-23.00; Thursday to Sunday 11.00-01.00

This pub is to be found just south of SE Belmont Street on 9th Avenue. Bus No 15 runs from the city centre along Belmont Street. It returns to the city along Morrison Street, one block north. Other alternatives are Bus No 6 that operates north-south along Martin Luther King Jr Avenue/ Grand Avenue 4/5 blocks west. The new East Side Streetcar (tram) also runs along these avenues.