House of Sour

Greetings Cheap Date Portlanders. Recently Lesley and I tried a new place (to us) that we'd been eyeing for sometime now, The Cascade Brewing Barrel House on SE Belmont (not to be confused with Cascade Lakes Brewing in central OR, I was at first). This industrial nouveau pub features a wide variety of Belgian and German style sour beers in addition to some conventional NW ales and tasty bar food. A sour beer you may be familiar with is a Belgian lambic. The tart flavor is achieved by using different kinds of yeast from normal ale and often includes the addition of fruit juice and additional aging.

To start off we decided to conduct our own sample tasting of several beers. The restaurant doesn't provide a board of tasters like many Portland breweries, but this way you get to choose which beers to try and how many or how few. The beers we tried are...

Cascade Kriek Ale - notes of cherry, nuts and chocolate.
Spring Gose - a German pilsner brewed with lemon peel, salt and lavender.
Razberry Wheat -  pink wheat beer with the tartness and aroma of fresh raspberries.
Karma - a good, hoppy northwest IPA.

(see picture below for Lesley's and my rankings of each beer. Neither of us cared much for the Razberry, but the other three were all enjoyable.)

For eats, they have a nice selection of sandwiches which come with a variety of sides. Lesley chose the BLT with black bean and corn salad. I ordered the "Cuban" which comes with ham, pulled pork and gruyere cheese, panini grilled.  My side was German potato salad, which if you've never tried, is worth a try. Instead of the classic American picnic potato salad which is ruled by mayonnaise, this one is heavy on vinegar and onion...how fitting for the House of Sour. Oh, and it's served warm which helps to bring out the flavors.

I washed it all down with a glass of Vlad the Imperial Aler, a 10.3% tripel-style blond ale which is aged in a bourbon barrel...yum!

If you are a beer connoisseur or just like to try something new, we'd both highly recommend checking out The Cascade Brewing Barrel House on SE 10th & Belmont.

Cheers!

-Evan