Bar Guide 2014: Ecliptic Brewing

By Rebecca Jacobson

Ecliptic Brewing

825 N Cook St., 265-8002, eclipticbrewing.com. 11 am-10 pm Sunday-Thursday, 11 am-midnight Friday-Saturday.

Whether or not you've been to Ecliptic Brewing, you've almost certainly had John Harris' beer. The Oregon brewing luminary perfected the recipes for Deschutes' Black Butte Porter and Mirror Pond Ale, plus McMenamins' Hammerhead. Harris spent three decades working under others, most recently at Full Sail. Now, he's his own boss, running a just-opened brewpub in a colossal former auto-body shop just off of Mississippi Avenue. The space pays homage to Harris' love of astronomy, with constellations pinpricked in the concrete walls, and the beers are named after stars. Try the supremely balanced Procyon Pale Ale or the Spica Hefepils, which is bottom-fermented like a Pilsner but unfiltered—it's a cloudy golden lager with a pleasant, lingering bitterness. The mildly roasty Mintaka Stout and the softly herbal Spica HefePils, especially, are well-suited to food pairing. Get them with the sweet and spicy drumsticks ($9), expertly confited and sparked with a caramelly sauce. REBECCA JACOBSON.

Happy Hour: 3-6 pm daily. $1 off pints and specialty cocktails, $2 off select food items.   

WWeek 2015

Rebecca Jacobson

Rebecca Jacobson

Rebecca Jacobson is a writer from Portland (OK, she was born in Seattle but has been in Oregon since the day after she turned 10) who's also lived in Berlin, Malawi and Rhode Island. While on staff at Willamette Week, she covered theater, film, bikes, drug dealers-turned-barbers and little-known scraps of local history.

Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office.

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