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4534 SE Belmont St., 503-232-2202, horsebrass.com. 11 am-2:30 am daily.
Established: 1976
Portland's status as a beer mecca can be traced back to a grungy, dimly lit neighborhood British pub on an obscure tract of Southeast Belmont Street. The late, great publican Don Younger's famous Horse Brass wasn't just the first place in town to pour many English beers, and one of the first accounts for fledgling West Coast breweries like Sierra Nevada, but the first place to feature Oregon breweries like BridgePort and Deschutes. It even helped launch Stumptown Coffee, when Younger loaned his employee Duane Sorenson a little bit of scratch in the '90s.
Don's gone now—rumored to have drifted downward, healthwise, after the county made him stop smoking in his own bar—but the Horse brass lives triumphantly on after 40 years, still hosting some of the rarest beer tappings in the city (Pliny, unfiltered Pilsner Urquell), and still Portland's premier example of the English pub, with some of the best fish 'n' chips in the city.
Related: An Oral History of The Horse Brass
Bar story: Somewhere in 1976, Don Younger awoke from a late drinking session to discover he'd purchased a year-old pizza joint-turned-pub called Horse Brass. He found the bill of sale written on a cocktail napkin on his desk, and broke the news to his brother and business partner, Bill Younger, during a game of darts.
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