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Scout Beer was once brewed at a place called "Unicorn" and served only out of food carts. It has since grown into a full-fledged brewery behind the Toffee Club.
But still, viewed from certain angles, the new Scout Beer Brewery & Taproom (1516 SE 10th Ave., scoutpdx.com) looks like a life-size workshop for the Fisher-Price Little People, a Pee-wee's playhouse of beer in the former location of a strip club.
On one wall, a red square framing a fork and knife hangs next to camping equipment and a mismatched set of rainbow letters spelling S-C-O-U-T. Bar stools are bright orange trapezoids next to a stained-wood bar hand-hewn into complicated geometries.
Full-grown adults, in despair over the recent election, are offered consolation in the form of coffee ice cream to float in their bourbon stout, not to mention a sour beer "dry-hopped" with SweeTarts candy that tastes almost exactly like its namesake confection, replacing a previous beer made with Sour Patch Kids.
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Though the fresh microgreens served as a side seemed astonishingly adult by comparison—if also a little like a grass hill to roll down—a bit of salami and melted cheese between two slices of bread was advertised as a "pizza sandwich," the stuff of school-cafeteria dreams.
Meanwhile, a "jam" marionberry ale was a recommended pairing with peanut-butter porter, and the five-deep tasters of beer came with Goldfish crackers as a palate cleanser. And despite football on three screens, there was a brief moment on a recent Sunday when children under 4 feet tall outnumbered adults. The kids' ice cream came without beer, sure, but it seemed like they were using the place the same way.
