Two New Breweries Are Coming to PDX Airport… and One Is Leaving

The airport consistently voted best in the nation keeps getting better.

This April, the airport opened a mini-movie theater showing Portland films. And soon visitors to PDX airport will now be able to drink Black Butte Porter and HUB lager at brewpub prices. The Port of Portland announced that Hopworks and Deschutes Breweries move brewery bars into the airport next summer.

But this also means a longstanding PDX tradition may be coming to an end: A lot fewer tourists will likely be carting those Pepto-Bismol bottles of Voodoo Doughnut Bacon Maple beer onto the plane with them.

Deschutes Brewing will be moving into the Concourse D space currently occupied by Rogue Ales, and Rogue will be departing PDX next year as their 10-year-lease expires.

Hopworks, meanwhile, is taking over Laurelwood Brewing's Concourse E location—one of two Laurelwood pubs at PDX.

"We'll still have Concourse A till 2020," says Laurelwood owner Mike DeKalb. "Right now concourse E is pretty slow, but that will change by 2019, when Southwest Airlines moves in."

DeKalb says this is part of a periodic effort by the airport to refresh its offerings, not a referendum on how business was doing for Rogue or Laurelwood.

"Our concourse A location was originally 1200 square feet, until we expanded into the seating area for Horizon," says DeKalb. "It does about the same amount of sales a month as our Southeast Portland location [in Westmoreland]"

The breweries won't operate the space—that's done by a food and beverage company called SSP—but they do provide and train the employees there, and obviously provide all the beer.

Deschutes and Hopworks locations will have a 10-year lease in the location.