Away Days Brewing relocated to Portland’s Brooklyn Neighborhood
Away Days Brewing’s Niki Diamond, Marshal Kunz, Pete Hoppins
The long anticipated relocation of Hawthorne Blvd. brewery Away Days has opened in southeast Portland, Oregon’s Brooklyn neighborhood.
Since opening in 2019, Away Days Brewing has been one of Portland’s smallest under-the-radar breweries with a loyal cult following. Founded by British expats husband/wife duo Niki Diamond and Pete Hoppins, the lower southeast Hawthorne Blvd. brewpub has been a home away from home for Soccer/Football fans and lovers of quaffable European beers like bitters, mild ale, and pilsner. The term “away days” is an English football (soccer) culture reference referring to when your team goes away to play in another city.
Away Days Brewing shared a corner with their sister pub the Toffee Club, a classic English-style pub with a full bar and kitchen that was sports and drinking focused. But after the COVID-19 pandemic struck and people just weren’t going out as much, the more industrial corner of SE 10th and Hawthorne became more gritty with less foot traffic. The Toffee Club closed in 2020, and Away Days was without their counterpart and felt a bit adrift in the area. That is when they began looking for a new home. In 2021 the Away Days team struck a deal to open an expansive new multi-level beer garden, restaurant, and brewery in Troutdale in a redevelopment of the historic old town city hall.
In 2023 Away Days Brewing launched an SMBX small business crowd-funding investment campaign and successfully raised their original goal of $250K and then set out to raise a stretch goal.
“We ended up raising $266k from 259 individual investors,” says Niki Diamong. “Not only are we now funded for opening, we've got an engaged community of investors who will play a big part in helping us bring Away Days to Troutdale.”
While the Troutdale project is in a very long holding pattern with no timeline to open, it was time for Away Days to move out of their longtime home for a building with more square footage and a neighborhood feel. But Diamond and Hoppins did not want to stray too far from their loyal regulars and began looking in the area before finding a former linen manufacture building at 1234 SE Cora that had sat abandoned for the last decade. Located in the Brooklyn neighborhood down a residential side street just a few doors down from Array bottles hop & taproom, the new Away Days has a similar aesthetic to the old location with a few major differences.
To make the new Away Days stand-out, Diamond and Hoppins opted to diverge from their typical brand colors of baby blue and white for a bright canary yellow to make the building stand out. The interior is similar, freshly painted white walls and industrial cement floors lit from drop down lights and skylights, bright and friendly like an art studio.
Away Days Brooklyn has a similar floor plan to the old spot, with a slightly larger bar and wood work-bench style tables. The back bar pours 10 house-made draft beers and the occasional guest tap of friends beers or ciders. One cask engine has been installed and a second is coming soon.
Original Away Days Brewer Marshal Kunz is excited to have a new Brew house hooked up soon. Upgrading from their previous 5-bbl electric system, Away Days now has a 7-bbl direct fire system just waiting for the building power to be upgraded before it can be fired up. In the meantime the brewery has saved at least one keg of enough beers to fill the taps for now. Kunz plans to continue on in his mission to bring deceptively simple and classic beers to the people.
One of the main reasons Away Days opted to move to the new location that has a similar amount of space inside, is that this building has a 2,000 sq. ft. backyard that triples that size. The brewery has built a permanent cover over about a 1/4 of the lot and added a colorful mural. Soon they will have a projector hooked up under the cover to project footie matches on the side of the building.
Perhaps most exciting is space for a food truck. A reigning burger pop-up with a fan following that wishes to remain nameless have purchased a trailer and will be towing it into the back lot soon and hopefully up and running in the next month.
“The Brooklyn brewery will become our Portland wholesale hub,” says Diamond. “We will extend our hours to be open more days and also incorporate live football and more events into our schedule. We're looking forward to being a part of the community and becoming a local go-to for the surrounding neighbourhoods.”
Away Days Brewing - Brooklyn
1234 SE Cora St, Portland, OR 97202
Open Tuesday - Thursday from 3-9pm, Friday - Saturday 12-10pm, and Sunday from 12-8pm. Closed on Mondays for now except when there is a match. The pub is also all-ages and when the food truck is ready, will sync up with their hours.
