First look inside pFriem Family Brewers Milwaukie taproom in Portland-metro
pFriem Family Brewers (left to right: CEO Rudy Kellner, CFO Sonya White, Brewmaster/Co-Founder Josh Pfriem)
For over a decade pFriem Family Brewers has stayed resolute in their commitment to keep Hood River as their sole tasting room location, but as draft beer sales first teetered in 2019 and then plunged during COVID-19 they began the cautious search for a second location. After exhaustive searches in and around Portland and as far as Seattle, pFriem settled on the untapped potential of a prospective new restaurant and taproom in south Portland suburb the city of Milwaukie. A little more than a year after the project was first announced, pFriem Milwaukie is ready to open to the public on Monday, April 7th.
The arduous process of restoring and reimagining the former Milwaukie City Hall building was well chronicled by our Clackamas County expert John Chilson, long an admirer of craft beer, history, and architecture. The new pFriem is housed in the former fire station and city administration sections of the historic 1930s building and taking up about 2/3 of the brick structure, the rest of which is occupied by 2-floors of Keeper Coffee and bakery, and a common event room space for nonprofits.
“It’s been so great to work with the pFriem team, along with Keeper Coffee and Henry Point Development, through this entire, transformative project,” says Joseph Briglio, Assistant City Manager for Milwaukie, “pFriem is known for their excellence in brewing and hospitality, and we are so fortunate to have them as part of our downtown.”
The entrance is through a central archway along the Main Street side of the building with a wraparound mural marking the way. The entry foyer opens up into a lobby, with a reception area where you can check in with a host for a table in the main bar and dining hall to the right, or walk past into a backroom walkway, bathrooms, elevator, and stairs to the second floor spillover sections, or make a left and head to the casual and to-go bar the Bear’s Den.
The Bear’s Den may be familiar to those who have visited the main Hood River tasting room and it is the section of the new Milwaukie location that most resembles the original. Functioning as both a waiting area for seating, and as a casual walk-up bar for to-go and merchandising, the Bear’s Den is a dimmer, warm, wood paneled, fireside lounge-esque area. The bar has the signature pipe fitting insulating a row of draft lines, and a handsomely displayed landscape painting of the pacific Northwest displayed above the bar. There is no seating in this area, but a developing merch section provides an easy option for gifts featuring pFriem’s constantly rotating shirts, hats, sweaters, mugs, pins, and stickers, while a row of three doors of packaged cans and specialty bottles is chilled to go. I have a feeling the Bear’s Den is going to prove popular for those facing long wait times for a table and just wanting to grab a beer and ok with milling about in the lobby or the grassy front garden.
second floor bar at pFriem Family Brewers new Milwaukie taproom has views of the downtown area and natural light
The primary taproom area occupies the south side of the building once used as a fire station, where engines entered and exited from the roll-up doors now opens to a covered patio. The decor is posh-casual/sophisticated Euro-inspired daydream of a Czech-style beer cafe, all awash with a color palette of pale turquoise, tan, and brass, with globe lighting adding warmth to an already naturally well lit interior.
Larger communal or group tables occupy the center of the room, with smaller leather backed partial booths along one side, and a single cozy wraparound booth for a big group. The entire room is built around the glass roll-up doors and a “U” shaped European-style arc bar that features a partial false back-wall for glassware in front of a white tiled back bar with 27 brass neck faucets protruding from a custom walk-in beer cooler optimized for the ideal pouring temperature. While the row of wooden handled faucets may be the centerpiece, I have a hunch the fire house pole that drops down two levels and through the front center of the bar may get more attention for the two Lukr Czech faucets pouring off it. The pole that firemen slid down from second to first floor was too cool not to salvage, so they moved it a little further back and insulated it with glycol to run dense foam pours of lager bier.
While beer will always be the focus of pFriem, the Milwaukie taproom’s secret weapon may be the pilot draft cocktail program created by R & D brewer and blender Kyle Krause and Quality & Innovation Manager Joe Shubert. Cocktails on tap are nothing new, but typically use cheaper ingredients often mistreated from bottle to pony keg. In typical pFriem fashion they have put as much care into the cocktails as their beer, with the brew team working up some of their own syrups and juices and figuring out what spirits and liqueurs hold up well in solution. With limited space to work with and the expectation to do big numbers of drinks which could be taxing on the staff, pFriem has engineered the program to batch keg cocktails at the brewery in Cascade Locks and outfit each with a stir plate that keeps all of the ingredients integrated and not separating out in the keg. And instead of bulky custom ice machines and lots of cocktail shakers, they have installed spindle drink mixers to add some speedy blending for quick service.
The pilot spirit program launches with five handcrafted specialty cocktails playing off of popular drinks with a pFriem twist:
Oude Kriek Negroni ($15)
A tart and ripe take on the classic bitter apertivo. The Brewers worked to capture the essence of the pFriem lambic-style Kriek and integrate it into a bitter-citrusy Negroni. The result is a much sweeter Montmorency cherry splash to the highly aromatic Rosa Americano, bitter campari, and apricot kernel liqueur.Strong Dark Old Fashioned ($13)
Inspired by one of pFriem’s original beers, a Belgian-style Strong Dark Ale merged with an Old Fashioned. Featuring a blend of bourbon and rye, sweetened with port wine infused with Belgian dark candi syrup. Served with a dash of bitters and orange.Saturn ($12)
I wasn’t familiar with this vibrant tiki-inspired cocktail but plan to get intimately familiar over the coming months/years. Bright, citrusy, semi-sweet, very tangy, and an amazing refresher with hidden complexity. Made from a tropical blend of gin, passion fruit, lemon, spiced falernum and orgeat.Banana Belt ($16)
A riff on an espresso martini designed in collaboration with Westward Whiskey and Coava Coffee. Featuring a rich combination of cold-brew coffee, Westeward Single Malt, amaro and banana liqueur.Margarita ($12)
A straightforward but highly fresh and balanced margarita. Made with a blend of 100% agave Ocho and Tapatio Blanco tequilas from Jalisco. Super bright and fresh citrus and a partial rim of flaky salt.
A small but mighty kitchen powers the food program to a slightly paired down menu in Milwaukie as compared to the pFriem mother ship in Hood River. But if you are fans of the elevated Belgian-inspired food in Hood River, you will be pleased to find many of the most popular items have made the trip to the new location.
Introductory appetizers could fuel a strong girl dinner alone. There is plenty to snack on from shoestring style frites, to seeded baquette bread and butter to whet the appetite, before rotating house soup, pickle plates, olives, and cheese plates. One of the highlights the Gochujang Wings ($17) which are true whole chicken wings dressed in Korean gochujang BBQ sauce, with sesame, and scallions, on the side pickled radish, arugula, chile-lime sauce for dipping.
Classic main dishes have some real house favorites like the Pimento Cheeseburger ($18) cooked to specified rareness, and mercifully a half-pound beef patty instead of a smashburgers. This true Gastropub-style burger is thick and juicy but not overloaded, it comes with lettuce, onion, house pickle chips and lightly dressed with aioli and housemate minento cheese. Veggie burger is an option with a house patty and apple-onion chutney and curry aioli. An Olympia Provisions bratwurst plate, Fish & Chips, and Clams & Chorizo. The hefty plate of Mac & Cheese ($16) (available vegan) feature gemelli pasta, a creamy cheddar and pilsner sauce, topped with crunchy garlic breadcrumbs and herbs, make for some serious comfort food for your belly.
The main dining area can spill outdoors into a sizeable covered pergola in slightly warmer weather, perfect for neighborhood people watching in the center of downtown Milwaukie next to boutiques and restaurants and longstanding icons like Dark Horse Comics. Traveling to pFriem Milwaukie is a breeze, as a public transit station with more than half a dozen bus lines intersecting runs along the south side of the building and an open public parking lot is across the street to the west.
An upstairs third bar area is planned to be open on weekends when the taproom is busier, which I expect will be 24/7. The upstairs bar has even better views of the neighborhood all the way to the riverfront, and has a quieter area with more seating behind the bar if you want to tuck away with a friend or a good book.
“We’re beyond excited to finally open our doors in Milwaukie,” says Josh Pfriem, Brewmaster and Co-Founder of pFriem Family Brewers. “This community has welcomed us with open arms, and we can’t wait to share this space with our friends, neighbors, and beer lovers. We’ve put a lot of thought into creating a warm, inviting gathering place, and we hope it becomes a hub for great beer, great food, and even better company.”
pFriem’s new Milwaukie tasting room will be open seven days a week from 11:00am-9pm starting April 7th. It is located at:
pFriem Family Brewers
10722 SE Main St,
Milwaukie, OR 97222
