Great Notion Brewing pours hazy IPAs and dessert stouts at 2204 Northeast Alberta Street, the flagship Alberta Arts taproom where the brewery built one of the most copied beer programs on the West Coast.
The bar sits in the heart of the Alberta Arts District in Northeast Portland, a short walk from the galleries and food carts that run the length of Alberta Street. The flagship keeps a large outdoor beer garden, an expansive taproom with a full kitchen, and a window onto the original seven-barrel brewhouse where the recipes started. It reads as a neighbourhood beer garden first and a destination second, even though plenty of drinkers treat it as both.
Great Notion made its name pushing flavor as far as it would go. VinePair has tracked the brewery's run of juicy, fruit-forward hazy IPAs and culinary-inspired stouts, and the team's stated philosophy is go big or go home. The original Alberta house remains the place to drink the core range closest to the source.
What to order: start with Juice Jr., the Mosaic-driven hazy IPA the brewery calls its favorite to make, then move to Ripe if you want the Citra version. For dessert, Double Stack, the imperial breakfast stout aged on Coava coffee and maple syrup, took a Great American Beer Festival silver medal in 2017 and remains the flagship pour. Pours land around $7 to $9, with flights for anyone reading the board top to bottom.
The crowd is families and Alberta locals during the day, beer travelers and hazy-IPA hunters at night. Best time to go is a weekday afternoon, when the beer garden has space and the rare releases have not sold through. Who it is for: hazy-IPA drinkers, stout fans with a sweet tooth, and anyone building a Northeast Portland crawl. Who should skip it: West Coast IPA purists and anyone who wants a quiet room, since the taproom runs loud and full on weekends.
The flavor-forward house style is the whole identity. The hazy IPAs stay juicy batch to batch and the pastry stouts go further than most breweries dare, which is exactly what the regulars come for and exactly what the purists grumble about on Yelp. The common knock is that the sweeter beers are not for everyone and the lines stretch on release days.
The lineup runs deeper than the headliners. Beyond Juice Jr. and Double Stack, the brewery keeps a rotating bench of fruited sours and seasonal stouts, including Sticky Bun, a stout built on toasted pecans, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Craft Beer and Brewing has run a full course on the brewery's pastry-stout method, a sign of how seriously the team takes beers that other brewers treat as a gimmick. The Alberta taproom anchors a group that has grown to several Portland-area locations, but the original keeps the deepest tap list and the freshest pours. The kitchen turns out tacos and shareable plates built to sit next to a hazy IPA, so the beer garden works for a full afternoon rather than a quick flight. On a sunny day, the outdoor tables are the seat to ask for.
Set the afternoon around it. The Alberta taproom sits inside an easy walk of the street's food carts and shops, so it works as the anchor of a slow crawl rather than a quick stop. For more in the category, see our guide to the best craft beer bars in Portland, browse the full Portland bar guide, or place it against our citywide craft beer roundup.
