DRINKS ABOUT TOWN

After working in the retail side of beer for over a decade, Tom Madden decided that the time was right to break into producing his own beer. A long-time home brewer and Certified Cicerone, he reconnected with his longtime friend John Paul who had been working in the music industry in California. Together, they opened Lone Pine in March of 2016 in a former countertop production space in Portland’s East Bayside and quickly enjoyed tremendous success and popularity. In 2018, Lone Pine moved their brewery into the former Sebago Brewing brewing facility in Gorham which has increased their production volume by ten-fold. They have also opened a spacious new tasting room at the new site allowing them to also expand their barrel program.

Founded in 2018, Root Wild produces Portland’s finest kombucha. Kombucha is a craft alcohol product that is made with fermented black and green tea. The result is a pleasing low-alcohol base product, to which they add locally foraged fruits, herbs, roots, and more. The 12 taps feature the brewery’s “core flavors” of kombucha on draft: Wild Blueberry, Ginger, and Vanilla Rooibos, along with tasty flavors in seasonal rotation. Their goal is to blur the lines between their products and experiment with beer-kombucha blends. Root Wild is one of the first kombucha producers in the country to package their kombucha in 12-ounce aluminum cans to allow for greater distribution of their products.

Originally based in a tiny, brick-walled former scrapyard building in East Bayside, Bunker Brewing Company has moved to a much larger former warehouse on the West side of town. Their creative brewers make a rotating assortment of ales and lagers, making this the perfect stop during which to ask the question, “What’s the difference between an ale and a lager?” Enjoy their spacious tasting room and outside patio while pondering that important question over a well-crafted Bunker beer.