I wanted to jot down some notes here from our quick trip to Portland this weekend, about the Horse Brass Pub.

The Horse Brass is one of my favorite places in Portland for beer and food. In the style of an English pub, they offer real darts, dark wood furnishing, English food (bangers and mash, kidney pie, Scotch eggs), cigars, and a large number of good beers on tap (and more in the bottle). It’s one of the only places I know that has lambic (Lindemans Framboise) on tap.

For me, one of the best beer bars in Portland.

Anyway, while there, I had two beers: Poor Richard’s Ale from Laurelwood Brewing, and a fantastic Black Cherry Stout from Walking Man (under construction, that site). Quick notes on both.

Poor Richard’s: Laurelwood’s version is creamy and caramely, and not as hoppy as the two others I’ve tried. Same character, though, nice and molasses-y in what I’m coming to think of as the "Colonial style." Very good.

Black Cherry Stout: Quite unlike a lot of other fruit beers I tried! It smells just like Cherry Coke, and the taste isn’t too far off, either. The darker stout flavors are downplayed and very smooth, and the smoky cherry is right there at the beginning. Wow! I was very impressed. Next time I make it back to the Horse Brass, I will definitely order up a pint of this again.

One other thing to note about the Horse Brass: next door sits Belmont Station, billed as the premier bottle shop in Portland. They have a huge selection of bottled beer to buy, I picked up a few that I’ll be drinking and writing about. Consider this a required stop, too, if you are looking to acquire some hard-to-find beer.