Deschutes Brewery’s new Street Pub is billed as the first “pop up pub” of its size (that they know of), a behemoth of a mobile bar that they will be touring across the country. As a reminder, here’s their quick recap description of it:

We’re shutting down the streets in cities across the United States this year with our newest traveling event called: Street Pub – Crafted for Community. We’re kicking off a soft opening in the home of brewery, right here in Bend! For the first time in it’s entirety, you’ll see the 400+ foot bar set up creating a pub of epic proportions. The bar is crafted from reclaimed wood and steel from right here in Oregon and the Street Pub is a one stop shop to try lots of our beers – from the coveted Reserve Series rarities (think The Abyss) all the way to year-round favorites like Black Butte Porter and Mirror Pond Pale Ale.

This one of a kind block party is truly, “crafted for community.” Grab your friends and family and come see what it’s all about.

This past Saturday they debuted the Street Pub here in Bend for a soft opening, which of course we attended, and accordingly have some notes and pictures of it all.

There’s no doubt about it—this is an impressive achievement! The amount of work to put this together had to have been incredible, but they’ve done a great job; you can see up close how it breaks down into manageable panels and components, but even then it doesn’t seem like this should be able to all fit into a single 50-foot semi trailer. (Apparently it does.) There are 40 taps arrayed in groups of four on either side, located under each of the roofed areas, plus a station for pouring specialty Reserve Series bottles. However, don’t look for refrigeration, as taps are fed by kegs stored in ice buckets which adds to the mobility.

Saturday’s event was fairly mellow, despite the large number of people that showed up, and from my point of view was a big successful for Deschutes on this test run. Of course, they also had live music and a couple of food trucks present, and in the various city stopping points they’ll have that and more, and I expect it’s going to be even crazier (bigger cities and all). Here in Bend they simply set up in the parking lot of the production brewery; in the cities they will need to close a city block to accommodate this roving fest.

While there, I enjoyed pours of Bachelor Bitter and Horse Ridge IPA (normally these are pub-exclusive specialties), tastes of Reserve Series Black Butte XXVI and The Abyss 2013, and a bit of Not The Stoic. They of course were pouring their standards (Black Butte Porter, Mirror Pond Pale Ale, Deschutes River Ale, Fresh Squeezed IPA, etc.), Bond Street Series (Foray Belgian IPA, Pinedrops IPA and more), and Reserve Series (Mirror Mirror 2014 in addition to the afore-mentioned ones). An impressive lineup.

The logistics of getting this thing from city to city are something I’m glad I don’t have to figure out. From Bend, they are heading to the East Coast to kick off a western craft beer tour, bringing this to a number of cities; here’s their planned schedule:

• Philadelphia, May 30
• Cleveland, August 1
• Chicago, August 22
• Minneapolis/St. Paul, September 19
• Denver, October 17
• Sacramento, November 14

Now, one thing I want to clarify: it turns out the entire structure is not 400 feet long from end to end; it’s actually around 190 to 200 feet long in that regard. But the pub bar wraps around the entire structure, double-sided and on the ends, with taps on each side, so if you remember your geometry it turns out the perimeter of the rectangle it creates is just over 400 feet. So, yes, there is 400+ feet of bar space to occupy. And I promise, 200-ish feet per side offers up a pretty impressive sense of scale when up close.

Look for Street Pub to be hitting one of (your?) cities listed above in the coming months; those are going to be some fun (if crazy!) events.

Here are more photos we took from Saturday: