Exploring the craft beer route
Oregon’s North Coast Craft
Beer Trail off ers a taste of
regional breweries
BY PETER KORCHNAK
Peter Korchnak
Customer Mike Todd gets a passport stamp from Dwayne Smallwood, owner of Bridge &
Tunnel Bottleshop & Taproom in Astoria.
Oregon’s North Coast Craft Beer Trail is
back on track. Like many favorite gatherings,
the program promoting local beermasters’
bounty has been ramping up.
Locations throughout the region, totaling
13, currently participate in the North Coast
Craft Beer Trail. These include breweries,
taprooms and bottleshops from Astoria to
Cannon Beach.
Visitors can collect stamps from participat-
ing locations on a passport found at each loca-
tion, and can claim a souvenir glass mug as a
keepsake if they visit at least 12 locations.
The passport is “a gamifi ed checklist to
guide people as they’re trekking around,”
Regina Willkie, Astoria-Warrenton Cham-
ber of Commerce marketing manager, said.
Willkie oversees the trail, designed to pro-
mote the region’s brewing scene. The cham-
ber is one of three locations where visitors
can claim their prize, alongside locations in
both Seaside and Cannon Beach.
During the pandemic, a digital passport
was launched, requiring just 10 redemptions.
Hundreds of travelers and locals signed up
for the pass, with most living nearby. “The
majority of folks were from Oregon and
Washington, which lines up with pandemic
travel trends,” Willkie said.
The North Coast Craft Beer Trail emerged
in 2009, when former Dan Bartlett, former
Astoria city manager, Jeff Kilday, Wine and
Beer House proprietor and Alan Smiles of the
Seaside Chamber of Commerce drew inspira-
tion from similar programs and sketched out
the program over pints.
Two years later, the trail kicked off with
a beer festival. In its fi rst year, the Brewers
Association named the trail as one of 10 best
in the nation. Since then, participants have
come and gone, but a handful of mainstays
remain. Plus, the trail has nearly doubled
since its launch.
Smaller, newer breweries, which hav-
en’t reached the status of destination locales,
especially benefi t from the program. “A lot
of people use (the passport) as a tour guide,”
Josh Allison, owner of Reach Break Brew-
ing, said. “They’ll use it as a way to dis-
cover places that might not have been on their
radar.”
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