Breakside Milwaukie Breakside goes really big

The NoPo brewery funneled the cash from its award-winning beer into a gigantic Milwaukie facility n' tasting room that makes the south-of-PDX suburb feel a lot like Wisconsin, in only the best ways possible.

The taproom's loaded with oak barrels retrofitted as tables, and overlooks the gigantic new brewing facility. How gigantic? Breakside's original location is capable of pumping out 700 barrels annually, vs. the 10000 capability here. Mathletes would tell you that's a 1329% jump... if they didn't hate beer so much that they skipped this story.

Like Boozy Captain Kirk, the brewers control everything from a command center, from dumping grains into the tanks to temperature. Unlike that interplanetary lothario, one of the other things they can control is the amount of wort that shows up.

Supplying the taproom and storing kegs until they go out to bars throughout Oregon, this is basically the world's greatest keggerator.

In a cold and damp back room that doubles as Donkey Kong's artillery shed, specialty barrels of stuff like the 11.7% Old Whiskey Dick and Chinato Belgian age before emerging as limited-edition beers.

The taproom rocks 24 spigots curated and manned by the brewers themselves, and includes location-exclusive pours like the Aquavit-inspired New Nordic Porter, the citric Oude Noire farmhouse ale, and the lip-scalding Thai pepper-brewed Szechuan Blonde.

Those beers and faves like Breakside's Aztec Aztec and Oatmeal Stout are available in pints, kegs, growlers, and flights, which are also something you no longer need in order to to experience breweries on a Wisconsin-massive scale.