Deschutes Brewery Bend Public House

Deschutes opened on Bond Street in downtown Bend in 1988 as a small brewpub and became one of the defining American craft breweries. The public house is still on the same site, and it remains the place most visitors start a Bend beer trail. For anyone not drinking, the reason to come is Black Butte N/A.

Black Butte Porter is the beer Deschutes built its reputation on, and rendering it without alcohol is a genuinely hard technical problem. Alcohol carries body, sweetness and aromatic weight, and dark beers depend on all three — strip it out carelessly and a porter collapses into thin, sour coffee water. The N/A version holds the roast and the chocolate character of the original, which is why it stands out in a category dominated by pale, hoppy styles that are far more forgiving to dealcoholise. If you have tried non-alcoholic beer before and concluded it only works as an IPA, this is the pour that argues otherwise.

The public house itself is a large, warm room with a long bar and a menu built around pub food done properly — the kind of place that fills with families early and stays busy late. It sits a block from Drake Park and the Deschutes River, so it works as an end point for a walk along the water.

Bend's non-alcoholic scene leans heavily on hop-forward beer, which is what a town of trail runners and climbers tends to want after a day out. Black Butte N/A is the counterweight: the one to order when the evening has cooled off and a bright IPA is the wrong shape of drink. Cases are generally available to go alongside the full-strength range.