Silver Moon Brewing

Silver Moon is one of Bend's older breweries, on Greenwood Avenue at the top of downtown, and it has built its identity around being a room where things happen — trivia nights, live music, comedy, a taproom that functions as a small venue as much as a bar. For anyone not drinking, that programming is the draw: there is a reason to be there beyond the drink in your hand, which is most of the battle on a Friday night.

The alcohol-free option it is known for is Downshift, a sparkling drink with no sugar and no alcohol, infused with terpenes — the aromatic compounds that give hops, citrus peel and pine their smell — and a trace of hemp-derived THC under the 0.3% federal threshold.

That needs saying plainly rather than glossing. Downshift contains THC. It is not alcohol and the quantity is small, but it is an intoxicant, and for a large share of the people this site is written for — anyone in recovery, anyone avoiding all mood-altering substances, anyone driving back over the Cascades — it is not an alcohol-free drink in the sense they mean. Order it knowing what it is. Silver Moon also pours ordinary soft drinks and the taproom's non-alcoholic options extend beyond it, so there is a route here that involves no active compounds at all.

This pattern is common across Bend and Oregon more broadly: hemp-derived THC and CBD drinks are widely treated as part of the zero-proof category by local venues and local press. Reading the label is more necessary here than in most cities.