Worthy Brewing Company

Worthy Brewing sits on the east side of Bend on Bellevue Drive, with a hop garden, a greenhouse and — unusually for a brewery — its own observatory, the Hopservatory, with a telescope open to the public on clear nights. It is a big, family-friendly site with a large patio, and its contribution to Bend's alcohol-free drinking is Hop Quencher.

Hop water deserves explaining, because it is the most interesting thing to happen to non-alcoholic drinking in a brewery town and it is still unfamiliar to most people. It is not beer with the alcohol removed and it is not a soft drink. It is water infused with hops — carrying the aroma, bitterness and resinous character that hops give an IPA, with no malt, no fermentation, no alcohol, and essentially no calories or sugar. The result tastes recognisably like the smell of a hoppy beer, without any of the body. For someone who misses an IPA specifically because of the hops rather than the alcohol, it is a closer match than most non-alcoholic beers manage, and it is dry rather than sweet, which is where NA soft drinks usually fail.

In a town where the post-ride, post-climb, post-float beer is a genuine social ritual, Hop Quencher slots into the ritual exactly. It is the drink for a hot afternoon on the patio when a full pint would end the day rather than extend it.

Worthy pours it alongside its full-strength range, and the site's scale — patio, gardens, family space, observatory — makes it one of the easier places in Bend to spend a long afternoon without the drink being the point. The observatory keeps its own separate schedule, so check before making a special trip for it.