My Top 5 of 2009

As the year comes to a close and many are sharing their Top 5 Lists, I thought it would be appropriate for me to do the same as my first post for The Daily Pull.  I've lived in Portland for four months.  In my short time here I've spent a lot of my spare time visiting the seemingly endless number of local breweries, beer bars, and bottle shops - talking with people about their favorites and asking for recommendations - trying to get a handle on all that's available here in the Pacific Northwest.

I moved to Portland from Chicago in August.  By comparison, Chicago has an extremely limited number of local microbreweries (there were only a couple in the city when I moved here, and I heard that another opened this fall).  Because of the limited local selection, we were left to seek out beers brewed elsewhere.  And while that may not sound so bad, beer distribution issues in Chicago and Illinois served as another barrier to getting our hands on the quality and variety we were looking for (the most well-known case is Bell's Brewery's - see 'availability').  The move to Portland completely changed this.

I've included my Top 5 beers of 2009 below.  These are all beers I first tried after moving to Portland, and I've opted to only include beers brewed in Oregon as part of my list for this year.