May 17, 2012
I visited the Raccoon Lodge on a recent visit to Portland. This is a really large restaurant that happens to make great beer. The service was great; friendly, attentive, knowledgeable. The selections were great featuring some exclusives that were not even available at the Belmont Street location (although there are more sours at the Belmont location). The food was good. If you have to choose between this location and Cascade Brewing I think Cascade is the way to go if you like sours. If you are looking for something with more of a restaurant-like feel and beers that are more suitable to more palates then Raccoon Lodge is your best bet. Either way I would recommend both.

March 25, 2012
Ate upstairs with a child who could have eaten free on a Monday. Come in at dinner time Sunday and you can hear live music possibly in the Den and children’s voices upstairs. Very friendly. good food. Great deserts. 11 beers on the sample tray.

January 13, 2012
Stoped in after working a jobsite in the area. We sat at the bar downstairs and had a few beers. Bar was pretty small but there were plenty tables and booths behind us. Bar tender was attentive and knowledgable of the 10 taps from the Cascade brewery. Served our pints plus gave us samples of what ever we wanted to try. We ordered cheeseburgers and pullerd pork sliders, decent but nothing exciting. It was cool to look thru the glass at the brewery operation as we drank and ate. Checked out upstairs before we left. A good sized restaurant and what looked like a nice menue. Liked the taxadermy on the walls, especially the raccoon skin over the stairs. Overall a nice place to have visited.

July 13, 2011
2010-06. Visited on a sunny Saturday afternoon last June, this has a huge lodge restaurant upstairs and a game hole den in the basement with a pool table, flatscreen televisions, an arcade wall, and windows into the brewery. Unfortunately slow food service despite very few patrons, but the brewer thoughtfully brought out two special brews for us to try at the end. Ten of their own on tap with more in bottles, all decent -- the most interesting were the two at the end, an experiment that had become deliciously infected! Good, solid food. Great place to visit.

July 8, 2011
Popped in here just before Cascade opened its barrel house, mainly just to try the beers. Faux-rustic, wide open, woody cabin sort of ambiance. Big and less than cozy. The crayola work of tots as you walk in signals the family friendliness, which is good for us. Maybe not the place to come and while away the evening with the fellas, but looks like a good spot for lunch or dinner with beers. Very impressed with the sour ales and lower-abv goses. Some of the plainer beers were, well, plain. Good hospitality.

June 15, 2011
Good place to sit and have a few... Also good place to get your OBF stuff early... Excellent fries and brews!

March 16, 2011
If you are in the beer capital of the world (Portland) and you choose this overpriced shithole then you suck.

September 22, 2010
Raccoon Lodge is one of the more interesting brewpubs that I’ve been to. It’s a large place, with a sizeable brewery on the ground floor, a big restaurant upstairs, and a large back yard complete with beer tent and outside bar. The ground floor also has a raccoon themed arcade or sorts for the kids, which allows them to peer through the glass windows to the brewery and watch as brewers fill towering stacks of oak barrels with the beers that will become Cascade Brewing’s award winning sour ales. I’m still not why the brewery is called Cascade, and the pub Raccoon lodge, but it is slightly confusing. The upstairs wasn’t anything exceptional, atmosphere-wise, but I can imagine spending plenty of warm summer afternoons out on the back lawn or under the tent. After Trying a sample flight upstairs, (all were pretty good, with the Summer Gose and Frite Galois being exceptionally good) we were able to get a tour of the brewery with one of the brewers, Jonathan, who kindly poured us samples and chatted in between cleaning out oak barrels. Cascade has an interesting take on sour ales, using only lactic acid producing bacteria of their own proprietary mix, and no wild yeasts in their production process. Jonathan let us sample a batch of their Blackberry ale that had become infected with brettanomyces, and it definitely had a dry earthiness and funk that their beers normally lack. It might have been even better than the regular version though, and is being kegged as a special release. Overall, Raccoon Lodge is a must see for those visiting Portland. Soon though, they are also opening the Cascade Brewing Barrel House closer to downtown. I can imagine this being the new hot spot in town for those interested in barrel-aged beers. Next time, it’ll be first on our list of places to go.

August 31, 2010
Stopped at the lower bar, 10 taps and bottles for sale, came for the Gose, food was decent, bartender was friendly and accomodating

July 21, 2010
This is a pretty large place, which does a good job of depicting a lodge. Lots of wood on the interior. They have a relatively small bar inside, which is pretty dead. The bartender there was a bit of a sarcastic prick at first, but I warmed up to him very nicely, once I realized that was his thing. He knew his beers really well, and he also gave me lots of history lessons behind the owner of the place, etc. It was intriguing. The beers were very very good, with a nice wide selection. Only about a dozen on tap. I had the cheeseburger meatloaf sandwich, which was a good value. I didn’t like the sweet pickles they put on it. FUCK SWEET PICKLES. Otherwise, the staff was friendly and fun. I could see how the place could get super busy and crowded, though. The TV situation at the bar was poorly planned.