Portland Record Store Day gets local craft beer collaboration twist

Portland’s Record Store Day got a hometown beer release with Deep Cuts Pale Ale, a collaboration from Baerlic Beer Co., Music Millennium and John’s Marketplace that landed as a one-two punch of vinyl culture and craft beer. The beer was timed for Record Store Day on April 18 and poured at Music Millennium for $4 a pint, with four-packs also available to go at Baerlic locations and John’s Marketplace.

The release was the first installment in John’s Marketplace’s Pourtlandia Project, which the bottleshop describes as an effort to bring people into the same room through beer, music and neighborhood retail. For John’s Marketplace, the pairing had clear local weight: Music Millennium brought the record-store legacy, Baerlic brought the brewing, and the Oregon Music Hall of Fame added a civic and charitable angle through its Music in Schools program. John’s Marketplace operates bottleshops in Portland and Beaverton and carries more than 2,500 craft beers, wines, ciders, meads and non-alcoholic drinks, but this project pushed it beyond selection and into place-making.

Music Millennium gives the collaboration its deepest Portland roots. The store says it opened on March 15, 1969, in an 800-square-foot shop at 32nd and East Burnside, and it now operates from 3158 E Burnside St. The shop also has an in-store bar and hosts live performances, which made it a natural setting for a beer release built around Record Store Day. That day itself was conceived in 2007, and the first event took place on April 19, 2008. Record Store Day says it now celebrates nearly 1,400 independently owned record stores in the U.S. and thousands more internationally.

Deep Cuts Pale Ale was brewed at 6 percent and built on American two-row and Pilsner malt, Centennial and Simcoe hops, and a late addition of Crosby Hops Deep Cut Cascade. Crosby says Deep Cut Cascade is a late-harvest version of Cascade, left on the bine into late September for higher total oil content. The hop brings mandarin, peach, grapefruit, pine and resin notes, which fits the beer’s flavor profile of orange zest, grapefruit, peach, soft tropical fruit and a pine finish, with enough malt to keep the pint balanced. Crosby also describes Cascade as a defining American aroma hop, and that lineage gives the beer a recognizable craft-beer anchor beneath the music tie-in.

That mix is exactly why this collaboration stands out. It was not just a seasonal IPA with a clever label; it was a collectible, place-specific release that linked a legendary record store, a neighborhood beer retailer and a Portland brewery to a cause rooted in music education. In a city where local identity still matters, Deep Cuts turned Record Store Day into something drinkable, tradable and distinctly Portland.