Great Notion Brewing

Sommelier Audit Deconstruction

Great Notion helped define what a "culinary" approach to beer looks like, and Portland has been its home base for treating hazy IPAs and pastry stouts less like beer styles and more like dessert menus. Juice Jr. is the brewery's approachable, sessionable entry point into its hazy IPA world — soft, juicy, and built to be an easy everyday pour rather than a once-a-year chase beer. On the other end sits BBA French Toast, a barrel-aged pastry stout that leans fully into dessert territory — the kind of beer that treats maple, vanilla, and barrel character as legitimate brewing ingredients rather than gimmicks. Between those two poles, Great Notion has built a reputation as one of the Pacific Northwest's most inventive kitchens-disguised-as-breweries, constantly pushing what a hazy or a stout is allowed to taste like. Haliʻā watches Great Notion for that culinary range — hazy IPAs for freshness-driven juiciness and pastry stouts for the kind of rich, dessert-like complexity that benefits from a slow, cold trip rather than a rushed one. Oʻahu readers: expect a Great Notion drop to read more like a dessert course than a typical beer — that's the point.

From the Tasting Ledger

Beers we've reviewed from Great Notion Brewing

BBA French Toast

Great Notion Brewing // 8.6/10

Juice Jr.

Great Notion Brewing // 8.2/10