Camas is a mill city & now has a fine brewery by that name

   Camas, on the Columbia just east of Vancouver, is dominated by a huge Georgia-Pacific mill (hey, didn't that used to describe Bellingham?).  The downtown streets are tree-shaded and their stores look to be thriving.  A nice place to locate a new brewer, Mill City Brew Werks, in business just since June.

   The actual werks are in the basement, but a glass enclosure allows restaurant diners to see the top of the shiny new 10 barrel system.

  Mill City had ten taps working for their own brews on the last Friday in October, and a half-dozen or so guest taps.  Besides the Bear Paw Brown, my choice (5.4% abv, 28 ibu, rich malty mouthfeel), I saw a good selection listed.  A Pale, a Hefe, a Porter, a Milk Stout, a couple of IPA styles, the almost-obligatory for this time of year pumpkin ale--gives an idea of the range of brewer Chris Daniels' interests.
    Chris was good enough to offer a short tour of the system down in the basement.  The fermenters are also 10-bbl sized and there is plenty of room to grow capacity down below.

   He pulled samples of a couple of werks-in-progress:  A smoked lager, real Bamberg-style Rauchbier with 80-85% of the malts being smoked, and an Imperial IPA, to be called Log Splitter, which, believe it or not, tests for bitterness around 100 IBUs but rolls across the tongue in a balanced way rather than a hop-heavy blast of bitter.  I hope this one gets to the winter festivals.
(Visited 10/26/13)