Where to Find Scary-Good Halloween Cocktails in Portland

While Halloween is typically thought of as a candy-filled holiday for children, there are still plenty of treats to be had for adults. This scary season, bars around Portland are dressing up with creepy decorations and concocting themed cocktails for the occasion. Here’s where to sip on bubbling brews and tantalizing tonics leading up to and on the holiday.

The Uncanny

“The House of the Unholy” at The Uncanny

Lighting Bar Collective’s intimate bar within a North Mississippi Avenue house serves goth vibes year-round, but the Uncanny team is taking things to the next level for Halloween with scary decorations, eerie baby head tiki mugs, and a special menu. Enter if you dare for cocktails like the Machete Incident, with espresso-infused rum, coconut cream, and Campari-soaked strawberry chunks; alternatively, the Rest in Pieces, served hot, combines cocoa butter-infused rum, peanut butter batter, and chocolate whip. As with the bar’s regular menu, the House of the Unholy is offering no-proof cocktails, including the candy-loaded Treatz with hibiscus, Sour Patch Kids, pineapple, orgeat, and Pop Rocks.

Dirty Pretty x Black Lagoon

Bar industry veteran Collin Nicholas’s ’70s-vibed bar is hosting Black Lagoon, an internationally reaching pop-up founded by star bartenders Erin Hayes and Kelsey Ramage. Visitors will find cocktails such as the Hellfire Fizz with rye whiskey, amontillado, carrot, turmeric, yogurt, and soda, as well as the Creature Feature with vodka, banana liqueur, sherry, chlorophyll, and tobacco bitters. Agave aficionados may prefer the Book of Blood, with mezcal, Giffard Piment d’Espelette, miso falernum, beet, and absinthe; $2 from each Book of Blood will be donated to the hospitality-focused nonprofit Another Round Another Rally. The pop-up will run until Halloween.

“You’re Dead to Me” Pop-Up at Dead Guy Bar

Tucked behind the leaf-strewn South Park Blocks, Rogue Ales’ Dead Guy Bar has been decked out for the Halloween season and is offering themed food and cocktail menus, plus special events throughout the month. The pop-up’s namesake cocktail is an Old Fashioned served with Dead Guy whiskey barrel chips “smoldering atop,” while its cocktail version of a pumpkin spice latte is the Basic Dude, with vodka, coffee liqueur, pumpkin spice cream. You’re Dead to Me runs through November 5; reservations can be made via OpenTable.

Blank Slate’s Tropical Goth series

The team behind this intimate Montavilla bar “loves Halloween,” so for each Thursday and Friday night in October, diners are invited to join them for a special tiki drink menu, horror movies, and eerie soundscapes. Quench your thirst with cocktails like the Fog Cutter — with rum, cognac, gin, amontillado, orgeat, activated charcoal — or the Blood & Black Lace, made with pineapple rum, pineapple juice, passionfruit, and demerara syrup, finished with a Cynar float.