The Great American Ale Trail (Revised Edition) Read online

  Wine Country: The Willamette Valley

  WOLVES & PEOPLE FARMHOUSE BREWERY

  30203 NE Benjamin Rd. • Newberg, OR 97132 • (503) 487-6873 • wolvesandpeople.com • Established: 2014

  SCENE & STORY

  Admittedly, I’m biased. Wolves & People is my own brewery, which, over the course of a long, drudging year of construction, I built on the farm where I grew up. I started dreaming about this brewery during my freshman year of college at Whitman, in Walla Walla, oh-so-many years ago. A good friend who lived across the hall taught me to brew. One crisp, hoppy taste of Abe’s Ale told me he knew what he was talking about. And with a single stir of my own kettle, I was hooked. I could write a book about my path from that dusty section lounge to the present day, and maybe will someday. With help from former Jester King head brewer Jordan Keeper, who spent a year working on site, the brewery was constructed from October 2014 to the fall of 2015.

  Wolves & People, located down a quiet country road in the Oregon wine country next to a hazelnut orchard, is housed in my family’s 100-year-old white barn, gently restored and converted to brewing starting in the summer of 2014. The mission was to build a true farmhouse brewery, with nods to Belgian traditions and new-era techniques, and to share the results on site in a tasting room with visitors (and bottle the rest). The farm supplies many ingredients used in beers, from heirloom plums to Douglas fir and cedar tips, herbs, and other fruits. Inside, visitors encounter a copper-clad 7bbl system (formerly used by Heater Allen Brewing Co.), exposed wood beams (which, in the late ’60s, came out of my late father’s meat packing plant in Portland’s industrial inner southeast), rows of oak barrels, and a mill room I built with help from a dear, former teacher friend (and current neighbor) from salvaged barn windows and stained hemlock. There are several tasting areas inside the barn, and as of this writing, plans for outdoor seating under shade, alongside the old filbert trees.

  If it’s open, wander upstairs to the loft and admire the Soulboat, an art installation first hung from the rafters in 1994. Built by an acclaimed Washington, D.C., artist, Soulboat was formerly displayed in the Smithsonian, then joined a traveling tour. When it reached Portland, Larry Kirkland, its creator, and my mother, Ellen, were chatting at a party. Kirkland needed a home for his massive mobile-like piece; she offered up the barn’s beautiful loft, and soon the barn had its most long-term, most mystical inhabitant.

  PHILOSOPHY

  “Wolves & People” is the name of a nighttime game of tag I played with my older brothers and cousins on the farm growing up. And it relates to hops (humulus lupulus, Latin for “wolf among weeds”). As a lover of saisons and wild ales as long as I have been legally allowed to drink, my passion is for those styles above all. With the fruit and nuts we grow on the farm itself, I aim to brew vivid, food-friendly beers that truly express a sense of place. The yeast we use in the brewery came from a wild strain I propagated off an old Italian plum tree in our field. The soft, pristine water comes from our own farm’s well, tapping the Parrett Mountain aquifer directly below our farm. Our grain comes from the Northwest, especially Mecca Grade, an heirloom barley farmer in eastern Oregon. And our hops come from nearby family farms like Crosby and Annen (along with a few pounds off our place, too).

  KEY BEER

  Sebastian, our signature saison, is named for Sebastian Brutscher, the Bavarian immigrant who was the first non-native settler on Springbrook Farm’s land, around 1850, and who gave Newberg its name (he was born in Neuberg am Danau, in Bavaria). Brutscher, a woodsman and later both the postmaster and schools’ superintendent of the area, grew oats, wheat, and hops here (among other crops), so all those ingredients are in our signature saison. A blend of young- and barrel-aged, brett-kissed saison, dry-hopped and carefully bottle-conditioned, Sebastian aims for an earthy, grassy, slightly tart character, dry finish, and a rich meringue-like head. And if we have any imperial stout aged on estate filberts, we’ll gladly share that, too.

  HEATER ALLEN BREWING

  907 NE 10th Ave., McMinnville, OR 97128 • (503) 472-4898 • heaterallen.com • Established: 2007

  SCENE & STORY

  As IPAs multiplied around him, Oregon native Rick Allen, a mild-mannered home brewer living in the heart of Oregon’s pinot noir country, eyed the negative space. Perhaps his previous career as an investment banker had taught him to look for what was missing as much, if not more, than what was piling up. In an era of unprecedented hoppiness in beer—the first massive, pungent American-style and Double-IPAs were being imitated across the state, indeed, the nation—but instead of walking that path, he looked to Bavaria, where balance is the ultimate pursuit. In 2007, excellent craft-brewed pilsner was still fairly rare. He decided to go pro and name his brewery by joining his wife’s maiden name, shared with a famed early pioneer to the area, Benjamin Heater, and his own. Labels would be clean, clear, and direct. The mission was clear: to brew exceptional handcrafted lager beer.

  After countless home-brew batches, including fourteen pilsners in a row, in 2007 he was ready to ramp up his favorite—a crisp, flowery number—on a handsome, used, copper-clad 7bbl system housed in a small warehouse next to a winery in McMinnville, Oregon’s quiet granary district. He decorated the tasting room with empty grain sacks from Weyermann, the celebrated Bavarian maltsters. Tasting room hours were limited at best. But slowly, Allen’s detail-oriented, no-nonsense approach, and bright, grainy, substantial pilsner, achieved nothing less than cult status. Not long after launching, Heater Allen Pils, 200-gallon batch by 200-gallon batch, eventually earned the top spot in RateBeer’s entire pilsner category. As of this writing, the tasting room is open on the second Saturday of every month from 12 to 5 p.m., and by appointment.

  Since 2009, Allen’s daughter, Lisa, who has a background in winemaking, has taken on more and more brewing, and the cheerful Allens recently completed an expansion, doubling the brewing capacity and entering the California market in the process.

  PHILOSOPHY

  Think straightforward, clean, fresh superb German- and Czech-style lagers, with perhaps a touch more hops than the Old Country.

  KEY BEER

  The Allens have created more than a dozen beers, but three take top billing: the Pils, a Vienna lager called Coastal, and a super schwarzbier. By all means start with the Pils (4.9% ABV) and work your way through the offerings.

  McMinnville is the beating heart of Oregon’s vaunted pinot noir country, scarcely a drop of cheap merlot in sight. But brew tanks are increasingly standing tall, too. Touring Mac (as locals call it) on foot offers another fine, spacious, newish brewpub, Grain Station (grainstation.com), a few steps away from Heater Allen. Visitors can also raise a well-made glass on the patio at Golden Valley (a brewpub popular since the mid-1990s); later, go deep into more esoteric styles with the Bitter Monk’s focused list of Belgian and American wild ales (thebittermonk.com). It’s the best Oregon beer bar outside of Portland, these days. Night cap on the roof deck—then sleep it off—at McMenamins’ historic Hotel Oregon (mcmenamins.com/HotelOregon); revive at Community Plate, a chic, airy breakfast and espresso sanctuary that could have been airlifted out of Portland (communityplate.com).

  Corvallis

  BLOCK 15 BREWERY & RESTAURANT

  300 SW Jefferson Ave. • Corvallis, OR 97333 • (541) 758-2077 • block15.com • Established: 2008

  SCENE & STORY

  Housed in the historic corner building that used to be the Gazette-Times newspaper office, Block 15’s name comes from its address (or block number) from the early days of Corvallis. It’s a small brewery, relatively speaking, but it holds a lot of significance locally as a popular watering hole, with fourteen taps (seven rotating), two floors, and room for about 120 imbibers. There’s an appealing menu of fare like house-smoked pork shoulder, burgers, and crispy fries. It’s also a rallying point for the fermentation science majors at Oregon State University, who get their own dedicated tap to showcase experimental brews. Suddenly, Corvallis has a bigger beer sc
ene. “We’re in our own little island,” says brewer and co-owner Nick Arsner, “but we’ve got a great little beer culture growing here in Corvallis.”

  PHILOSOPHY

  Nonconformist. Given that Corvallis is something of a conservative town, with endless acres of corn, hops, and locals in big pickup trucks, Arsner’s cutting a different track. “I love the art in barrel aging and mixed fermentations rather than kicking out IPA,” he says. There’s even a little coolship in the cellar. It was among the first in the country just a few years ago.

  KEY BEER

  Pappy’s Dark, brewed with six different Belgian and British malts and aged in nine- and ten-year-old bourbon barrels, is a velvety, deep, and rich beer with flavors of bourbon, caramel, and woody vanilla (10% ABV). And ask what other saisons, sours, and other experiments are in the works.

  Enterprise

  TERMINAL GRAVITY BREWING CO.

  803 SE School St. • Enterprise, OR 97828 • (541) 426-0158 • terminalgravitybrewing.com • Established: 1998

  SCENE & STORY

  East of the Cascades, dense Douglas fir forests yield to rolling hills of wheat, with narrow ribbon roads connecting small towns like Enterprise (population: 1,000). After a series of brewing jobs big and small, brothers-in-law Steve Carper and Dean Duquette moved back there to launch their own operation, Terminal Gravity (a brewing term for the end of fermentation). In 2014, new owners (and an expanded team) took over, polishing up the website and adding staff and new beers to the lineup. This is pristine Wallowa County mountain country, spitting distance from Kokanee salmon-filled Wallowa Lake, one of America’s only true glacial lakes, and the Hells Canyon recreation area, a major adventure-travel hub. And what’s a spin through the great outdoors without a beer to cap off the journey?

  PHILOSOPHY

  “Middle of Nowhere . . . Center of the Universe.” This little brewery is a treasure, a quaint yellow-painted, Craftsman-style cottage with a few tables and stools inside and three acres of grounds outside where travelers meet to drink beer on the porch, play volleyball, and toss horseshoes—then stand around a roaring bonfire: the definition of summer itself.

  KEY BEER

  Terminal Gravity IPA, the tangy and ultrabitter bottle-conditioned beer that made this tiny brewpub regionally famous (6.8% ABV).

  Eugene

  NINKASI BREWING CO.

  272 Van Buren St. • Eugene, OR 97402 (541) 344-2739 • ninkasibrewing.com • Established: 2006

  SCENE & STORY

  Back in 1994 the irrepressible Jamie Floyd was just slinging hobby home brew for University of Oregon parties. After graduation he considered academia but scored a gig manning the kettles at Steelhead Brewery in Eugene instead. Now Floyd and Co. have a staff of several dozen, and a 100,000-barrel-capacity brewhouse, not to mention a rabid fan base. In part by harnessing the power of community involvement through the arts and social networks (the company boasts a massive Facebook presence) and guerrilla marketing (at night, for example, with the Ninkasi logo “Bat Signal” spotlight), the firm has solidified its place in Oregon’s beerscape. There have been, in just nine years, four major expansions. Next up, the world?

  How about outer space? In what was a PR gambit of interstellar proportions, in 2013 the team set up what they called the Ninkasi Space Program (NSP), with one goal: “send brewer’s yeast to space, return it to Earth, and use it to brew delicious craft beer.” It took two launches, but the project succeeded in getting a yeast sample into orbit, which, once recovered back on terra firma, was used to brew Ground Control, an Imperial Stout brewed with Oregon hazelnuts, star anise, and cocoa nibs.

  Ninkasi’s tasting room and outdoor patio features year-round beers, seasonals, and occasional limited specialty releases on tap, and big summer block parties are guaranteed. And there’s a limited menu of large soft brewery-dough pretzels, pasties, and soup.

  PHILOSOPHY

  “We make beer-geek- [approved] beer, but we don’t make beer for beer geeks,” says Floyd. “We encourage everybody [to drink beer], not just the supernerdy 1 percent.”

  KEY BEER

  The intensely bitter and tangy Total Domination IPA (6.7 % ABV) is one of the top-selling twenty-two-ounce beers in the state, but they’ve been accomplishing amazing things with lagers lately, even pulling down a coveted GABF gold medal for Pravda, a sparkling Bohemian pilsner, in 2013.

  AGRARIAN ALES

  31115 Crossroads Ln. W. • Eugene, OR 97408 • (541) 632-3803 • agales.com • Established: 2012

  SCENE & STORY

  Built on a bucolic seventeen-acre farm plot in a converted dairy barn just north of Eugene, Agrarian is one of the most authentic farmhouse breweries in the nation. Starting in 2002, Nate and Ben Tilley (brothers whose parents established it as Crossroads, an organic farm, in 1985) began tending hops, reviving a practice from the farm and area going back over a century. Today they grow eight varieties of Northwest hops plus two Old World varieties, and operate a small, heartfelt brewpub with a busy weekend scene, live music, yoga and lecture sessions, barn dances, and other programs. Without any discernible hype, Agrarian has become one of Oregon’s best beer destinations, especially on warm summer nights, an authentic farmhouse brewery in every sense of the word.

  PHILOSOPHY

  Even by the most stringent DIY standards, the fact that head brewer Tobias Schock and Co. use only estate-grown hops makes them a real rarity. Few breweries can pull it off, because hop farming is time-consuming, labor-intensive, resources-intensive work (especially in the busy beer season of late summer and early fall). All ingredients are sourced locally, and the crew sells excess hops in the farmers market. The result here is an appealing mix of hop-forward farmhouse ales, with forays into fiery and experimental terrain using farm herbs, honey, peppers and other crops. With an organic certification in process (no small task), Agrarian is an idealistic operation to stay the least.

  KEY BEER

  In late fall, look for Harvest Belgene, a dry-hopped Belgian-style saison (5.5% ABV) brewed with organic pilsner malt and a blend of two farmhouse yeasts. The nugget and crystal hops add potent, but not overpowering, herbal notes. And Field Beer, a “farmhand session beer” of 4%, is more or less a standby.

  Troutdale

  MCMENAMIN’S EDGEFIELD

  2126 SW Halsey St. • Troutdale, OR 97060 • (503) 669-8610 • mcmenamins.com • Established: 1991

  SCENE & STORY

  For those who live in the Northwest, the McMenamin Brothers’ quirky empire of fifty-nine (and counting) inns and brewpubs in artistically converted old churches, schools, theaters, utility buildings—even a lighthouse—are everyday neighbors, seldom spoken of with much passion anymore. It’s all too easy to forget that the Dead Head brothers Brian and Mike were right there at the start of things, though, with the Widmers and Ponzis of BridgePort in lobbying the Oregon state legislature to legalize brewpubs.

  The fact is that after years of mediocrity the beer and food and service are much improved. And most—if not all—of their loving, Age of Aquarius–inspired restorations, earnest local history murals, and other psychedelia-tinged whims will stand the test of time. The bars might serve only McMenamins’ beer, but the quirks and design are worth celebrating. Edgefield, a sprawling seventy-four-acre Works Progress Administration compound built in 1911 just outside of Portland—is the jewel in the crown, with a 100-room inn, brewery, distillery, winery, movie theater, multiple bars, concert stage, and rambling grounds complete with gardens and a par-3 golf course. (And a resident glassblower, naturally.) A summer concert series has gone from good to great lately, with musical guests along the likes of Wilco, Steely Dan, and local heroes the Decembrists. Show or not, on a warm summer night, you can’t do much better than strolling around the grounds with a beer in hand, ducking into the cigar-friendly Little Red Shed, a tiny, candlelit, ten-seat hideaway built in the farm’s former incinerator, now covered with creeper vines.

  PHILOSOPHY

  “Welcome to the K
ingdom of Fun.”

  KEY BEER

  On a hot day, the raspberry sweet-tart 4.4% ABV Ruby does the trick, getting plenty of zing from forty-two pounds of berries in every small batch.

  Hood River

  PFRIEM FAMILY BREWERS

  707 Portway Ave., Ste. 101 Hood River, OR 97031 • (541) 321-0490 • pfriembeer.com • Established: 2012

  SCENE & STORY

  Hood River, an adrenaline junkie–filled ski and river town about forty-five minutes east of Portland, has become a real hub of craft brewing, with Full Sail, Logsdon, and Double Mountain breaking trail. In 2012, locals eagerly embraced cofounder/brewmaster Josh Pfriem’s brewpub, dubbed pFriem with internal capitalization, perhaps to help beer lovers pronounce (and easily recall) its name. By mid-2014, the brewery was really cranking, with fifty different beers released and an annual output of 4,000 barrels. By the middle of 2015, pFriem had gained a solid retail presence in the region, thanks in no small measure to clean, elegant branding. The brewpub, located a short walk from Columbia’s wind-swept riverfront (which, on any tolerable afternoon, is teeming with board sailors), is an excellent stop, especially on a sunny afternoon post-waterfall hike or Mt. Hood ski. Be prepared for a wait to get inside the airy modern brewpub, attractively appointed with exposed beams, cool, old barrel-hoop chandeliers, polished cement floors, and, helpfully for some, a kids’ corner. There’s an ambitious menu, but it’s classics like the burger and mac ’n’ cheese with bacon that truly standout.

  PHILOSOPHY

  Pfriem is a garrulous, exacting brewer, and the releases are, across the board, very clean and sometimes adventurous, such as in the case of a recent, well-made Flanders blonde, which spends 18 months aging in oak.