Jon Abernathy's 'Bend Beer' Earns Two Thumbs Up

Bend Beer: A History of Brewing in Central Oregon by Jon Abernathy
Foreword by Gary Fish
The History Press/American Palate, 171 pages
$20

Bend, Oregon is widely recognized as one of the top beer cities in the country. In fact, articles published in the national media have routinely referred to it in recent times as Beer Town USA. That's based largely on the number of breweries per capita and the quality of the beer.

Jon Abernathy's new book traces the transition of Bend (and Central Oregon) from frontier homesteading to the timber boom era to recreation, tourism and, finally, beer. It's a long and winding road, with a number of fascinating stopovers along the way.

The first thing you realize is that Bend's history does not parallel that of Portland, Oregon's largest city and the place where craft beer in the state was born. Henry Weinhard Brewing had a dominant presence in Portland and the Northwest for more than a century. There was only a small brewing presence in Central Oregon until Deschutes Brewing was born in 1988. That's when Bend's beer trajectory starts to line up with Portland's.

Without many breweries to write about in the early period, Abernathy focuses mostly on the economic development of Central Oregon. The area possessed a tiny population of subsistence farmers and ranchers. Bend wasn't even incorporated until 1905, largely a result of the fact that the area was economically isolated. That changed in a big way with the arrival of the railroad in 1911, which opened to door to the timber era and dynamic growth.

Strangely enough, the coming of the railroad and the launch of the timber boom era coincided closely with state prohibition in 1916. Bend had been a haven for saloons and brothels from its early days and the temperance movement was greeted by many. But not all. One of the more fascinating stories from the prohibition period involves the role Central Oregon played in the manufacture of moonshine for the region. I won't give it away, other than to say the countryside "lit up at night."

Confiscated still

By the time Prohibition ended in 1933, Bend's economy was dominated by timber. Taverns and bars opened or reopened and the beer flowed. Bond Street, the eventual home to Deschutes Brewery and Public House, once again became a bustling strip. The area's beer experience during the period following Prohibition mirrored that of the country, as the national brands moved in.

The timber era began to decline by the late 1950s, gradually replaced by recreation and tourism. Mount Bachelor (known at Bachelor Butte until 1983) led the way as a magnet for visitors from outside the area and accounted for a growing financial footprint. As the onslaught of the national brands intensified during the post-World War II era, Central Oregon aligned with the rest of the state in supporting regional brands Olympia and Blitz-Weinhard.

Deschutes under construction. 1988.

Gary Fish was operating a restaurant in Utah and watching the craft movement expand in the mid-1980s. He looked at the brewpub model and saw something he liked. Northern California is where he wanted to establish a brewery, but high real estate prices and competition proved problematic. His parents, having visited Central Oregon, suggested he take a look at Bend.

Deschutes Brewery opened in June 1988, less than a year after Fish visited the area to check things out. Abernathy documents several interesting points here. First, there were others who had plans to open a brewery in Bend around this time. None succeeded. Second, Deschutes was not an instant success by any means. They were problems with employees, customers and infected beer. These were uncertain times.

Collection of Jubelale bottles

"You could shoot a gun off in here a lot of nights and nobody would notice," Fish is quoted as saying. Some nights he sent employees home and ran the place alone business was so slow. That's a hard concept to fathom today, given what Deschutes has become.

Most of the second half of the book deals with Bend after Deschutes. Abernathy rolls through the successes and growing pains at Deschutes and traces the history of breweries that came later: Silver Moon, Cascade Lakes, Bend Brewing, 10 Barrel, etc. The names and travels of countless brewers, many of whom passed through Deschutes and other places on their way to their own gigs, are tracked.

Bend Brewing

Because it happened after the book was published, Anheuser-Busch's purchase of 10 Barrel Brewing is not covered. That's probably just as well. Any future edition of this book will certainly address that deal and the not-so-friendly response to it. For now, interested folks will have to be satisfied with news reports and blog coverage.

As many who read this surely know, I wrote the history of Portland beer. The Bend book shares the same publisher and, as you can see, the same cookie cutter cover layout. I have never met Jon Abernathy, but we had several online conversations regarding his project. Still, no one told me I had to like his book or recommend it. Bend's story is really quite different than Portland's for reasons that are readily apparent as you read the book.

At the end of the day, some of the most interesting history is local history. For it is local history that traces the development of communities and people most clearly. Jon Abernathy does a fine job laying out and explaining the forces that shaped the transformation of Bend and Central Oregon from frontier to modern times. The brewing part of that history happens to be most prominent after 1988. Still, there is great history here.

This book will be of interest to residents, non-residents and tourists who want to know how Bend and Central Oregon became what it is today. The hoards that travel the Bend Ale Trail annually will find plenty to like here. The story is well-researched, well-constructed and expertly written. And it will occupy a seminal place in the literature of this area for years to come.

Jon has launched a series of events in support of the book. Some have already taken place and I assume they have gone well. Here in Portland, he will appear at Powell's Books on Burnside on Friday, Dec. 5.  He will partner with Brian Yaeger, whose book, Oregon Breweries, comes out next week. Both books have Facebook pages and websites with more info. I urge interested folks to learn more.

Rural Oregon: Where the GABF Medals Roam

Everyone in the beer community is talking about the just-completed Great American Beer Festival. Here in Oregon, there are handshakes all around. Our breweries brought home 25 medals, third on the list behind California (52) and Colorado (46).

First, congrats to everyone who won a medal, any kind of medal, whether your brewery resides in Oregon or elsewhere. It's no small task. As Jeff Alworth says in his wrap-up, it's a challenge just getting into the GABF. There are something like 2,500 breweries competing for roughly 600 spots. Ye gods.

Some have suggested that the Brewers Association adopt regional competitions to filter entries for the national event. Don't hold your breath. There's a lot of money being made just the way things work now, and there are logistical challenges involved in putting on regional competitions. Near-term changes are unlikely.

As I looked at the list of Oregon winners, the first thing I noticed is that Portland breweries are not well-represented. Of the 25 Oregon medals, Portland breweries picked up just six of them...roughly 25 percent. I was surprised by that, given we have more than 50 breweries in the city. It turns out I shouldn't have been.

I decided to do an analysis of where Oregon's GABF medal winners have come from over the past five years. Sure, I could have gone back 10 years...or 20. I chose five because I'm most interested in recent history. Be my guest if you want to do a more extensive analysis. The data is out there all the way back to 1983.

Of the 95 GABF medals Oregon has brought home since 2009, 67 (70 percent, if you prefer) were won by breweries outside Portland. In actual fact, Portland breweries have done fairly well the last two years, winning six medals this year and eight in 2012. Before that, the best recent year was 2009...when Portland breweries won nine of Oregon's 22 medals. The bad years were 2011 (2) and 2010 (3).

I wanted to know more. I wondered who the hell is winning all these medals. So I looked through the yearly GABF results and tabulated the number of medals won by the various breweries around the state. I don't want to say I was shocked, but I was surprised.

It turns out five breweries have been fairly dominant over the course of the last five years: Barley Brown's (aka Baker City Brewing), Bend Brewing, Deschutes Brewing, Pelican Brewing and Rogue. Together, these five breweries have accounted for 56 (or 59 percent) of the 95 medals GABF medals won by Oregon breweries.

Boiling it down further, the top three accounted for 41 of the 95 medals (43 percent). It may come as a surprise to learn that the top medal winner is Barley Brown's of Baker City, which has won 16 medals. Deschutes is next with 13; Pelican has 12. Rounding out the top five, Bend Brewing has eight medals and Rogue has seven.

It's hardly a surprise to see Deschutes among the top medal winners. It's a huge operation and they've been making good beer for a long time. The big surprises are Barley Brown's, Bend Brewing and Pelican. These operations are small and two of the three are rather remote. When was the last time you visited Baker City? Pacific City? Alrighty then.

In case you're wondering, the top Portland brewery over the last five years, in terms of GABF medals, is Laurelwood with six. Widmer and Breakside both have four. Hopworks and The Commons, which added two this year, both have three.

What do these stats mean? Mostly they mean Oregon's rural brewers have dominated the GABF medal hunt in recent years. Why has this been the case? I have no idea. I was originally thinking about linking Portland's relative lack of success to the fact that style barriers have completely collapsed here. But that seems a bit of a stretch. There has to be more to it.

One final point with regard to Barley Brown's/Baker City Brewing. These guys won three golds, two silvers and a bronze this year. They were also named  best Very Small Brewing Company and Very Small Brewing Company Brewer. Seeing them win medals in highly competitive categories (like American Style IPA) shouldn't really come as a surprise. Not if you look at their recent history. They're in a groove.

John Harris? Who the Hell is He?

You've probably heard John Harris is getting ready to open a brewery and pub over on Mississippi and Cook. If not, you heard it here first. John's holding a sneak preview of what he's up to on Sunday, April 28, from 2-4 p.m. He'll reveal what he plans to call the place, among other things. But wait. Who the hell is John Harris?

The collaboration with ex-employee Tony Lawrence was a hit

Even if you don't recognize John's photo or know him, you almost certainly know some of his beers if you've been around Oregon beer for any length of time. See, John has been part of the beer scene around these parts for 26 years...and counting. He's what you call an icon, even if you don't know him.

John began his professional brewing career with McMenamin's at the Hillsdale Pub. After the Brewpub Bill passed in 1985, Hillsdale was the first pub to take advantage of the law and start brewing. When they advertised for a brewer, John applied. He had some homebrewing experience, nothing more. As he joked when I spoke to him a while back, "I had no experience, but they hired me anyway." That's kind of the way it was in those days.

He got off to a rough start. "When I was hired, they told me to bring rubber boots my first day. But I forgot to buy them and showed up in hiking boots. That didn't work out too well when it came time to shovel the hops out of the brew kettle. But they didn't fire me, thankfully."

Unknown to many, they were using malt extract to brew at Hillsdale in the early days. They didn't have the ability to mash, so they bought 50-gallon drums of extract and used that. The beers were okay, never great. Other brewers made fun of them. About a year later, they started mashing and the Hillsdale beers eventually got better. Harris was there.

"The cool thing about McMenamin's is you had your own brewery. They gave you a lot of freedom to create stuff. We brewed with fruit, which was not common at the time…rhubarb, strawberries, raspberries. Some recipes worked better than others. There were times when they would say, 'Don’t make that again.'”

After two years (1986-88), Harris took a job at a little place called Deschutes Brewing in Bend. Deschutes was just getting started and he had a major role in developing recipes that were and are infamous in Oregon and beyond.

"I developed the recipes for Mirror Pond, Bachelor Bitter, Black Butte Porter and Obsidian Stout…all the good stuff," he said. "That’s where I made my name." Later in his four-year tenure at Deschutes, John hired Tony Lawrence to clean up the place after brewing day. Lawrence eventually left for Arizona, but subsequently returned and launched...Boneyard Brewing. 

John left Deschutes in 1992 and returned to Portland to work for Full Sail. Full Sail had opened in 1987 in Hood River and was well-known...in large part because they were the first craft brewery to start bottling. But they wanted a pub presence in Portland. The Pilsner Room on the South Waterfront seemed the perfect spot.

"I moved to the Pilsner Room in 1992," Harris recalled. "The place was still run by McCormick and Schmick. Pretty soon we made all Full Sail's draft beer for Portland in that brewery. We made the first IPA here…in 1994. Later, I started the Brewmaster Reserve Program, which was small batches, special beers. The brewery here was good because it gave locals a chance to taste Full Sail's specialty beers without going to Hood River."

Harris left Full Sail after 20 years in 2012. His plan all along was to start his own brewery and pub, but it took longer than he had hoped to find the right location with the right combination of attributes. Now that he has things moving along, it will be interesting to see what he comes up with. Should be good stuff.

If you plan to stop by on the 28th, keep in mind there won't be any beer. Not yet. But there are lots of places in the area to get a beer once you've taken a gander at John's plans.

Black Friday Follow-up and Notes

One of the things I strive for with this blog and anything else I write for public consumption is journalistic integrity. With respect to beer, I refuse to simply parrot what the various breweries, pubs and retailers. I collect information from the appropriate sources and interject my own thoughts as I write.

I followed that course when I put together the post on the Return of Workhorse at Laurelwood. I first reported the official reason why Workhorse was taken out of production: a shortage of hops. That's the information they gave me. I then provided a personal interpretation of why Workhorse was taken out of production: to make way for Gearhead as their standard IPA, with an imperial version of Workhorse to be released soon thereafter.

Workhorse is back on Laurelwood's big board

My interpretation was not well-received by Laurelwood brass. It's not hard to understand why. A lot of people were unhappy about the demise of Workhorse and many of them didn't believe the official explanation. I was tossing gasoline on the fire. You get the drift.

In the spirit of fair play and good beer, I spent some time talking to Laurelwood brewmaster, Vasili Gletsos, yesterday. I had not met him before. We spent an hour or so bouncing all kinds of beer thoughts around. Vasili is a great guy. They're lucky to have him at Laurelwood and I suspect he will do great things there.

Below are a few updates to my prior post, based on my conversation with Vasili:

• Although Laurelwood considered tweaking the Workhorse recipe and releasing it as an imperial IPA, they eventually decided against the idea. Plans change all the time, Vasili said. 
• There are no plans to release an imperial version of Workhorse this year. An imperial version may happen at some point, but the timeline is uncertain.When it happens, Imperial Workhorse will likely be part of their specialty series, with availability limited to select bottleshops.
• Gearhead is Laurelwood's standard IPA going forward, widely  available on draft and in bottles at grocery stores, bottleshops, etc.
• The A-Z IPA program was never intended to be lengthy. As Workhorse was running out last summer/fall, Vasili launched the A-Z program and named the first few beers after racehorses...Aftershock, Best Bet and C-Biscuit. The "D"-beer wound up being Gearhead, which they decided to launch to replace of Workhorse, and the A-Z program was tabled.
• A little off the beaten path, Vasili said making less Workhorse has freed up brewing capacity and given them more room to experiment with new ideas. He hopes to use some of that production capacity to produce a lager, with a probable summer release.

So there you have it. My supposition that Workhorse was taken out of production so they could easily release Gearhead and later launch Imperial Workhorse over the top appears to have been mistaken. Their plans for Imperial Workhorse are too uncertain to suggest that strategic course.

As for the A-Z program, the information I was given by a Laurelwood employee last summer was incorrect. Vasili had only recently joined the brewery at that time. He says they are working to improve communication between the brewhouse and the pub.

Deschutes Outing

While I'm (sorta) on the subject of Workhorse, there are a growing number of beers out there that offer similar hops character. This surely has something to do with the fact that the hophead pallet increasingly seeks IPAs that feature piney, citrus, grapefruit notes in flavor and aroma. 

Hop City 2 is front left

On a quick lunch outing today, I tasted an IPA that reminded me a lot of Workhorse  The beer is Deschutes Hop City 2. It's one of their special selections at the Portland pub and they're calling it an experimental IPA. It has 95 IBUs and 9% ABV. Excellent lunch numbers, eh?

More importantly for hopheads, Hop City 2 uses nine hop varieties. It features the same kinds of citrus, pine and grapefruit notes that in my mind make Workhorse so popular. Hop City 2 also reminds me Boneyard RPM. Workhorse, RPM and Hop City 2 make a nice trio, despite Hop City 2's higher ABV. Round 'em up!

There was another beer on the taster tray that deserves mention. In the photo above, it's the beer to the right of Hop City 2. This is a blended beer from their Reserve stock. They evidently blended two parts Black Butte XXII with one part of what he referred to as a "house sour." No matter. This beer has a solid backbone, rich chocolate notes, and is wrapped in a mildly sour presentation. Really terrific job, Deschutes!

OBF Walkabout Destinations

It's strangely inevitable. People attending the Oregon Brewer’s Festival will want to do a little tasting on the side. It’s tough to fathom, given the 86 beers available at the Festival, but it’s going to happen. So I’m making a few suggestions…places within walking distance of Waterfront Park that represent some of the best beer selections Portland has to offer. No need to explain the walking part, right?

Five walkabout destinations by the numbers.

1. Hair of the Dog After operating his brewery out of a Southeast Portland warehouse for many years, brewer Alan Sprints finally stepped to the plate and opened a first rate tasting room closer to the city on Yamhill and Water Ave. Hair of the Dog should be at the top of any serious beer fan’s list when visiting Portland. It’s where you can sample some of the finest beers on the planet. Adam, Fred, Ruth and the excellent barley wine, Doggie Claws, are all available to taste in exquisite glassware. These are high alcohol beers, so don’t overdue it. Hair of the Dog beers are available for sale in bottle-conditioned form at the pub and in select stores around town. These beers, like fine wine, are generally thought to improve with age. But they also taste great directly out of the tap.
2. Cascade Brewing Barrel House One of the founding fathers of the craft beer movement and the Oregon Brewers Festival, Art Larrance, opened the Barrel House in 2010. Larrance also operates the Raccoon Lodge in Raleigh Hills, but the Barrel House is truly unique thanks to the beers being produced there. Brewmaster Ron Gansberg, who came from the wine making industry, is dedicated to being different. He and Larrance wanted to offer an alternative to what they refer to as the “hops arms race” in the Northwest. They landed on the idea of creating a line of sour beers similar, but not quite identical to, Belgian-style ales. They use fruit grown in the Northwest and oak barrels from local wineries for aging. This effort started in 2005 and their sour beers have been recognized several times at the Great American Beer Festival. They offer more than their sour beers at the Cascade Barrel House. But sample the sour beers if you go there. They are pretty unique.
3. Bailey’s Taproom The growing popularity of craft beer has resulted in growing number of pubs that feature a huge number of guest taps and wide selection of beer. Bailey’s Taproom is one of the best. It offers 20 constantly rotating taps that emphasize Oregon and Northwest beers. Bailey’s hours are limited to late afternoons and evenings and they don’t have food. But the beer list is primo and the assistance provided by the servers is excellent. Also, Bailey’s is one of the few places that regularly updates the list of available beers on their website. Their stated goal is to constantly offer one of the most eclectic selections of beer around and provide an atmosphere that is comfortable, accommodating, and encourages enthusiasm for the unfamiliar. They succeed on all counts.

4. Tugboat Brewing Across the street from Bailey’s Taproom you’ll see the Tugboat Brewing fascia. Tugboat started operations in 1992. It’s a logical destination for OBF visitors because it represents the small ball approach that once characterized brewpubs in Portland. The brewhouse is small, producing the equivalent of eight kegs per brewing session. Owner/brewer Terry Nelson apparently brews what he feels like as his schedule permits. For 20 years, Nelson has maintained the values of small scale beer production and friendly, down to earth ambiance. While some of Oregon’s craft breweries have gone to mass production and distribution, Nelson likes to think Tugboat has taken a calculated step backwards by staying small, family-owned, and respectful of the beer and his customers. You never know what you’ll find on tap here. Don’t worry about it. Have a pint of house beer and take in the ambiance. It’s worth the trip!
5. Deschutes Brewing Based in Bend, Deschutes Brewing has enjoyed amazing success since opening in 1988. It is now the fifth largest craft brewery in the United States. Deschutes didn’t open a brewpub in Portland until 2008, possibly because they wanted to find the perfect space. They found it, then spent a fortune renovating the building to their specs. What they have is striking, with high ceilings, a sizeable bar area and plenty of table seating. The brewhouse is a custom-built 20 bbl system which is prominently on display for beer fans to absorb. Most of the beers served at the Portland brewpub are produced there. That list includes a number of specialty beers you won’t find in stores or pubs. Whether you like their mainstream beers or not, you have to face the fact that Deschutes produces a consistently excellent product. Mirror Pond Ale has won a number of awards and Black Butte Porter is the best selling craft brew porter in the land. There’s nothing at all wrong with their standard beers, but look to the list of specialty beers like Imperial Hop in the Dark, Streaking the Quad, Chainsaw White IPA or Fresh Squeezed IPA for a taste treat. Great stuff.