Lompoc Tavern Closure a Sign of the Times

The news that Lompoc Tavern will soon close arrived Friday afternoon. I wasn't surprised. It has become increasingly difficult in recent years for established pubs and breweries to compete with a sea of newcomers that tend to have greater appeal among young drinkers.

In the press release announcing the closure, owner Jerry Fechter talked about the challenge of operating pubs in various parts of the city and said it's time to sharpen the organization's focus on the pubs they have left...Fifth Quadrant, Oaks Bottom and Side Bar.

"We're embracing this as an opportunity to invest more time and attention on the remaining pubs and brewery, and making them the best they can be.”

This is the second Lompoc pub to close within the last year. The Hedge House on Southeast Division closed late last year and is now home to Little Beast. Lompoc had been a major player in the Portland market for many years, but its status is apparently waning.

Recall that Lompoc Tavern is the descendent of the original Old Lompoc Tavern, founded in 1993. Fechter, who moved to Oregon from Ohio in 1989, got hooked on craft beer and homebrewing in the early 1990s. He wanted a brewing job, but couldn't find one.

"McMenamins wouldn’t hire me," he told me in 2013. "I never got hired."

He wound up working at Old Lompoc Tavern and they got interested in brewing in-house. He started brewing there in late 1996, marked as the beginning of Lompoc. The initial results were sketchy.

"The first batch of beer was called Erstfest," Fechter remembered. "It wasn't good, but that's how I got started."

Several years later, Fechter negotiated with the owners to buy the place. They worked out a deal that included all the appropriate numbers. At the point where everyone was supposed to sign, the owners backed out, saying they wanted more money. Fechter would need a partner.

"That’s how I got partnered with Don Younger," he said. "Don and I met and chatted over several months on barstools in various places and eventually combined to buy the place. We renamed it New Old Lompoc."

I never met Don Younger, who was a partner is several of the Lompoc ventures. He passed away in 2011, as I was starting to cover Portland's beer scene. But conversations with Fechter suggest to me that the partnership worked fairly well. Don was the wacky elder statesmen who knew the business; Jerry was the eager apprentice who took it all in, though they weren't always in sync.

"I didn’t know how influential Don was until I started talking to him," Fechter told me. "He knew everyone and had been involved in craft beer from the start. Don was a character, always coming up with creative and crazy ideas." Fechter has an archive of stories.

After Younger passed away, New Old Lompoc came under Fechter's control. But things were changing dramatically in the area. The building owner soon decided to demolish it and build something that's a better fit for the trendy Northwest neighborhood.

When it reopened in 2013, the Lompoc Tavern had been reconfigured to fit a smaller space. The antiquated little brewery was gone, which helps explain the name change. Changes in the industry were also putting pressure on Lompoc.

Portland's brewery count started spiraling dramatically upward around 2009. By the time Lompoc Tavern opened, the city had more than twice as many breweries as it featured only a few years earlier. Competition in the beer and pub business was stiffening.

The press release says the crowd that supported New Old Lompoc found other places to go during construction and never returned when Lompoc Tavern opened. It also suggests business declined because a number of jobs moved out of the neighborhood.

My own version is that a lot of options started popping up in the area. Breakside Slabtown, just a short walk from Lompoc Tavern, undoubtedly sucked business away after it opened in 2017. Other new places harmonize better with what the millennial crowd is looking for.

Lompoc Tavern's final day will be Wednesday, Sept. 26. The lease is being taken over by Tap & Table, which currently has a location on Southeast Ankeny St. There will almost certainly be a gathering of regulars and friends on that last day. Note to self.

There are those who will shrug at the demise of Lompoc Tavern. For them, it's a relic of a bygone era. That's one way to look at it. Another view is that a slice of Portland's craft brewing history is being displaced. There's an instructive tale here for established pubs and breweries.

Lompoc Updates Artwork for Popular Beers

Fans of Lompoc beers will soon be seeing an updated look on store shelves and in bottle shops. Several of Lompoc's most popular beers are getting new labels. The common theme is that the Lompoc logo is taking a backseat to the beer's identify. I think it's a good change.

The old and the new

The first of the updates is to Kick Axe, the unofficial beer of the Portland Timbers. Kick Axe was launched about a year ago. It's a dry-hopped pale ale with many fans. The new label softens up the presentation while maintaining the basic notions of the original. Note the smaller Lompoc logo.

Proletariat Red and C-Note Imperial Pale Ale are also getting face-lifts. Proletariat Red is full-bodied with a rich red color. It's built a following on it's malty flavor and smooth finish. The new label projects the working class aspect of this beer. C-Note is a hoppy pale brewed with seven "C" hops. It packs IBUs to the limit at 100. Hopheads love it.

The new and the new

New Proletariat Red and C-Note bottles will start appearing on store shelves in a few weeks. Bottles of the new-look Kick Axe are already out there.

Although I consider these changes to be fairly dramatic, there is apparently no plan to extend the revised look to the company as a whole.

"When we decided to design a new label for Kick Axe, it seemed like this would be a perfect time [to update other labels], " Lompoc owner, Jerry Fechter, said. "We wanted to create a little bit of excitement in the Lompoc Brewing family. We will also be changing the LSD (Lompoc Special Draft) label in the fall. We feel these new labels help convey what each beer is about and what it represnts as a beer style."

I approve of the new look. The retail bottle market is heating up dramatically and you need to have appealing labels to compete. I think the new Lompoc labels will help with that.

Women in Oregon Beer Expanded: Irena Bierzynski

Over the summer, a lot of us beer geek types saw For the Love of Beer, a movie highlighting some of Oregon's most awesome women in beer. Sarah Pederson (Saraveza) and Tonya Cornett (Bend Brewing) kind of dominated the film, although we heard from Lisa Morrison (author), Veronica Vega (Deschutes Brewing) and a few others along the way.

The field of beer and brewing, long dominated by men, is opening up to women. Nonetheless, women are still a vast minority in the industry. Of something like 50,000 craft beer employees in the United States, fewer than 600 currently belong to the Pink Boots Society, an organization of women in the industry. The fact that things are changing is good, however slow.

Another potential member of the Pink Boots Society is Irena Bierzynski, the latest addition to the group of brewers at Lompoc Brewing. Irena joined Lompoc after graduating from Lewis and Clark last spring and is immersed in learning the trade. She came to brewing in an roundabout way.

On the brewery floor...a great place to be.

"My interest in beer and brewing perked when I was 18 and on a vineyard tour," Irena said. "I had plans to become a chemist. Then and there I realized there was chemistry involved in wine making. That evolved to beer and brewing when I came to Portland to attend Lewis and Clark for obvious reasons."

Bierzynski (yeah, that's her real name) hails from Detroit. She spent her high school years in Shanghai. Her dad, an engineer who works for General Motors, was sent to China to help set up auto plants. The international school she attended had kids from around the world. It was a unique experience, she says.

Coming to Portland to attend Lewis and Clark, Irena became interested in the beer festival culture that has taken off in recent years. That led her to an increased interest in brewing. But not homebrewing.

"I had decided I wanted to brew professionally before I started homebrewing. I didn't have any formal brewing education, but I understood the chemistry of brewing thanks to my science background. It helps a lot."

Most of what Irena is doing at Lompoc is pretty basic. She's mastering the work of transferring and racking beer into kegs, cleaning tanks, working on the bottling line, taking gravities and keeping the Fifth Quadrant bar stocked. Her responsibilities will grow with time.

A batch of Bierz Brown in the tank.

"Irena volunteered to help on the bottling line last spring," said, Bryan Keilty, Lompoc Production Manager. "Based on that experience, we thought she would be an asset to the company and we asked her to join the group. She's smart, a hard worker and driven to succeed. She'll get more in-depth training on brewing as we move along."

Part of the brewing training involved coming up with a recipe for the recently released Bierz Brown. Irena developed the recipe with input from other brewers at Lompoc.

"Bierz Brown is my first," Irena said, "I think it's been fairly well-received. What's next? I'm not sure. I like the idea of making beers for particular times of year. The next beer could be a winter beer. I actually want to go light if I do a winter beer. Everybody makes dark beers in the winter. I wouldn't make a super light beer, just not a dark beer like everyone else."

Like all brewers, Irena has an ultimate goal that is similar to that of most brewers.

"I think most brewers ultimately want to run their own brewery or brewpub. That could happen someday. It's down the road. What I’m doing now is great and I'm enjoying it. Lompoc has a great team. If you ever need help with something, you get it.I'm learning so much."

Sometimes, you just need to kick back and have a beer.

What does the fledgling brewer do for fun? When she isn't enjoying one of the countless festivals around town, Irena is a hardcore hockey fan who loves the Red Wings and Winterhawks. She also enjoys live music in small venues.

"As a hockey fan, I'm a little nuts," she said. "I'm from Detroit. What do you expect? I also like concerts at the Aladdin and Roseland…small places, new music, electronic music. Arena shows don't excite me."

If you want to meet Irena, plan to attend a Lompoc release party at the Sidebar. They are always low key and friendly. Highly recommended.

Do the Monster Mash

It may not pay very well, but writing about beer does have its occasional benefits. I'm talking about media-only previews that happen from time-to-time at some of the best places imaginable. You don't have to have no stinkin' badge to get in, but you do have to be invited. These outings, usually sponsored by a brewery, give folks on both sides of the beer community a chance to mingle, taste and talk beer.

Tuesday's event was held at Lompoc's Sidebar, located on North Williams next door to their Fifth Quadrant pub and brewery. The drink menu featured a list of beers that will be pouring at the Monster Mash Release Party on Friday. I'm quite sure we tasted some beers that won't be available Friday, but I digress. More on the beers shortly.

Fechter (right) shares the floor the Head Brewer, Dave Fleming

The Story

The Lompoc (officially, New Old Lompoc) story is rich. The place started out as a tavern in Northwest Portland in 1992. In 1996, the then-owners teamed up with homebrewer Jerry Fechter and started making beer. Fechter subsequently took over the business in 2000, teaming up with iconic Portland beer geek Don Younger. 

Searching for a partner, Fechter reasoned that he needed someone who was established and well-known in the beer community, someone who could make Lompoc more reputable. He found exactly the right person in Don Younger, who made significant contributions to the business over the years. There's a void now that Younger is gone, but Fechter is carrying on and the business seems to be on pretty solid ground.

Lompoc has expanded rapidly and now has five locations: New Old Lompoc (the original) on NW 23rd; the Hedge House on SE Division; the Oaks Bottom House on SE Bybee: and the Fifth Quadrant and nearby Sidebar on North Williams. The main production brewery next to the Sidebar has been expanded several times, but they still have a hard time keeping up with demand. If you're going to have a problem in this economy, I guess that's a good one.

Brewer dude, Bryan Kielty, shows me some barrels

The ambiance at the Sidebar is terrific, super comfortable. Lompoc's barrel aging program is instantly evident, as barrels line several walls. These aren't just for show, kids. These are the real deal, each one containing some concoction that will eventually be released. Barrel-aged beers are gaining popularity because they tend to be richer and smoother than beers aged in steel tanks. It's wise to be doing this.

The Beers

Getting to the beers, the starter was Steaming California. I arrived a little early and had a chance to enjoy one of these with John Foyston, the longtime beer guru at The Oregonian. I can't speak for John, but Steaming California is a nicely balanced beer. It has a light body and is just slightly bitter. They use lager yeast to make this stuff, but they ferment it at ale temperatures. That's where "steaming" comes from.

We tasted a couple of complex beers next. Flamingo is a pale ale fermented in Cabernet Franc barrels with 35 pounds of sour cherries. This beer is a couple of years old. It's fairly light and slightly tart. Good stuff. Mon Cheri is a Belgian-style golden brewed in 2008. It's mildly fruity and spicy, but smooth as glass. Yummy.

Next was Bierz Brown, the first creation of Lompoc's newest brewer, Irena Bierzynski (yeah, that's her real name). The beer is a dark brown ale called Bierz Brown. Go figure. This beer has a strong chocolate flavor and a malty body. Great fall beer. What's next, Irena?

Irena lifts a glass to toast her first beer creation at Lompoc

The star of the show was Monster Mash, an imperial porter with exceptionally strong chocolate and roast flavors. They say it has a hint of red fruit flavor, and maybe it does. I carted two bottles of this stuff home and had a glass tonight. The bottled version was apparently aged in barrels, likely for a short period, which definitely adds to the character. I'm not a huge fan of this style, but this beer is excellent. My advice: get some! They'll have it on tap at the pubs for a while and it will be distributed in bombers.

We finished out the tasting flight with C-Note Imperial Pale Ale, which is Lompoc's flagship beer. This stuff is brewed with seven "C" hops (Crystal, Cluster, Cascade, Chinook, Centennial, Columbus and Challenger) and anyone who knows of such things knows that those are some of the best hops on the planet. This beer has 100 IBUs and packs a nice punch. But flavor and aroma are what makes the wheel go around with this fine beer.

Applause

Special thanks to Jerry for hosting this event and also to Chris Crabb, who organized things and made life easy for the beer geek media types. The official Monster Mash Release Party is this Friday at the Sidebar. Good times, for sure.