Somewhat ironically, the inspiration for Bend’s barrel-aged beer festival started not with a meditation on wood, but as an homage to iron—steel specifically, according to one of the festival’s key developers, local brewer Pat O’Shea.
O’Shea said it was the experience of seeing his hometown of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania trying to preserve its 20th Century steel culture even as steel jobs were moving overseas in the 21st Century that got him thinking about Bend’s mill history and the town’s relationship to trees and wood products.
O’Shea eventually found himself at the local historical society poring over old photographs of the Brooks-Scanlon and Shevlin-Hixon mills and piecing together the area’s early mill history.
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Let There Be Wood: Little Woody takes beer making back to its origins
While O’Shea’s vision of a wood celebration with chainsaw carvers and lumberjack competitions never really came to fruition, the festival, which became the Little Woody has carved a niche for itself among beer drinkers and brewmasters.
