Bound for Seattle, the Brown family’s car broke down in Baker City, barely east of the Idaho border. Most parents would simply get the car repaired, but Tyler Brown’s parents saw it as a sign to open a Mexican restaurant instead. When his parents’ Mexican restaurant went under, Brown saw it as a sign to turn it into a brewpub in 1998. Now, 25 years—and 26 Great American Beer Festival awards — later, eastern Oregon’s most vaunted brewery is throwing a party.
Driving over four hours to drink beer may sound hefty, but that misses the point. Two points, actually.
“People in cities measure driving distance in hours; rural people still use miles.” Fine, so it’s 230 or so miles to Barley Brown’s Brew Pub from Bend. Conveniently, it’s also 230 miles to Baker City Brewing. Long story short, a decade after the pub with a small, four-barrel brew system launched (which was temporarily decommissioned at the start of the pandemic and isn’t back online yet), the beer proved so popular (as you can imagine, Barley Brown’s sells more beer in Portland than in its hometown with a population of 10,000) that Brown opened a 20-barrel production brewery directly across the street and called it Baker City Brewing. Technically, it celebrates its 15th anniversary. The primary differences, experientially speaking, is that the family-friendly pub serves food and the taproom across the street doesn’t allow minors.
The second point? The beer is totally worth the drive, especially since you won’t find it in stores as Barley Brown’s, which produces some 5,000 barrels a year. That’s draft-only. Since Boneyard now cans its beer, Barley Brown’s is assuredly Oregon’s largest draft-only brewery.
Among those 26 medals, 10 of which were gold, six went to Shredder’s Wheat, four went to Disorder Stout and another six have gone to various pale ales and IPAs, Barley Brown’s is most famous for its hoppy beers including Pallet Jack IPA and Hand Truck Pale Ale. The last four awards belong to my personal favorite, Turmoil, a Cascadian Dark Ale. The Brewers Association that organizes the GABF doesn’t recognize CDA as a style, so it has technically medaled in “American-style India Black Ale” (2010) or “American-style Black Ale” (2012, 2014 and 2019).
Brown shared a funny story with me about Turmoil when I first interviewed him in 2012. “We had a bunch of guys from a well-known California brewery…come and hang out at our (GABF) booth and drink Turmoil non-stop,” Tyler had shared. “They’d get their glass then go around the corner and talk about it.”
The brewery being referenced was Stone Brewing. The brewmaster was industry legend Mitch Steele. One of the beers that became Steele’s calling cards was Stone’s 11th Anniversary Ale that debuted the following year (later rebranded as Sublimely Self-Righteous). Furthermore, Steele would go on to pen “IPA: Brewing Techniques, Recipes and the Evolution of India Pale Ale” for Brewers Publications, the publishing imprint of the Brewers Association. It contains a chapter on black IPAs, but neglected to so much as mention Turmoil or Barley Brown’s.
While Barley Brown’s does brew “some hazy IPAs,” with a hat tip to head brewer Eli Dickenson for over a decade, as well as his kid brother, Kyle, along with brewer Marks Lanham, the brewery has managed to avoid capitulating to flashy styles such as cold IPA or its predecessor brut IPA, or anything resembling a lactose, fruit puree, marshmallow fluff IPA.
Before the Dickensons joined his brew team, Brown initially employed his childhood friend, Shawn “Big Daddy” Kelso. After more than a decade, Kelso was hired by 10 Barrel Brewing to open its Boise brewpub and fairly recently moved to the company’s headquarters in Bend. Brown finds himself in Bend now and then and even brewed a beer with Boneyard’s owner and brewmaster, Tony Lawrence, that will be among the beers tapped at the 25th anniversary party.
The road is well-worn in reverse, too. “I know lots of people from Bend make the trek out here,” says Brown, “and move here. (There are) probably six of them sitting in the taproom right now.”
This article appears in Source Weekly May 25, 2023.
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