So much fuss over a little leaf. Times are getting tight, at least that's what we keep hearing, especially in this part of the country. People are driving less in an attempt to spend less of their hard-earned cash on gas, they're eating out less as food costs increase, but here in Central Oregon, where we have a brewery for about every 15,000 people, it appears that people are still drinking.
We might be cutting down on our road trips, but we'll be damned if we stop drinking our locally made beer, or so say our local brew smiths. If there were ever a sign that there is confidence in the local beer industry, it is Three Creeks Brewing Co., the new craft brewery that Wade Underwood recently opened in Sisters. Underwood previously lived in Phoenix while operating an Internet-based company that he subsequently sold before settling in Sisters with the intention of opening the city's only craft brew pub.
"We're opening at an interesting time, that's for sure," says a laughing Underwood, a University of Oregon grad whose interest in brewing stems back several years to the early days of McMenamins.
"If you look at all the business models, it would tell you not to build this," Underwood says, citing models that suggest that a community needs at least 150,000 people to support a craft brewery. But he says the Northwest is an exception, and furthermore, Central Oregon is an even more substantial exception, supporting six brewing establishments before Underwood opened the seventh.
