Prohibition in Bend: Revenuers, Shootings, and Dynamite, oh my!

Officer's Home Dynamited - The Bend Bulletin, March 8, 1926
The Bend Bulletin, March 8, 1926

Note: I’ve adapted and expanded upon this from Chapter Two of my book, Bend Beer.

Just before three a.m. on the morning of Monday, March 8, 1926, a terrific explosion rocked the Congress apartments, located at the corner of Congress Street and Hood Place southwest of downtown. The apartment building was demolished and several nearby houses were damaged; miraculously, none of the residents of the apartments were killed or seriously injured, though in a neighboring home, Alice Bush was buried in falling debris as she slept. Another home, owned by the Mansfield family, had a piece of timber punch through the wall; “Had it continued its line of flight,” The Bend Bulletin reported, “Miss Mansfield would have probably been seriously injured.”

The cause: Dynamite. The targets: state Prohibition officers A. F. “Buck” Mariott and C. C. McBride, who had been involved in the shooting death of suspected moonshiner Vayle Taylor several weeks earlier. Mariott and his wife had been sleeping in their apartment at the time of the explosion, and luckily escaped unscathed—possibly due to either the would-be assassin(s) being unfamiliar with demolition techniques, or because a barking dog heard before the blast scared the bomber(s) off. Regardless it appears they did not plant the explosives properly, leading to spectacular destruction but no lives lost.

Though this was the most spectacular local story occurring during Prohibition, it was far from the only one. Central Oregon during Oregon’s prohibition years of 1916 through 1933 became, in the words of writer Finn J. D. John, “Oregon’s liquor cabinet.” The Oregon Outback, as the High Desert region of Central and Eastern Oregon is sometimes called, was a major source of bootleg whiskey and moonshine for the entire state—and beyond. “[Few] parts of the Pacific Northwest,” wrote journalist and historian Phil Brogan, “had more moonshine stills in operation… than Central Oregon.” Historian David Braly said it more directly: “Central Oregon became the moonshine capital of the Pacific Northwest.”

In his book East of the Cascades, Brogan wrote:

The Central Oregon moonshining industry began… when men with little or no knowledge of liquor-making fashioned crude stills from copper boilers and coils, then launched their great experiment with sugar, corn meal, barley, and wheat. At first the potent product from the desert stills was sold in nearby towns to a select trade. Later, as competition increased, the market expanded, and moonshine runners took their liquor into Portland and Seattle. Some of this liquor produced in caves of the High Desert bore Canadian labels.

The High Desert was full of ideal hiding places for the moonshine stills: the openings of lava caves, abandoned homestead shacks, sheltered coves and gullies—all spread out over hundreds of square miles. “Every night,” according to Braly, “the countryside… would light up with the fires of whiskey stills.”

Central Oregon still, during Prohibition
Courtesy Deschutes Historical Society

Unsurprisingly, law enforcement officials were unable to keep up with the sheer number of moonshiners over the vast expanse of land. Part of the problem was that they were too well known; people noticed if the sheriff headed east into the desert. The wide-open landscape worked against them as well; seeing them coming from a distance, the moonshiner had plenty of time to vacate his still and evade capture.

With well-known local law officers were unable to curb moonshining and bootlegging, state revenue officers, unhindered by the same constraints, took over much of the effort. The incident that led to the death of Vayle Taylor (and the subsequent attempted bombing of Mariott and McBride) took place in mid-February at a moonshine plant near Bear Butte on the edge of the High Desert.

Vayle Taylor shooting - The Bend Bulletin, February 18, 1926
The Bend Bulletin, February 18, 1926

Here is the account of the incident from The Bend Bulletin. This article related the findings of the coroner’s inquest of the shooting, which fully exonerated the prohibition officers:

The story of how Taylor came to his death, related by the three living witnesses, C. C. McBride, A. F. Mariott, state prohibition officers, and a third man, Fern Lowell, was dramatic. They reached the moonshine plant on the west slopes of Bear creek in Crook county, not far from the Deschutes county line, Wednesday afternoon. Removing the window from the only door to the dugout, they entered the place where 10 barrels of mash were brewing and hid there for 18 1/2 hours, from 3 o’clock Wednesday afternoon until about 9:30 Thursday morning.

Shortly after 9:30, Taylor came to the moonshine plant from the direction of the Tom Ewing place, where he lived, with a saddle horse and a packhorse. He evidently saw the tracks of the prohibition officers. He picked up a 4 by 2 inch, 12 foot long plank, placing it against the door behind which the three men were hidden, waiting for the owner of the plant to return, according to the testimony brought out at the inquest. After placing the plank against the door, he walked around the dugout and the adjoining shed which sheltered two complete stills.

It was after walking around the plant that Taylor again went to the door of the dugout, lighting a match and placing it against the smoke blackened glass which formed the upper half of the door. He put his hand through, and it was grasped by McBride, who told him he was under arrest. He wrenched his hand loose and braced the plank once more against the door. At the same time, McBride and Mariott, their guns in their hands, broke the door down with their shoulders. It was when they broke through, according to testimony, that McBride’s .38 automatic pistol was discharged.

The bullet struck Taylor on the left side of the neck, ranging downward to his right shoulder. The shot broke his neck. Death was instant. Taylor fell on the end of the board he was using to hold the state men in the dugout. McBride, Mariott and Lowell came through the broken door and attempted to give first aid. After ascertaining that Taylor was dead, Mariott drove to Millican, from where he telephoned to Deschutes and Crook county officials. Sheriff S. E. Roberts, Deputy Sheriff George Stokoe and District Attorney A. J. Moore of Deschutes county arrived at the scene of the shooting shortly after 3 o’clock Thursday afternoon. Sheriff Steve Yancey, Coroner P. B. Poindexter and Dr. J. H. Rosenberg of Crook county reached the Beer creek country shortly before 5 o’clock Thursday evening.

When the Deschutes county officials arrived at the moonshine plant, walking part of the distance over the high Bear creek ridge, only Mariott, McBride and Lowell were there. Mariott was standing on one ridge, to direct the officials to the dugout. McBride and Lowell were on an opposite ridge, keeping themselves warm by a juniper fire. Shortly after the arrival of the Deschutes county officers, residents of the Bear creek country and the high desert country began to arrive. In sullen groups they discussed the death of Taylor. Feeling against the state officers ran high.

Without realizing that the majority of the men gathered in front of the dugout which held the body of Taylor were harboring ill feeling for the state officers, Coroner Poindexter started to impanel a coroner’s jury. The jury impaneled consisted of Eli Wilson, Tom Ewing, W. P. Rogers, Joe Varco, Jerry Swisher and Fern Lowell. After the coroner was made acquainted with the feeling of some of those present, it was announced that the inquest would be held in Prineville.

It was at this point that the undertone of bitter feeling was made manifest by a number of the ranchers and others present. “If the Bear creek gang was here, the inquest would be held on the ground,” one of the men remarked. He was told by one of the county officials to “bring on the Bear creek gang.” The county officials remained near the state men until they had reached their automobile. The Deschutes county officials, the state men and the Crook county officials, having with them the body of Taylor, arrived in Bend about 7:30 Thursday night, continuing on to Prineville.

McBride at the scene of the shooting Thursday afternoon was plainly broken by the killing of Taylor. When Sheriff Yancey of Crook county arrived, McBride walked up to him, handing over his revolver, not speaking a word. No arrest was made. McBride frequently states to his companions that he would not have shot Taylor intentionally even his own life was at stake.

Belief that Taylor came to his death because of his well known inclination to play practical jokes is held by a number of local people who were well acquainted with the youth. It is held possible by these people that it would be Taylor’s idea of a good joke on the officers to pen them in, not with the intention of escaping, but merely to “kid” them.

Before the body of Taylor was strapped across a saddle on one of Ewing’s horses, the county officials and the state men broke up the two moonshine stills, piled boards and barrel staves in the dugout and under the adjoining shelter. Two fires were then started. The last thing officers saw as they went over the ridge to the cars, with the horse carrying Taylor’s body leading the procession, was the smoke from the moonshine plant rolling down into Bear creek valley. Only one quart of alleged moonshine was found in the plant, one of the best equipped ever located by Central Oregon officials.

Taylor was 25 years of age, having spent most of his life in the Central Oregon country. His father is Walter Taylor, now a resident of Tacoma, Washington. Sheriff Roberts Thursday night sent a telegram to Taylor, telling him about the death of his son. Taylor’s mother died in the local hospital several years ago. When the body of Taylor was searched by the coroner Thursday afternoon, $195 in bills was found on him. One of the bills was $50. Taylor had been living at the Ewing ranch for a number of years. The land on which the moonshine plant was operated is owned by Chester Smith.

The barrels of mash in the dugout were ranged along the sides of the place, warmed by a “furnace.” Three fires were needed in the operation of the moonshine plant, one under in the dugout furnace and one under each of the stills just in front of the dugout and under the board shelter. The dugout was covered with dirt. A trench, about 10 feet deep, had been dug recently in the draw just above the dugout, supposedly for the purpose of catching rain and snow water. A trail led from the dugout to Bear creek.

It was brought out at the inquest that the state officers called to Taylor through the door of the dugout, when he attempted to brace the door, that he was under arrest. Taylor is said to have paid no attention to this ultimatum.

The Bend Bulletin, Friday Afternoon, February 19, 1926

The “Bear Creek gang” and high desert folk were unhappy with the verdict, and tensions ran high. Just how the officers were tipped off to the moonshine plant is unknown, though some suspected rancher Marshall Green of being the informant; Green was even assaulted by Eli Wilson, resulting in a head wound:

Desert Rancher Declares That he is being threatened and persecuted by high desert moonshiners who charge that he informed the officers about the still that Vayle Taylor was operating prior to the raid which resulted in Taylor’s accidental death last week, was the statement made in Bend today by Marshall T. Green, the rancher who reported earlier in the week that he had been assaulted by Eli Wilson, who threw an automobile jack at his head and knocked him unconscious. Green was in Bend to have his wound dressed.

Green also stated that in order to keep a neighbor from trespassing on his property, Green had found it necessary to shoot at him after the visitor had ignored his orders to advance no farther.

The Bend Bulletin, Friday Afternoon, February 19, 1926

McBride’s life was threatened only a few days before the bombing, according to a man the desert gang tried to hire to kill him. Since McBride formerly lived with the Mariotts at the apartment, it’s believed he was the intended target of the dynamite.

The headline for the March 8, 1926 edition of The Bend Bulletin said it all:

OFFICER’S HOME DYNAMITED

Buck Mariott’s Apartment Wrecked in Night Blast
Death Vengeance, Theory

A dynamite blast which awakened the city, wrecked the apartment of A. F. “Buck” Mariott, Congress apartments, a few minutes before 3 o’clock this morning. Suspicion of officers is directed toward moonshiners of Deschutes and Crook counties whose plants had been the frequent object of raids in which Mariott and his fellow officer, C. C. McBride, have taken part. The apartments are at the extreme south end of the building. McBride formerly lived with the Mariotts, and he is believed to have been the object of the dynamite attack.

The blast was set off in the basement or under the corner of the rear of the Mariott rooms. Had it been placed to the front Mariott and his wife would have been killed, or at least severely injured. As it [was], their bedroom, in the front of the building, was [laid] ruin of broken glass and fallen plaster. Both were asleep when the explosion came.

Miss Alice Bush, Shevlin-Hixon office employee, living in the rear of the Congress apartments, was covered by falling debris, and was carried out by rescuers, her lower extremities paralyzed temporarily.

Despite the early morning hour crowds had gathered at the scene in a few minutes after the explosion. First to arrive were neighbors, whose own homes were damaged by the blast. Men and women in slippers and bathrobes, hurried to give help. Mariott and his wife were taken down town in a police car. Tenants of the other apartments busied themselves attempting to bring some sort of order out of the chaos the dynamiter had wrought.

The fact that so much damage was done to Miss Bush’s home adjoining the Congress apartments lends credence to the theory that the dynamite was placed just outside the apartment building, rather than in the basement. Water connections were broken in the apartment basement, but no fire started.

The Bend Bulletin, Monday, March 8, 1926

Aside from the property damage, the assassination attempt failed, and Deschutes County placed a reward of $750 per head for information leading to the arrest of the bombers. The culprits were never found, however, and the case remains unsolved to this day.

Bombing reward - The Bend Bulletin, March 9, 1926
The Bend Bulletin, March 9, 1926

Further reading: The Coldest Cold Case, published in the November 2017 issue of Bend Magazine, by Tor Hanson. It’s a good piece with some additional backstory and photos.

Prohibition in Bend

Liquor Taken in Hotel Raid - from Bend Bulletin, November 6, 1923

2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the start of national Prohibition, which officially took effect on January 17, 1920. To commemorate the centennial of the “noble experiment” I thought it would be interesting to delve into the local history of Prohibition.

Chapter Two of Bend Beer details this time period, and I’ve excerpted some of that chapter here. It was one of my favorite chapters to write because I found it to be one of the most fascinating and surprising periods in Central Oregon history.

Oregon experienced prohibition earlier than the 1920 starting date; in fact, Oregon went “dry” starting in 1916. But did you know that Crook County (at the time, encompassing all of Central Oregon) also went “dry” for a year and a half starting in 1908? Here’s a short timeline of prohibition and the temperance movement in Oregon:

  • 1844: The Provisional Government of the Oregon territory passed a prohibition law that was to prevent “the introduction, distillation, or sale of ardent spirits” in Oregon. (This only lasted a few years.)
  • 1854: A prohibition petition was circulated and signed by 74 people to ban liquor (it was denied).
  • 1887: The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the national Prohibition Party managed to get a strict prohibition measure on the Oregon state ballot for the election of that year. (Defeated by 3-to-1 margin.)
  • 1904: The WCTU and Anti-Saloon League (ASL) were successful in getting a local option bill passed in Oregon.
  • 1908: Crook County votes to go “dry” under Local Option laws, going into effect June 30. (Crook County at the time encompassed all of present day Crook, Deschutes, and Jefferson counties.)
  • 1910: Crook County’s local prohibition repealed at November election.
  • 1914: A state prohibition measure was once again placed on the ballot. It passes!
  • 1916: Oregon becomes a bone-dry state on January 1.
  • 1920: National Prohibition goes into effect January 17.
  • 1933: National Prohibition repealed on December 5. In Oregon, the OLCC was created to regulate alcohol in the state.

You can find various stories related to Prohibition throughout the Bend Bulletin at the time, but by far the most sensational event occurred on Monday, March 8, 1926. At three in the morning, when “a terrific explosion rocked the Congress apartments, located at the corner of Bend’s Congress Street and Hood Place southwest of downtown.”

The cause? Dynamite. The targets: state Prohibition officers A. F. “Buck” Mariott and C. C. McBride, who had been involved in the shooting death of suspected moonshiner Vayle Taylor the month before. Mariott and his wife had been sleeping in their apartment at the time of the explosion, and luckily escaped unscathed—due largely to the apparent fact that the would-be assassin was unfamiliar with demolition techniques to properly plant the explosives to accomplish their goal.

I’ll get into the full story of Mariott and McBride (also in the book) in a future “Prohibition in Bend” post. I also plan to dig into some of the background behind how and why Prohibition happened, and share some of the other old Bend Bulletin articles about it.

Talk Oregon Beer History Sunday, July 14, with “Bend Beer” and “Southern Oregon Beer”

This Sunday, July 14, I’ll be teaming up with Phil Busse, the author of the new Southern Oregon Beer for a book discussion event at Broken Top Bottle Shop. We’ll be discussing Oregon Beer History and will both have books for sale!

A fun discussion that puts together two big puzzle pieces of Oregon’s history and beer culture. Phil Busse, author of the recently released “Southern Oregon Beer: A Pioneering History,” in conversation with Jon Abernathy, author of “Bend Beer: A History of Brewing in Central Oregon” and blogger at The BrewSite.com. The two compare and contrast the history of beer in Central and Southern Oregon.

The event starts at 7pm, and we’ll be enjoying beer, talking history, and signing books. Come out and see us!

Four years ago today…

the Book was officially released! It’s hard to believe it’s only been four years, and in that time there have been quite a few changes to the Bend beer scene, including new breweries:

  • Monkless Belgian Ales, which opened late in 2014
  • Craft Kitchen and Brewery, which spun out of Old Mill Brew Werks and Fresh Tracks Brewing (all interlinked, the latter two no longer in existence)
  • Kobold Brewing
  • Immersion Brewing
  • Crooked Jay Brewing
  • Boss Rambler Beer Club
  • Geist Beerworks
  • Porter Brewing
  • Spider City Brewing

And unfortunately there have been closures as well:

  • Old Mill Brew Works and Fresh Tracks Brewing, as mentioned above
  • Below Grade Brewing
  • Rat Hole Brewing (the owners opened the Camp Abbot Taphouse in Sunriver (now also closed), but ceased the brewery operations
  • Juniper Brewing
  • North Rim Brewing

Both Juniper and North Rim opened the same year the book came out—they are mentioned in there—and closed last year.

Other breweries have undergone change in the intervening four years as well; Deschutes Brewery opened a taproom in Roanoake, Virginia; Bend Brewing Company changed ownership and expanded; Silver Moon, Three Creeks, Boneyard, and Crux Fermentation Project all opened production breweries; 10 Barrel opened a pub at its east Bend brewery.

All of which would be worth another chapter or two in a hypothetical second edition! (People ask me about that all the time, ultimately it’s up to the publisher.)

It’s been a great four years, and Bend Beer continues to sell, for which I want to thank everyone who has bought a copy (or more than one) as well as everyone who will buy it in the future!

Raise a beer to four years of Bend Beer!

Happy Repeal Day!

The Bulletin, December 5, 1933: Prohibition EndedToday is Repeal Day, in which we celebrate this date (December 5) in 1933 when Utah became the final state needed for a majority to ratify the 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution—ending Prohibition. To commemorate the date, I’m posting some excerpts from the book about Prohibition and Repeal as it happened in Central Oregon. So crack open a beer and read along!

The state of Oregon, like many states and communities prior to the onset of national Prohibition in 1920, was no stranger to the temperance movement. Temperance took hold in the Oregon country even before the state entered the Union in 1859: in 1844, the Provisional Government of the Oregon territory (not to be confused with the organized incorporated Territory of Oregon, which was established in 1848) passed a prohibition law that was to prevent “the introduction, distillation, or sale of ardent spirits” in Oregon. (“Ardent spirits” referred to beverages in which the alcohol content is measured by proof instead of by percentage.)

Although this law did not last for more than a few years, the temperance movement was not yet finished in Oregon. In 1854, a prohibition petition was circulated and signed by seventy-four people to ban liquor (the “worm of the still”), but as the idea of prohibition did not enjoy the support of the population of the Oregon Territory, the petition was denied.

In 1887, the WCTU and the national Prohibition Party managed to get a strict prohibition measure on the Oregon state ballot for the election of that year. Oregonians weren’t having any of it, defeating the measure by a three-to-one margin. This and other state- and national-level setbacks helped the WCTU, ASL and other temperance organizations to realize that attacking alcohol at the state (and higher) level was fruitless—focus at the local level instead was the key.

Thus were born the “local option” laws, which quickly became the most powerful weapon in the temperance movement’s arsenal. Local option allowed for the individual counties in a state to hold elections to determine whether they would remain “wet” or go “dry,” allowing the prohibitionists to focus their efforts on a county-by-county basis and later, under the “home rule” laws, on a city-by-city basis.

In 1904, the WCTU and ASL were successful in getting a local option bill passed in Oregon, and began working on getting the individual counties to go dry.

Crook County elected to go dry in 1908 in a two-to-one vote that surprised many residents, wets and drys alike. Crook County at the time encompassed all of Central Oregon: Prineville, Bend, Redmond, Sisters, Madras and more. Local prohibition was in force as of June 30, 1908, and all of the saloons in the county were forced to look for other, legal avenues of business or close their doors.

However, by 1910, many residents had had enough of the dry spell, and petitions were filed “by the liquor people” for a new vote on Crook County’s local option measure for the fall election. In November, the county (and the state) voted itself wet again, as did nearly all of the cities under the home rule measure—all but Warm Springs, which voted to remain dry.

With women [acquiring the right to] vote [in 1912], prohibitionists renewed their efforts in Oregon, and in 1914, a state prohibition measure was once again placed on the ballot. [It] was the pivotal role of Oregon’s enfranchised women that carried state prohibition—an estimated three out of every four women who voted chose prohibition—and the law went into effect on January 1, 1916. Oregon became a bone-dry state.

On January 16, 1919, Nebraska became the thirty-sixth state to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment, and it officially took effect on January 17, 1920.

Overall, the arrival of national Prohibition had little impact on Oregon, largely due to the fact that the state’s moonshiners and bootleggers already had nearly four years’ head start. The High Desert was full of ideal hiding places for the moonshiners’ stills: the openings of lava caves, abandoned homestead shacks, sheltered coves and gullies—all spread out over hundreds of square miles.

Central Oregon still, during Prohibition
Courtesy Deschutes Historical Society

American became fed up with Prohibition as it had exactly the opposite effect its proponents had promoted: violent crime had risen dramatically, enforcement was ineffectual, and corruption among the upper class and law enforcement was rampant. Hence Congress fast-tracked the necessary constitutional amendment needed to repeal the 18th Amendment.

Congress put forward the Twenty-first Amendment in February 1933, but it would still take time for the ratification process, so in the interim, an immediate solution sponsored by New York representative Thomas Cullen and Mississippi senator Pat Harrison proposed legalizing the manufacture and sale of beer with an alcohol content of 3.2 percent by weight (4.0 percent by volume). The Cullen-Harrison Act was enacted by Congress on March 21, 1933, and signed into law by President Roosevelt on April 7.

Meanwhile, ratification sped through the state conventions. Oregon was the seventeenth state to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment on August 7, 1933, and on December 5, Utah became the thirty-sixth and final state needed to ratify the amendment. Prohibition was finally over.

The Bulletin, December 5, 1933, the City Prepares

Meet the Writers, Buy Some Books Dec. 3

Meet the Writers at Bazi Bierbrasserie

Add another event to the Portland schedule this weekend, on Saturday, December 3: a Meet the Writers event at Bazi Bierbrasserie! It takes place from 5 to 7pm. Here are the details:

Join us for Happy Hour and meet the writers of these must own beer books:

Jon Abernathy – Bend Beer Book
Jeff Alworth – The Beer Bible
Pete Dunlop – Portland Beer Book
Niki Ganong – Field Guide to Drinking in America
Steven Shomler – Portland Beer Stories

Writers will be onsite to answer questions and sign copies. Get an extra 10% off your tab when you purchase one of these books for your collection.

It is amazingly generous of Bazi to offer the 10% discount with a book purchase! Bazi is a terrific Belgian-themed beer bar and one you should be visiting anyway—but especially come out and visit on Saturday night! I and my fellow writers will be more than happy to sign a book for you.

See you there! Cheers!

Books & Beer at N.W.I.P.A. in Portland, Dec. 4

Holiday Books & Beer at N.W.I.P.A.

On Sunday, December 4, I will be one of several authors signing and selling books in Portland at N.W.I.P.A. beer bar for their Holiday Books & Beer Event taking place from 2 to 5pm! This is going to be a terrific event and the perfect opportunity to do some Christmas shopping for the beer and book lover in your life!

We’re bringing together local publishers and a few local authors to sign books this holiday season. A signed book is a great personalized gift!. You’ll find gifts for beer lovers, traveling tipplers, art fans, books for the tikes and toddlers in your life and more. The team at N.W.I.P.A. will help you select some gift-worthy bottles of beer and cider to round out your holiday shopping list. Stop by, buy a book, buy a bottle and raise a glass all in the name of getting things done this holiday season!

This event is age 21+

Meet the authors:
Jeff Alworth (The Beer Bible)
Niki Ganong (The Field Guide to Drinking in America)
Brian Yaeger (Oregon Breweries)
Steven Shomler (Portland Beer Stories)
Matt Wagner (The Tall Trees of Portland and art director for Gigantic Brewing label art)
Jon Abernathy (Bend Beer)
and more to be announced!

We’ll also have books by these publishers:
Overcup Press
Hazy Dell Press
and more

N.W.I.P.A. is a beer bar that almost exclusively serves—you guessed it—IPAs, along with other limited-availability beers. Come on out, have a beer, and get a signed copy of the book!

See you there!

Fresh Hop Beers

Fresh hops

We’re on the tail end of it, but this time of year is the peak season for the release of one of the most ephemeral types of beer—those made with fresh hops. These beers are made with freshly-harvested, un-dried hops (sometimes called “wet hops”) and added to the beer at some point in the brewing process. Sometimes they replace the regular dried hops entirely, more often they are used to complement dried bittering hops.

The use of fresh hops lends a very different character to the finished beer than those with dried hops. They can be intensely floral and fruity, have very “fresh” plant or vegetal characters like fresh-cut grass or chlorophyll, and (in my opinion) can be very “bright” in a way that’s tough to describe without having smelled and tasting one yourself.

Fresh hop season is one of my favorite times of the year for beer, and these beers don’t last long. To help commemorate the hop harvest this season, I thought I’d write a bit of history on fresh hop beers, particularly focused on Central Oregon.

1990s

The first documented commercial fresh hops beers date to the early to mid 90s. In 1993, the late beer writer Michael Jackson chronicled a fresh hop beer made in England:

Trevor Holmes, head brewer at Wadworth, of Devizes in Wiltshire, was inspecting the harvest a year or two ago when he began to wonder how beer would taste if it were aromatised with hops fresh off the vine.

The practicalities are such that it could be done only once a year. Mr. Holmes tried it first last year [1992]. The 100-barrel brew was meant to last a month; it sold out in a week. This year, there are almost 300 barrels.

Mr. Holmes has used the first of the new seasons malt to make his “green hop” beer. The brewery calls it simply Malt and Hops. I can think of only one other brewery that has tried making such a “biere nouvelle,” and that is in the far West of the United States.

The “other brewery… in the far West” of the U.S. Jackson referred to was probably Bert Grant, whose Yakima Brewing (located among the hop fields of Yakima, Washington) was the first post-Prohibition brewpub in the United States. Portland-based beer writer Jeff Alworth wrote a few years ago:

In the mid-90s, he decided to take advantage of the vast wealth of hops that grew within a few miles of his brewery in Yakima (where well over half all domestic hops were grown at the time). He sent folks from the brewery out to the hop fields during the September harvest while he started prepping the mash tun. They gathered a batch of fresh hops, brought them back to the brewery, and within minutes of having been picked, were dumped into the boil.

Concurrently with Grant’s fresh hop beers, California’s Sierra Nevada in 1996 brewed their Harvest Ale, their first fresh hop beer, with freshly-harvest hops flown in from Yakima.

2000s

Here in Central Oregon, Deschutes Brewery was the first to release a fresh hop beer, Hop Trip, in 2005. It was an American-style pale ale infused with fresh Crystal hops sourced from the Willamette valley. This was only three years after Karl Ockert at BridgePort Brewing brewed what was probably the first fresh hop beer in Oregon in 2002. (In a nice bit of synergy, Ockert is now Director of Brewing Operation for Deschutes.) So Deschutes was definitely on the forefront of the Oregon fresh hop phenomenon.

Deschutes Brewery Hop Trip, first brewed in 2005   Deschutes Brewery Hop Trip, 2008

In 2007, the Oregon Brewers Guild partnered with Travel Oregon’s Oregon Bounty to launch the first “Fresh Hop Tastivals” around the state; Deschutes Brewery hosted the Tastival when it came to Bend. This event is what eventually morphed into the Sisters Fresh Hop Festival in 2010, which was started by Three Creeks Brewing.

In addition to Hop Trip, Deschutes regularly brews something like a dozen fresh hop beers each fall, and packages several, including Chasin’ Freshies Fresh Hop IPA.

Deschutes Brewery fresh hop tasting, 2008

Other breweries followed suit, like Silver Moon with their Hoppopotamus, Three Creeks with Cone Lick’r, and Crux Fermentation Project which regularly brews four or five different fresh hop beers each season, including one using hops grown in front of the brewery.

These days it’s almost more unusual for a brewery to not brew a fresh hop beer each fall, and this year (2016) saw at least three dozen beers from 16 Central Oregon breweries. A unique feature to a number of these beers was that the hops were locally grown:

I’m sure there are others I am missing from this list as well. Hop farming has been growing in Central Oregon, and while it will likely not get anywhere near the levels seen in the Willamette Valley, it has become an important local component to the regional beer economy. Especially at a time when “local” is more important than ever in beer.

There are still some fresh hop beers on tap now—don’t miss out on the last of this ephemeral beer season!

Released two years ago today!

Today marks the two-year anniversary of the release of Bend Beer: A History of Brewing in Central Oregon!

Bend Beer is out!

It has been a terrific two years and Bend’s beer scene is as vibrant as ever. I wrote a post last year summarizing the changes that occurred in the one year since the book was published; of course there have been even more changes since then!

  • Monkless Belgian Ales expanded into the 10-barrel brewery formerly occupied by Fresh Tracks Brewing (which started as Brew Werks Brewing, and this space was originally 10 Barrel’s).
  • Immersion Brewing opened their brewpub and brew-on-premise location, in the Old Mill Marketplace complex next door to Atlas Cider.
  • Kobold Brewing opened, a two-barrel production brewery headed up by former homebrewer Steve Anderson.
  • Deschutes Brewery announced that Roanoke, Virginia will be the location of their east coast brewery.
  • New breweries for the region are in the works, including Good Earth Brewing (Terrebonne), Crooked River Brewing (Prineville), and possibly Crooked Jay Brewing (Bend) and White Mare Brewing (Bend) — these last two are still in the rumored stage.
  • New cideries, the growth of hop farming, and even more beer-related businesses and services have punctuated the past two years as well.

But don’t let that deter you from the book itself! If you haven’t read it yet, you can still pick it up  at Amazon and a number of places around Bend and Central Oregon (see sidebar).

And of course I greatly appreciate all the support of those who have bought Bend Beer over the past two years! That definitely makes it all worthwhile.

Have you read the book? Have a favorite period in our beer history that stands out to you? (I’m partial to the frontier days and Prohibition, myself—such interesting stories from those days.) Let me know, and always feel free to send any questions my way!

Cheers!

Frontier Brewing: the Woods Brewery at Tetherow Crossing

During my research for the book I uncovered hints toward a frontier-era brewery being located at Tetherow Crossing, a fording point of the Deschutes River about five miles west of present-day Redmond. Andrew Tetherow filed a claim for the land in 1877, and by 1879 he had built a cable ferry across the river, which eventually was upgraded to a bridge. The Crossing became a way point, with a stage area and a store for travelers coming over the Cascade Mountains bound for the Crooked River valley.

Tetherow Crossing location
Map view of historic Tetherow Crossing location

One of the first clues about the brewery that existed there was found in old photographs indexed by the Deschutes Historical Society; there are a number of them of the Tetherow Crossing buildings and bridge circa 1900, and tantalizingly, someone had written “Brewery in background” below one of them—unfortunately, the building it referred to in the background was indistinct. Other clues I found on the web on sites like this one mention “a store, farm, ranch, orchard, garden, dairy, blacksmith and brewery,” but I couldn’t find cited sources.

Author and historian Phil Brogan, writing for the Bulletin in 1980 on the history of Tetherow Crossing, made no mention of a brewery—instead, he mentions a still, on the west side of the river.

So I didn’t have enough to go on for the book, and within my deadline I really did not have a chance to dig deeper on this Tetherow brewery at the time. But you know, research is really an ongoing project, and just recently I discovered much more detail about the brewery—found in the book Central Oregon Place Names, Volume III: Deschutes County, by Steve Lent and just published within the past year!

Lent references the brewery as Woods Brewery, and he wrote:

This early brewery was located at Tetherow Crossing on the Deschutes River west of Redmond. It was west of the Tetherow stage stop and on the west side of the river. Lynn Woods from Prineville built the brewery at the site in 1890. He preferred the clean water of the Deschutes River for his brewing. He built a frame building about 35 by 50 feet in which his brewing activity took place. The brewery operated until 1898.

He sources the Bend Bulletin and the 1880 Wasco County Census (I will try to find specific date/issue of the Bulletin for this info).

I’m glad to see this confirmed, and this means early Central Oregon had three frontier breweries: the Ochoco Brewery in Prineville from 1882 to 1890; the Woods Brewery; and the Prineville Brewery from 1893 to 1906.

Now to figure out just what they brewed there…