12/8/2023 0 Comments Great notion beer glassThat will change later this year when Great Notion opens a large new brewing facility on the fringes of Slabtown. "That beer takes weeks to make, and if we give you a keg, we only have 13 kegs left." We only distribute for special events-a festival, or an anniversary party or something," Reiter says. If you see it on tap outside its own spot, it's because somebody has something to celebrate. Paul Reiter, the third partner who just quit his high-powered sales job to focus on the brewery, says Great Notion simply can't make enough beer. For a while, there were rumors swirling that Great Notion brewers put actual fruit juice in their beer, or that they use bread flour to generate cloudiness. Other professional brewers have had similar reactions. A while later, the customer brought the $5 back. "He says, 'This is not going to fly in Portland.' He went on to tell me why it was hazy, how it was a problem that it was hazy, and that he wanted his money back."ĭugan gave him his money back, but then asked him to go out on the porch, close his eyes and drink the beer. I come out and he says, 'Hey, buddy, I'm going to do you a favor-because you're new,'" Dugan says. One of the first people who came in to try Juice Jr. It's looks a little different than most beers. We soon come to learn that he and Miller had been homebrewing something special in their garage. The story could be a movie-opening, of course, on and cold and misty Alberta, where a young James Dugan, wearing his trademark newsboy cap, presses his face to the foggy window of a brewery, his longing palpable as his heavy breath steams the glass. No one had written about their homebrew, and the space they bought wasn't on anyone's radar. Neither Dugan nor his buddy-a tall Alabama boy named Andy Miller with red hair and a slight drawl-had any professional beer experience or reputation in the local beer scene. It seems crazy now that it's got the attention of every beer geek in town, but Great Notion came out of nowhere. an easy pick for Oregon's Beer of the Year. But Great Notion also changed the conversation around hoppy beers in Oregon overnight, spurring thousands of heated debates and dozens of imitators, with everyone from the Ram to Fat Head's trying their own version.Īll that makes Juice Jr. and its hazy siblings still offend a few traditionalists and those who've come to like the sharp, grassy chomp of a standard Northwest IPA. That feeling mostly dissipated after a few months, but Juice Jr. "It's almost like, since we're making Northeast IPAs, we're traitors." "I feel like a lot of the people who have lived here for years and have seen the whole Northwestern style develop think it's a dig at the style, or a lack of respect for the roots and origins of what an IPA represents in this region," Dugan says. Last spring, a mere photo of the beer in a glass could cause a thread to get heated. Opinions were divided at first-sometimes bitterly. They named their Great Notion after Oregon author Ken Kesey's novel about a scrappy logging family, which was in turn named for a line in a Lead Belly song. It took a while, but Dugan finally got his foot in the door-by buying the place, along with two other guys from his street in the Overlook neighborhood. "I dropped my résumé off, like, three times and never heard back." "I walked by one day and looked in the window and applied for a job, because I liked how the brewhouse looked," he says. Maybe it was the shiny copper kettles, or the cozy patio, or the simple seven-barrel brewhouse a homebrewer could see himself manning with a little practice. (Great Notion, Thomas Teal) By Martin Cizmar Februat 9:01 pm PSTīe fore he showed up at the Mash Tun with a real estate agent, James Dugan tried dropping off a résumé.įor whatever reason, Dugan was taken with the moldering little space off Northeast Alberta Street, long forgotten by local beer geeks and with literal cobwebs in the corner.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |