An Inside Look at De Garde Brewing's New Tasting Room & Brewery

After two years, hardcore environmental remediation, and three and a half months without brewing a single batch, de Garde Brewing opened up its new tasting room and brewery in downtown Tillamook last week. The move, which included a renovation and additions to a former auto shop at 114 Ivy Ave., will allow Trevor Rogers and the de Garde team to produce their wild, wood-aged beers with more precision and efficiency, as well as accommodate more people in the tasting room.The public area of the building features plenty of exposed wood, high ceilings, and a covered patio; plenty of breweries have these things, but Rogers, with a sculpture degree, and his wife Linsey, with an art history background, translated the spirit of intentionality in the beer to the design aesthetics of the most local place to drink it. It is warm, unpretentious, and modern, with artistic quirks placed here and there; a wood carving of a man with a goat on his head (by artist Christopher Wagner) peers solemnly over the room from above the bar.The beer list and bottle availability remains similar to the original tasting room; several guest taps in a range of styles (which included Heater Allen Pils, vintage De Struise Cuvee Delphine, and Hanssen’s Oude Kriek among others), a range of bottles for consumption on premise from de Garde and abroad, and a few bottles ready to go.The brew house is all moved in (with some upgrades: a mash plow and [gasp!] trenched floor drains will cut janitorial hours drastically), along with an armada of glowing new foudres; many puncheons and barrels have yet to make the journey into town, and even more are a golden glimmer on the horizon. Eventually, over 2,000 wooden vessels will call de Garde home.The second floor, which necessitated the installation of rather large I-beams below to support over 800 pounds-per-square-inch, is wide open right now; only the stainless coolship sits. And through Rogers seemed artistically dismayed at the appearance of the floor--plywood sheets with a heavy protective coating--the bespoke amenities added will further the pursuit of perfected spontaneity. Simply put, vents to the outside placed around the perimeter will allow air to be drawn in and over the coolship by a variable-speed fan just above it. No doubt Rogers has an idea of what that sort of control this will allow; the rest of us will just have to drink it up.Words by Aaron Brussat; photos and editing by Don Scheidt.