North Seven Brewing opening in Baker City, Oregon this summer

Baker City in north eastern Oregon will soon get their second brewery, North Seven Brewing (N7) plans to be open in the heart of the the downtown area just three blocks from Barley Browns Brew pub.

Pythian Castle building in Baker City, OR. Photo by Sam Anthony/EO Media Group

North 7 will set up shop in the Pythian Castle building in the former space of The Hen House Cafe at the corner of 1st Street and Washington Avenue, the previous tenants there included Earth & Vine. The brewery takes it’s name from a favorite stretch of Highway 7 along the drive to baker city and a particular road marker that reads “North 7.”

Founder and brewer Kevin Multop has only lived in Baker City for about two years, but is truly passionate about the areas natural beauty and history. Multop relocated to Baker City from Bend, OR where he worked as an administrator at Central Oregon Community College. After homebrewing for about 10 years, Multop decided it was for real when he won Silver Moon Brewing’s Battle of the Brews in 2016 and was able to make a collaborative beer on their commercial brewhouse. That experience and the ensuing conversation with the brewmaster at the time lead to the decision to set down roots in a small town where he could foster his own small professional brewing operation. With the mentorship of Barley Browns and the recent acclaim that local micromaltster Gold Rush Malt has achieved he felt Baker City was that place.

“As you probably know, Bend has a LOT of breweries. Baker City has one. It seemed like a great place for some elbow room,” says Multop.

North Seven Brewing is the first new brewery to open in Baker City since Bull Ridge Brewpub closed in 2014.

Multop will focus on malt-forward beers of more classical pub styles very different from their neighbors at Barley Browns who are known for beers like Pallet Jack IPA (though they have never shied away from malt either.)

“My beer line up will be throw back styles from the early days of craft beer...browns, ambers, porters, stouts but I will definitely have a couple of IPA's available,” says Multop.

“I will be using Gold Rush Malt in almost all of my beers. There are a couple of exceptions...my American Wheat and Kolsch-like golden ale which will use Weyermann. My house yeast strain will be Fuller's ESB aka Imperial Pub or Wyeast 1968.”

The beers will be crafted on a Blichmann nano brewhouse that Multop acquired from the short-lived Super Brewing Co. in Portland. The small brewery will feed into a casual taproom with just the basics of beer, conversation and comfortability in a central location with pre-packaged food on-site or bring in your own.

Multop hopes to be open for business in June of 2021 at 1935 1st St. Baker City, OR.