Exit Interview: Breakside Brewery’s Jacob Leonard departs for new adventure
Jacob Leonard is ending his 10 year career at Breakside Brewery and moving out of Oregon
Breakside Brewery’s longtime brewing production manager Jacob Leonard is ending his accomplished career in Oregon on a high note.
After 10 years with Oregon’s currently most award-winning brewery, he is moving to Arizona with his wife April. Jacob is in large part credited with making Breakside the well oiled and fan favorite brewery it is today, and his career has been marked by long stints at seminal Pacific Northwest breweries from the early days of Laurelwood and Walking Man to Widmer Brothers. In his years at Breakside 2012 to 2022 Jacob helped oversee the transition from an eccentric tiny N. Portland brewpub to Milwaukie production facility and industry powerhouse brand that it is today. Today we take a look back at Jacob Leonard’s career and see what’s next.
Jacob was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, lived in Texas, Arizona, and Nevada, but was raised mostly in Grand Junction in western Colorado where he spent 12 years of his life. Jacob’s mother was restless and loved to move around to new places every few years, for Jacob, his father, and sister the constant change seemed normal to them. The family moved to Las Vegas for Jacob’s high school years, after that he made his final move out on his own to Portland, OR in 1997.
Before he discovered the joys of craft beer Jacob worked an eclectic series of odd jobs around the northwest; from cooking in various kitchens to loading trucks for a painting contractor. He even spent 2 years on a fishing boat in the Bering Sea, which probably helped a lot with stress management later in life, “The worst day at any brewery isn't nearly as bad as some of the days I had on the boat,” he says.
As the manager of SE Woodstock neighborhood’s Pizza Roma he had the first taste of the hospitality side of the food and drink industry. It was his first foray into developing a leadership style that values patience and leading by example, skills that would serve him well more than a decade later in the brewing industry. At the time brewing wasn’t even on his radar, but Pizza Roma did have a Terminal Gravity IPA on tap so after work sampling may have planted a seed that just needed to be watered.
Brewers Jacob Leonard and Dan Hynes after judging and winning at the North American Beer Awards
It was Deschutes Brewery’s all-time classic Black Butte Porter that first peeked his interest but it was European styles that really drew him in. “When I first started exploring craft beer in the early 2000's, there weren't many options for well packaged hoppy beer so I tended to lean towards imports. Mostly German and Belgian beers.”
Another prototypical classic from Belgium was the beer that made him consider homebrewing. “The first time I tasted Saison Dupont it blew my mind and that's when I started to think about making beer,” says Leonard. “My good friend Ben Lukes and I purchased a homebrew kit together and took a class at F.H. Steinbarts. I was hooked immediately and he was less than excited about how much work it was. I paid him back his half of the kit and then never looked back.” Ben Lukes would later attend the American Brewers Guild science and engineering program and founded recent GABF gold medal-winning Perry Street Brewing in Spokane, Washington.
Both Ben and Jacob worked the front desk at a motel near the airport. Jacob was also attending Portland Community College for an Associates of Science degree. After taking his first microbiology class he fell in love with the science behind beer.
“I was fascinated by yeast and bacteria and asked my teacher how I could land a job working with them. He suggested research or becoming a brewer or wine maker,” recalls Leonard.
He started volunteering at wineries and quickly became an avid homebrewer. His wife April encouraged him to explore it as a career and found the American Brewers Guild (ABG) online. Jacob had heard that one of his favorite brewers had attended the ABG. Christian Ettinger was the head brewer at Laurelwood Brewing at the time, years before he would go on to open Hopworks Urban Brewery.
“He highly recommended it (American Brewers Guild) which was encouraging. When I left our meeting, I let him know that I was signed up and asked him to keep me in mind if there were ever any openings. A week or two later he called and offered me a job. It was very exciting and I was stoked about being able to learn the principles of brewing while working for a world class brewery.”
Jacob worked at Laurelwood from late 2003-2005 under Ettinger and Chad Kennedy who would later go on to take over the head brewer job before becoming the founding brewer for Worthy Brewing in Bend. Ettinger and Kennedy became brewing mentors shepherding him into the industry. “Both of those guys were so focused on quality and consistency. They really were in the top tier of U.S. breweries during that time having just come off of a World Beer Cup Brewpub of the Year award. They were great teachers and leaders in different ways.”
From Laurelwood, Jacob moved on to become the head brewer of Walking Man Brewing in Stevenson, WA at the height of its popularity from 2005-2011.
Jacob found early success earning a scholarship from the Glen Hay Falconer program responsible for assisting many up and coming pacific northwest brewers into long and successful careers. In 2007 Leonard and fellow brewer Corey Blodgett were the annual Glen Hay Falconer recipients selected to study at the prestigious Siebel Institute of brewing in Chicago. Jacob spent years after that helping organize the Sasquatch Brewfest and the Sasquatch Legacy Project at Walking Man raising funds for other young brewers to get similar opportunities in the future.
In 2011 Jacob scaled up, going from the tiny small town Walking Man brewpub to Oregon’s largest brewery Widmer Brothers.
“I was intimidated for sure, but also extremely excited. I knew when I got in the industry that I would want to work at a production facility at some point.” The biggest part of the challenge was learning and trusting automation software. Although Widmer is not fully automated, brewers still had to learn to conceptually understand the layout of the brewery through computer programs and what is and what isn’t hands-on. “I met some great brewers and became friends with some amazing people during that time. Widmer was, and maybe still is, the most state of the art brewery in Oregon.”
Breakside founder Scott Lawrence (left) and Jacob Leonard at the Holiday Ale Festival
Jacob was only at Widmer Brothers for a relatively short while, but it prepared him for what would become his home for the next decade.
“I had been going to Breakside on Dekum quite a bit as it was in my neighborhood,” says Leonard. He really enjoyed the beers that brewers Ben Edmunds and Sam Barber were making, and got to know owner Scott Lawrence and the team as a regular at the pub. When he was offered the job as production manager to help Breakside scale up from a 4 to 30bbl brewery in Milwaukie the opportunity was simply too good to pass up. “I really enjoyed my time at Widmer and learned A LOT there. It was just time to move on to something else.”
“When we first started the Milwaukie brewery, all of us were doing a little bit of everything,” remembers Leonard. There were only 4 total brewers as they headed into operations at the new location in 2013. Breakside hadn’t yet become a known brand, or achieved the acclaim or consistency they are known for today. The operation was still so small that the brewers had to rotate shifts working at the taproom pouring beers once a week. Jacob brewed the first batch in Milwaukie solo, which was kind of a mess. But they quickly got things figured out.
In 2014 Breakside Brewery won the most coveted medal in brewing, a Gold at the Great American Beer Festival for the flagship Breakside IPA. The growth trajectory only shot up from there, and the medals and the sales followed. “The biggest challenge was simply navigating the growth and keeping the quality of beer as high as we have,” says Leonard. He credits a lot of the passion for quality and leadership direction to founding brewmaster Ben Edmunds: “His leadership and faith in other leaders in the brewery is what has led Breakside to be so successful, and has given me the confidence I needed to be a (hopefully!) successful leader to our team. Our team has evolved and changed so much over the 10 years that I've been here. Getting "buy in" from the team and creating positions where people could thrive and really feel like they contributed was something that Ben and I actively worked on every day. Without Ben I don't think it would have gone as smooth as it has.”
Breakside brewers celebrate winning a Gold medal for Breakside IPA at the Great American Beer Festival in 2014
Jacob is now more on the administrative and managerial side, but he still steps in for the occasional beer transfer, CIP, or coverage on the packaging line. On his role as the departing Director of Brewing Operations he says, “I've always thought of my role as "the puzzle master". There are so many moving parts at Breakside that require attention from different people. From brewing and cellaring, to packaging and QA, to the barrel program and leading a team of very motivated and hard working people. A lot of projects and special beers get directives from Ben, and a big part of my job has been to make sure that we have the right people, raw materials, and equipment to execute that project effectively. My role has been very dynamic and fulfilling.”
Jacob Leonard (left) and Ben Edmunds (right) toast to Leonard’s final days at Breakside Brewery
This week Jacob Leonard’s time with Breakside Brewery comes to an end as he packs up and relocates to Tucson, Arizona with his wife April. It’s unclear whether he is done with the brewing world, but he leaves it in a better place then when he started.
Q: What was your proudest moment or some of your fondest memories at Breakside?
Jacob Leonard: It's hard to think of a single moment. A very fond memory that will stick with me forever is when Ben, Scott, Ray and I all went to Belgium and Germany. It was such a fun trip and I think Ben and I came back with a focus and inspiration that we didn't know we needed. Drinking Augustiner Pilsner together, which we modeled Breakside Pilsner after, was very special. Also, so much Gueze in Belgium. It was awesome to have some many examples that were fresh and very different.
Q: What were some of your favorite beers you had a hand in making at Breakside and why?
Jacob Leonard: Wanderlust has to be at the top of the list. Ben tasked me with creating that IPA and the inspiration came from our very first collaboration in Milwaukie which was with Jamie Floyd of Ninkasi. Jamie is one of the first people I met in the industry and he has been super supportive and integral to my career. Getting to collab with him, and then designing a beer inspired by that collaboration that is now considered a staple at Breakside is very special. Another beer that was my pet project early on was a 100% Brettanomyces fermented Rye IPA that ended up taking a gold at the North American Beer Awards. I always wish we could have revisited that beer. Maybe Breakside will bring that back one day.
Q: How and why did you make the decision to move to Arizona?
Jacob Leonard: Honestly, it's just time for a change. My wife April LOVES the desert and we both are looking for more sunshine and a change of pace. Plus my mother was born and raised in Tucson and we used to go there often when I was a kid. Currently my parents live in Phoenix so it will be nice to be closer to them as they age. Tucson is a special place with a great food scene and a young and exciting beer scene. I'm looking forward to checking it out once I settle in.
Q: What will you miss most about Oregon?
Jacob Leonard: 100% my friends. I've lived here since 1997 and the friends and chosen family I have here are the best people on the planet. Also, I'll really miss the amazing beer scene that we have here. Oregon is a very special place for craft beer and I feel so fortunate to have been a part of it for so long.
Q: Where do you see yourself in 5-10 years?
Jacob Leonard: If there is one thing that the last 2 years have taught me is to not think that far ahead. We have all had to pivot so many times during the pandemic that I don't think it makes sense to try and anticipate what the world will look like in 5 years. If I had to guess, I'll still be in the beer industry in some capacity. I love the community so much that it's hard to think about not being connected to craft beer. I do have a dream of opening a sandwich shop at some point. Maybe that will happen?
