Pono Brewing opening in former Columbia River Brewing and Laurelwood space
Portland, OR based Pono Brewing has found a home of their own in the former Columbia River Brewing location in the Hollywood neighborhood of northeast Portland. The island themed beer brand has brewed all of their beers through an arrangement with Zoiglhaus Brewing for the past 6 years, and last year partnered with Bit House Collective to feature their beers as a sort of guest taproom.
This spring Pono Brewing will open the Pono Brew Lab at 1728 NE 40th Ave. The building has housed several prior breweries, most recently Columbia River Brewing which closed in 2019, and it was Laurelwood Brewing’s original location before that, and even earlier it was Old World Brewing in 1999. The brewpub with attached brewhouse has been sitting vacant and up for lease for nearly 3 years.
“We are thrilled to breathe new life into a historic part of Portland’s craft beer history. We will continue to do our larger production brewing within the ever expanding Zoiglhaus Brewing building while The Pono Brew Lab will be where we can finally flex our creativity,” says co-owners Erick Russ and Larry Clouser in a statement. “The 7BBL system gives us a chance to experiment with new hops, fruits and other ingredients plus we can start a mixed fermentation and barrel aging program which has been a dream since day one.”
Pono Brewing also announced plans to cultivate wild and unique yeasts and plan on collecting some from the outdoors themselves. Single hop IPA’s, ESB’s, tomato basil gose, pandaan pastry stouts, and surely more pineapple beers and other tropical and garden themed beers are in the planning. With a full kitchen, arcade area, and facelift to brighten up the dining room is on deck. When the location was Laurelwood Brewing it was known as the most family friendly brewpub in town, and it sounds like Pono Brewing wants to bring that tradition back.
Pono Brewing also has a new member of their team in Byron Sina who is lending a hand in graphic design. As a fan of the beer and as a friend, Sina wanted to see Pono in more places and started hitting up his westside watering holes, and soon was doing sales for the brewery which leaves some time for Erick to run his own bar the Golden Cat Beer Venue while also trying to run Pono.
With the new space, bigger team, and a fresh new distribution partnership with Bigfoot Beverages, Pono hopes to make 2022 their biggest year yet.
