One of the best parts of the Oregon Beer Awards is inducting legendary members of the beer community into the Hall of Fame. On April 6th, 2022 the Oregon Beer Awards honored iconic figures in the industry Teri Fahrendorf, Art Larrance and Alan Sprints. To properly celebrate these influential figures the New School and Willamette Week gathered the group for a discussion on their careers and legacy, the nearly 2 hour long talk was filmed and edited by Zzeppelin and produced and interviews by myself, and heavily condensed into a 10+ minute long video. Please enjoy this brief opportunity to reminisce on Oregon beer history and the people that made it.

Teri Fahrendorf started her brewing career in the bay area after leaving a career in computer programming. After spending some time in the homebrewing community she figured she should get a professional brewing education if she wanted to pursue it as a career. After attending Siebel Institute of Brewing Technology in 1988 she went on to 33.5 years as a brewer, including a stint as a GABF medal winning brewmaster of Eugene, Oregon’s Steelhead Brewing from 1989-2007. She then embarked on a beer road trip promoting craft beer and women’s place in it. She went on to found the Pink Boots Society, an industry trade group representing women in the industry. PBS has grown and is now international, Teri no longer leads it but continues as an advocate and ambassador of the mission. In 2022 she retired from her job as Malt Innovation Center brewmaster for Great Western Malting.

Art Larrance was in real estate before he co-founded Portland Brewing with Fred Bowman in 1986 just a few years after Widmer Brothers Brewing and Bridgeport Brewing. He was an early advocate of craft beer and helped shepherd into law the Oregon Brewpub Bill in 1985 that paved the way for the McMenamins Breweries empire and all those that have followed making craft beer accessible in restaurants In 1988 he founded the Oregon Brewers Festival which was a smashing success and eventually became the largest beer festival in the country. In 1994 he was forced out of Portland Brewing, but went on to greater things by founding Cascade Brewing in 2006. Along with brewmaster Ron Gansberg, the Raccoon Lodge brewpub and Cascade Brewing beers helped usher in American Sour Ales and bring real fruit beer and oak aged bacteria driven sours to America. In 2019 Art retired and sold Cascade Brewing, but he continues to own and operate the Oregon Brewers Festival and the new Hillsbrew Fest.

Alan Sprints was a chef and homebrewer, a regular member of the Oregon Brew Crew who was inspired to get into brewing professionally. After a short stint at Widmer Brothers Brewing in 1992, Alan founded Hair of the Dog Brewing in ‘93 Sprints resurrected historical styles like Adambier, and began experiments with barrels, oak, and aging of strong ales to the forefront. Hair of the Dog was and remains an innovator and originator in the big beers and oak and spirit driven experimental beers that recreate or hybridize styles sometimes inspired by food, fruit, spirits, and wine. Famed beer writer Michael Jackson was an early fan of Hair of the Dog, crediting Sprints for opening up the possibilities of beer by thinking outside of the typical industrial era European beers of the day. Recently, Sprints announced he would be retiring and closing Hair of the Dog sometime this summer.