Nebuleus Beer weaves cult Saison magic into Small Oregon Brewery of the Year

When Nebuleus Beer swooped up not one but three awards at this year’s Oregon Beer Awards, including Small Brewery of the Year and Gold in the Mixed Culture category for their yessitka spruce, there was head-scratching from many in the audience who had never heard of this Portland-based operation. At the same time, there was jubilation and validation for the handful of beer nerds who have been snatching up Nebuleus’ saisons since day one through their ultra-limited releases and from the New School which named Nebuleus as one of our most anticipated breweries of 2021. Regardless, this was a worthy victory for a brewery that has garnered the kind of low-key hype that may one day lead to cult status, even if Nebuleus isn’t even a brewery in the traditional model we all think of. So how did they get to this point just a year after getting legally licensed to sell their beer?

The Nebuleus story begins in Seattle with two avid homebrewers and partners named Tim Crook and Rachel Olen. Like many of us, they started by brewing basic beer recipes using extract. Brewing styles like IPAs and brown ales were fine, but it was a chance visit to Portland’s supremely underrated Upright Brewing that lit the fire of what would become an all-consuming devotion to saison.

“We visited Upright and we were like damn, they’re making these barrel-aged saisons and nobody really does that. So we introduced [Brettanomyces] to our system and once you go funky, you’re kind of always funky. Since then we’ve brewed saisons only and maybe one barleywine and that got infected too,” says Crook, who works as an accountant by day.

Ironically enough, Olen now works as a beertender at Upright, which also happens to be where Nebuleus lets people pick up their beer. “[The draw] is [we] wanted to brew what we wanted to drink. I love drinking saisons. When we first started, we would drive to Portland, go down to the [Upright] basement, and just try these crazy saisons,” she says.

Nebuleus Beer’s Tim Crook and Rachel Olen

Besides Upright, they also found inspiration in breweries like Logsdon, Russian River, and Ale Apothecary (“Paul Arney is an Angel,” says Olen), but were pushed down the path by a desire to have more access to funky and fruited saisons. “Not a lot of people were brewing that kind of stuff back then, so we were like fuck, guess we are going to have to brew it,” says Crook.

When they moved from their apartment to a house in Portland in 2017, they started brewing bigger batches. “We got an oak barrel that we were doing like a solera thing in. We had a basement so we could brew 15 gallons and split it into five different carboys with different yeasts. As [we] started to build up a stock and blending and fruiting, the beer got exponentially better,” reflects Crook.  

At some point, Olen and Crook realized that they were less attracted to the act of brewing than they were to the art of blending, fruiting, and aging saison. “One barrel turned into two barrels, four barrels, and it just hasn’t stopped,” says Olen.

Procuring adjuncts like wine grapes, spruce tips, and stone fruit allowed them to experiment and give each saison its own flavor identity, and these beers caught the attention of friends and beer lovers.  

“We started sharing with friends and then people started asking about it, like how do I get this? I guess that’s how we got to where we are now - it got to the point where a lot of people were asking. We had this weird following in Europe suddenly,” says Crook.

The Europe following may not have been entirely weird or accidental. While pouring their then unnamed beer at a Brews for New Avenues event in 2019, Crook and Olen shared it with Raf Souvereyns, the influential Belgian lambic and saison brewer behind Bokke, who whispered his praise to attendees to create a buzz. This moment was pivotal as it was when the idea of starting a business truly came to fruition.

“It was our spruce tip saison and Pinot noir saison. He wanted to raffle our beers off but he said we need a logo and a story, and [suggested] say somebody rode their canoe here to deliver it,” says Crook. The name Nebuleus was inspired by a marketing friend who pointed out the trendiness of the nebulous, Crook and Olen then translated into Flemish. “It was kind of a joke at the time and we never thought we would be selling beer with this logo and this name. When Raf says something is good, people will listen,” he adds.

While they have been sharing their beer for a little while now, it was extra time during the pandemic that pushed them to make the leap to legitimate status and start officially selling it. “We were like, let’s just see if they will give us a license, and they did,” says Olen, and in 2021 Nebeleus the business was officially born.

Since then, the quantity of beer being produced has increased slightly, but not much. “We are slowly ramping up but the first batch we did was a 62-gallon wine barrel and we split it two ways - half on spruce tip and half on apricot. There were roughly 150 bottles of each. Then the next bottling we did the same thing, just to maximize variety and have different things. Now what we are doing is full 62-gallon batches, which are closer to 300 bottles,” says Crook.

In the age of pop-up restaurants and Instagram-exclusive product offerings, Nebuleus’ model of announcing releases on their page and selling them almost entirely online has only added to their allure and mystique. Though each release usually sells out within minutes, this approach is more democratic and accessible than rule-intensive, members-only breweries like Seattle’s Floodland. Their style of announcing a release via Instagram and selling it through their website has led to occasional griping from beer nerds, and the few in-person releases for Nebleus have resulted in lines, but this is the most logical approach for Crook and Olen, who are still surprised by the hype.

“We’re struggling with how to release it to just make people happy. We never in our wildest dreams thought this would happen. We think the beer is good. We just didn’t know how it would be received and it’s kind of blown up,” says Olen, adding that, for now, “We’re probably going to ride that for a minute until we can find more space.”

As brewers, Crook and Olen strike the balance between the kind of intense focus that leads to perfectionism, and a willingness to get there through experimentation and trial and error. This can be tasted in their beer, which can be perfectly balanced and delicate, with the base beer offering support to vibrant flavors of oak, fruit, and adjuncts like spruce tips, vanilla and honey, or deeper levels of funk coming from the brett yeast and more left-field offerings like their rye saison aged in brandy barrels. Regardless of what beers they are putting out, they have repeatedly demonstrated a respect for saison that has captured the attention of beer nerds. There is also something neat about the fact that, with the exception of having some of their wort produced at Away Days Brewing, Crook and Olen are doing all of the work themselves out of their 350 square-foot detached garage in Southeast Portland.   

Rachel Olen accepts the small brewery of the year award for nebuleus beer at the Oregon Beer Awards 2022

With so much momentum and excitement behind each new beer, where does Nebuleus go from here? At the moment, they are basking in their unexpected wins at the Oregon Beer Awards and there are no immediate plans to open a larger brewery or taproom. Crook is quick to point out that he isn’t even sure if a taproom is the end goal for Nebuleus and that they aren’t in a rush to expand.  

“We can afford to be pickier because we’re not just relying on a brewery to support ourselves,” says Olen.  

Then again, many brewers have said this before making a big move and taking their operation to the next level. This is a reality that Crook hasn’t ruled out. “If the perfect spot came along, we would maybe just go for it.”