Portland, Oregon’s Island themed Pono Brewing takes inspirations and ingredients from the South Pacific filtered through a pacific northwest craft beer lens. Pono Brewing has operated as a contract ghost brewery partnering with Zoiglhaus Brewing to make popular local beers like Pineapple Express and El Garrote west coast IPA. This Friday they open their own brewery, first taproom and restaurant called the Pono Brew Labs.

Pono Brewing was a homebrewing and collaboration project prior to becoming an officially licensed brand that launched in October of 2016 with a beer that would come to define them.

“It was probably not the smartest idea to launch with a Pineapple Kölsch in October but it’s what eventually put us on the map,” says Pono Brewing founder Larry Clouser.

At the time Clouser worked in sales for Country Malt Group, when he started brewing pilot batches with local breweries like Breakside, Gigantic, and The Commons. When one of their first commercially made batches became a big hit at the Spring Beer & Wine Fest, Clouser decided to put more time and effort into building a brand.

“I thought I could juggle working full time and Pono but quickly learned it wasn’t possible,” says Clouser. “I was actually fired from Country Malt when the new Director didn’t like that I was brewing beers with other breweries and was trying to start my own label. Honestly, it was a blessing in disguise and if I wasn’t fired, I wouldn’t have worked so hard and pounded the pavement doing sales calls.”

About 8 years ago Erick Russ joined Pono Brewing as a partner and sales manager, “I had put the word out to some friends that I was looking to get involved with a brewery project and someone introduced me to Larry,” recalls Russ. “After chatting for about 3 hours and countless beers we came to the conclusion that we had similar outlooks on life. Similar flavor palette’s too. The funny thing is I got involved with beer because I’m a very flavor driven person. I wanted to contribute to the world of delicious things but thought only masochists open restaurants. Fast forward to today and we are doing exactly that!”

Pono Brewing struck up a fruitful relationship with Zoiglhaus Brewing in southeast Portland’s Lents neighborhood as a home base for production and eventually canning of their beers. Pono started as a contract brewery, but eventually put even more skin in the game as an alternating proprietorship licensed at Zoiglhaus. The brand began to take off in the restaurant and foodie scene for their connections to fruit driven and tropical beers and has partnered with Bit House Collective and the Golden Cat Beer Venue to name a few.

Earlier this year with the anticipated operational expansion, Pono’s graphic designer Byron Sina became a partner after self-starting in sales to his favorite westside watering holes. Sina hails from Hawaii, and worked for graphic design agencies in Honolulu, then Colorado, before moving to Portland in 2007. Along with a new distribution partnership with Bigfoot Beverages, the Pono team is now able to focus more on getting their own location up and running.

“We have been looking for a place for about four years,” says Erick Russ. “As I’m saying that I can’t believe it’s been that long. We had more than one occasion that we thought we we’re about to finally lock down a location only to have something out of our control derail it.”

The new Pono Brew Labs marks the brands first brick-and-mortar space to call home. Their new location at 1728 NE 40th Ave, Portland, OR 97212 may seem familiar, it has a long history of breweries starting with Old World Brewing, then the original home of Laurelwood Brewing, before becoming Laurelwood Pizza Co., then Columbia River Brewing, and then finally a short stint as Spud Monkey’s bar and grill.  

“This neighborhood is packed with families that just want a decent spot to walk to that’s easy to grab a bite and a couple drinks with their little ones,” adds Russ, who is already brainstorming neighborhood collaborations with the likes of the Hollywood Theater. Russ half jokes that the Brew Labs location was full of promise as a turnkey brewery lease, but even more work to get it back up and running, after having to fix everything from clogged grease trays that were never cleaned, to resurfacing every floor, and rerunning every draft line.

The neighborhood it resides in is a busy thoroughfare just off of the 39th ave. public transit center with numerous bus lines and a MAX station, and the Hollywood Theater nearby. The pub is only about a block off of the Sandy Blvd. and Broadway intersection, which is a cross-cultural center of town with the more affluent families around the Fremont hill and Roseway golf course, and a fluid and diverse demographic of the inner-city transit area connecting the four quadrants of Portland.

Pono Brewing is itself a reflection of that diversity of cultures, “While the name Pono is Hawaiian in origin, our ownership and management team are a melting pot of White, Hawaiian, Filipino, Japanese and Dominican,” says founder Larry Clouser, who is white, but whose wife Mai is from the Philippines and is also the Brew Labs general manager. “I spent a lot of time in Hawaii and other Pacific Islands and actually met my wife while traveling for work. The word “pono” means righteous or rightousness and which is what my life changed into. I guess getting married and having kids can do that to you.”

Taking that inspiration of the more tropical regions from Hawaii to the Philippines and even Korea has resulted in a multi-cultural mish-mash of cuisines in both the Pono Brew Labs culinary dishes and beers they brew. The food menu at the Brew Labs executed by Chef Garrick Ikeda is extensive, and offers the kind of Hawaiian/Pacific Island/Asia food you don’t find at breweries, but is served up in familiar American ways.

Bulgogi Fries are a shareable platter of dirty fries loaded with beef bulgogi, kimchi, and gochujang mayonnaise, you will need a fork. Traditional beef or veggie Lumpia from the Philippines, or Kalua Pork Sliders from Hawaii, are both great finger food, and you can load up a few more snack platters with Crab & Cream Cheese Rangoons like we did. For the mains check out the Korean Fried Chicken, I was expecting a plate of crispy fried chicken you eat with your hands, but it actually comes out in a pile of chicken pieces drowned in sweet and spicy Korean sauce that require a fork. Each main dish comes with two scoops of rice and a choice of a side. On the next visit I plan to check out the Bulgogi Cheesesteak, the Kalbi Short Ribs, and North Shore Style Garlic Shrimp.

When it comes to the on-site Pono brewery, there was and is still a lot of work to be done. The 7bbl brewhouse dates back to when it was the original Laurelwood Brewing location. The sunken beer production area is one of the few breweries clearly on display in Portland, visible through the interior restaurant windows. In addition to having to redo the brewhouse floors, there is new reworking and rerouting of the hard plumbing, putting in a new diverter panel, new chiller, adding tankless water heaters, and more to give it a complete overhaul. The brewery won’t be completed until mid-September to October, when it becomes the pilot brewery for Pono.

“Pono Brew Labs is essentially going to be “Pono’s Playground.” says Clouser, “We will be making a ton of beer that most likely can’t be made on a larger scale but the ones that can be and are a hit, we will then move them over to the other facility.  One thing we will be doing for sure is moving into more barrel aging and mixed fermentation beers at the Labs.”

Recently Pono has been making more lagers and both hazy and West Coast IPA’s, but it’s their tropical beers that really put them on the map. “If you have never had fresh fruit from a tropical place while there, you don’t know what you are missing! I wanted to use a lot of these great ingredients in beer since at the time fruit beers weren’t a thing. When we started out, almost all of our beers had fruit in them and it’s what we were known for,” says Clouser. Who tries to take a balanced approach in the flavors for most of the beers, to make them more drinkable. Those popular recipes like Pineapple Express Kolsch will continue to be produced at Zoiglhaus Brewery while they do more experimental stuff at the Brew Labs. If the beers are successes, they can be moved to production.

Pono Brew Labs is a game changer not just for the inner Hollywood neighborhood families, but for Pono Brewing as a brand. Even though they have had plenty of support and places that regularly stocked their beer, it was always a struggle.

“For years as the salesman of Pono my biggest hurdle was explaining to people that we make beer but don’t have our own place. Maybe I’m reading into it too much but with some people it felt like just having delicious beer wasn’t enough and we didn’t have street cred until we had our own space. I think being able to release a new beer and actually have a place for people to come immediately try it will be very cool for fans of ours. Usually when I post something on social media about it there’s people commenting “Where can I get it now!” and I have to give some lame response like “check your favorite neighborhood taproom or restaurant”. This is our chance to connect with people through our beer on a much more personal level. That means a lot to us,” says Erick Russ.

Pono Brew Labs opens Friday, August 26th at 1728 NE 40th Ave, Portland, OR 97212