ColdFire Brewing introduces new Head Brewer Shawn Grover and Expansion Plans
ColdFire Brewing is one of those locally beloved breweries that sometimes fly’s under-the-radar outside of their home market in Eugene, Oregon. Word of mouth and fan following is strong for the now 7-year-old accomplished brewing company that has consistently won local and national awards and frequently ranks as one of the most underrated breweries in the state during the New School’s annual best of the year awards. 2023 looks to be one of ColdFire Brewing’s biggest years yet, as they recently promoted pFriem Family Brewers veteran Shawn Grover to head brewer as they gear up to open a second production brewing location in Junction City.
Founded by brothers Stephen Hughes and Dan Hughes in 2015, ColdFire Brewing became the workmans brewery of Eugene, opening without a lot of hype but consistently putting out solid beers that kept getting better and better. Eschewing trends but not ignoring them either, the Hughes focused on the less overtly sexy things that take a beer from good to great.
“The thing that has changed the most here at ColdFire is our understanding of what quality means. It’s easy to start into craft beer with stars in your eyes and a belief that your beer is the absolute best, but we’ve really tried to steer away from that narrative and look to see where we’ve fallen down on quality and process,” says Stephen Hughes.
In the early days the brothers weren’t big hopheads, and admit to falling back on old school recipes that didn’t accentuate the hops enough. In the process of going from homebrewer to pro, they learned a ton about sourcing and terroir and fell in love with advanced hop products, hopping strategies, and discovering new hop varieties. Today, ColdFire’s Cumulus Tropicalis IPA is their top seller and it’s as modern of an American IPA you can find. But their passion for European classics never waned, even if the regular lineup doesn’t focus on them as much.
“My passion has always been for recipe development, barrel aging and mixed culture fermentation, and I wanted to find a way to segway into making those things my primary focus,” says Stephen. In fact it’s those type of beers that eventually inspired him to take brewing seriously. Stephen was working in a clinical microbiology lab as a medical scientist. He found the microbial world and the culturing fascinating even before a friend at the lab turned him on to Crooked Stave Artisan Ales founder Chad Yakobson’s Brettanomyces Project. “That moment marked my thirst for beer knowledge in a way that no other moment has yet,” he says.
In January of 2021 the brothers got to talking and decided to hire another brewer to keep up. Stephen had been doing most of the brewing for the previous 6 years and was getting a little burnt out between that full-time gig as well as his duties as an owner and manager. So they started searching for a brewer with a broad skill set that could take the reins of their clean beer program.
An industry friend introduced the Hughes to Shawn Grover, a recent alumni of pFriem Family Brewers who had just moved back to Eugene to be near his family. Shawn was born and raised in Riverside CA. His dad’s side of the family is from Eugene and they visited a lot, in 2007 Shawn and his wife Erin moved to Eugene as he studied at the American Brewer’s Guild, and got a brewing internship at Oakshire Brewing. 8 years later he was hired as a brewer and cellarman at pFriem.
ColdFire Brewing’s recently anointed head brewer Shawn Grover
“When pFriem first started, Josh [Pfriem] was making, and is still making, all these beers that were diverse and so flavorful. I remember visiting pFriem on vacation with my wife, and saying to her, “I really want to work here.” I applied, and two months after that I was hired,” recalls Shawn. There, he helped head brewer Gavin Lord with the barrel-aging program and got to write his first recipe for oak which ended up being their barrel-aged saison. Among the top highlights of his 5 years at pFriem was his first ever trip to the Great American Beer Festival which coincided with pFriem’s first GABF medal win.
Shawn fell in love with beer as a touring musician in the UK. “I think I was 23. I was straight edge at the time, the last remaining straight edge kid in my group of friends. We had a day off in Birmingham, and the band we were touring with invited us to the pub. My band mates were raving about how great the beer was. Our bus driver who was a big Welch guy bought us all a round and noticed I was not drinking. Well, he got super fiery, and offended, and told me I had better drink it or I would not be allowed back on the bus. At this point I was used to standing up against peer pressure, but my curiosity got the best of me. Unfortunately, the beer wasn’t one of those cask beers my friends were drinking, but rather a Stella Artois. I remember it being very refreshing though.”
Roughly two years later the band broke up and he got a job at Trader Joe’s. While he wasn’t a beer connoisseur yet, he had a taste for craft beer and the job was a great way to sample the craft beers available at the time. Some of his co-workers were also homebrewers and he quickly fell in love with it as a hobby as well. “What excited me was the creative aspect to it. For me making a beer was reminiscent of making a song. To make a beer or a good song, all the parts need to complement and flow.”
After 5 years in Hood River, the Grovers missed Eugene and decided to move back and got the job at ColdFire. Shawn’s experience at pFriem in fast paced but high quality production work made him a perfect candidate.
“In addition to needing help here at our current facility, Dan and I knew we wanted to grow our wholesale to keep pace with the market demand for our beer and that meant increasing our production with a larger brewhouse in a different facility. We needed a capable brewer to help keep that ship steady. Shawn turned out to be just the person to help us accomplish this goal,” says Stephen Hughes.
In the fall of 2022 ColdFire Brewing purchased Buoy Beer’s original 20bbl Metalcraft Fabrication brewhouse which they had decomissioned for their big expansion into a production facility across the way in Astoria. Then ColdFire quietly leased two warehouses in Junction City, 15 miles outside of Eugene, to begin building a new brewery over the course of 6+ months.
“We will transition most of our production to Junction City, but will keep our 10bbl brewhouse in its current location,” says Stephen. “I will be utilizing the Eugene brewery space to dive deeper into my love for mixed culture fermentation and barrel aging. My brother and I will also use it to create small, one-off batches that help the two of us scratch our creative itch.”
After less than a year at ColdFire Brewing, Shawn Grover has been promoted to the new head brewer position. “Throughout the year that I have been here, Stephen and Dan found themselves planning a new production brewery, and they needed me to oversee things as they are not as able to get in the brewery and get their feet wet as often. Now that the new brewery is being planned and built in Junction City, I am their guy to oversee the facility once we are up and running. With this new brewery, our goal is to get more beer to more people, along with the ability to produce and add more diversity of styles to our brand.”
The biggest challenge for the brewery right now is fulfilling demand for hit beers like Cumulus Tropicalis and their growing lager beer program headlined by ColdFire Czech Pilsner, which is right up there with the best in Oregon. For the Hughes they want the growth to come naturally and not to lose sight of the valley for the hills, as the brewery consistently puts out styles of beers we don’t see as often such as a brown ale and black IPA. The expansion to Junction City is about keeping the portfolio as diverse as ever, and giving Stephen a space to delve further into Belgian/French farmhouse mixed culture and Grover room to double-down on lagers and IPA’s.
“I don’t want to be naïve, but I also see it as my duty to share beers with the community that are colored by tradition and the natural world,” says Stephen on his proclivity toward long time-intensive ales that may not be as in vogue as they once were. “As a brewer and brewery owner, I feel a sense of responsibility in sharing these stories and traditions within beer so that they can be rightly appreciated and understood by the modern consumer. I personally wonder about the staying power of some of these nuevo styles that utilize high quantities of these ingredients. Not to cast stones of course, there is definitely a place and time for all sorts of creativity and I myself enjoy brewing some of these bombastic styles, on occasion.”
All of the secondary focus on mixed-culture and farmhouse ales has paid off, as ColdFire has a stellar track record over the past few years in world-class competitions for that genre. In 2020 ColdFire Brewing was awarded a Gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) for ‘Wild James’ in the Mixed-Culture Brett Beer category, and the same year a Silver medal for ‘Seeds of Infinity’ in Specialty Saison. In 2022 the Oregon Beer Awards honored them with a Gold medal for ‘Live!’ in the American Sour Ale. Also in 2022 the GABF gave them a Silver for ‘Genièvre’ in Wood- and Barrel-Aged Sour Beer, and the World Beer Cup awarded a bronze for their ‘Valley Mélange’ in Belgian Fruit Beer.
But they are not looking at the brewing schedule with rose colored glasses either, even as they would be thrilled to make as many barrel-aged (clean and sour) beers as possible they realize it’s going to be low-volume going forward. “We aren’t trying to produce volumes that our customer base hasn’t given us permission to produce. If 75% of our wild ales were to move through our taproom, that would make me thrilled. Honestly, I just want to be creative and work on as many small batch projects as possible.”
In ColdFire Brewing’s first year they brewed about 600 barrels of beer and over the following 6 years reached 2,000 barrels sold in 2022. Their long-term plans remain to fulfill what the local market desires, but their greater ambitions include possibly opening a full ColdFire brewpub with restaurant in the future (they currently have food trucks at the taproom.)As the brewery wraps up equipment purchases for Junction City, they have also started the process of trenching and sloping the floors and are hoping to bring the new facility at 130 E. 1st street avenue, Junction City online in May or June.
ColdFire co-owner Dan Hughes says their goals remain modest, ”Growth has always been organic for us and we have no intentions to push harder into the market as opposed to being pulled in. We hope to fulfill demand for core brands that have done well for us, namely the Cumulus Tropicalus, Czech Pils (and other lagers) and our wild ales.”
“Dan and Stephen really believe in what they do,” added new head brewer Shawn Grover. “The diversity of beer styles keeps things interesting, and I work with some really talented people.”
ColdFIre Brewing is self-distributed in most parts of Oregon and in SW Washington. Their taproom and brewery is located at 263 Mill St, Eugene, OR 97401. Open Monday-Thursday: 3pm–9pm, Friday and Saturday: 12pm-9pm, and Sunday: 12pm-8pm.
