Chef Doug Adams and Brewer Whitney Burnside reflect on One Year of Grand Fir Brewing
Hard to believe it has already been one year since 2022’s most anticipated new Oregon brewery Grand Fir opened up. The Portland brewpub at 1403 SE Stark St, is from former 10 Barrel Brewing, Pelican Brewing, and Upright Brewing all-star Whitney Burnside, and former Top Chef finalist and acclaimed chef and restaurateur Doug Adams, who are married. Grand Fir Brewing’s opening was met with lines around the block and sky high expectations as the service industry was meeting unprecedented headwinds against dining out amidst the pandemic and inflation. Only one year into operations, Grand Fir Brewing has already won a few prestigious beer medals and a lot of fans, but it has been a tumultuous 12 months for restaurants and the craft brew industry to say the least.
This Saturday, November 18th, Grand Fir Brewing celebrates one year with SLUG FEST at the brewpub, featuring guest chefs from OX, an anniversary beer, local makers market, live bluegrass picking, brewery tours and tastings and more.
In honor of their first year in business, we caught up with Doug and Whitney to look back and forward at the business.
Q: What did you think owning a brewery would be like, versus what it is actually like?
Whitney: Just navigating owning a business and owning a brewery after the pandemic has been hard, and Portland has been really slow to come back from that. Navigating that and our location, and trying to pivot, and roll out new ways of doing service to try to bring people in. I guess we expected because of our location that it wouldn’t be a problem, but it is everywhere. We opened up the doors with a little fancier food, and since then Doug has dialed that down a little bit and changed it up.
Doug: When we opened our burger didnt come with french fries and it was as if I walked out into the dining room and slapped every person across the face. I was used to places where it was like ‘its a $14 burger of course it doesn’t come with fries.’ There are different expectations with a brewpub, so figuring that out. And its always challenging when you go into a new space. And when its a plug and play space, you have to deal with decisions that you didnt make. Who has the money to build from the ground up these days? We knew we had a funky layout, and its proven difficult, but a fun challenge.
Q: If you could go back in time and change one thing about Grand Fir what would it be?
Doug: I would borrow more money and redo the kitchen. Its a smaller kitchen than you would see in a food cart, and we have this large brewpub. In the first few months it was really apparent that we couldnt keep up. So we dialed it back pretty quickly to more burgers and fries. You always hope you can do more, but it was pretty apparent that we didnt have the space to do more than we do now. And you know I come from pretty large spaces, so this was a lot different.
Whitney: We would love the luxury of having more money to do all the things we were facing that we would like to change. We would love to change around where the bar is located to be on the other side and more fluid. But that was never in the cards because it is a big undertaking and costs a lot of money. You also cant really expand in that space, I am at 4 fermenters and I am pretty much at my max capacity with that. If we have the money to do it that is something we would do for sure.
Doug: But then we would be in debt, so it is what it is.
Q: What was the best decision you have made so far at Grand Fir Brewing?
Doug: For me it was getting the staff involved in a lot of decision making. Bringing them in as much as we can in how we do things is something that we have really tried to make part of who we are. And working together with Whit, owning a business is hard and in our business it takes up a lot of time. Its a lifestyle business right, and deciding to do it with Whitney has allowed me to spend a lot of more time with her. And I am constantly inspired by her. Thats the first thing that comes to my mind, doing it together, when things are hard its the best to do it with your partner and wife, and to watch your kiddo run around it is super rewarding. She does make the best fucking beer in the world.
Whitney: I think we have done a pretty good job even though we have made some changes to our food menu, but we have pretty much stuck to our vision to give people the ultimate beer and food experience that is really thoughtful. And not rethinking that too much to keep up with what we think is going to sell more.
Grand Fir Brewing’s one year anniversary beer - Slug Life PNW IPA
Q: The one year anniversary is slug themed, what do you like about slugs and how did they become the unofficial (official?) mascot?
Whitney: Growing up in Isaquaah I spent a lot of my childhood outdoors. I have always just really liked banana slugs, you would see a lot of them where I grew up on Tiger Mountain. I remember as a little girl there was this chocolate store in Isaquaah and they had all these artisan chocolates, and they had this banana slug chocolate that was on a stick like a lollipop. I wanted it sooo bad but my parents wouldn’t buy it for me, but one day I finally got it. That really stuck with me and it came to mind when we were designing labels with Kirin, and especially with Undergrowth Pale the banana slug came
Doug: As long as it wasnt going to be named Doug the slug I was fine with it.
Whitney: Ohh that’s cute!
Doug: We had a really great trip to the Olympic Peninsula and it really reminds me of that.
Whitney: It has been fun with our branding because our food is really Texas themed smoked meats, and our new Tack Shack shirts have a cow skull. And you usually see a snake coming out of the eye hole in the skull, but on ours it’s a banana slug. So it has been fun combining those two different feels and making it work.
Q: Now that you have year one wrapped up, what is in store for year 2 and what are you most excited about?
Whitney: It flew by!
Doug: We are actually going to change some stuff up a little bit, adding another fryer so we can do more smoked chicken and half birds on the regular. When you are looking at food you always look at what works well and expand that, and get it to as many people as possible. We are excited about that and having more stuff for people to take to-go as well. It doesn’t work as well with burger and fries, expanding up the options to fit that and bring in more stuff that we can push out the door like hot chicken.
Whitney: Obviously I want more beer, and so does everybody else. We are just exploring our options right now, we do not know what direction we are going to go. We have our feelers out for a new taproom location if that is the direction we are going to go. But we are also toying with the idea of producing more beer off-site, whether its contract brewing or opening another production facility.
Grand Fir Brewing will celebrate their One Year Anniversary with a Slug Fest from 12pm to 10pm on Saturday, November 18th.
From 1-4 pm Greg and Gabi Denton from restaurant OX will be guest Chefs making some casual fare with Doug in the kitchen. This is special because Doug used to work under them! Grand Fir will have their smoker out front for the day cooking up specials.
Slug Life PNW IPA anniversary ale available on-draft and in 16oz cans available all day
From 1-4pm Whitney will be pouring Slug Life IPA in the actual brew house!
At 3 pm Grand Fir will fill with local vendors, artists, and makers from around the community showing off their skills and wares.
At 7 pm live bluegrass picking from up and coming bluegrass outfit Dadweed
Grand Fir Brewing, 1403 SE Stark St, Portland, OR 97214