de Garde Brewing’s Decade of Spontaneous Invention
A look back at a decade of spontaneous invention at Tillamook, Oregon’s de Garde Brewing
10 years ago, a young couple named Linsey and Trevor Rogers launched a brewery whose concept seemed as wild as the spontaneously fermented beers it would produce. Sour beers and wild ales were becoming more popular among an increasingly savvy group of craft beer fans, but the idea of opening a brewery solely focused on these beers was a gamble to say the least. Doing it in a tiny farming town on the Oregon coast known for its cheese and little else seemed downright crazy. Not only that, but the tiny amount of beer that de Garde would produce meant that the vast majority of people who got to consume it would have to travel to the source. The idea of a destination brewery was still a somewhat foreign concept though more of these would come to fruition around the country in the decade that followed.
Trevor and Linsey toast the installation of their original brewhouse in March 2013
“Honestly, we had no idea if people would come to Tillamook to try our beer. We didn't have a tasting room or anything, we were just brewing out of our rental house's garage. I think we had kind of imagined we'd be selling our beer to whoever might have an interest locally and in the Portland area,” says Linsey, who handles much of de Garde’s business affairs while Trevor manages the brewing. At just around ninety minutes away, Portland was the closest major city to Tillamook.
“It certainly was a terrifying wager though,” adds Trevor.
At the same time, the unique environmental circumstances of Tillamook also had exactly what they were looking for. From the very beginning, Trevor has been obsessed with harnessing the energy of this landscape as the primary source of fermentation for de Garde beers. In doing so, he has taken the wine-related concept of terroir and applied it to native yeast. This yeast finds the mix of briny coastal air and rainy farmland giving each batch of de Garde its signature funk and minerality.
De Garde Brewing is now in their third location since opening 10 years ago
“We're intrinsically tied to this place. Our area naturally provides the native yeast and bacteria that define our beer, and we'd be making something quite different in a different location. We chose to be here, because we believe it's a great location for this type of craft,” he says, but points out that this all comes at a cost. “There are definitely some additional hurdles and costs to making beer in our location, but it's part of being who we are, where we are. From a purely business standpoint, operating in a larger market would be ideal: Less transport costs, and proximity to a larger audience. While that would be lovely, we opted to pursue unique character and quality over economic ease and feasibility.”
As a former assistant manager at Pelican Brewing, Trevor saw de Garde as a way to explore his love of wild ales and wine. He brewed using the coolship method championed by his lambic-loving Belgian heroes like 3 Fontein, Cantillon and Tilquin among others, then transferred the beer to age in barrels and foeders where it would age for a minimum of one year and often more. Along the way, he might add local fruit and wine grapes to the beer. The result was and still is a beer that is tart, funky and expressive of its time and place.
“I guess we were hopeful and optimistic that there would be an audience for what we made? We started out producing a tiny amount of beer, and really, we still do. We believed that we'd be able to find enough like-minded people to support these efforts, and suspected that our beer would find its way to receptive people,” reflects Trevor.
Luckily, his suspicions were correct and de Garde took off almost from day one, timed perfectly (though not intentionally) with craft beer’s transition into a more adventurous era. Word of the little brewery cranking out delicate wild ales on the Oregon coast was soon spreading amongst a growing number of craft beer obsessives who traded and shipped beer around the world. When they opened their first taproom near where their current taproom stands now, it became clear on opening day that the word was out on de Garde.
“The first [big moment] that I can recall was the 'grand' opening of our original taproom, actually quite close to where we are now. It was an absolutely tiny space. We could somewhat comfortably accommodate maybe ten people? How many people were going to drive to Tillamook for our particular type of 'weird' beer after all?,” he says. “Anyhow, we had hoped a few people would show up for the opening. We ended up with a line around the corner of the block, and quickly realized that we were clearly unprepared.”
Soon after, they moved to a non-descript warehouse space out by an old World War II blimp hangar that houses the Tillamook Air Museum. Their small but airy taproom was no frills, with the emphasis being on the liquids in the glass rather than the decor on the walls. Starting with the kind of respectful awe most breweries can only dream of also came with its own struggles, with Trevor, Linsey and their small but dedicated team focused perhaps more on meeting demand than providing the kind of brewery experience that matched the quality of their beer. This all changed in 2017 when they opened their brewery and tasting room at 114 Ivy Ave in November of 2017 after long delays and budgetary issues.
“Major consideration for our current brewery and tasting room was put into the hospitality and guest experience, largely based on learned lessons,” says Trevor, who cites the opening of the brewery as perhaps their biggest milestone. “We'd gone through a long and frankly terrifying process of purchasing, renovating and adding onto the very old structure and property, but it allowed us to design the brewery and tasting room as we'd wanted but hadn't had the ability or opportunity for prior. It's what we needed, what the folks that choose to come visit us deserve, and what the beer deserves.”
Indeed, the tasting room allowed for more spacious seating, including an outdoor patio. Behind the scenes, hundreds of wine and spirit barrels sit with wild ales happily fermenting away while the coolship lives on the second floor. The early days of the new tap room found eager beer nerds lining up every weekend, but much of the line culture that defined pre-pandemic hype beer culture went away when businesses like de Garde were forced to switch to online ordering and shipping, and quick, seamless pick-up. The decrease in tap room visitation also led de Garde to rely more on distribution, which means that ten years in, their beer is perhaps more accessible than it’s ever been.
“The pandemic changed the landscape, for sure. It's been a difficult few years for pretty much everyone, and I think we're all still finding our footing. Having our beer be more accessible is certainly not a bad thing though. It's been a goal of ours from the start, and one that as a small brewery we've often failed at. So long as beer is getting to folks that want it, we can keep working, and our team is well cared for, then broader accessibility is good. We'll see what future years bring, I suppose,” says Trevor.
Trevor points to the fact that de Garde has actually decreased output over the years though it may not seem like that when you can now find their beer on shelves in bottle shops around Oregon, California and Washington. “Our focus has instead been on refining recipe and process, and maturing beer for ever longer times in barrels, with quality being the driving goal. With a finite amount of space and oak barrel and tank capacity, the longer maturation has necessarily resulted in a decreasing amount of beer output. We're ok with that. Particularly in the pursuit of quality. I like going to bed at night knowing that I tried to do something that I could be proud of.”
The brewery has also been devoting small but precious amounts of barrel space to making wine in recent years, once again leading a trend that has caught on at a small number of breweries around the country. (Read: It Took a Lot of Great Beer for these Breweries to Make Wine)
It’s difficult to gauge the influence of de Garde, but it seems fair to assume that the fervor it has generated over the last decade amongst beer nerds has pushed many other breweries to dedicate more time and space to crafting wild ales. Alongside peers like Jester King - which also just celebrated a ten-year anniversary - de Garde has helped bring more visibility to the idea of making spontaneously fermented beer using the coolship method, with breweries from coast to coast investing in the ancient style of production.
“There have been some pretty incredible and humbling moments over the years though. Seeing customers line up for releases, winning awards, festival invites, and finishing the renovation on our current building, will always bring me happiness,” says Linsey.
For Trevor, there are a handful of key moments where he knew that de Garde had earned the respect of the same people he once idolized. “Perhaps the most inspirational moment that I've personally experienced happened at the first of the beer awards ceremonies we were invited to, in Santa Rosa, California. It was fairly early on for our brewery. We were awarded a medal as one of the top 10 breweries in the world, and the best in Oregon, amongst a number of other awards. This was as unexpected as it was humbling. Later that day, another Oregon brewer approached me inside Russian River Brewing and said, ‘You know that your awards are bullshit, right? Just want to make sure you know that.’ The awards and the following interaction definitely provided even more inspiration to do better.”
As for his own favorite de Garde beers, Trevor says he’s “a huge fan of the long-aged, unfruited blends we compose, as well as the beers we make that incorporate wine grapes.” Many of these have been the result of collaborations, which also have represented milestones for Trevor and Linsey. “We've been able to blend and collaborate with some of our Lambic brewer friends, as well as numerous other inspirational folks. We've been invited to places and events and traveled around the country and world. Both to learn as well as to work, and we've found a lot of friends along the way. We've served beer with and next to our industry idols and been well received. We've met people in the most random and distant places that were familiar with our brewery and were fans of it. We've partnered with Michelin starred restaurants, and poured beer in numerous rustic beer joints. Every little bit has been an adventure. Every bit has been worth the effort.”
Many of those friends and collaborators will make their way to the Oregon coast when the first decade of de Garde culminates in a blowout anniversary party on May 6 just up the road from Tillamook in Garibaldi. Trevor and Linsey have traditionally kept their beer events low-key and smaller affairs, but the lack of social interaction during the pandemic and their own growth after 10 years signaled that they should throw what promises to be their biggest event to date. To pull it together, they have invited some of their famous friends including Hill Farmstead, Toppling Goliath, Cantillon, Side Project, Monkish, Trillium and Anchorage, to name just a few. There will of course be plenty of de Garde being poured as well. Not surprisingly, it didn’t take long for the event to sell out.
Ultimately, the event will be yet another major moment for a brewery that has earned its way into the upper echelon of craft beer. At the core of this is their unwavering commitment to quality as well as representing their little corner of the world that a decade ago seemed like a gamble for this kind of brewery. For Trevor, the balance of all these things is exactly what he hopes to maintain in the next chapter of de Garde.
“We've built this business on a particular ethos, style and expression, and we're committed to doing it the best that we can. I'd like to say, perhaps to hope, that the future holds more of the same, with a similar focus on continual improvement.”
