How Ruse Brewing unlocked the secret to success in 5 Years
How Portland, Oregon’s Ruse Brewing unlocked the secret to success in their first 5 years. In that relatively short period of time Ruse has became one of Portland’s favorite breweries, but not that many people know the story of how they got there. Now known primarily for IPA’s that flicker between hazy, west coast, and contemporary American, Ruse very much makes beers of the here and now including the occasional smoothie sour and pastry stout. But the brewery launched with far more rustic and old world beers to begin with.
Shaun Kalis started homebrewing in 2002, and got a job working at a craft beer store in 2005 that really helped him fall in love with the brewing industry. In 2006, Shaun and his now wife Dana Kalis moved from the Detroit, Michigan area to Portland where he landed his first professional brewing job at Old Market Pub with little to no experience. “I worked under Tomas Sluiter and learned a lot, being extremely green I was a sponge that wanted to absorb everything,” says Kalis. Around the same time, Kalis got a second job at Mcmenamins where he learned the hospitality business and eventually became a pub manager. Kalis left Old Market in 2011 and briefly worked at Cascade Brewing Barrel House and then the now closed Two Kilts Brewing in Sherwood, Oregon before he decided to take a break and leave the industry.
Shaun Kalis
Ruse co-founder Devin Benware started homebrewing when he was 17 while growing up in his home state of Vermont.
“A couple of friends and I were tired of asking people to buy us beer so we drove to the local homebrew shop, which happened to be right down the road from us. The owners of the shop helped us pick out a recipe from a big binder they had. We gathered our ingredients and sent us on our way. I remember making Cream Ale, Brown Ale and being really into brewing English Stouts,” recalls Benware.
Devin Benware in the Ruse Brewing construction area during demolition
In 2011 Benware moved to Portland for a change of scenery and to advance a burgeoning career as a cook that he cultivated at various Burlington, Vermont area restaurants. But to his disappointment he wasn’t finding the work he wanted in Portland at the higher-end restaurants, discouraged, he decided to apply at a local brew pub as a line cook while looking for a better gig. After about a month toiling in the back of the house at Old Market Brewing & Pub, Benware was told that the previous assistant brewer Shaun Kalis, had just left and they needed somebody to clean kegs part time. Over the next few years, Benware learned the ropes and eventually became a full-time brewer at Old Market.
During his time off from the industry, Shaun Kalis found a renewed passion to come back.
“I left brewing for a year or so but then realized that it was my love and owning a brewery was a destiny,” says Kalis. “I was a well trained brewer at the time but not a well educated one. I then went on to attend the American Brewers Guild and got over a hump that I had been at for the previous 7 years commercial brewing. I started home brewing again and working on recipes especially saisons, then I landed a job at Culmination Brewing which was awesome.”
In the meantime, Benware was hired as the head brewer for new startup Brannon’s Brew Pub in Hillsboro, Oregon. What once seemed like a big budget and exciting addition to Hillsboro’s lacking craft beer scene quickly imploded despite his hard work in the brewhouse.
Somehow Benware and Kalis never crossed paths at Old Market Pub, but they both landed brewing jobs at their former boss’ new business Culmination Brewing Company in 2015. Together with the Culmination brewing team at the time of Conrad Andrus (now co-founder of Living Haus Beer), Sonny Thomas (now at Baerlic Brewing), Shaun and Devin began to hit their stride and really dial in their brewing skills.
Kalis and Benware got to experiment a lot in those early days of Culmination Brewing, and talked with each other about starting their own brands independently at first. They struck up a mutually beneficial partnership to set up Ruse Brewing as an alternating proprietorship within Culmination Brewing, and even brought in their own tanks. The first beers were farmhouse ales and an IPA released draft-only. At the same time Kalis was still working as a manager at McMenamins, that is where he met Seth Black and Dino Mangini who joined Ruse Brewing when they eventually found their own space to open the brewery we now know in Southeast Portland’s brooklyn neighborhood.
“We looked at several brewing spaces around the east side of Portland before seeing a flyer for the Iron Fireman Collective building,” recalls Benware. “Just from the pictures we knew it was the perfect spot. The building was still being renovated and was in pretty rough shape at that point, but we saw the potential.”
A month before opening Ruse Brewing in the Iron Fireman Collective Building, they hired their first brewer - Luc Goovaerts who is still with them today as the head brewer responsible for most of everyone’s favorite beers they are drinking there now. Initially, the beers were very different and Ruse had a more mysterious quality about it with little of the current hop driven hype that took them years to develop.
“We started as a mixed culture focused brewery with a couple IPAs on the side. It soon became an obsession and the barrels multiplied. When we got our current facility up and running we had 90 wine barrels and a 20bbl foeder,” says Kalis.
Ruse Brewing’s opening day July 14th 2018
When Ruse first opened to the public in 2018, they were amazed by how many people showed up. The packed house of family and friends and enthusiastic fans looking to check out the neighborhood’s new brewery spilled out of the small taproom and into the lobby and hallways of the Iron Fireman Collective building. Some friends like Conrad Andrus jumped behind the bar to help save the day as the staff became quickly overwhelmed.
But even with that enthusiastic response, they soon sensed they would have to make some changes.
“After the first year we found ourselves in a tricky spot. On one hand we wanted to continue to make Saison and barrel/foeder aged fruit beers, but we already knew the IPAs were paying the bills. Year one we also signed with our good friends at Day One Distribution,” says Benware.
“As Devin mentioned, we loved making the beers but the writing was on the wall for us, we were having trouble selling volume and sitting on that much inventory was hard as a small business,” adds Kalis. “And also our own pallets changed. We began focusing on our true love, the fruit of there NW - hops. We emptied the barrels we liked, dumped the ones we didn’t like. Sold off the oak and sold the foeder to our friends at Alesong where we are happy to know it’s in good hands.”
It was bittersweet, as early release beers like Architect Saison, Multibeast barrel-aged brett/mixed-culture saison, and other bottled funky beers with art/bottle labels by yours truly (Ezra Johnson-Greenough) like Blue Ruins and Kriek went by the wayside. On the other hand, Ruse’s first hoppy beer Translator IPA has lived on and has won many accolades as the brewery transitioned to IPA’s.
By year two Ruse Brewing was seeing success with more IPA’s and 16oz cans hitting bottleshops and beer bars, their output began to grow with the help of fellow young startup - Day One Distribution. Ruse began collabing with other breweries that had inspired them, they continued to learn and get their name out there and the trajectory was looking good.
“We were definitely finding our groove, then, Covid,” says Benware. Without rehashing the ravages of the still fresh in our minds pandemic, Ruse did what many other breweries were doing by staying lean, canning more, and getting creative with service models and distancing. They eventually got rid of their entire barrel program, selling off their foeder to a good home at Alesong Brewing & Blending, and replacing the large corner of the taproom filled with barrels with seating to accommodate social distancing. “It was a painful decision for us but we knew it was the right move,” says Benware.
Ruse Brewing’s barrel corner of the taproom in 2018
“We made sooo many different beers during the covid shut down period that we were forced to learn and try things that work and don’t. Collaboration has been a great tool to learn from each other and we look forward to continuing to do them,” says Kalis. Noting that Ruse Brewing’s 5th Anniversary is marked with collaborations between them and Cloudburst Brewing, Structures Brewing, Burgeon Beer, Pure Project Brewing, and Brujos Brewing.
“The past 18 months since things have got less covid-y we have found ourselves very fortunate,” notes Benware. In April 2022 Ruse Brewing opened the Crust Collective on Vancouver, Washington’s new waterfront esplanade. The Detroit-style Pizza pub has been a very different business model focusing on food and families, bringing in a new set of customers with different desires.
Learning how to run a second business, especially a restaurant like Crust Collective, has been a challenge. But leaning on their previous management and kitchen experience, and with McMenamins and Ruse veteran Seth Black heading up the Crust Collective team they have figured it out. They even took a collective trip to Detroit to study and research Detroit-style pizza with the Michigan & Trumbull staff.
“Dialing in the pizza and being consistent took a little bit of time but I feel like we hit a stride last fall and learned some things and got over some humps,” says Kalis. It was successful enough that Ruse added a small pizza kitchen to their original Portland taproom earlier this year, and the pizzas par-baked in Vancouver and then finished in PDX have been a big hit that has allowed them to have consistent weekend food rather than relying on food trucks and pop-ups.
2022 and 2023 may be Ruse’s best years yet. With the second location running smoothly, and demand for their beers higher than ever, they have nearly doubled brewing capacity and were able to hire new brewer Cody Sewell. Having such a solid team has allowed Benware and Kalis to travel a bit to other exciting collaborations and beer festivals like Mikkeller Beer Celebration in Denmark, and Hood to Fuji in Japan.
“We are so dang lucky to have these guys, they keep the train on the tracks as the 2 of us are often pulled in other directions,” says Benware. “The 4 of us collaborate on every recipe and respect each others ideas. To this day we still occasionally have to dump beers down the drain, in our eyes it's just a cost of doing business. At the end of the day, quality and customer service are our main goals.”
There have been many trials and tribulations, like the rise and fall of live music and the demise of Ruse’s weekly Bluegrass Jams that Kalis was particularly passionate about. At one point, Ruse wanted to be part live music venue, and Kalis is a musician himself.
“The past 5 years has not by any means gone by fast and it's been very hard at times,” adds Benware. “Our growth with the restaurant and the growth of Day One Distro has allowed us to start to brew some of the other beer styles that interest all of us. Tons more lagers, witbiers, amber ales, American style stouts, etc. The coolest thing is, our customers seem to be really digging them. It’s like things are coming full circle, at least on a small scale.”
Devin Benware and Shaun Kalis at Ruse Brewing one day before it opened in 2018
Ruse Brewing now turning 5 years old (not counting the brands time as an alternating proprietorship at Culmination Brewing) is looking to stay consistent in the future, host more and better events and bring back live music as a greater part of their expansions. Perhaps even open a couple more Crust Collective pizza joints and to continue to stay true to the team and their co-workers.
“We are so lucky, such an amazing team at both locations, I feel so grateful!” says Kalis. “Our goals are to keep learning and making clean consistent beer and not ruling out anything. Who knows, maybe get a couple mixed culture small projects going again?”
Ruse Brewing celebrates their 5th Anniversary with five collaboration beers for 5yrs on Saturday, July 15th. All beers will be released both on draft and in 16oz cans:
Many Minds w/ Brujos Brewing
Barrel-Aged Imperial Pastry Stout with Marshmallow, Chocolate & Vanilla.
Many Minds w/ Structures Brewing
Smoothie Style Tart Ale: Blue Raspberry Lemonade.
Many Minds w/ Cloudburst Brewing
American Style Pale Ale with Mosaic Incognito and Dry-Hopped with even more Mosaic.
Many Minds w/ Burgeon Beer
American Style India Pale Ale with mega Strata, Simcoe and NZ Cascade.
Many Minds w/ Pure Project Brewing
American Style India Pale Ale with Mosaic Cryo, Motueka Hop Kief and Strata.
