Forest Grove’s new Pelagic Brewing partners with Bull Run Cider on new Public House
Bull Run Cider has partnered with new startup Pelagic Brewing on a beer and cider hall and upcoming food cart pod
Pelagic Brewing is a new brewery about a 40 minute drive west of Portland in Forest Grove that has moved into a former post office building which was recently home to Ridgewalker Brewing. Pelagic (pronounced pe·lag·ic ) means : of, relating to, or living or occurring in the open sea. Brewery owners Josh Weber and Christina Chamberlain started Pelagic from their home as a nano with on-site brewing specializing in saisons and pale ales. When Ridgewalker Brewing closed in November 2024, Pelagic made the leap into the turnkey space but needed help filling the 30 tap lines while the veteran 2010 founded Bull Run Cider only operated a very limited seasonal taproom and saw the partnership as a great opportunity.
“Pelagic was first dreamed up while my brother, Ben, and I were offshore, sailing my boat back down the coast from British Columbia in the fall of 202,” says Pelagic co-owner Josh Weber. “Ben and I had homebrewed as a hobby since around 2004, and over time had ramped up to using small-scale professional equipment in my garage. We made a lot more beer than we could drink, but had a lot of happy friends.”
Josh is a former lawyer who has kept his current day job working for a sustainability-focused software company while also helping manage Pelagic. Along with his brother Ben, his wife Christine is the official “beer boss” of the brewery, and their graphic designer Colleen is also a part of the team working remotely from Alaska. All of the Pelagic team share a passion for the sea, salmon, and sustainability that is expressed in the brand and beers.
There is a certain division between the beer styles that Pelagic specializes in. At the forefront of their initial established identity are highly attenuated food friendly Saisons. Their brewing goals are to keep these French and Belgian-inspired ales dry and approachable and generally under 6% abv. However, head brewer Ben Weber is keen to focus on hop-driven ales and lagers which he is strong in. Even then, the IPAs and Pales are first and foremost drinkability emphasized in the low end of IBUS and alcohol in the 5.5-6.5% abv range. The Launch Day Lager, a 4.2% abv double-dry-hopped beer, has emerged as a best seller and flagship for the brewery. The taplist is buoyed by a consistent malt-focused beer, currently a dark rye beer, along golden farmhouse ales and variations of IPA. In total they have a core lineup with 3 saisons, a pale, 4 IPAs, and a West Coast lager, and hopefully supplemented by rotating seasonals or one-offs.
“I love experimentation, and I travel for work (I'm the partner who had to keep the day job), so I taste beers all over the country, and bring back ideas, recipes, and formulas that Ben and I pilot in small batches on the weekends, and some, like the Launch Day end up on the regular taps,” says Josh Weber
Pelagic runs on a small nano-sized brewhouse and pieces cobbled together from other closed operations, they often have to turn twice a day to fill a fermenter. Unfortunately the Ridgewalker Brewing space is no better for brewing, so they must keep brewing in their original location while looking to upgrade their brewhouse and continue production off-site from the new taproom which is luckily only about 6 blocks away.
The new restaurant and taproom that Pelagic has taken over came turnkey, with 30 draft faucets to fill, which is a big lift for even much larger breweries. Instead Pelagic is focusing on a filling 8 to 10 of those draft lines with their housemade beers, and has partnered with fellow Forest Grove fermenationists Bull Run Cider to help fill out the selection as well as create a complete experience for crossover drinkers and fans of both brands.
Kolin Leishman, Bull Run Cider’s director of sales and operations, says “We are working in tandem to promote fermentation in Forest Grove. To go along with Pelagic's beer taps and guest beer taps, we have 6 cider taps that I'm curating featuring both Bull Run Cider and Seven Seeds Seidr offerings. We also have some cider bottles and cans to go including taproom exclusives like our White Barn Estate Cuvee.”
Food pairing and a family friendly atmosphere is a big deal for Pelagic, they aim to please a wide crowd with a growing list of small and hard to find winemakers and a simple but thoughtful in-house food menu that features Italian-style panini sandwiches, steak, frites, and salads. While the interior of the building seats 96, there is a sizeable outdoor beer garden that is slowly becoming a food cart pod that will take pressure off of delivering a full in-house kitchen.
“Our goal is to keep our kitchen operating like a fantastic indoor food cart, while bringing lots of great options into downtown Forest Grove. All of this is a work in progress, of course, but coming along well,” says Weber.
Pelagic is in their nascent stages, testing the waters on new beers and seeing how much they can keep up with production on their own beers while preparing to install a larger brewhouse. The food truck pod is also just getting rolling, with the first permanent food truck being Franko’s Hot Dogs, and they have had regular appearances from mobile Mexican truck Comida Kin, as well as burger, donut, and wood-fired pizza pop-ups. Bull Run Cider is also already very active in the new space hosting cider tasting events, with future plans for educational talks and more ways to directly connect with Forest Grove and have the first year-round space where they can always find their cider from the tap.
Pelagic Brewing Public House x Bull Run Cider is now open 6 days a week (closed Tuesdays) at 1921 21st Avenue, Forest Grove, OR 97116