St. Helens attraction Crooked Creek Brewery follows the path to expansion
Left to right: Nate Rajski, Jill Ramseier, Dave Lauridsen
It’s a late summer Thursday evening on the banks of the Columbia River. The sky is a deep blend of pink and blue turning to purple with the majestic Mt. Hood and St. Helens looming in the distance. A bustling crowd of cheerful locals and tourists sip on beers, eat dinner, and bask in what is likely one of the last stretches of pleasant weather before the rainy gloom of the Pacific Northwest fall and winter truly sets in. If you happen to be present for all of this, you might think you have stepped into a portal back to a time when brewpubs were always busy and the beer industry was blissfully unaware of the challenges that lay ahead in the form of neo-prohibitionism, the industry-disrupting pandemic, and inflation making it damn near impossible to turn a profit. Yet, here in the quaint Oregon town of St. Helens that is best-known as the filming location for movies like Halloweentown and Twilight, Crooked Creek Brewery is the kind of success story most of us are dying to hear about nowadays.
“We’re starting to get recognized and get the word out there,” says founder and owner Dave Lauridsen. “Having a fantastic location helps a lot. Being one of the handful of restaurants in town has helped a lot. Having the opportunity to purchase the building has helped a lot too because that overhead is what’s hurting a lot of breweries. Our rent doubling [like some breweries] would be a deal killer for us.”
When I first reported on Crooked Creek shortly after they made the move from nano brewery to brewpub in 2023, Lauridsen struck me as ambitious and committed yet perhaps due for an uphill battle as the only brewery and alcohol producer in the entirety of Columbia County, a place where Coors Light still reigns supreme. Back then, I noted that Lauridsen “sees potential for growth in the long term when the town develops the waterfront that sits in the now vacant lot just across from the taproom’s front door.”
It took about two years, including a stretch where the brewery didn’t even have a functional sidewalk in front of it, but the development happened and Lauridsen’s prediction has turned out to be true. Besides the facelift that has brought more people to the St. Helens waterfront, Crooked Creek put in the effort to transform the space and bring in the best team possible. They have also continued to refine their beer - a surprisingly wide spectrum of lagers, modern and classic IPAs, stouts and porters, and his beloved Belgian styles - while putting more work into the restaurant space. They built out the tiny kitchen space, added a stage, more patio seating, got a liquor license to be able to make cocktails using a lineup of almost all Oregon spirits, and started packaging their beer. David even renovated the space above the pub into a gorgeous midcentury-style Airbnb called the Taproom Terrace that has an impressive view of the Columbia River and nearby mountains.
By focusing on creating the best experience possible for guests - whether it was the local community or people passing through - David has been able to make people feel welcome and leave Crooked Creek already looking forward to their next visit. It helps that they maintain a packed calendar with events ranging from cribbage, bingo, and trivia, to live music, vinyl nights, and hosting their own weekly running club.
“Originally the idea was to get people in because we didn’t have a kitchen. The beer goes so far but it doesn’t pack the place out necessarily. We’re a third space for our community and we love being that, so we probably won’t take away any events but we’re cautious about piling on more.”
Lauridsen may have had big dreams, but he was also experienced enough to know he couldn’t make Crooked Creek successful without some serious help. Shortly after opening the pub and building out the kitchen space, he brought in a major heavy hitter in the beer industry's culinary sector. Enter Jill Ramseier, former corporate executive chef for all of the Deschutes Brewing pubs, who happened to live in the area and was looking for a career change.
Crooked Creek chef Jill Ramseier
“I live in the area and Dave and I were talking about opening a brewpub several years ago. We were talking with a bank and had a whole business plan. We were trying to lease a building when the pandemic happened, so we hit the brakes. I stayed at Deschutes and he ended up brewing out of his shop. I kept in touch and when he bought this building, I came by and was like ‘wait, you have a full kitchen in there?’”
At the time, Lauridsen had just planned to outsource the menu to a food truck but meeting with Ramseier changed his mind. He tried this, but he soon noticed that customers wanted to sit down and have a nice meal, so he recruited Ramseier to join the team.
“Jill was such a blessing to come on board. She came in and said, I want to run the kitchen, and I said it’s yours. As long as we can keep our costs in check, then sky’s the limit, and shes done it,” says Lauridsen, noting that they even change the menu roughly every 1-2 months.
At Crooked Creek, she balances the precision, logistical skills, and consistency she learned running massive kitchens at Deschutes with the nimble creativity to take chances and try new items. Jill’s ever-rotating menus with an emphasis on the concept of “locally sourced comfort food” proved to be a major hit. Items like their house-made sourdough pretzel (served with fondue containing a dollop of delicious bacon jam plopped right in the middle as an added bonus), Bang Bang Chicken - sweet and spicy fried chicken served over savory grits with seasonal squash, and a range of burgers fly out of the kitchen. Ramseier works hard to source local, seasonal ingredients from nearby farms, and rarely goes more than a month without changing the menu. November will bring housemade perogies with shortrib and colder months will see a handmade udon noodle dish hitting the menu.
“Obviously 16 years at Deschutes was an amazing foundation for brewery food and I had a lot of leeway there as well. I came in here and I really wanted to do things that I had done for years that I knew worked in breweries but I wanted to do them differently than I had ever done them. Like Deshcutes brewery pretzel is pretty iconic so you can’t change that ten years in the making. I knew coming here that I could do that. Deschutes’ pretzel had IPA in it and was butter-heavy, but I knew here I wanted ours to be vegan and sourdough. I come from a pretty heavy pastry and baking background, so I took [that experience]. That was funnest thing about starting this; I spent the entire first year in R&D mode just making things that I knew that I loved differently and figuring out what worked,” says Ramseier.
Lauridsen is happy to play guinea pig in trying out her specials, and even allowed her to launch a brewers dinner series that takes place during the quieter winter months. For each installment - all of which have sold out so far - Ramseier collaborates with chef friends both locally and from Portland to create a six-course menu paired with Crooked Creek beers. For the inaugural run of dinners, Ramseier and her guest chef each crafted three of the courses. As of now, the next round of dinners will take place December, January, and March, and will include Pretty Nice Deli, a sandwich shop run by former Kachka employee Brian Michael and beloved local pizza place Hallows Pizza.
“It’s nice and intimate and fun,” says Ramseier, who is excited to host more dinner in the future.
Crooked Creek head brewer Nate Rajski
With the food in place and the restaurant space dialed in, Lauridsen turned his sights on stepping up his brewing game by hiring Nate Rajski in May of this year. Rajski had been a main brewer at Portland’s Stormbreaker for seven years and wanted to change his career while cutting his commute. Rajski’s experience has helped Crooked Creek improve the efficiency of its operation, and for now he will continue to focus on that will gradually adding his own creativity into the actual beer recipes.
“Beyond being close to home, having a new goal and project and direction has been nice,” says Rajski.
They recently acquired much of the brewing equipment from the shuttered Foreland Brewing space in McMinnville, and getting it online will mean massive improvements in their ability to operate and produce more beer for their pub and for distribution at their facility in Warren a few miles away.
“We have been lucky to score a bunch of equipment at [low] prices lately, so we decided to buy it and then figure out what to do with it. It will definitely increase our capacity, but the primary thing is it will reduce the number of times we have to brew,” says Lauridsen, who notes that they also scored a 16x24 walk-in cooler from a grocery store that closed for almost nothing. “Right now we’re brewing on kind of a Frankenstein 4-barrel system. The new system will allow us to do 10-barrel batches on a 7-barrel system. Then you can just keep adding tanks when the need is there. We need to add on 12-16 feet to the brewery space, which will allow us to stay there for at least another five years.”
Rajski adds his own take on the equipment, saying “there are fewer turns, less labor, so it’s more efficient. It’s slightly more automated to get more done while you’re brewing. So we’re ready to make a lot of beer once we set up the brewhouse and get the cooler set up.”
All of this has translated to something of a rare success model that feels like an outlier and perhaps a beacon of hope in today’s floundering beer scene. In my previous article on Crooked Creek, offered his thoughts on the future, saying, “if I’m not run out of town and people keep drinking beer, I think in a few years it will make sense to invest in a larger brewery and I’d like to keep building the business here in St. Helens and Columbia County. I’d like to get a taproom in Clatskanie and maybe Vernonia.”
The brewery upgrade and expansion is in the works, and once that happens, Lauridsen is confident that his team will be able to look toward finding a second location for Crooked Creek. For now, he is patient and wants to make sure wherever they land feels like a perfect fit in order to continue the same success that has carried them this far and has made them one of the more feel-good stories to come out of the Pacific Northwest beer scene in the last couple of years.
“We’re dreaming about expansion and trying to figure out what that looks like, but the first thing is we need to produce more beer since we are definitely stretched. We’re brewing a lot to satisfy the restaurant. Having a second location would probably stretch us beyond our ability at the moment. We’ve been keeping our eyes open for the right opportunity but it’s an expensive time to open restaurants so we’re being very cautious. There are places available but we’re not convinced the right one is available yet. We’re really focused on cautious growth.”
Crooked Creek Brewery
343 S 1st St, St Helens OR 97051
Hours
Sun / Mon / Tues / Wed: 11a - 9p
Thurs / Fri / Sat: 11a - 10p
https://www.crookedcreekbrewery.com/
