100-year-old Oregon pub & cidery expands to farm and brewery
West Linn, a southern suburb of the Portland metropolitan area separated from Oregon City by the Willamette River, has it’s first brewery and cidery combo. The New School first visited the Willamette Valley Ale & Ciderhouse back in 2018 when they were a family-friendly pub and aspiring craft cidery, in the 7+ years they’ve graduated from a 100-year-old building to adding a 65-acre farm, orchard, events venue, and now a beer brewery, and that’s just the start.
Since the New School first reported on them, Willamette Ale & Cidery dropped “Willamette” from their name after Willamette Valley Winery threatened them with a cease & desist over “willamette” (fun fact: Oakshire Brewing was originally called Willamette Brewing). The historic old brick pub at 1720 Willamette Falls Drive has expanded from a restaurant and guest taproom into a two-bar setup with dozens of taps split between their house cider and beer, a full-premises license (draft cocktails are coming), a second location at Queen Orchard Farm that features 65 acres with an event venue, food carts, and an estate orchard planted with roughly 7,000 cider-specific apple trees.
One big change, however, is that instead of hosting other breweries’ beers on tap, they’ve entered the brewing game themselves with in-house beer production. Slightly confusingly, the Ale & Cider House parent company is called 7 Bev and their beers are produced under the 7 Bev label, but their cider brand is called Queen Orchard Hard Cider and their farm Queen Orchard Farm.
“7Bev means beverages for all 7 continents of the world. 7Bev Corp is the parent/umbrella company—we set it up initially with ideas around international export/import, but we've paused that for now as a future thing,” says Toney Chay, the manager of Ale & Ciderhouse, brewer of 7 Bev and of Queen Orchard Cider who explains that the separate naming conventions “keeps the family of brands organized while giving each its own focus.”
Surviving COVID-19 by adapting the business to include food trucks and expansive covered and open air outdoor areas has resulted in one of the best beer/cider gardens in Oregon and a prime gathering spot for groups and special events. The Ale & Cider House pub is impressive enough for it’s well kept interior, beautiful furniture, design touches and architecture separated into 5 separate but connected rooms.
The front lounge is a quaint dining and sipping area with warm natural light from windows facing downtown West Linn. It’s a great area to enjoy a drink from one of two bars inside and bites from up to 6 food trucks outside.
The front room opens into the Queen’s Lounge and Crown Cafe. This dining area serves a counter service bar that offers Italian hard soda, Spanish Coffee, worldly High Ball Cocktail flights, and a wine selection that brings together the best Oregon vineyards and international labels with their own.
On the south side of the building is the main tap bar, featuring 32 rotating handles with some permanent placements for their own brands. This is a cozy warm interior with bar seats and small tables and a pub like atmosphere. The bar also opens into the small bottleshop which is a separate room to the back that serves as a to-go area for their own ciders, craft beer and a curated selection of international wines.
The ‘Cider Hall’ directly behind the indoor pub is an insulated, glassy and natural light filled garden room with a stage for live music and a bar with 12 draft lines and packaged product. To the north of the hall is the ‘Beer Garden’ a semi-permanent tent enclosure with side walls that open or close and a clear ceiling to let the light in. Behind the enclosed areas is the outdoor garden, a fenced in spacious patio lined with greenery and trees, well spaced picnic tables, a gas fire pit, and 6 different food trucks.
“We’re definitely like the watering hole of West Linn. It’s a pretty small town, everybody kind of knows each other. We do everything, from school fundraisers and sports events to birthdays and celebrations of life. Pretty much everything as far as events go,” says Chay.
That stabilization of the on-premise taproom experience has allowed Chay to refocus a bit on initial goals like their own handcrafted premium cider and beer.
With dozens of taps to fill and a mug club membership to keep happy, the Ale & Cider House and beer garden still have guest taps but hope to have all of their own beers adventually. Chay and his production assistants Preston Wyant and Izzy Zamora make all the cider and currently Brew the beer on a 1-barrel system with a much bigger 15-barrel production brew house in the wings.
“The 15 BBL system at the farm will be a major step up in capacity, allowing us to brew larger batches while maintaining the creativity and quality we’ve built our name on,” says Chay, who hopes to have it up and running at their new farm site by this summer. “So far we’ve produced a double IPA, a German Pilsner, and a Pineapple IPA. The German Pilsner sold out in a few weeks, and the Pineapple IPA was really popular.”
Before the pandemic the family operation was looking to expand, then during the downtime a farm property popped up. The farm sits out on Mountain Road near the Canby Ferry (yes there is a year-round ferry in the greater Portland suburbs).
“Not many cider companies actually grow their own apples,” says Chay. His father, JC, suggested they invest in their vision and went all in. “I went to different orchards around Oregon, got all the scion wood, and grafted everything myself. You can’t plant apples from seed, you have to clone them. We planted about 7,000 trees across 30 acres right before COVID. They were just tiny sticks back then.”
Those apple trees are semi-dwarf rootstock, freestanding trees, not trellised, and they don’t use any pesticides which makes them grow slower but arguably healthier and stronger. The apple trees are about five to six years old now, and just about at the point that they will reach their full potential in Queen Orchard made estate ciders. The first batches will be special annual releases to start, they plan to still source fruit for the year-round production of seasonal ciders and fruit wine. As the orchard ages and grows, they hope to make nearly all of their product from their own apples.
The new property comprises 65 acres, including a 20k sq. ft. former horse arena converted for gatherings. The property’s inaugural event was Chay’s own wedding. The farm is seasonally open from summer through October with regular hours and rotating food trucks.
“My biggest thing is I’ve always wanted to make a really high-quality cider,” says Chay. “I feel like a lot of people are just trying to make the cheapest thing they can that’s drinkable and sell as much as possible. For us, we want to use the highest-quality ingredients, and we don’t want to go through distributors. We just sell it ourselves.”
Chay has big ambitions in making Queen Orchard and 7 Bev a one-stop craft beverage maker with distilling in their future, with plans for ready-to-drink cocktails and standalone spirits, and roast their own coffee in addition to the cidery and brewery. They even want to grow their own hops on the farm, maybe even growing specialty corn for whiskey
“But it’s all step by step. You don’t really see results until years later, and that’s just part of it,” adds Chay.
Ale & Cider House
1720 Willamette Falls Drive,
West Linn, OR 97068
