Back Pedal Brewing Suspends Operations
Back Pedal Brewing, the small Portland taproom and nano brewery that is an offshoot of BrewCycle Pedal Tours will suspend operations until atleast early 2021 after a final sale on Saturday September 26th.
Based in downtown Portland’s pearl district, Back Pedal Brewing has long been known as a hidden beer gem next to 10 Barrel Brewing PDX. Back Pedal is headed up by partner and brewer Greg Passmore, who has won silver medals at the Oregon Beer Awards and Best of Craft Beer Awards.
“We were on the cusp of expansion and the pandemic pinned it - big time. We've been at this a long time and this has been absolutely devastating,” says Passmore.
Back Pedal Brewing launched in 2015, less than a year ahead of their neighbors at 10 Barrel Brewing PDX. The BrewCycle tours were already in operation, beginning and ending their cycle pub crawls at their on-site taproom called Brew Stop before they decided to begin making their own beer.
Back Pedal Brewing and BrewCycle closed their public areas right before the governor mandated shutdown in early March. Since then Passmore has released six of his beers in cans available only by online orders for pickup. Back Pedal is small, only a 3.5 bbl brewery that sold nearly all of it’s beer on-site, much of it before and after BrewCycle tours that haven’t happened since March. They had planned to expand production and reach before the pandemic struck them down.
BrewCycle and Back Pedal Brewing have not completely thrown in the towel on the business though. But the Flanders Street Bridge construction that will shutdown traffic in the area scheduled to go through March and the pandemic still raging, they may not open again until Spring or summer. In the meantime the Back Pedal/BrewCycle space could be a temporary home for other creative outlets that the team is looking into.
Last call for Back Pedal Brewing is Saturday September 26th when they will be offering blowout prices on merch and cans of their beers ordered online at http://backpedalbrewing.com/. After the 26th you may still be able to find Back Pedal cans at Function PDX and their Road Beers bottle/can delivery service.