A day after news broke that lager-maker Chuckanut Brewery of Bellingham plans a Portland beer hall, the co-founder of the heralded brewery said ownership is excited to come to Portland despite being unsure how long it will take to open the place.
Mari Kemper, who with husband Will Kemper opened Chuckanut in 2008, said the partners for the first time will have to navigate Oregon’s regulatory process before she has a better sense of a timeline for opening in the Rose City.
“I have no idea what the (Oregon Liquor Control Commission) board is going to say,” Kemper said in a phone interview Wednesday. “Maybe they’ll have lots of questions.
“We can’t wait to get there,” she said, “but we still have so much to go before we’re ready.”
Chuckanut recently filed a liquor license application in Oregon to open a Southeast Portland location. While Kemper said few details have been planned, a site has been secured in the Hosford-Abernethy neighborhood, at 920 S.E. Caruthers St., within blocks of Baerlic Brewing, The BeerMongers bottle shop and taproom, and Apex beer bar.
Kemper said she and her husband have for decades wanted to have a place in Portland, but other efforts fell through. When Robby Roda, the owner of Day One Distribution, Chuckanut’s distributor in Portland, suggested opening a taproom here, things started to fall into place.
“Robby is fantastic, and he is such a fan of ours,” Kemper said. “He had an available (space), and he says, ‘Well what if you turned that into a beer hall? Then you can have all of your beers there instead of just one or two Chuckanut beers at any spot.’
“He said, ‘We’ll give you a decent rate and you have lots of fans,’ so we jumped at it,” she said. “We just love Portland.”
Kemper was initially worried about the location, however.
“We didn’t want to interrupt sales with BeerMongers and Apex, some of our favorite accounts, and they said, ‘Oh no, if anything you’ll have all the brewers stopping in.’ So, the brewers being behind us convinced us, so we thought let’s give it a try.”
The Kempers craft journey began in 1984, when they opened Thomas Kemper Brewery in the Seattle area. After an ownership change, the Kempers left the brewery and were involved in projects from the East Coast to Mexico to Istanbul. They were also part of the Beers Across America group during the 1990s, bringing them to Portland to work for the first time, Mari Kemper said.
Will Kemper was teaching at the American Brewers Guild in California before the couple decided to open Chuckanut in Bellingham. With Will as brewmaster, the brewery quickly became one of the nation’s most respected German- and European-style breweries.
In 2009, its first year at the prestigious Great American Beer Festival, Chuckanut won four medals and Small Brewpub/Brewer of the Year, then recaptured that honor again in 2011.
“What I feel is important about Chuckanut,” said Mari Kemper, “is we have a history and very technical knowledge. I feel like those are a big part of who we are. We’ve learned a lot over the years after starting in the early ’80s.
“My husband, the brewmaster, is a chemical engineer, so his understanding of the science is supreme,” she said. “And he has a long experience in the industry, and he’s become one of the premier brewers in the craft industry.”
Kemper’s skills have been passed on to a number of its head brewers who have gone on to acclaim elsewhere, including Josh Pfriem at Hood River’s pFriem Family Brewers, and Kevin Davey, the brewmaster at Southeast Portland’s Wayfinder Beer.
“There were only 29 craft brewers in America when we started out, and, I think, well, we’re pioneers,” Mari said, when asked about Chuckanut’s legacy.
Chuckanut Brewery's South Nut taproom in Burlingham, Washington, the brewery's second location. It plans a third location in Portland.Courtesy of Day One Distribution
Portland would be the brewery’s third location, after its initial Bellingham brewpub, called North Nut, and a taproom in Burlington, Washington, called South Nut. Chuckanut would ship kegs from Bellingham, which requires an Oregon brewery license – which in turn opens the opportunity to brew in Portland.
“That’s out there,” Kemper said, “so we’re not ruling it out, but we’re also not thinking about it now.”
Chuckanut specializes in mostly European style beer recipes and ingredients and “in some situations” uses Northwest hops. The brewery has made ales, but “we haven’t made an IPA in probably three years,” Mari said.
“We specialize in lagers because those are the beers we like to drink,” she said, but making lagers in the IPA-crazed Northwest hasn’t always been easy.
“In 2008, we started Chuckanut in Bellingham, then we had the financial crisis,” she said. “It was really very challenging, and we hung in there by the skin of our teeth, and we didn’t give up. We tried very hard making these kinds of beers, and finally now lagers are having their day.”
And now that lager resurgence has created the Portland opportunity for Chuckanut, named for the mountain and area where the brewery was started. But Kemper isn’t getting ahead of herself.
“Everything, knock on wood, is falling into place,” she said. “But I’ve never worked with the liquor board in Oregon so I don’t want to say or do too much yet. … If they say it could be at least four months, I should just take it easy before starting all the buzz about this.”
Too late for that. For Chuckanut fans in Portland, the buzz has begun.
-- Andre Meunier; ameunier@oregonian.com
Follow Andre’s beer reviews on Untappd, where he’s andremeunier13, and follow him on Instagram, where he’s @oregonianbeerguy.
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