Paul Arney Oral History Interview, June 26, 2018

TIAH EDMUNSON-MORTON: Okay, let me get this... there it goes. Alright, your name, the date, etc.

PAUL ARNEY: Okay. My name is Paul Arney. The date is June 26 and we are currently sitting in the Ale Apothecary tasting room.

TEM: In Bend, Oregon.

PA: In Bend, Oregon. I almost got it right.

TEM: [Laughs] I don't think I put the full location, zip code is... And my name is Tiah Edmunson-Morton.

ANNA DVORAK: And I'm Anna Dvorak.

TEM: It's like Anna wanted to turn to the camera.

PA: It's running. That's the red light.

TEM: So, where were you born?

PA: I was born in Seattle, Washington.

TEM: Okay. Did you grow up there as well?

PA: No. I grew up in Everett. My parents were living in Mountlake Terrace, and that was the nearest hospital at the time. So, drove us down to Seattle. But, yeah, grew up in Everett, Washington. A mill town.

TEM: What did your parents do there?

PA: Well, the Ale Apothecary, the reason...

TEM: Oh, right!

PA: Yeah. No, hey, this is what we're doing.

TEM: Yes! That's right. Yes.

PA: My dad, like my grandpa and great grandpa were all pharmacists that had their own little shop and so I stole some of that family heritage to kind to create our identity. Apothecary, the root word actually means shopkeeper and it got associated with druggist, but the actual, the origin of the word is for shopkeeper. It was very important to me at the time, because I really wanted to keep the brewery small and breweries grow and become factories pretty, I mean, easily a lot of hard work. It's also hard to not grow too much. So, that was one of my anchoring words.

TEM: Yeah. Did they always, were your ancestors...

PA: Yeah, my, totally. Isn't that funny? I used to find myself saying that sometimes, too.

TEM: Your lineage-were they always druggists or did they kind of have more catch-all general stores as well?

PA: I mean, you know, so there was my dad, but then he married my mom and it was her dad and grandfather, so basically my mom must have just really liked growing up, the daughter and granddaughter of pharmacists.

TEM: Oh, okay.

PA: What I remember, Dad had his shop and then I remember Grandpa's shop when I was a kid and I've seen pictures of Great Grandpa's shop. They were all mainly drug stores. I think Grandpa's in the like '60s through the '70s had a lot more of comic books and squirt guns and toasters and stuff like that, but it still was mainly a drug store.

TEM: But kind of, yeah, all the other stuff that is not drugs in a drug store.

PA: Yeah, it's really funny. You know, because my great grandfather, we got pictures of him and there's this huge wall behind him with all these glass jars with actual real things they grew in the ground somewhere. He would mix them together, and then during Grandpa's era that's when synthetic drugs started coming in and the profession changed a little bit. Yeah, Great Grandpa had like a, he had like a soda fountain, so they had the little chairs and they could do ice cream and stuff like that, too.

TEM: Yeah.

PA: Now, I guess nowadays you go to Walgreens and they kind of carry that stuff on, right? It's like you can buy a bunch of junk.

TEM: Yeah, that's what I was thinking, I remember buying like garden things at a pharmacy.

PA: Yeah. It's really funny. It's funny.

TEM: So, were they all in northern Washington?

PA: Yeah, so my dad obviously was Mountlake Terrace in Everett, and then my 00:04:00mom's side of the family's all from this tiny town called Coulee City, a real windswept, very pioneer-y, it's like the railroad came through, the big silos, lots of farmers, you know. Very depressed nowadays, but I mean they had their boom way, way, way, way, way back. They have a rodeo. I love visiting. I really do, because it's like time travel. You can still see Nihart Drugstore on the side of the building. It's fading and stuff, and it's like oh, that's where Grandpa's drugstore was.

TEM: That's where it was.

PA: Yeah.

TEM: What do you remember about growing up in Everett?

PA: Well, it was rainy a lot. Big trees, but I was really fortunate. We lived on this very long cul-de-sac road. It was actually a smaller cul-de-sac road one time. Then they bumped it to even be a longer one, so we had this really cool 00:05:00section in the middle. So, when we were riding our BMX bikes we could just have a jump just kind of set up on the road all the time in front of Matt Muller's house. But then we had these woods down there beyond there, frogs, and it was great. A lot of the way we want our kids, we're trying to raise our kids, trying to have some sense of freedom. It's harder these days. People don't trust as much. We were just in Italy and we went through, we were staying in this town near the square and we were coming back-there was a beer festival, and we were coming back from the beer festival and it was 11:30 at night, and it was... there were kids and there were people and it was like the daytime but it was night, you know? Hanging out. Eating ice cream. Playing games. It's like, back at home if I go by a park at 11:30 at night it's dead. There's nobody in it. I don't know why, but I do like that. I could be like, Mom I'm going down to 00:06:00so-and-so's house. Then you could hear, dinner! [makes calling motion]. That kind of stuff. I like that.

TEM: Did you spend a lot of time outside despite the rain?

PA: Yeah. I mean, I played soccer a lot, but I think, yeah, a lot of it was Mom just-we lived in a small house and, you know, Mom wanted us out.

TEM: How many siblings do you have?

PA: I have two younger brothers. I'm the oldest, the most responsible. They're not going to watch this [laughs].

TEM: [Laughs] Now they are. So, what did you like to do as a family? What are some of the things that you remember doing that were kind of family traditions or things that you did for fun or trips you took?

PA: Well, my dad worked a lot. That was one thing that was kinda crazy looking 00:07:00back on it. He started his first little pharmacy... well, to answer your question we would go cross country skiing on Sundays. Church, too. We did a lot of church back then. I went to Catholic grade school first through eighth grade, uniforms and all that. So, on Sundays we would go to church. Family get-togethers-my dad's side of the family is pretty big, and they had a place on Mason Lake, so we'd do that. That was always fun. Easter, you know, those kind of get-togethers were always fun. Mom would take us on like hikes and stuff. Those kind of field-trip type stuff, but Dad was, he was, I think 9:00 to... he would open the pharmacy at 9:00, close it at 8:00 Monday through Friday and then Saturday it was 9:00 to 2:00. I mean, yeah. He ended up, later, by the time I 00:08:00got out of high school he had finally grown the business enough where he could have employees and it wasn't so crazy, but when I was a kid, man, that's crazy.

TEM: Did your mom help out at the business? Did it feel like a family business, or was it?

PA: Well, it was. She raised, she took care of the kids, you know? Bring him lunch or we'd go visit him and, well, I guess, well, yeah, I guess that was, the later years once my brothers and I got old enough to where later in grade school and high school she ended up doing the gift portion of the pharmacy. He started out in like at Safeway. He had a little box that was seriously just only drugs, you know? Only prescriptions. But then when he moved to another location, there was a woman that was one of his investors that was managing this little gift shop and it didn't go very well, and so my mom kind of came in there and took 00:09:00care of that. She loved it. She was really big on antiques, so that became a big growth outlet for her.

TEM: Did she continue to work there? How long did he run the business?

PA: Up until the end. Gosh, that would have been... I'm so bad with dates. Let's see, if he's 75, it would have been like he was 64, maybe? Something like that.

TEM: So, not long ago.

PA: Not long ago, but he did, nobody at that time... I only know a little bit of this. So, if there's any pharmacist watching who would know this better than me, it's like I'm sorry. But there was this period of time for the independent pharmacy where it was almost impossible for them to actually make it work due to the price structuring. They would buy certain things, but then the insurance 00:10:00company would only pay so much, and they were only allowed to charge so much. It just, I think the regulation thing, all these things that they were trying to do for the consumer, but what happened is the independent drug story, really, it was hard. At that point, he's like, well, nobody's even going to buy this place. So, he sold his, the catalogue of his clientele to Safeway, back to Safeway. Part of the agreement was he would go to work at Safeway for a while. It was terrible. He was so bummed. He was like, this is just, you know, corporate, awful. He ended up sticking it out for however long, because that's what he does. But he was not very happy with how that all worked out. But they did fine. Monetarily they saved and started out retirement great. Yeah, but, selling to Safeway was something I remember for sure.

TEM: Well, and I imagine, too, the whole Seattle area has changed a lot. From 00:11:00what I know about Everett the population growth wise, I imagine that even the point that he left Safeway, owned his own business, went back to Safeway, it seems like the town had probably changed a lot.

PA: Right. Yeah. But really I think the biggest deal was him being self-employed for so long and walking in being the boss and like this is what I'm going to do, this is important, that's how I'm going to spend my time, and not having to deal with all the bullshit or whatever. Then going to Safeway as a new employee... you know that kind of thing? Then paperwork and then how you need to do things and, that, he was like... it's so funny, because even now, because he does like to talk politics and try to figure out what's wrong with the world with the idea that we could fix it. He'll link a lot of these conversations directly to his experience at Safeway, because that's his connect, the only connection he's got 00:12:00to working in a corporate environment. They can not be very pleasant. It can be kind of ridiculous.

TEM: Well, I imagine that being within the pharmacy within Safeway the level of regulation. It's not just being a normal employee at Safeway.

PA: Yeah, yeah. I guess that's probably true, right. I do remember where the special cabinet was. At least when he was there before they had, yeah, because the, what do they call those? There's over-the-counter, then there's the stuff that's behind the counter, but then there's like this super controlled stuff. They always had a safe that was secret, little compartment for it.

TEM: What were you interested in when you were in school? What are some of the subjects? Were you interested in science and brewing when you were in eighth grade?

PA: I don't know. I was... let's see, I was good at science. I think mildly interested. I think I had a teacher, a freshman high school teacher, physics teacher who was great. That was more about where I kind of found my interests, was through people that maybe took the time or they helped create the interest. My son is very similar. I see that. Certain things come kind of easy. He doesn't have to work really hard at school and so we're trying to help push him into something. We don't care what it is. Just do something, you know? On your own. Choose something. I probably shouldn't bug him so much, because I didn't. I made my way through grade school. I did fine. I got into high school. I did fine and the thing was when I got done with high school, I knew I was going to college. It just was, that was part of the plan. I was going to go to WSU, that's where 00:14:00my parents had met. That's where my mom's side of the family had all been to school. It was kind of like one of those things. I'm going to college. I'm going to WSU. Well, I took a trip up to Bellingham with a buddy of mine. He was checking that out. I was like, this place is amazing! It's beautiful and wow, gosh! I decided to go to Western, which was great, I think, because I helped open my experiences to other things, but you know, I was drawn to geology because I liked being outside. I wasn't drawn to geology because of a potential job or the kind of work I wanted to do. I think there's a lot of value in maybe taking a year off between high school and college, especially if you're somebody that doesn't know what you want to do. That was what I was doing. My parents had saved up money and I had to work and you're going to college. So, I went to college. I got his geology degree, which I never used. Then I got a job at a coffee shop when I got out of college, and it was fine. It was fine.

TEM: What year, so backing up, what year did you graduate from high school?

PA: 1990.

TEM: So, did you know at that point, like did you enter school, enter college knowing that you wanted to go into geology? Did you declare right away?

PA: No. Nope, I went to college c, right, yeah, went college, picked my electives and all that kind of stuff. Then when it got to the point where it was junior year, or whatever, two years in. I had to make a choice. It was like geology sounds really cool, you know, rocks. I think my wife was in geology. At that time, I don't think we were dating yet, but I liked her and she was in geology, but she quit. But, I don't know. That might have had something to do with it.

TEM: It was like positive association.

PA: Yeah. I don't know.

TEM: Outside was something that you liked.

PA: It wasn't very... I didn't do any research. I mean, it all ended up working 00:16:00out great. I'm not complaining. It's just on our minds a lot because we've got these little kids, and trying to, you know, we did a trip to Italy. We're just trying to show them that there's, gosh, you know look at the job that guys doing. Does that look fun? I mean, and the things you're interested in trying to talk more about it, because right now my boy's super interested in cars. It's so funny. He could see a car a mile away and he'll tell you what it is. But he's not like, I don't think he's really interested in fixing the car. We're like, how do we use this? He is obviously just jazzed on these things, because every single one, boom, boom, boom. Old, new, it doesn't matter. He's always talking about them and it's like I'm not a car guy. You know?

TEM: It's that memory, though, you imagine that like there's a lot of connections that have to go with visual recognition.

PA: Yeah, but it's not happening with anything else, you know? It's just so 00:17:00funny. It's just, so, for myself, yeah, I had a great time. A lot of partying. Played some lacrosse in college, but then, yeah, I ended up working at the coffee shop. That's where everything changed because you start living this life where you are responsible for everything at that point and it's not in this campus environment where you got a little Viking union card to go get your lunch.

TEM: Did you stay in Bellingham? Was the coffee shop job-?

PA: No. I moved back to Everett.

TEM: Oh, okay.

PA: I went back to Everett and got the, it was at a Starbucks back in...so, that would have been '94. Starbucks was still relatively cool back then. Its' hard to imagine. But they would actually send us to a little education thing at first, learned a lot. Worked with some good people, but we had this one customer that would come in fairly frequently. Anyway, he was the brewer at Glacier Peak in 00:18:00Everett. I got to know him. A really nice guy. Tom Munoz, and he invited me to come see what it was all about, see what he did. He kind of said, you can go to school for this. You can probably get some of those college credits and they'd probably transfer over. So, I sold my van and I went to brew school. It's like somebody says, and like okay [makes gesture of following].

TEM: Were you interested in food and drink and beer beyond the kind of traditional stereotypical college level?

PA: Not really.

TEM: I mean, it's pretty early in the development of artisanal craft, or, the reemergence of interest.

PA: It is. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't. No. I think me and a buddy had experimented with Pete's Wicked Ale and some of those, Redhook, of course, right? I had home 00:19:00brewed with my dad in, this would have been in high school, my senior year of high school. We got a home brew kit and I brewed with him a couple, a few times. I think that, when I first met this fellow who worked at the brewery that's what I was thinking of. Oh, that's what I did with my dad in those plastic buckets and then we made this thing and it was fun. I think because we actually made something. It wasn't like, I mean there was this physical product at the end. I think that appealed to me.

TEM: So, you moved to UC Davis. Or, you went to UC Davis.

PA: Yeah. I went to UC Davis. They got a master brewers program. Oh, and before we leave this Starbucks thing, I worked with this woman who was awesome. She said something to me that for some reason it stuck with me the whole time. When I told her I was leaving to go into brewing she's like, what a noble profession. Like, that's what she said. I was like, really? Oh. Great. Yeah. Noble. That's 00:20:00right. It's funny because I had another friend, the exact opposite. His family came from money. I'd known them since I was in grade school, and when I told his mom what I was doing, she was like, why don't you go into wine or something? Those were the two things that I just remember. I was like, I really liked this woman I worked with. I really liked her outlook on life and all that stuff and that that was her response. Then, this other woman who was wealthy and not really the kind of person I wanted to spend any time with had that other response. It's like, you know, that's, this is where I want to be. So, yeah. It was kind of almost not reassuring... what's that... reinforcing, you know?

TEM: What were the qualities that you liked about her? What were the, what was 00:21:00it that, I guess, spoke to you.

PA: She was older than me to the point where she had a family. She had a husband who would come in and they had two little kids. Growing up where family was super important, that was really cool. She was the only one at that place who I think I saw the family unit as all together. But just her nature. She was very easy going, fun to talk to, had a really practical, not necessarily practical, but it was a really good outlook on life. A good sense of humor, all that stuff. It's just like, wow, maybe when I get older I'll meet somebody like this. You know what I mean? That's like being younger and finally realizing that maybe growing up isn't going to just turn me into a, I don't know, you know like when you're young-I remember I was going to be 28 years old by the year 2000. I was like, oh, my God. 28. What am I going to be doing then? She was one of those 00:22:00people that I saw and like, oh, you can be cool when you're older and not turn into a dufus.

TEM: Do you know how old she was?

PA: I mean, she must have been like, so I would have been 22. She would have been, I mean, she could have been just 30, right? She wasn't that much older. But, I like, yeah. It's really funny. Now, the opposite is happening. I'm going to be 47 this year. It's like I've got up to 50. That's not cool. That doesn't make any sense.

TEM: How has time passed?

PA: Yeah.

TEM: When you were leaving to go to California, were you together with your wife at that point? Or the person who became your wife?

PA: Yes. We were together but we weren't married. We were engaged, I suppose. We 00:23:00didn't really do that very formally, but we were engaged, I guess. Yeah. So, yeah. I went down there and did the program. It was kind of funny, because it's still the continuation of that initial going through grade school, high school, college and then it's like I'm going back to school again because this is what I'm supposed to do. Meanwhile, learned, through the end of that process.. I mean, I did get my job and it all worked out, like I'm saying. But it's like meeting people who had a complete different path, where they just followed their own whim and just wanted to do whatever they did, and so, you know, maybe they snowbird all winter. Or, you know, maybe they did these seasonal jobs and who knows what they? I have plenty of friends like this, and I was always like, God how did I, why did I get [makes forward motion]. Because plenty of those guys ended up working at the same brewery I did. They might not have started in the brew house but they started at the cellar or the bottom line, the cellar and 00:24:00worked their way up and we ended up having the same exact job. I'm trying to keep that stuff on the, when we talk to our children. It's like, it's really okay. Don't try to figure it all out.

TEM: Yes. Even as adults. We can always figure it all out.

PA: Yeah, exactly. Oh, my God. Don't even ask me about this place [laughs].

TEM: [Laughs].

PA: I don't know how this happened.

TEM: How long was the program at UC Davis?

PA: I believe it was like 5 months, 4 or 5 months.

TEM: So, what was it like to have spent so much time in the northwest and then go down to Davis. What are some of your memories of that 5 months?

PA: It was so awesome. So, Davis was flat and everybody would ride bikes. It was awesome. The weather was so great. I met some really, I mean, lifelong friends down there, people that my family and their families hang out with our kids now. 00:25:00It was a little bit of a college experience that I didn't get in Bellingham. Another thing I did when I went to Bellingham that I sometimes look back and why did you do that? I still hung out with all my high school friends for quite some time, and I think that prevented me from kind of branching out and finding out some of the other cool things going on in Bellingham. So, the total removal, like, I went down there not knowing anybody, which was great. It was such a great experience.

TEM: Who was in brewing school with you? Who are some of the characters that you remember who were in your class?

PA: The biggest character's Nile Zacherle. He runs Mad Fritz down in St. Helena. He's been a wine maker. I think, he's-David Arthur is head wine maker down there, so he's pretty famous, but he's a goofball. I love him. He's awesome, but, man, you spend 5 or 10 minutes with the guy and you're like, how do you do 00:26:00this all the time? You do this all the time. He's great. Him, other than that-Brit Antrum. I don't know if you've heard his name. He worked at Coner for a while. I'm trying to think of the other-oh, Anderson Valley. He was at Anderson Valley for a long time. Other than that, I remember some names but I don't know if they're in the industry anymore. This guy named Jay Brot who would ride this tiny little kids bike back and forth to class. He had to get back and forth, and instead of getting a bike he just went to the, like a little pawn shop or whatever, and bought this dinky little kids bike. That's how he would get to school. It was so funny.

TEM: What were some of the things that surprised you about the educational aspect of brewing? I imagine that going from having done some home brewing with your dad to being in school for, you know, you'd obviously graduated from 00:27:00school, and then what was it like to be in this shorter fermentation-focused program? What was that like?

PA: That's a really good question. I think it was, well, it wasn't like anything else that I'd ever... I didn't have anything to compare it to. I didn't have anybody there that I knew to adopt their, what they felt about it either. I do remember it being, on one hand, it was really great because it was a lot of information. Michael Lewis as an instructor is very entertaining. I really enjoyed the lectures and the general discussions of the stuff. I really did. Honestly, I didn't know a heck a lot about it. I just picked up and did it. When it started getting weird was when I was like thinking about taking, because a 00:28:00lot of the class is preparing for this test. Because the whole point is you take the master brewer's class, you are going to take the IOB, 3-stage, blah, blah, blah, and pass this test. We're going to prepare you for that, and this certificate is what's going to get you a job. Like, okay, well, all this education in learning about the beer is great, but then it kind of changes a little bit because instead of just talking about the beer and learning about the beer and breweries and stuff, you're preparing for the test. That kind of got a little weird. The other thing that was a little hard for me to get around, too, was we had brewers who had been in the industry and they had come back to go to school and they just had this working knowledge. It was so, I was just like, oh my gosh, they know what a butterfly valve is. They know what a whirlpool is. I 00:29:00don't know what any of this stuff is. Starting at, because I had made beer in plastic buckets. There was the vocabulary and learning about all that was a pretty steep learning curve.

TEM: It seems like an interesting, I think about the difference between that program and the program at OSU now, where people start in their freshman year often thinking this is, I am seeing this as an educational, I will take this, I will take history, it's part of this-you're all 18, 19, 20 years old, but it seems like the program at UC Davis is a lot of maybe new people, but these people who have been in the industry. That must just be an interesting mixed population of people to be in classes with.

PA: Yeah. Yeah. Actually, there was, so UC Davis also had a fermentation science program as well. That's how I-I don't even know if Nile was in the master brewers course, but these guys in the fermentation they would take some of the 00:30:00classes we would.

TEM: Oh, okay.

PA: So, we had master brewers group that was like a classroom size...what'd they call that? The extension program, the UC Davis extension program. Then people in the fermentation science four-year degree at UC Davis would often take some of the classes we would.

TEM: Oh, interesting. So you really get that mix.

PA: I got a big mix. I got a big mix of people. Yeah. That's funny. I haven't thought about that in a while. There was, I would say there was probably more people in our class that had never brewed before than people who had been in the industry. We did have some people like, we had a couple brewers from Asahi over that sent them over from Japan, that kind of stuff. Bigger breweries. There was some Budweiser stuff. There was also quite a few people who had never brewed before. It was different. This was '95, '96 or something. There was still a lot 00:31:00of interesting, but it's nothing like today.

TEM: Where did you think you would get a job?

PA: Are you seeing a pattern here yet?

TEM: Sorry. Have you listened to [laughs].

PA: I wish. I mean, I thought I would get a job at a brewery. I don't know. I was trying to work a deal with Mac & Jack's because they were up there in Woodinville and Boundary Bay up in Bellingham. But what I did was, you know, there was even some people who were in this course, so, they were only in the course for 5 months, and it's probably even shorter than that now. It just seemed like a long time when I was there that were considering not even finishing the course because they had been offered a job, which was interesting. So, when I heard that I'm like, oh, they're already figuring this stuff out. I went out and got the Celebrator. Do you remember the old Celebrator?

TEM: Mm-hmm.

PA: Got the Celebrator, and in the middle they had the list of all the breweries 00:32:00in there. I went through and I wrote this form letter and I went through and I went through all the breweries in Washington and Idaho and Oregon and Montana and sent this letter out. I probably sent 300 letters, maybe I'm exaggerating. It's a long time ago. I sent a lot. I got two responses. One of them was from Roslyn, the one up in eastern Washington on the eastern side of the Cascades there. Tiny little town, tiny little brewery and they're like, hey, that's really great but we never hiring anybody. Best of luck. But, they at least wrote back.

TEM: Yeah, but it's sweet they wrote back.

PA: They wrote back, and the other one came from Dr. Bill who was the head brewer, or master brewer at the time at Deschutes. He says, that sounds great. Give me a call when you're done. Come on down. It was kind of, it was serendipitous. It was really awesome.

TEM: Before we leave Davis, did you travel when you were there? Did you go to 00:33:00San Francisco? Did you go to Sacramento? Were you pretty solidly in...?

PA: Yeah, I mean a lot of it was my best friend there, John Protie, he went to work for Pyramid for a while but he's not in the brewing industry anymore. I would come and just hang out with him and his buddies, because they all were going to college together and they were just great guys. They would do stuff. They had, one of them had a cabin out in the Casseo. John had a connection with somebody in Carmel and, you know, this is where they live, and this is totally new to me. So, yeah, I'd tour around with them and learned about California. I had to learn, I mean, because I think growing up in Washington I kind of had this idea what California was. I think we had family, my dad's brother lived in like Anaheim, so that's the only thing I'd ever seen before. It was kind of nice. California's actually really cool. No wonder everybody wants to come here.

TEM: Did you know that you wanted to return to the northwest, though? I mean, obviously you only sent your letters to the northwest states, but did you think about staying there?

PA: No. There wasn't-Davis didn't have any options. I guess Sudwerk was hiring and I did consider that for a minute, but no. I don't... like my wife and I traveled around the country in our van when we graduated from college before-

TEM: This is the van you sold?

PA: This is the van I sold, right. There was this one point when we were far northeast. I can't remember. It was like a [unclear] or whatever, and we went to this place and had some food and they were hiring. I was like, let's just get jobs and live out here. She didn't want to do that. I don't know if that was part of the thing that, because I never did. I did just focus on kind of where the family's from and all that, I guess. I like the northwest, but, you know, 00:35:00brewers they go all over the world on their skill set.

TEM: That's true. So, you finished at Davis. When did you and your wife get married? Was that before you came here?

PA: Yeah. Within...how did that work? There was like a 2 week window. I moved to Bend and got married and we got married and I moved to Bend. But I came down first, started working at Deschutes, got us a little rental house and then she moved down. I think we got married in... no, because Bill gave me kegs for our wedding. It was so crazy. These regional breweries back then... there probably are still some that do this now. They're at the stage of growth where's there's like no organizational structure really, and it's a free-for-all. I remember I 00:36:00showed up for this interview, and he's like, well, after the interview... I mean, "interview" [air quote gesture]. He's like, you want to take some beer home with you? I was like, oh, that sounds like a great idea. He's like, okay. We go over and there's this pallet of beer, like "low fills" [air quote gesture] right? He's like, I don't know-take what you want. I was like, okay, I'll take a case. He's like, or five. They weren't all filled, but I mean I walked out of there with all this, again, I'm like this is going to be my job, like okay. It was so funny. Of course, those things got all tightened up. That particular time, I think a lot of breweries experienced that window of time, the ones that grow through that zone. It's pretty lovely as an employee because there's a lot of freedom. You can shoulder a lot of responsibility and make changes on your own. Then there's a lot of beer. A lot of beer.

TEM: What was Bend like? So you came in 1996. What was Bend 1996 like?

PA: Way smaller. I do remember like downtown there are plenty of places that there were no businesses, for rent signs and stuff. Deschutes Brewery, the pub, was lively and a lot of young people that didn't particularly care about, not everybody had brand new everything. I remember being on the mountain bike trails and it just was like regularly people riding their bikes and having fun and smoking weed. It was really great. There still is, there are these elements. I understand why things change and it's a beautiful place, but it was pretty fun. I guess, in coming from a place of having a secure job, right? That was also a 00:38:00thing that Bend didn't use to have a whole heck of a lot of employment, and I was fortunate enough to work for a place that did. Another thing, right, so these breweries that are growing and trying to hold onto employees, even though your sales forecast might be, or your distribution requirements might be all over the map, there were times that we would start brewing on Monday, and I was at-and Bill did such a great job. I was on salary, right? It was like $20/21,000 a year. We'd start brewing on Monday and I'd work sometimes 2 or 3 eight-hour shifts in that week, and then we wouldn't be brewing anymore because the orders weren't there. Because the beers churn over in 3 to 4 weeks, and so it's kind of like you're brewing to the orders. There were a handful of times where it was like I guess we're done for the week. Go mountain biking and camping. There was a lot of opportunities to get out and do stuff. Of course, that changed, too, 00:39:00with how busy the brewery got. But there was a small window of time there where it was pretty sweet. I think my dad was just like that's not work. You're still getting paid? What are you talking about? That doesn't make any sense.

TEM: What did your, did your wife get a job when she moved here? Knowing that the Bend economy in the mid '90s wasn't fabulous. What was that like?

PA: Yeah. She was like an outdoor educator person and so initially she got a job, I think her first job was at the Inn of the Seventh Mountain, which was like renting out things and driving the Zamboni on the ice rink a couple times. That was pretty fun. Because, again, back in the old days there were times when me and my buddies could just go out there and she's running the show and we drinking our beer and playing our stupid broom hockey and nobody shows up and 00:40:00it's just like, this is great! She also got a job at Sun River as kind of with event planning or something down there. She was there for a little while. Then her big job was she got the director of the Boys and Girls Club when it opened in the old high school building. I think it's the old high school building, or the old athletic club or something.

TEM: Is the Inn of the Seventh Mountain still around?

PA: Yep, yeah. It's been remodeled. It's pretty sweet. Pools and stuff.

TEM: I remember, I grew up in Eugene, so I remember that.

PA: It has a different name now. Do they call it that?

TEM: I don't know.

AD: I think it's Seventh Mountain Resort.

TEM: Yeah.

PA: That's right. They wanted to separate themselves a little bit but not too far.

TEM: I hadn't heard that in forever. I was like, wait, is that still a thing?

PA: Yeah.

TEM: I remember that's where fancy... that was where people would, people had fun there.

PA: Yeah. They'd go skiing and do all that stuff. It was pretty funny.

TEM: Now it got fancy in a different way with a new name.

PA: Yeah, exactly. We still know how to get in the pool, though.

TEM: Ah, perks of history. So, what about restaurants in Bend? People who were living here in the late '90s? When did it feel to you like it started to shift? I feel like Bend is one of those places that has changed so much in 20 years. What was the shift point that you observed?

PA: I think a lot of that is like, you know the frog in the frying pan thing, right? But we, the funny thing, so I worked at Deschutes Brewery as a shift brewer from '96 to 2002. Then I quit. My wife and I were like, we have to 00:42:00travel. We had this friend who went to southeast Asia and it was just like, we have to do this. We have to like, we're just, we're both, I mean, we don't' have any kids and we're both career job people right now. We need to do this. We had a mortgage and so we saved her paycheck, one of our paychecks for an entire year, just stocked it away. All my brewer friends, the guys I was working with, are like Arney, dude, you're crazy. This is like the best job in town. I mean, what are you thinking? It's ridiculous. Look at all you did to get here and blah, blah, blah. I was like I know, but we have to do this. So, we left in the fall of 2002, and we were really gone for about a year and a half, and coming back was just like, whoa. I mean you leave for a little while and I ended up getting a job back at Deschutes Brewery and it was very similar to the change that happened in town. So, when I left Deschutes it was kind of that not a whole lot of structure in the organization. Everything's working but you've got people 00:43:00that are having to make serious decisions and luckily we were just making the right ones. The brewers were taking a lot of, we were shepherding the beer and all that stuff and took a lot of ownership in that. Well, when I left that fall... it's kind of interesting. I have this banner up there, Paulina Pils. I don't know if you saw that when you were coming in, but that represents this whole era of time to me because the brewers were making this, we were making this pilsner. It was so good. It was so, so, so good.

The sales department, either didn't want to sell it or couldn't sell it. To us, it seemed like they didn't want to sell it. They wanted us to make porter and pale. We're like, man, but if you look at beer all over the world, because we 00:44:00were just kind of learning this. We were like the first thing in craft is hoppy pales and dark porters and then we learned about German pilsners and Czech pilsners and it was like these are so good, so we make our own one. It was northwest-y. It had hops. This is before Lagunitas. This was before Trumer. This was before all these craft pilsners. It kind of came to this head between the sales and marketing and the brewing side of things. That's when I kind of, my own thing was like I'm out. See ya. Within 3 months of me leaving, I think, is when the big [makes explosion gesture]. I kept getting these emails like, Dr. Bill got fired. Mark [unclear] quit. John Duzer quit. Like, just all this. I mean, the company had to change. It had to. In running my own business, I understand. I'm so glad I wasn't there. I skated out. Because I didn't have to 00:45:00choose a side, and so when I came back Deschutes Brewery had a new brew master. They had a whole new brewery they were installing and they had a structure put in place. It was very similar to the way the town felt, too. It's like everything kind of just went from the wild west to an industrial park to a certain degree. Things are a little bit more just, you know?

TEM: Yeah. I think Bend is one of those just fascinatingly different places. I feel like I have adjusted to it now, but I remember coming back to Bend after being here when it was very wild west-y. We would come to visit, and it was the strangest. You knew it was the same place, but it was not the same place. It was kind of disorienting. How did this change? Now judgment on the change, but it 00:46:00just, it changed a lot. It took me a long time, like, oh, okay. This is just different now.

PA: It's just different now. Yep. It is. There's still a lot, a lot of good stuff. I'm trying to, I'm just trying to understand that, you know, I mean, it's beautiful here. Of course people want to come here. I think the frustrating things are when it seems like there's a lot of money that drives this, what's happening to the state. Like having my friends who can't afford to live in town anymore, so they got to move out of town to buy a house. My brothers experienced the same thing in Seattle. They've lived there the whole time and they used, they're musicians, and they used to live really close to town, and as they've gotten older now they bought a house and it's in Burien, because that's all they can afford. It's happening everywhere. But, yeah, it's been fascinating to watch. I remember that sign out in front of the Entrada, or whatever, coming 00:47:00back down from Bachelor. When we first moved to down it said something like 14,000 or 16,000 people. Now it's like 100,000. Wow.

TEM: So, what was the Deschutes Company structure like before you left? What was, how many people were working there? How do you, what do you remember about company structure?

PA: Well, I remember that there was just the one office. There was the brew house and the cellar and the bottling line and then the shipping and receiving zone and then there was just this little hallway where there was the front desk and Angie would be there and then, you know, you'd go back to the desk and it was like Gary and Sue Paige, and John Bryant and our engineer, Ron. Geeze. It's just like, it's so funny because it was like they were all right there. In order 00:48:00to get to the bottling line sometimes you'd walk through the offices. Then, when I came back, there was the administration building and then everything else, and it was like, it was crazy because what happened was people started referring to it as the dark tower.

TEM: Oh.

PA: You know what I mean? It was really, for me, learning about growth of companies and how these things work and like that, just somebody not being in the same room, silos happen and then people make up all these crazy stories. Yeah, it's hard to grow a company. It's hard to have-I think that's why, one of the reasons mine is so small. I'd be so fearful of like... I don't even think I could handle it. Like, how would I make sure everybody's okay? You know.

TEM: I feel like that move, I think, for lots of people that I've talked to at Deschutes who were there during that time, that was a really, that physical separation, even though it wasn't very far, that there was a physical separation, and a lot of people talk about that, that it was weird to not have, you know, well, there were a lot of people in a smaller space, and they felt crowded that once there was more space, that separation was hard.

PA: It was, yeah. You know, and I think the other thing that was hard, at least from my understanding was with the company's growth there needs to be more structure in order to keep things from really getting out of control, right? So, you've got this thing happening already that's creating a separation, but then you also have to have structures in place to make sure that the product and everything, all these things are happening so everybody's okay and the product's 00:50:00okay and everything's working well. Having, you know, going from very loose set of rules to tightened rules, there's definitely, I know a handful of people who just, they weren't those type of people. It weeded them out. They were angry, but it's like you can't-I mean, that's not their, it's not their company. It was the right thing for the beer and it's the right thing for the company. Because you couldn't fit in that little zone, it's time to move on.

TEM: I can imagine that it could be really chaotic, that as something gets bigger that you do have to have the structure, otherwise it's...

PA: Yeah. I do remember a lot of, we'd get together and have these, we'd have some consultants come in and the 5S-ing was huge. I loved it. I thought it was the coolest idea, like they're going to give me anything I want so my workspace 00:51:00is the most efficient. I could just geek out on that. Okay, so like we don't need any of this crap. Let's get rid of this and let's just [organizing gesture]. There's some people that did not like that at all. It's like, man, but if you just, it will make your job better. But, you know, I think it's the same thing. It's like big brother and like, oh we've got to do something different. Yeah. Everybody's different.

TEM: Change is hard.

PA: Mm-hmm. I do also thing that because that growth phase, what we're talking about, that wild west growth phase for Deschutes, it took a lot of people to, I mean, they were really putting a lot of themselves... it was more than just a job for a lot of people. It was a lot of effort and a lot of work. I think at the end of that, instead of it feeling like that could continue and their place would be, you know, they'd had that much responsibility for whatever it was to, 00:52:00I think a lot of people felt like well, I'm not needed or I'm not important enough. But, you know.

TEM: So, it's an interesting time for brewing in Oregon, that time period.

PA: That had to have been going on at Full Sail and Widmer, right?

TEM: I think also just that mid '90s where there is a sort of burst of money coming into the industry so lots of breweries were opening but not necessarily lots of breweries were being run well, but that there is a certain level of popularity that's starting to come with craft brewing, as we now call it.

PA: Yes. Craft brewing. Yes. It's true. It's almost like we're entering a phase where it seems like we should have learned some lessons from what happened to 00:53:00some of those breweries back in the mid to late '90s. It's like, it's not that far, it's not that long ago, but I guess it's long enough.

TEM: I have sort of like 10-year cycle theory. It seems like this industry that over the past 40 years, 30 years, it seems like every 10 years or so there is this like, wait a minute-this was happening before.

PA: Yeah, geez.

TEM: Wait a minute.

PA: Yeah, and oddly enough it feels like Bend and the housing thing is going to be doing the same thing, just about 10 years later. We'll see. All my contracting buddies are saying this feels like it did in '06 and right before '07. That kind of thing. I mean, we're intelligent people. Like, you're not a filmmaker and look what you can do? [Laughs].

TEM: [Laughs] Yeah, we'll wait to see [laughs].

PA: [Laughs].

TEM: If we can hear anything... no, but I think that's, yeah that's why we need archives and historical records because people forget.

PA: It's so true. Here, here [toast gesture].

TEM: Yes.

PA: Yes.

TEM: Interview over [laughs].

PA: [Laughs] Yeah, exactly. Done. Drop the mic.

TEM: Well, we figured that out. What were you interested in style-wise, beer making-wise at that point? What was really exciting to you about beer before you left beer?

PA: Before I left? I think at that time I was really into the German Alt and Kolsch and pilsner. I won a gold medal for my German-style pilsner that I brewed on a little pub system.

TEM: In two thousand-

PA: In '97?

TEM: That was like, I didn't even write the date, so I just said two thousand.

PA: Oh, yeah, way before that. But, no, that was, it was definitely those German beer styles. It's kind of funny to think about that now, because it started with 00:55:00these English pale, porter, stout-ish things, and then went to the German ones and Czech. Czech was in there, too.

TEM: Where did you get inspiration at that time? How did you... you had freedom at Deschutes at that point [something falls]. Boy, we just keep-this is that tech part. I knocked the cords. How did you figure out what you wanted to do? What you wanted to make?

PA: I mean, we had such a cool group of brewers at that point. I want to say there was 12 or 13 of us, because we were running shifts on the very manual system, so there was always 2 of us on shift. Sometimes, for a while there were 12, so there was just, but you'd... anyway, two or three shifts, but the thing was there were 2 people on each shift. You know for that entire shift you had somebody to kind of just talk beer with. I won't say all of us, but there was 00:56:00quite a few of us who were just stoked on this whole idea of beer and what we were doing and what was kind of, it was really kind of, I think for a number of us it was just discovery, too. I remember going up to an MBAA up in Leavenworth, and this was one where Dr. Bill took us up there, took the whole team up there, and we went to this German, in Leavenworth went to a German bar and drank German pilsner and we're all just like, this is amazing. It's like, why can't American logger taste like this German pilsner? It was just very exciting. But I think most of it came from we would rotate brewers down to the pub. It was like you'd spend your time over at the production facility, but then there was, I think Mark Vickery was at the pub at this time, and we'd have an opportunity to go 00:57:00down there for a month or 5 weeks or 8 weeks or something.

So, we'd rotate brewers through there. You'd get to brew your beer, and you'd also get to work on all the other beers that they needed to brew for other there. It was kind of like understand what the pub is and does, what people are interested in. Obviously we were a hop-driven brewery, so I mean, it was always kind of fun to mess around with hop, but I remember like when Mark Kenyon started, I'm trying to remember-Glass Butte Imperial Stout was one, I mean, that grew into the Abyss. When he started really researching that and, what was Tony... was always working on the Irish, the dryer stout. We didn't know beer styles and so we were all, we'd all get to go down there. What beer are you going to brew? It was always, well, I'm going to do this style, and that's kind of how we learned. It was funny because we're not that far away from Portland, 00:58:00but we were separated enough where we were pretty insulated from the industry. We just kind of relied on each other.

TEM: So, in that year and a half off, I'm curious, what did you do? Where did you go?

PA: Well, we drove, my wife grew up in Anchorage. So, we drove the ALCAN up to Anchorage. We flew over to Europe and spent a little bit of time, like a month or so, six weeks over there. Then we came back and the plan was we were going to fly to southeast Asia and spend until the money runs out kind of thing. We had these tickets that we got on miles. We left, like we were supposed to leave at like 1:30 in the morning on a particular date, so we had the date in our minds, right? Well, then when the day came we were getting ready to take the plane that 00:59:00night and then we realized, oh. That was this morning. We missed our flight. Because it was on air miles they had to wait for another flight that had... I don't know, they had some way of regulating this, so we couldn't just get on the next flight. I think we were staying at her parents through winter up there in Anchorage for weeks and weeks. I want to say six, but, again, I might be exaggerating. Maybe it was like 3 or 4. So, we lived in the basement in our house and Stacy ended up getting a job at ExxonMobile as a clerk or something just to make some money. I drank Warsteiner like in the basement. It just was kind of a weird time, because we were like, we're going to do this. We did this awesome car trip and went to Europe. We're like, we're going to Asia. Then it's like [makes slowing down motion]. No, and I gained all this weight.

TEM: You were in Anchorage in the winter.

PA: Yeah. But that wasn't the plan. We were supposed to be leaving-

TEM: It's dark.

PA: ...yeah, November I think was when we were supposed to be heading to Asia and we missed the flight. So, we ended up spending both Thanksgiving and Christmas in Anchorage. There was some family drama stuff, and it was just like, what is going on? This is crazy. But we ended up finally making it to Asia and we spent like 7 or 8 months over there traveling around Vietnam and Cambodia, Lau, Thailand, Miramar, Indonesia. We were kids. We were 30, but it was pretty awesome. Then we came back, we did a 2-week trip through interior Mexico and then came home and I got a job at Deschutes Brewery again, because I'm sure I told myself, I'm never going back to work there again. I don't know what I'm going to do, but, man, I'm going to-and then when we came back we had our mortgage and Stacy wasn't finding a job and I still knew Paul Cook was still over at the brewery. He was one of the last people that, you know, that made the transition. I ended up getting a job there and it was like going to work at a 01:01:00brand, spanking new, different brewery.

TEM: Before we go to that, was language a problem when you were traveling throughout these places?

PA: Yeah, it could be. I really enjoyed that part. Growing up a monolinguist and wishing I could speak another language, this was an opportunity to kind of try. I didn't learn anything fluently, but knew the right words, and I learned the Buddhist culture was wonderful. The people were very friendly and there was still a fair amount of tourism and so people were willing to help. There was quite a few people who wanted to learn English because maybe it would be an opportunity for them to get a job doing something different. It wasn't too bad. I mean, we had to be on our game sometimes. It was fun.

TEM: When you, the brewery was very different. The company was very different when you came back. Then had started its transition to difference. You had also had this year and a half experience being away. How did that change your thoughts on beer? On making beer? What was that like from a brewer standpoint? Did you feel more creative when you came back?

PA: That's interesting. I should go read my journal. I should have prepared for this. Yeah, that's really interesting. I think, you know, after being gone for that long there was definitely part of me that wanted to come back to "home" [air quotes gesture]. This was my home. I think also we weren't really, we talked about, oh we can do anything when we go back. At the same time, we come 01:03:00back and Bend is awesome. Then she's not getting, I think I probably went back into and just put my head down. I don't think, I do remember saying things sometimes to my supervisors and having them look at me in this way and in my head I'm like, don't, that's just Asia, and that's cool and let it go because that's, I mean... there's just, I don't know exactly how to put it, but it was like a, I think going to Asia for me personally was, all that stuff I had told you guys about earlier, my childhood and all that and just kind of following and people being kind of the reason for me to do stuff, I think that was, finally I got to this point where I was like, you know, everybody does it different. Really it's not necessarily about the outcome and I've got all this opportunity. 01:04:00It gave me this whole other view of the world. I think going back to the brewery things that maybe would have been hard for me in the previous version of Deschutes, I just was accepting because of where I was and all the cool benefits I was getting out of the deal. But, then they became, there was always, there was challenges because the corporate thing was hard for me to... I butted head with my boss over certain things. It eventually led to me departing there. It was... but, yeah. I don't know. I don't have anything concrete, but I do remember. There was a distinct change, and I think for me a lot of it had to do with self-confidence and not necessarily worrying about the outcome. That sometimes didn't work out so well.

TEM: It's funny to hear you talking about that. It reminded me of your dad going back to Safeway.

PA: Yeah. That's interesting.

TEM: Like wait. Now I'm in Safeway after doing this.

PA: That's true. But, on the other hand, it wasn't like going back to the same brewery, right? It was going back to this other thing. There was all that, especially being interested in beer and having all this opportunity now, where before we didn't have as much, the brewery didn't have as much money before. So, there was for anything that we wanted to do brewing-wise, we could find a way to make it happen, which was pretty amazing.

TEM: What about beer in Bend at that point? Deschutes was the only game in town for a while.

PA: Well, BBC has always been here, right?

TEM: Yeah.

PA: Come on.

TEM: The bigger game in town.

PA: Right, yeah, yeah.

TEM: But then, by then there are more than 2.

PA: Yeah.

TEM: What was beer culture in Bend like? We think about it now as so defining, regionally defining, city defining. What was it like when you came back?

PA: Man. I really should have done more... my memory's terrible. I mean, I remember certain things, but I guess the last two questions have both been kind of more about the how did these things feel at those moments, and I wish I could know more than I remember.

TEM: Maybe it doesn't stand out to you, though.

PA: Yeah. It doesn't. I mean, there's also this thing like I also know the history of Wildfire Brewing and where it started and how it transitioned into 10 Barrel and then what happened. I think it's hard for me to separate Paul Cook and all his efforts and what happened to him from the 10 Barrel Brewery before 01:07:00they went to Budweiser. It's like for me I think it was more about brewers, knowing people in town, I suppose. Then, again, you know, I also wasn't as avid a socializer as other brewers, like I think even at that time I wasn't, there wasn't too many married brewers on staff. I think that's still right. I know that was that first point. The second point, and you know like, so let's think about this... yeah. But it was definitely, I think I can say for certain it was by and large less competitive. It felt less competitive, I guess. Because it 01:08:00felt like everybody kind of had their thing and even though Deschutes was pretty massive at that point I think everybody else was feeling like, well, it's okay. I mean, their beer is traveling and it's going to other places and they still have their pub. We've got what we need to do what we're doing. I think when all the breweries started getting larger, I do remember when GoodLife was going. At that time they would become Noble, right, Noble Brewing. They were going to be putting, they were coming in. I didn't know any of them at that time, but just the vibe in town and the brewing industry was so crazy, because we didn't know them. Nobody knew them. They were just coming in and they were going to open a brewery and they're going to call it Noble and what are they going to do? Who do they think they are? All that stuff. It's so funny. I think every other brewery 01:09:00up until that point, it felt like there was some connection. We kind of knew a little bit of the story, but I do remember that. That was just like what is going on? They're doing great. They did their thing. They came in. They didn't bother anybody, and they treated me really well when I moved into here. They're great people.

TEM: So, two questions that I'm thinking about right now. Guess what they are? No.

PA: [Laughs].

TEM: I have the advantage, the people watching this, have the advantage of looking at the wall behind us, and Gail ____ is up there in her hops and I see ______ sack, I think.

PA: M-hmm.

TEM: At that point, how much were you thinking about ingredients and where they come from and were other people talking about ingredients and where they come from? Part of my curiosity is now we talk a lot about hops. We talk a lot about 01:10:00hop farmers. People love to go and rub and sniff when the big machinery is going by. It feels to me having talked to a lot of growers that there, again, was this kind of shift, that people started wanting to know about farms and that farms had been growing hops for a long time and nobody really cared that much. It was a crop, and now it became a thing that people talked about. I know, we don't want to give away the ending and jump to the end of this story but I know it becomes very important to you.

PA: Yeah.

TEM: So, I'm curious if you have a memory of an awareness. Was it something that was in the discussions you were having about ingredients and styles and where things come from. That was a very, very long question.

PA: No, but it's awesome, because I think it wasn't. It wasn't, really. I remember being aware of these things, like I remember going to hop selection. I remember going to all these different hop farms. This is not just one time. This was throughout the years. I remember doing the hop selection thing, and I remember going to different farms. I remember noticing the difference between the farms and just kind of being aware like, when we go to hop selection we're going there and all we see are these little brew cuts. That's how we're choosing where we're getting our hops from. Okay, but then we go around to the farms and I see all this other stuff. It's like, it was kind of a dichotomy. But I understand. You want the beer to taste "the same," so you're trying to get the 01:12:00same deal, but that was something that I remember noticing, being aware that all farms are run differently. Every farmer's got their own philosophy on how they treat the land and how they treat their customers and all that stuff. That was interesting. I do remember going back to, I remember I went back to Breece a long time ago with Deschutes. I went to one in Portland, Gray Western. Noticing the difference bewteen those two. Breece still had these things they called, I think they called them 8 balls or something, but they were these cast iron round kilning things that they would shovel malt into and they would shut the door and latch it, and then they'd turn on this jet flame that would come out of the ground and these balls would spin. They weren't very big, and that's where our caramel malt came from. I was like, that's why I like this stuff. It's because 01:13:00of that, I mean, it's dinky. It's so crazy. It's so old-world. So, I remember those things.

I think, you know, it wasn't until after I left Deschutes, I think, where I made this connection like, I don't want to order things out of a catalogue as a blanket statement, big generalization. Back then it was like, oh, I want to use, I mean that's also the problem of having all this money, is you can have whatever you want. I want this, and I'll do that and this and that and the other thing. That's what we're making. So, it was wonderful and great, but yeah. Coming out of that, and learning about some of the things that I appreciate in the brewing history, like the way that brewers have created these styles out of 01:14:00very limited raw materials. That's a thing that I just, it's so cool to think about. All these styles that we talk about that people spend all this time and energy trying to get all that, these guys, they probably had one option for each one of their ingredients. They did the best they could, and they found a way to work with their water and their raw materials. That's the kind of, I mean, now we're jumping way in the future, but that is the kind of pressures I want to put on our brewery, to use the creative brewer's brain of our ancestor heritage brewers, the ones that don't have all these options where I could just buy a machine to do it or whatever. That's where I believe our house character comes in.

TEM: Well, and I think it's such an interesting, for me having been asked by people to give them very concrete answers about what breweries in Portland were 01:15:00making in 1875, or what... that there is this expectation, I think, that there were this many options in 1875. Whereas, I think that a lot of the answer is they were just making what they could, even in a bigger city.

PA: I go even way further in the past than that, back to before industry. Because I think that's pretty much where these beer styles, they were, that's old-world stuff. It's so fun to think about. I think another thing going into this, there was always that discussion, I felt, that there was this discussion going on that's like, yeah, people have made beer for 10,000 years, but it probably didn't taste good. They probably just drank it to get drunk. I totally disagree, totally disagree with that. It's just, I think because of, well, 01:16:00American brewing history, first of all, we had this weird thing called prohibition that just totally separated us from this heritage. Where you go to other countries, and it's like this culture that just kind of comes out of everywhere. We kind of had that stolen a little bit, and I kind of lament that. I think that's part of the other reason my brewery looks like this.

TEM: And the 1950s, for a lot of food products period were very, it just, Velveeta doesn't feel like heritage. I will admit to liking Velveeta, but I will not put it on the historical record that I do not love Velveeta. I do. But it's also a very different product than cheese.

PA: Those are the two things that when I do my brewery tour, part of my dog and pony show is I talk about the industrial revolution and I talk about prohibition 01:17:00and those are the two things that put us in this position where all of a sudden all the breweries look the same, regardless of their size, and by and large they're making the same stuff. For us to come out of that as American brewers, we still ended up with all the breweries looking the same. We just made different things. We're applying the craft to it and trying to learn about other stuff. By and large, the breweries were just very smaller versions of these processing plants. Yeah. It's fascinating. I can make up all sorts of stuff, because I don't know. Just make it up.

TEM: One other big thing that happened during your time is the internet and it was no longer catalogues, that you really could search even beyond what paper catalogue ends up in your mail tray. I think that, I imagine, could have changed 01:18:00a lot of what you could even think to order.

PA: Well, I mean, that's really interesting, too. I don't think I could have built my brewery without the internet. I wasn't using it for raw materials, but I was definitely using it for information and using it for contacts, but, yeah. I mean, here I'm trying to build an "old-world" brewery to a certain degree. That was kind of some guiding principles, but I don't think I could have done it without the internet in today's modern age. Because I couldn't get... Seth wasn't making malt then. I still had to get things and we had to do stuff.

TEM: The internet.

PA: Yeah. So, it's funny, just as a little side note. This is maybe a theme of mine, because it's like it's not about being a luddite. It's about what things are important enough to preserve or at least have knowledge of. So, when my wife 01:19:00and I, when we bought the property when I was still working at Deschutes, where our brewery is, the property is the reason why we have this brewery. Basically, when I left Deschutes it was like what do we do? Well, I want to keep the property. So, how do we figure that out? When we moved there, there was this time when we had to live in this little cabin that was right down by the creek while we built our little house. So we lived in this cabin for 10 months through the winter. There was no running water. Stacy was pregnant. Spencer was 1 and a half. We had to get our water from the creek, but I had internet [laughs].

TEM: [Laughs].

PA: Isn't that random? It's so funny.

TEM: That is, but and now we always have internet.

PA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, we do. We always have internet.

TEM: We always have internet, unless we're in Eastern Oregon. I did not have internet last week at times.

PA: Were you okay?

TEM: I was okay. I was driving.

PA: Okay.

TEM: So, I didn't need the internet.

PA: You had other things to do.

TEM: I need to steer. So, you were at Deschutes for 7 more years after you returned?

PA: I think it was 6 and 6. 2004 to, well, yeah, 2011, but May... ish.

TEM: Ish.

PA: Yeah, sure.

TEM: Why did you leave?

PA: Oh, yeah. It's super easy, because I had, so remember I was telling you about we had this awesome opportunity when we were, I don't know, the earlier years to go and experience the pub scene, and we'd rotate brewers through there. The newer version of Deschutes, I worked myself into a research and development assistant brew master position, where I was stationed at the pub. I think that was my goal. I just wanted to get back to making beer and the smaller, and I had 01:21:00done a lot of production and the things that got me excited were reformulation and physically making the beer and that kind of stuff, not necessarily automation and machines and pumps, those kind of things like some brewers, man, they, and I respect it a lot, it's just not my game. It's like there's some guys that just, that's their thing. It's the machinery. It's the way that things move, where I really, I found out that my interest lies in the beer and the creation of it. So, I worked myself into this position at the pub, research and development and it was really, really great. Really great just to be in that environment, people, creativity, living in town, riding my bike. It was awesome. I was told that because I was an assistant brew master, and this makes all the sense in the world, Larry. I'm not angry. I totally get it, it just if you're a 01:22:00brew master and you have 3 assistant brew masters, they should all know each other's jobs. Right? It totally makes sense. Well, they wanted to rotate me into the cellar and manage the cellar, which would mean budgets, spreadsheets, managing employees. There would be no-the only beer would be on the production schedule. What's going in what tank? What's getting filtered? I just said no. I can't do that at all. That'll crush me, which is funny because I do a lot of those things now, you know. But it's mine or whatever. At that time, I just, I couldn't do it.

So, I gave a good healthy notice and at that point was like, what the fuck am I going to do? What the fuck am I going to do? What the fuck am I going to do? Over and over and over again. But it didn't take too long, because we got this property and the last, I want to say the last 2 to 3 years at the pub doing the 01:23:00research and development is when we were really, you know, were doing the Dissident. We were doing the Abyss. We were doing all this stuff with barrels, non-hop beers. That's right when I think my realization that this beer world that I knew was going to get bigger. I mean, there were people that would come in there. We had the regulars, right? Those guys were great. They'd drink the same beer all the time, but when we had special beers people would show up out of nowhere. People would drive over from Portland to get the Abyss or whatever, and those were the kind of-and then working with the barrels and it got me very excited, and so at that point it's like why couldn't I have a super tiny little brewery? All this history, I really like history, and all this history of beer, they weren't in cities necessarily. A lot of these were in homes, and learning about native yeast and we've got this awesome water. Why couldn't I just have my 01:24:00own tiny little brewery and that will be my retirement job? It'll just be me. I'll sell beer. It'll be so awesome. It was. It became more than a retirement job. It was more than that, I was delusional. If I had known then what I know now it's hard to know if I would have actually-I'm sure I would have done it. There was a lot of stress early on. Anyway [laughs and covers face].

TEM: Well, no...

PA: Do you have a tissue.

TEM: We can take a break for tearing up as I look at my notes. Now, this is where I have my lots of question notes.

PA: What?

TEM: Get ready.

PA: Okay.

TEM: I know. It's going to get really intense. There are all kinds of arrows and highlighters.

PA: I'll work on short, terse answers.

TEM: Then I will work on my short, terse questions.

PA: We'll just get it done. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I think it was great 01:25:00until about the-

TEM: So, I'm curious how did you decide on this, and part of, again, the kind of thinking behind my question is that at that point in 2011, did you feel like there was an audience, a consumer base, that was interested and curious enough to try something that didn't feel predictable? Packaged and predictable? That it was maybe for many a very unfamiliar type of beer to have. How did you decide not only am I not going to work at this kind of production level facility, I'm going to do this thing that is very, very demanding, that is very unpredictable? 01:26:00How did you settle on this?

PA: Yeah. I guess the quickest answer is this brewery probably looks the way it does more because of all the things I didn't want it to be than what I wanted it to be. I was very adamant-one thing I got out of traveling, one of my favorite things about traveling is having a general knowledge but not planning everything out. Because then you hear things, you listen, you pay attention, sometimes you end up in these places that are just like, and these experiences are oh, my gosh! This is the best thing ever! It's part of that. Somebody could have told you about that or you could have been on your itinerary, but without being there it doesn't have the intensity. That was very important to me in this brewery. I thought a lot about these guys who, let's call them the "original brewers," 01:27:00these guys that are just making the beer that they can make. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to make whatever beer I could make from, as much as possible from the place that I was in. I felt that was really important. I was looking at the wine industry and seeing, well, you know every year these people are celebrating these differences and what we're doing in the brewing world is we're going to sensory and we're just ripping everything apart. We're smelling it and it's like, this is off. This doesn't smell right. I don't like it. Maybe not I don't like it but off flavor, off flavor, off flavor. Where in the wine industry I was hearing more people say this vintage was like this and this one was different and you know, and the difference wasn't a problem. So, I just assumed that that was going to work. I didn't do any market research. This was based on the fact that at this point, as you now know, the only thing I knew how to do was make beer. That's it. I didn't know how to do anything else. So, you 01:28:00leave your brewing job what are you going to do? It's like, well, yeah, I kind of dreamed about being a writer once, but now I've got two kids. It's like we've got a mortgage. I've got to do something. So, it grew of the fact that I only know how to brew and then I knew how I didn't want my brewery to look. I didn't want to chase kegs. If I'm going to do it by myself, and I want to focus on the beer because at that point it's like I'm very proletariat minded, and it's like I'm going to be the brewer operator and that's going to be my shop and that's how it's going to work. I can't spend my time chasing kegs. I can't even store kegs or spend my time cleaning them or fighting for tap handle space. I can't do any of that. So, we're just going to make the best beer we can and put it in bottles, and that way I can sell wholesale bottles and the beer's got to age, 01:29:00because I can't be on any type of schedule. So, it has to be able to stand up to aging, and looking into how champagne is produced and how they age them out and all that stuff was really-so, I was trying to pull from a bunch of different places: champagne and wine and beer and mead and the different types of beer, the way that Germans make the beer. I remember this project I did at Deschutes where Larry gave me a little bottle of Distelhäuser sour. It was my project to grow that up into, you know, because all German breweries have this little sour work factory in the basement that they use, because around [unclear] they can't use mineral salts to adjust their water.

So, they grow up this sour in their basement and so I got that opportunity to do it at Deschutes. It was an awesome experience. But during that and how we 01:30:00started using it and tasting it, it's like this stuff is amazing. Why can't I make beer out of this? Why are we using it in such small amounts. That was another thing, German. Then when I was going to dry hop like we did or the northwest beers did, you know, just I was trying to put together something based on my knowledge and the stuff that we had and see where it went, using the trees up there. I mean, when I was doing it that part came very natural. It goes back to one of the very first things we talked about when you're like what did you like to do at school? I'm like, well, I was good at science. I was good at math. Well, I'm just discovering that my mind is more a creative, artistic than it is practical science. Luckily, what do they say brewing is? It's like we're where art and science meet. I was good at science and I really like creativity, and 01:31:00it's like, boom, there it is. I'm right where I'm supposed to be.

TEM: Was the business side hard for you?

PA: Yeah. I mean, it's hard to say. Like, I only in the last couple years have I gotten to the point where I'm not stressing over, I guess, money. I guess it always comes down to money. No, no, no. The beer. I mean, it's the beer and the money. Like, oh my gosh, is this beer going to be okay? Oh my gosh are we going to run out of money? I think I'm a worrier because the beer's been fine and I've never defaulted. I've always had money in the bank. Just a month ago, my wife quit her job to come over and help and it's like the timing's great because I've been running the finances off of my gut and my heart. It's been great. Knock on wood. I have not dropped the ball, but it's-we 're at a level now where I want 01:32:00to sleep at night and so we need to get our own processes in place so I don't wake up and be like, oh my God, the labels! We've got a couple bottles over there that have crown caps on them because I forgot to order corks and it's 3 months from Portugal. Just stuff like that. I guess we're talking about the specific business, that has, it's come pretty easy because it started with relationships, right? When I first started this it was, I started a beer club, or ale club. A lot of those people knew me from the pub and supported me. That was super easy. They're like, yay! Go do this thing. It's like, thank you! Being, I think, fairly early in this thing, the fellow that was here when you guys showed up, Sean Campbell owns BeerMongers in Portland. He came up to our 01:33:00brewery. I think he was with the group, the very first people that ever came to see my brewery, and our beer's been at his shop ever since. That's how I followed, that's how I built the business. If people came to the brewery, they were the ones that get the beer. Then I don't have to like get on the phone and call people. Luckily there was enough interest at the time where we were able to sell the beer that we were making. I think right now I'm entering probably the most challenging part, because it's like I don't want this to just grow, grow, grow, but it feels like at some level something needs to grow, because we've got employees and we want more opportunity and how do we do that? How do we keep what's special and not turn this thing into just another brewery that you see everywhere? Because it's like we're starting to experiment with some different 01:34:00beer styles, some ones that maybe we can turn around in a little bit quicker time, you know like 6 months. But, at the same time, what does that mean? Are we getting kegs? What do we do? Do we need to do that, or can we just say no, this is what we're doing. This is what we're good at. With the industry, too, that you're talking about, the industry's in a strange place.

TEM: That was something Anna and I were talking about, about growth and how you manage/balance the importance of this kind of regional representation and the beer coming from a place. That it's not something that can be turned around quickly but that you balance that with a kind of natural growth of a business. I 01:35:00imagine that this is a time when you're, yeah, maybe struggling is too strong of a word but trying to figure out what that balance is.

PA: I think struggling's a good-I mean, I don't feel like we're in any, well, I don't know. It's weird because we do have, we have a very high priced product. This term that somebody turned me onto, market saturation happens really quick. I deliver a few cases to a bottle shop. It's not the kind of beer, like a Pliny or something where somebody's sitting there and just, oh my gosh! And [gestures rapid consumption motion], they buy it up where they could bring the beer right back and these people just buy it up again. These beers are, we tell people, you know the way we sell it is like it's for special occasions and the best celebrations are spontaneous. That kind of stuff, right? With that, it's like 01:36:00you know I always like being in demand to the point where it's like we have a place to move the beer when the beer's ready. Those times when it's like we have beer coming that's going to be ready here soon, like right now. Of course, I'm kind of waiting on the labels because I lagged on that. But we're waiting on the labels, and once we get the labels it's like, I'm going to have to figure out where it goes. That's not typical and this is normal, like it's a normal position to be in but it's not typical for me. It makes me uncomfortable because I'd rather know where it's going and then it's like, oh, I don't have to worry about it. It's like, is the market changing? Are people not buying these beers anymore? It's so hard to know. We just need such a tiny amount and there's so many people, and everybody that comes in this tasting room, everybody loves the beer. Great. Buy bottles. The information's right in front of me. It's just I 01:37:00think with a little bit more structure, a little bit more forecasting, it's going to help me a little bit, because it's always been this thing I've been holding so tight, to be able to release it a little bit.

TEM: I mean, it seems to me at the same time a lot of people do know about you, but I think there is, I wonder what that, that as we were talking about when we came in, that you gave a lot of tours. People would want to come and see this brewery out in the middle of the forest where there is a log. I wonder what those first few years were like. I don't want to call it an oddity, because I feel like there's a negative connotation with that.

PA: I don't take it that way, no.

TEM: Okay, excellent. That it is something that's very special.

PA: Yeah, yeah.

TEM: There's a specialness and a difference to this facility in this picture that we see behind you. Did you feel like you were kind of on the tour circuit? Did people want to come and look at the oddity? Was that part of this early brewing experience of the business?

PA: Some people, but yeah. Some people were definitely wanting to come see it for those reasons. The first bottle sales I ever did, I just put a sign up at the road because Tumalo Falls has all these, I mean 2 million people a year or whatever, so I put a sign up at the road that said, artisan beer for sale. Some people just pull of the road, right? It's like you go down the road and you see the farm that says fresh eggs or whatever. I always thought that'd be cool. One day Gary Fish showed up. It was great. It was just me and him in the brewery. They were awesome. I think those years with that kind of experience were very 01:39:00important. The time that I took with people to spend in the brewery and talk about stuff, it went a long way, I think, because there's quite a few people-in fact, the other fellow that was with Sean was very much like you today. He walked in and he's like, yeah, I was up at your brewery, I mean, this was probably 2014, 2015, or something. I met you up there. It's like awesome. Yeah. I'll tell you one story about this one day we had up there because it's really crazy, and I felt like I took these kinds of things as signs that I was, it made me feel like I was doing the right thing. I really like coincidences. There was this one day I was up there and these two women came up, came in. I had this sign up at the road, but they had...how did this work out? So, they had come over from Portland. One of the women had flown over from Maine to visit her friend in Portland and they were doing a beer event in Portland. The woman who lived in Portland said, after the beer event she's like Bend has got some good 01:40:00beer. We should go to Bend. So, they came to Bend and they found us in something. They found our brewery somehow and drove up.

So, I'm giving a tour. We're talking about stuff, and it just, it was so funny. So, this woman, I was like, there's something about her. It's just crazy. Whatever. Maybe, it can't... Maine. Anyway, we find out that she and my wife used to seriously work at the same desk back in Everett when we were, like, before I went to Davis. This was Kristin Sikes, and oh, yeah, I remember you, totally. C-o-i-c, not c-o-i-c, but AmeriCorp. It was like, it was nuts, right? It was just kind of like this is crazy and you didn't come to, and she's a beer person and it's just like, whoa. She's so psyched in our brewery. So we were 01:41:00patting ourselves on the back. This is really neat. How crazy. What a coincidence. They're walking out the door, and this car pulls up because they saw the sign that said artisan beer for sale and they're getting out of their car and this woman that Kristin was with had this funny voice, her name was Gilly. One of the ladies that gets out of the car goes, Gilly so-and-so, I haven't seen you in 25 years. Whoa. Do you guys feel that? So weird.

TEM: It's like the pub, the gathering place, but in your driveway.

PA: Yeah, for four people. All across the, yeah. It's so funny. They're all drawn here by something. It was so funny.

TEM: I remember there being a certain level of, somebody told me something like you won't find the address, like it was like a secret. There was a certain secret mystique around...

PA: Yeah, that was my invisible marketing.

TEM: Yeah, well, I know. I think, I mean, obviously it worked because I went, but I think that that was this kind of, the mystique about going out to the woods. It felt so incredibly different from the general growing beer culture.

PA: It was really fun. It's trying to take all the-that was another thing I thought about a lot was turning all the things that could make this project, turn all the negatives that could make this project fail into positives, trying to find ways to turn them into positives. So, the fact that I don't have a sales marketing team. The fact that I don't have money for any of that. I don't have any time for that. How do we do that? Well, we're going to use the place. We're going to get people up here. We're going to cut a tree down and make beer out of it. Those are all things that, yeah, thank you that's fun. This is fun reminiscing. I haven't thought about this in...

TEM: Yeah, well, and I like, like I went to this secret place and then I was 01:43:00like I've been there.

PA: Yeah.

TEM: I've been there. I still have the bottle. I bought a bottle at the Bend bottle shop as I was leaving town and shared it with my parents. Then I saved the bottle. So, now when people come into my office they see the bottle. I get to tell them that I went to the secret brewery. Which now, you know, we're in the tasting room so now it's not quite as secret.

PA: Right. We totally sold out. Admit it.

TEM: That is totally what I was thinking.

PA: [Laughs].

TEM: Well, this place is not...

PA: Well, the other funny thing about that, too, is coincidentally when go to apply for labels for the TTB, they won't let us put our brewery name on there. Well, we still have some bottles, because we finally got permission to use the ale apothecary on the label. Up until a year ago, half a year ago, we put "apoth" on there. You combine that, the fact that our name can't even be on the label to this mysterious brewery up in the woods. It really, it was... I 01:44:00couldn't have planned it. There was no way.

TEM: That's like marketing genius.

PA: Right, exactly.

TEM: You even involved the TTB.

PA: Right, yeah, exactly. I said I only know how to brew, but yeah, I know how to market.

TEM: I would love for the historical record for you to talk about the brewing process and how what you do is different and how it starts to where we get to here. What is different about what you do?

PA: On a very basic level it's not different. You know? This is something that's so funny because my wife will tell you there was this point where I was like, why am I doing this? I'm doing the same thing as everybody else, blah, blah, blah. She's like, are you kidding me? You know, look at your brewery. You do not do it like-yes. I'm talking from a brewer standpoint. But I do. I use hops. I 01:45:00use the malt. We mash it. We boil it and all that stuff. But I think where my understanding of this stuff is, we are, one of my core principle mantas in the beginning was everything is going to be done in wood. Anything I can do in wood, we're going to do it in wood. That was probably ore of a marketing decision than a, or even just a business man decision, like what I can afford more than a brewing decision, but it's grown into, I think, the house character. The more time that I do this, it's like... so, I understand how the brewing process works, as far as like, you know, I've done a lot of brewing. I've done a lot of production brewing, and I understand the very basic steps that need to happen. Then, with those steps, is I have certain things that I want to accomplish. I'm 01:46:00going to just bounce around because I'm just going to assume that everybody knows how beer is made. We'll get there. Right? We'll get there. Our efficiency's, you know, if you mash grain in a wooden barrel, your efficiency is not going to be the same as if you have a mash that you can steam jacket the thing and run through all your enzyme rests and all that stuff. Our filtering situation isn't going to be as good, either. So, I decided that I would leave the mash in there overnight to get more extraction. This is also at the same time that I was really concerned about this brewery not growing. This was an easy way for me to, I'm not going to be able to make that beer. If I'm mashing at night and I can't, it's going to make my brew day easier the next day and I will be limiting how much beer I can make in a week because I won't be able to 01:47:00just stack brew after brew after brew. Well, I think we're getting, so all this is built out of like, it's not just about the beer. It's about how I want my life to work around this little brewery and then trying to make the best beer possible. So, we mash overnight. We boil in a copper kettle. We'll either use last year's crop of Cascades from Goschie Farms or we'll use an aged version, depending on the beer. So, we're not using many different varieties of hops because we're not a hop-driven brewery. But that's also a practical decision. How am I going to store all these varieties of hops? How would I maintain a contract. It's like, well, if I just buy one hop I can get enough for myself for a year and then have enough to age, and then that's just what we'll do. We can keep it small.

TEM: What is the impact on the beer of aged hops?

PA: Well, hops act as a mild preservative. So, the only reason that we used aged ones is for the preservative quality. It's basically you want to make a beer that doesn't have any hop character, but we don't want the bacteria to go completely nuts and acidify the crap out of it.

TEM: Okay.

PA: I learned that, you know, I learned that, we'll say the hard way, I guess. I made some of the early beers I made a few without hops, and it's like, oh, that's why the lambic breweries use aged hops. That's why we read about that in the book. It's a real thing. Then cultivating this yeast. I wanted to use native microflora. So, that was kind of a challenge getting it going, because I didn't know a whole heck of a lot about it. I didn't do a lot of research and you hear about Trevor over at De Garde and how he selected his area based on the microflora. It's like, here we are living in this place that I want to stay. It's like, please, please, please, you know? I hope it works. Trying to develop 01:49:00that and find some way to continuously make beer, because that was the other thing. We had this tiny little brew kettle. It's all money based. I can't afford to have a large brewery. I don't want to have a large brewery. But that means we need to be making beer at the time, where in lambic breweries they have larger brew systems and they only brew part of the year to take advantage of that spontaneous thing and it's like I can't do that. I have to be able to brew year round in order to be able to make this work for us, financially. My plan was to find a way to use the native yeast and not do the coolship lambic thing. So, that's why our fermenters look the way they do. We harvest in pitch. Every fermentation is basically an inoculation of sorts.

It took us a while to get to that stage where we had yeast that was kind of acting a predictable way, something that we could work with. I guess it was me 01:50:00at that time. What went along with that, it's like if I'm going to be harvesting and repitching this yeast, I want to have clean morter. I want to have clear work because in bigger breweries they have this linear conical vessels. So the yeast will flocculate out with the proteins and all that and you can draw the beer off the top. Here I am brewing in these flat bottom, oak tanks. That's not possible. So, here we are harvesting and anyway, I came to the conclusion that if I have high protein wert. I don't have a whirlpool. I don't have the opportunity to be able to filter that stuff out, my yeast harvesting is going to continually get contaminated with more and more of this trub the more I use it. So, I went to running out of my kettle into what I'm calling a settling barrel-settle-ing, not settling-and so we leave that overnight, too. Here we are 01:51:00again. So, it's like grind the mash in the evening on day 1. The next day we run off the brew kettle and boil and add the hops and then knock out to that settling barrel to rest for another evening. It takes us 40 hours to go from grinding grain to pitching yeast, which, in modern brewery you can do that in 5. We run through a little heat exchanger into this barrel where we rest it overnight, and both hot and the cold breaks, so those protein particles, will settle out. The following day we can empty our fermenter to aging barrels, clean them out, and transfer that clear work into our fermenter and then add the yeast we harvested a week before, and viola. We get a fermentation and then we can use that yeast without making it all dirty. All these things are interwoven with the fact that I want to keep the brewery small. I want to do the right thing for the beer and we don't have any money. But through that process the fact that the 01:52:00beer sits in the mash tunnel overnight, we get this mild oxidation, we get this, I think we get more polyphenol tannin extraction that add to the mouth feel. This overnight reduction of these tannins, or the trub, I think create a better ferment and they're all in wood where there's organisms living, all that stuff is contributing to the final product in ways that I couldn't have sat down and, you know, said this is the beer I want to make. I hear some brewers talk about that and some people have these palettes where they can actually taste something and say, well, this is what I want to make and I'm going to make it. It was more exciting for me to set something up and then use this knowledge that I've gained 01:53:00my interests and wants and desires and see if we could make something work that would be different.

TEM: Does it change, and I'm looking at the open doors, does it change over the year? Do you feel like the beer that you make in October tastes different from the beer that you would make in April?

PA: Yes. We don't have any really hard date on that yet. That's something I'm really hoping in the next couple of years that we can start working towards tasting things. We know for a fact, so we also do natural bottle conditioning with honey. That takes a long time. We know that that, during the year, acts differently. We see it. We also know that if we leave beer out in a coolship, like to do a spontaneous beer, how the yeast load looks different than the stuff that we're harvesting and repitching, even though they're kind of coming from 01:54:00the same place. We leave the beer out in a coolship. We'll get about 70% Brettanomyces and 30% wild saccharomyces, where, with our harvesting repitching, we see the exact opposite. It's like more wild saccharomyces and far less bread.

TEM: That's fascinating.

PA: Yeah, and it's like, it's really cool to learn these things. Another thing is trying to, you said manual. The manual part is very, very important. I have this friend in town, Hunter Dahlberg, Orion Forge. He's a blacksmith. He made all this stuff, all this metal stuff. When I was designing my brewry, developing my brewery, even just the idea of the brewery, I had dropped this coaster back from Belgium when my wife and I traveled there. It was for this brewery and on it was this monk with wood barrels and he's stirring this stuff in a wood tank 01:55:00and I was like, this is amazing. That is awesome. That's the kind of beer I want to make. I went and looked up this brewery online and I found a picture of their brewhouse and it was like state of the art, automated. It didn't look anything like the coaster. I was so mad. I was just like, you jerks. It got me thinking about my buddy Hunter because he has his blacksmith business and his logo is this guy with an anvil pounding metal into shape. That's what he does. It is what he does. His energy is transferred into the stuff that he's making. That stuff I learned in the early days of Deschutes. That's why we're so proud of what we're doing. We were part of this process and I really feel strongly about that. That's why lucky Jarret now and Hans and Conner down here, too. It is very manual, but that's the kind of stuff I think only matters if you think it does. 01:56:00I think somebody I think could make beer that tastes really, really good on an automated system and that's great. I drink plenty of it, but this is important to me. I think it's important.

TEM: What has the transition been like for you to actually have employees?

PA: Surprisingly easy. I mean, Conner who was here, he's got the mustache. He was my, I mean, I had a kid who was helping me tie knots. Originally we would tie knots on our bottles. That was another little...

TEM: I think I have one of those. I kept the string.

PA: Yeah. The string on there. It would really pop on the shelf. Nobody was doing that. Stacy and I after work we would tie knots and stuff. So, I had this kid Jeff Gomberg, who was helping me do that for a while and he was telling me 01:57:00about a friend of his and this kid was a baker, fermentation gardener guy. It's like he just would love this. So, Conner came in and started tying knots and slowly just worked his way into doing everything. That was a really easy transition because with my not understanding the scope of what I would get myself into, that freed me up to do some of the business stuff. So, yeah, as that's gone on. It was the same way. Jarret was brewing. He used to be the beer curator at Crow's Feet when Crows Feet opened. He moved to Oregon to get a job at a brewery and had not had much success and was just like, I'll do anything. I'll learn whatever. The same kind of thing. He grew into that position and now he's-so, it's, I don't know. I try to say yes as much as possible. It's worked out.

TEM: It sounds like it wasn't all at once.

PA: No. Not at all.

TEM: It was a slower time for you to get acclimated to not being the only one.

PA: Yeah. Actually, this past year-so, we opened the tasting room in May, and prior to that Conner and Jarret were the only employees I had. May we opened the tasting room, so we got Kirstin and Nora and my wife came on to run the tasting room. At the same time we moved into this space and we got Micah to help with the labeling and we got Hans to come over and help in the cellar. In that one year, we went from myself and two to 8. So, yeah, that last year and a half has been, but it's been great. I think everybody kind of understands what we're doing.

TEM: I'm curious, I imagine early on, so we were talking about the tours that 01:59:00you gave, do you feel like you're explaining what you do less now?

PA: Oh yeah. We have a tasting room, and Kirstin's so good at it over there.

TEM: [Laughs].

PA: Yeah. It's way less, way, way less. I used to... yeah. It's really great, because it was, as much as I loved it, it was at our house. Another story. I mean, just because these are the things. There was one day in the wintertime and it's like 4:30 and it's dark. Pitch dark outside, and I'm up in Spencer's room playing with him and ____, and I hear a car come in the driveway and I'm like, oh, Momma's home. Great. We'll see her in a few minutes. So, nobody comes in the house. That's weird. I look out the window but it's so dark you can't see anything.

So, I go down there and I walk down the stairs and at our sliding glass door 02:00:00there's this guy and he's waving. I open the door. He's from Japan, by himself. He hardly speaks any English. He's like beer geek [points toward himself]. Beer geek. I was like, oh! So, then I just open the door to the brewery and he's like, oh so many barrels! You know? He was just, he had driven, I mean from like, somebody told him about our brewery. He had flown over and put together his whole little trip and was up at Hood River and somebody told him about our brewery and he drove all the way... and it was winter, like wow. Those are great stories, but I'm not entirely sad that they're all gone for the most part. We still, if somebody really wants to go see the brewery we make sure that we get them up there. There's plenty of times in this tasting room where you get people from all over the world, and it's really cool. It's still happening.

TEM: It's funny, though. I think that the pictures here, you know, it's not the same as being there, but there is this sense of that.

PA: Well, this, yeah, this is designed to be our flow chart wall.

TEM: Oh.

PA: So, we've got Gail. We've got the Klanns who grow the barley and malt it. Then we got the inputs with the water and the air and the brewery and it comes out. See, you got it.

TEM: I got it. Okay, so it worked.

PA: Thank you. Perfect. Yeah.

TEM: I am curious to hear about your thoughts on your own growth, and Anna and I both listened to an interview that you did on the Uncivilized podcast 2 months ago, 3 months ago.

PA: Yeah, that was really fun.

TEM: I almost want to just play it for [laughs].

PA: What did I say about growth? Yeah, I wonder if it's changed in the last 2 months.

TEM: Well, I think that you gave Anchor as an example of good growth, that the company has stayed vibrant but hasn't outgrown itself.

PA: Well, they've stayed relatively flat. I think that was what I was getting at, is they haven't been on this hyperbolic...

TEM: Meteoric, yeah. One thing, though, that surprised us both was when, I don't know if she asked it or if you just said it, but the question of would you ever sell came up.

PA: Oh, sure.

TEM: That's certainly something that is, lots of people talk about now.

PA: About people selling?

TEM: Yeah. I'm curious about, I don't even know how to exactly formulate my 02:03:00question, so I'll do a flowchart.

PA: Nice, okay.

TEM: This is so associated with your home, your family, your home. You move here at least from an access standpoint that people can now come here. What are your thoughts on what the future holds? What do you want the future to hold? How has maybe that separation from not having somebody knocking on your door at 4:30 in the evening now that you have this space? If we now do an equal sign for all of that stuff equals a question that is, how do you feel about where the company...

PA: Do you have a barf bag? [Laughs]. No.

TEM: Maybe I do. I don't know. I have lots of bags.

PA: I think it's very exciting, and I think once I get my wife up on how we can handle this distribution financial forecasting thing, I think it's going to be a lot more enjoyable for me. It's confusing, super confusing, because, and I mean I guess the first point is I honestly believe that nobody would ever buy this business because of all that. It's too associated with me and my family. The process is too slow, and the whole existence of the thing is based on this limited amount. So, when people are like if somebody wants to buy are you going to sell it? I mean, it's like, yeah if somebody, I mean, it's just ridiculous. 02:05:00If somebody came and offered me a whole bunch of money, that I'd be like, no. There's other options, too. There's invested people that work for us and what does that look like in the future. That may be an opportunity. I don't know. I think we're setting it up for, we're trying to set it up for the long haul. The place is so important that there's a lot of times people are like when are you moving the brewery to town? It's like I'm not moving the brewery to town. That's our identity. That's where we're getting our good stuff. That's so built in. If somebody else bought the business from me and then moved it that would make way more sense than me moving the brewery to town. I'd be shooting myself in the foot. So, like we built this little brewhouse, and the existing brewery is just 02:06:00going to be the cellar. We separated it from our house a little bit better. But, it's still there. We've got, I'm going to bring in another 20 foot container on Friday to hold our barrels. So, we have our malt trailer and we've got our barrel trailer. It's like, I'm trying to set it up in a way that works for us and for everybody. The challenge really comes when we get down here, because up at the brewery it's pretty easy to see what the needs are going to be. We could maybe have a larger kettle, but it can pretty much make more beer than we need. Actually in the last 2 or 3 weeks I decided, because we were brewing 2 to 3 times a week. Every other week we were brewing over the weekend. Conner was 02:07:00doing a spontaneous beer. It's like you know what? We just need to go down to 2 times a week because that barrel cellar can't hold very many barrels and we've got so many bottles, because also the first of the year we went to holding onto our bottles for 6 months. We had been only holding onto them for 2 to 3. This is a part of forecasting. It's better for the beer. All that stuff. But we need places to store it. We're starting to fill up there.

I really like it here. But where do we move? What do we do? If we did move, I think there's just so many unknowns. I think the excitement is in trying new things and so we are, we've got this plan, we're doing this wild logger. We're going to harvest some crazy yeast up in the mountains. At the very least, we'll just be brewing some wild logger anyway. Then these lower alcohol Saison-y farmhouse beers, beers that we can turn around, like I was telling you guys, in 02:08:006 months. But what do we... those are fun and we want to drink them, but then what? Do I put them in kegs? Then what does that-is that going to affect us negatively or positively? If it's positive, well what does that mean? I mean, you'd have to have a cold room or we'd have to have glycol. It's kind of, my wife is probably just so sick of hearing me, but this and then that and this and I don't know. But, I think, luckily for us what we do is going fine. It's just about knowing, I mean, the process takes almost 2 years. So, these decisions that we're making now we don't really see the impact for quite a while. So, I don't know. One example, so I was telling you we went from 3 to 8 employees. 02:09:00Within that same time we went from having about 100 barrels over in our barrel storage area to having over 200. Sure, we've been making beer for 6 years, and we're always brewing more than we bottled and always bottling more than we sold so we could have growth. That's what's worked out so well, is that coincidentally the timing has worked out where this place came along and we moved in that space first and then we moved into here and required employees. It all happened very organically, which is great. But we've always had this thing going on. Now, we're like, I kind of want that teeter totter to kind of do the Anchor thing, but it's really, really hard. I feel like I've been pushing rocks uphill and it just went to the top of the hill and now I'm like [mimics holding rock in place]. It's really crazy.

TEM: Well, it was funny. I feel like when I asked that and then listening to you answer that it was the expectation that growth is necessary or that growth is 02:10:00always good or that there is this inevitability to it, and there are limits to this space.

PA: Yeah.

TEM: So, in a way that is the boundary.

PA: Mm-hmm.

TEM: That only so much can happen in that space.

PA: Yeah, and we're pushing right up, I mean, today before you guys showed up, when Sean showed up, we were in the cellar (Conner, Hans, and I) and we were talking about, well, we could put some barrels there. If we move these things over. I mean, we're having those conversations now. That's exactly what's happening. We think we can get enough bins in here to hold 6 months' worth of beer. We're getting really close to having that. The hard part is because after 02:11:00all that, so, say we have the right amount of barrels in there to supply the right amount of bottle bins in here, it's going to fall on me to make sure that the beer gets the labels and the distribution on time. If it doesn't, we're screwed. It's like, you know, Arney get your stuff out of here. We've got to move more stuff in. But, I think that's what's got to happen. Another funny element to this thing is when I started in the brewing industry, the progression was a bottle line, cellar, brewhouse. You worked your way up to the brewhouse, where I've run mine exactly the opposite. I start people in the brewhouse and I did this to myself, I start in the brewhouse and I worked my way into the cellar and Conner took over the brewery and then I worked my way into the, I did the bottling. I held onto bottling as long as I could. A year and a half in I'm 02:12:00doing the bottling. This is like, we've got, you know? Then it's, I think is just that progressing. It's getting to that very final stage of getting the labels on time, having the distribution lined up, and getting the barrel out the door. Then I'll just close the book and be like, it works.

TEM: Then the wildness of the yeast will make it unpredictable.

PA: That's that 6-month window. We've got it built in. In the early days, I didn't make enough beer. We had to go with what we had. Fortunately, it worked out. Every time, almost, it was really odd. It just worked out, where now, we're getting to the point now where we get together and we'll pull barrels and pull samples and talk about the beer and decide to do something different. We've got, 02:13:00I think the quality's getting better, but just the luxury of having options has been so wonderful.

TEM: One of my questions is what are you excited about doing next but I feel like you covered that nicely, and also about the kind of experimentation, what you're experimenting with. What do you think, when you have time to reflect, what do you think your impact has been on the local brewing industry, the community, the larger brewing industry? Do you think about your larger impact on what's happening in this community or in the industry?

PA: I guess when... you know Brian Coombs over at Alesong? You know him? He's 02:14:00told me a couple times about he went to this speech I gave at the Master Brewers Association here in Bend in 2014. I've had that experience happen a few times with some people who were at that. It's kind of crazy to think that my actions in however frivolous and silly and self-centered they were, because they were all myself. I was driving this and wanting to make things work for me, but trying to instill things that were important to me in the bigger picture. To think that they've reached other people in these positives ways and actually encourages them to go out and do something has, it's, it floors me. It's crazy. I don't know how many, I don't think too many businesses will be affected by 02:15:00what I'm doing. I don't think I'm going out and spending a 401k... I just, I'm very happy that my, I guess I'll say my life philosophy is being, it's not acknowledged, it's being... it just so many things I believe about human nature and the way the world works have been, to me, I believe that they're true because of this.

TEM: Like, validated?

PA: Validated! That's the word I was looking for. Exactly. Validated. One of my favorite things that I tell my kids is like magic is real because this was all in my head. It all started up here and now it's like all around and you can touch it and I can talk about it with people and I get invited to Italy and our beer's in Japan. It's like, whoa. It's really, really incredible. The brewing 02:16:00industry is, I think it's such a unique thing that's going on right now where people are collaborating and the consumer's involved and there's this excitement. There just isn't a heck of a lot of other industries out there where this kind of crossover and stuff happens. You know what I mean?

TEM: That was actually one of our questions, was about exciting collaborations and what are some of the, obviously the Deschutes one is [laughs]. We are here in this 30th anniversary week.

PA: I love it. It's so great.

TEM: What was it like to go back? What is it like now to collaborate on an anniversary?

PA: It's fantastic. They're just some of my favorite people, Veronica and Ryan and Ben. Just, you know, I mean going over there and just kind of like we were doing, reminiscing, and oh, this used to be that and this didn't used to be there, observing that kind of stuff. It's really exciting. Then just on top of all that the fact that I was asked to participate was another one of those, oh my gosh, that's crazy. It's pretty awesome.

TEM: It's a good week.

PA: Yeah, it is.

TEM: Sunny weather.

PA: Yep.

TEM: What did you think I was going to ask that I didn't ask and/or what would 02:18:00you like to say for the good of the historical record [laughs].

PA: [Laughs].

TEM: No pressure for that last one.

PA: Yeah. That's-well, you covered way more. I didn't realize how in-depth we were going to go. You almost got me tearing up here, geeze. No, I don't know. Yeah. You asked far more, we got, I mean we were talking about Davis, California and stuff. It's pretty amazing. But it was nice. I really enjoyed it because so many of those things kind of came back to become part of the.. you're good at what you do. It's amazing. You've done this before.

TEM: I have done this before. I think it's interesting, though, from my perspective, I can always see how parts of people's lives connect. I think as we're living our lives we just don't necessarily have that perspective of that outsider perspective.

PA: Yeah. Well, I guess, you know the things that we didn't talk about, we didn't talk about my 1972 flatbed that we bring the barrels down on.

TEM: Yes.

PA: We didn't talk about my 1976 Dodge box van and sometimes those things are on my mind. Like, I think they're good for, they're really good. It's just like you talk about growth, it's like what's going to happen there? Meaning like, you know, there's ways that this can be done which are more reliable, but will they deliver the same thing in the same way? I think we're going to have to end it like a French movie.

TEM: Excellent.

PA: Because, yeah, there's just so many unknowns right now.

TEM: What's the pink bike that's been behind you.

PA: Oh! Stacy's bike that gets stored down here. I was hoping it would get on here because we move it around. We're running out of space and we're always like your bike, your bike. She's like, but I do like to ride it to town. We live out so far. It's fun to have a bike. It's like, yeah. Well, now it made it on this interview.

TEM: Now the bike always has to be there and people will be looking for it.

PA: Sometimes I'll ride it to go get lunch, too.

TEM: It's got a nice basket.

PA: Yeah, a nice basket, little flower on it. I can't take myself too seriously.

TEM: Well, thank you very much.

PA: Thank you! Yeah, wow. That was crazy, you guys.