Skip to main contentWhile the brewing community was fixated on the Great American Beer Festival earlier this month, other competitions happening around the same time resulted in some additional notable wins for Oregon breweries—including one that was on the short list of the best in the nation.
Oregon City Brewing came in at No. 7 this year in the U.S. Beer Championship’s annual top 10 ranking.
The business also nabbed five medals: two golds for a barrel-aged fruit sour and a British imperial stout, a pair of silvers for a red wine barrel-aged beer and Brett beer, and another Brett brew earned a bronze.
“I am so proud of our phenomenal brewmaster, David Vohden,” Oregon City Brewing owner Bryce Morrow tells WW. “He is a creative force of nature, one of the best young brewers and an even better person. I’m confident we’re just getting started.”
Breweries from around the globe entered more than 8,000 beers in the contest, which has 140 style categories—more than any other competition of its kind. Pandemic safety concerns meant that judging took place in both the U.S. and Canada, with adjudicators on the American side spreading out for blind tastings inside a 6,000-square-foot Amish pole barn on a small farm in Oxford, Ohio.
Oregon City Brewing took home two additional bronze medals from the North American Beer Awards, which were also held this month.
The haul is welcome recognition for the company as it continues to grow. On Sept. 20, Oregon City Brewing submitted building permits to begin work on its second location: the Canby Beer Library. The New School beer website was first to report news about the expansion.
“This is an adaptive reuse project,” Morrow adds, “converting the old Canby municipal library into a multitenant community gathering hub.”
The spinoff should also buoy that city’s beer drinkers since it remains one of the largest municipalities in the state without a brewery.
Once construction on the library is completed, customers can expect four food hall-style micro kitchens that open to a sweeping common seating area. While production will remain at the original location in Oregon City, kegs will only have to travel a mere 9 miles from the brewery to its new outpost. And since the business has a brewery public house license in Canby, brewers there will be able to blend and package from a barrel-aging cellar.
Tenants for three retail suites are already in the works—a salon and two boutiques. But perhaps most exciting will be the arrival of the Willamette Valley’s latest rooftop patio: a nearly 2,000-square-foot deck overlooking Wait Park.
The tentative opening date for the Canby Beer Library is summer 2022.
In the meantime, Oregon City Brewing’s new beer garden and food cart pod should begin operating in late November. Earlier this year, the business began converting three 7,000-square-foot gravel parking lots surrounding the taproom.
While a late fall opening might not sound ideal for an outdoor dining area in the Pacific Northwest, Morrow planned accordingly by including a handsome canopy made of Doug fir beams and locally produced Lock-Deck kiln-dried lumber laminations.
The food cart lineup has also been secured. Eight vendors will be parked outside the tap house: Alani Mediterranean, E-San Thai, smoked meat purveyor Jackpot Foods, Ko Sisters Seoul Food, Mexican-inspired The Meddling Lime, Nacho Time, Olympia Provisions, and Pete’s Meats Barbecue.