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When Pelican Brewing opened its doors in May 1996, its hometown of Pacific City bore little resemblance to the bustling beach community we all know today. As brewmaster and co-owner Darron Welch tells it, summer weekends were the only sure thing when it came to tourists dropping by the otherwise sleepy burg.
“We’d get busy for a brief summertime window,” he says. But fall, winter and spring? “Boy, it was pretty quiet around here.”
Three guaranteed months of business isn’t exactly a number that any owner wants to bet on, particularly in an industry with traditionally tight margins. The first few years were indeed mired in unprofitability, leading Welch to always wonder whether Pelican would survive the next slow season.
Twenty-five years and three brewpubs later—with another on the way in Lincoln City—Pelican is as much an Oregon Coast icon as Haystack Rock (which can be seen from the patio at the flagship) or the towering sand dune at Cape Kiwanda (which, incidentally, sits across the parking lot from that same restaurant). And while red ink in those early years might have given Welch pause, his beers have since become some of the most celebrated in Oregon.
One such triumph was Kiwanda Cream Ale, the brewery’s first summer seasonal, one of its most award-winning beers and an unlikely staple in Pelican’s expansive lineup.
Welch’s love affair with cream ales actually predates his time at Pelican. While studying abroad in Germany as a college student, he used the opportunity to also expand his knowledge of the country’s legendary lagers by bicycling from beer hall to beer hall. That experience coupled with Welch’s fascination with pre-Prohibition brewing are what inspired him to develop Kiwanda Cream Ale for Pelican’s opening day.
“I had this historical thread that was an ongoing interest,” he explains. “I had an interest in German-style beers, and I pulled those two things together.”
But when it came time to actually nail down that opening-day tap list, Welch found himself outvoted by the other owners. They wanted a wheat beer on draft instead, thinking it would appeal to diners who were uncertain about ordering anything other than the big domestics their palates were accustomed to.
Instead, the crisp, golden-hued Kiwanda would debut as a seasonal one month later, and remained as such for two summers. But Welch soon discovered that customers—especially those who weren’t “beer people,” as he puts it—would walk in, peruse the menu and routinely ask for the lightest beer.
More often than not, that was Kiwanda Cream Ale. The beer’s sales numbers soon eclipsed that of the wheat ale, Kiwanda replaced the wheat beer as a year-round staple after two summers, and—more than two decades later—it is among Pelican’s best-loved beers.
Today, Welch sees Kiwanda’s success as emblematic of what keeps Pelican not just relevant but thriving 25 years on: a wide variety of easy-drinking ales and lagers that taste just as good on the back patio as they do in a geeky craft beer bar.
“I always felt like it was our way of demonstrating that light-colored beer didn’t have to be flavorless beers,” he says. “And these days, I think part of the ongoing appeal of Kiwanda is that it has that crisp, aromatic, refreshing character about it. It’s very approachable in that regard, but at the same time, if you want to dive into it and dissect flavors, there’s quite a bit there to unravel.”
Get It Here: 33180 Cape Kiwanda Drive, Pacific City, 503-965-7007, pelicanbrewing.com. 10:30 am-10 pm Sunday-Thursday, 10:30 am-11 pm Friday-Saturday. 1371 S Hemlock St., Cannon Beach, 503-908-3377. Noon-9 pm daily. 1708 1st St., Tillamook. Noon-6 pm daily.
