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An Oregon City brewery has turned what was originally a temporary location into a permanent home with the purchase of a restaurant and convenience store in Estacada.
Bent Shovel Brewing announced late last week that it had acquired the Viewpoint Restaurant and McIver Outpost Store on South Springwater Road. The Bent Shovel Beer Garden is adjacent to those businesses.
Owners Rick and Shelly Strauss began serving at that location two years ago, after they were forced to shutter their original tap house and patio just seven minutes away in Oregon City. The two ran their tasting room out of a big red barn next to their home, but neighbors became concerned about traffic congestion in the rural neighborhood.
Just a few weeks after the closure, Viewpoint’s owners stepped up and offered Bent Shovel a lease arrangement so that the Strausses could continue to do on-premises sales. The resulting beer garden—now complete with heated tents, fire pits and board games—proved to be so popular that the couple stuck to that location and even expanded their customer base.
With the purchase of the 10,000-square-foot restaurant complex, Bent Shovel is poised for more growth. Located near the entrance to Milo McIver State Park, the site has long been a favorite stop for recreationalists who come to the area for rafting, hiking and the world-class, 27-hole disc golf course.
“We are so fortunate to be in a position to make this leap with Bent Shovel,” Rick Strauss stated in a press release. “This expansion will allow us to serve Bent Shovel beer to even more people, and the possibilities ahead of us are endless.”
Bent Shovel was founded in 2015, four years after longtime home cook Rick Strauss won Best in Show at the Cheers to Belgian Beers homebrew competition. The prize allowed him to scale up and work on Block 15′s professional brewhouse in Corvallis, setting the stage for him to open his own production facility.
Strauss continues to brew a wide range of styles—including the signature Black Spade Stout—on a 10-barrel system located in his retrofitted barn on the outskirts of Oregon City.
Related: Oregon City’s Bent Shovel Brewing Is Back Open, With a New Beer Garden