Another possible Bend brewery

Bend BeerI’ve been a bit behind on getting to this news (the last couple of weeks I’ve been out of town a lot), but a week ago Sunday the Bulletin ran an article titled, “New brewery a possibility for Bend area” (currently behind the paywall, unfortunately). In it, it talks about how DRW resident Dan Leach met with city planners about a brewery on the edge of the Old Mill District. From the article:

In documents on file with the city, Dan Leach wrote that he would like to open a brewpub in a 3,400-square foot suite of the Old Mill Marketplace building between Arizona Avenue and Industrial Way.

The business would have seating for 95 and would offer a limited food menu and beers on tap, including some made in-house. It proposes making 300 barrels of beer a year, about three times as much as what he home-based Bend brewery Below Grade Brewing produces.

It would stand out among the other breweries in Central Oregon by making beer exclusively for consumption on site, said Leach, 45, an accountant who wants to start the business next spring with one or more partners.

“It’s not a production brewery,” Leach said. “That’s not the plan at all. And so that’s the differentiation—a new beer experience.”

No name yet, I suppose we could call this “Marketplace Brewery” just to keep things straight—at the rate we’re going, Bend alone will end up with something like 15 breweries if this all goes through.

And, this “new beer experience”—making beer for consumption on site—is hardly new; that’s the model for most of the brewpubs in town, including the newly-opened Crux just up the road from this proposed location. No real differentiation there.

2 comments

  1. I don’t know. As long as people keep buying beer it’s hard to say.

    A more pertinent point I think is, how soon will the City of Bend’s wastewater issues impact the local breweries?

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