Remembering Lompoc
The following remembrance comes from Zach Beckwith, currently the Head Brewer at Bend Brewing Company. Zach was the Director of Brewery Operations at what was then called the New Old Lompoc from 2008-2012.
Guest Post by Zach Beckwith
Zack during his Lompoc tenure.
I wasn’t shocked when I heard the news; I had heard the whispers and rumors. I witnessed Portland changing year by year, mixed-use condo by mixed-use condo. But when I read the official announcement that Lompoc Brewing was closing for good, I felt a new type of melancholy, not just for founder Jerry Fechter and his employees but for the Portland brewing community as a whole.
I moved to Portland in 2008 after getting fired for insubordination from my first brewing job in Arizona. For weeks I learned to navigate Portland by visiting every brewery in the city looking for a job. Newly-opened Hopworks wasn’t hiring. “Try Bridgeport,” someone at Amnesia told me. My year and a half of experience left me “overqualified” for the job I interviewed for at Alameda. As my search continued for weeks, then months, I considered giving up on my dream.
I had been to every brewery in the city multiple times to no avail when I decided to try my luck one last time at New Old Lompoc. I found my way through the video poker machines to the little brewery in the back where I found Ty Reeder washing side-bung kegs on a three-basin sink. I sheepishly presented my resume and then we began to talk. Ty told me he was working as a stopgap between brewers and for me to keep showing up. I kept showing up and soon was invited to meet the rest of the crew at the annual holiday beer release party. After introductions and more than a few pints of LSD and Condor Pale Ale, I remember getting up from the table and hearing Jerry say, “Well, I guess there goes our new brewer.”
“Lompoc was an original. It embodied the funkier aspects of “old Portland” while serving as the vanguard in new Portland’s hippest streets. Lompoc was about beer, it was about people, it was about history with its ties to the Horsebrass and Don Younger, but above all else Lompoc was about fun.”
I have read a lot of commentary in the wake of the announcement that Lompoc failed to keep up with the times and the lineup was stagnant, but I don’t think that is true. If anything, the beers were ahead of their time. Every year Lompoc released 8 holiday beers on the same day, ranging from a one-year aged barleywine and imperial IPA to 8 Malty Nights, a chocolate rye porter blessed by a local rabbi. Lagers are hot right now; Lompoc was making Saazall Pilsner, Heaven’s Helles, and Oktoberfest over a decade ago. Customers demand a new IPA every week; well, Lompoc started a rotating IPA series before almost anyone else. Barrel aged beers? Check. Culinary inspired beers? Check. Sure, I made my fair share of C-Note IPA but also brewed a Belgian barleywine, a grapefruit and peppercorn saison, single varietal coffee stouts, a dark mild, and more.
Beyond the beer, Lompoc always valued people both employees and customers. I remember early in my tenure when “Arctic Blast 2008” blanketed Portland with snow, Jerry used his mini-van as a shuttle bus to get employees to and from work safe. When the original site, New Old Lompoc, was demolished to make way for apartments, Jerry made sure the employees were able to find jobs either at the other Lompoc pubs or elsewhere. Pittsburgh Steeler fans and Timbers fans alike found community inside Lompoc pubs.
Team Lompoc at the 2009 Brewer’s Summer Games
Lompoc was an original. It embodied the funkier aspects of “old Portland” while serving as the vanguard in new Portland’s hippest streets. Lompoc was about beer, it was about people, it was about history with its ties to the Horsebrass and Don Younger, but above all else Lompoc was about fun. As Portland continues to shed “legacy” breweries in favor of hip new haze houses, heed the warning of Joni Mitchell that “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”
I started at Lompoc as a 24-year-old brewer trying to find his place in the most exciting beer city in the country. By the time I left four years later for my first head brewer job, I had made lifelong friends, brewed hundreds of different beers and my wife and I were expecting our first child. Lompoc helped make me not only the brewer I am today but the person I am. For that I will always be thankful.
Photos courtesy Zach Beckwith.