Number of the Day: 46%

I was digging around the deeper recesses of my hard drive in search of a document this week when I stumbled across a file from 1999. I had just started writing my Willamette Week column, and must have reached out to the Oregon Brewers Guild for a list of breweries as contacts. The file seemed to be a working document Mike was using, but it contained contacts for most of the breweries, including owners, marketing folks, and brewers.

Aside from the pleasure of seeing a bunch of forgotten names for the first time in years, I was struck by how many breweries were no longer in business—and how many I didn’t remember ever existing. We’ll get to the numbers in a minute, but just 46% of the breweries are still around—though that “just” may be misleading. The number strikes me as far, far better than you’d see in other industries. (just 20% of US businesses survive to their 20th year.) It is a lesson in impermanence, or stability, but also a reminder that a lot of promising little breweries never really get off the ground. Keep on reading for a list of the breweries.

As ever, brewery counts are weird. At the time, OBG executive director Mike Sherwood identified 78 breweries in the state, but that included all the McMenamins and the multiple locations of a few breweries—mostly the chain breweries that were popular in the ‘90s like BJ’s and Big Ram. (In retrospect, the idea of turning craft beer into an Appleby’s was flawed—but so classically ‘90s.) Prune out the multiples and there were exactly fifty breweries on the list operating in the state at the time. Twenty-three are still with us.

Extant (23)

Barley Brown’s (Baker City), Bend Brewing (Bend), Big Ram (now just “Ram,” Salem), Bill's Tavern and Brewhouse (Cannon Beach), BJ's Pizza and Brewery (Portland), Caldera (Ashland), Cascade Lakes (Redmond), Deschutes (Bend), Full Sail (Hood River), Golden Valley (McMinnville), Lucky Labrador (Portland), McMenamins (15 brewing facilities), Mia & Pia's (Klamath Falls) Mt. Hood (Government Camp), Old Market (Portland), Pacific Rim (now Astoria Brewing, Astoria), Pelican (Pacific City), Philadelphia's (now 13 Virtues, Portland), Rogue Ales (Newport), Steelhead (Eugene), Terminal Gravity (Enterprise), Widmer (Portland), Wild River (Cave Junction)

RIP (27)

Alameda (Portland), Bank Brewing (Coos Bay), Big Horse (Hood River), Blue Pine (Grants Pass), Bridgeport (Portland), Columbia Gorge (Gresham), Cascade Micro (Salem), Eugene City (Eugene), Hair of the Dog (Portland), Hawks (Roseburg), Lompoc (Portland), Mt. Angel (Mount Angel), Oregon Trader (Albany), Oregon Trail (Corvallis), Osprey (Medford), Portland Brewing (Portland), Rock Bottom (Portland). Saxer (Portland), Siletz (Siletz), Spencer’s (Springfield), Standing Stone (Ashland), Southern Oregon and Pacific (Medford), Tugboat (Portland), Umpqua (Roseburg), Wild Duck (Eugene), Yamhill Brewing (Portland), Walkabout (Gold Hill)