Reverend Nat’s Relocates—and Rejuvenates

Next Friday, March 24th, Reverend Nat’s will debut a new taproom in Southeast Portland—the first time the twelve-year-old cidermaker has had a pub since moving out of its original space in 2020. The new location was formerly home to Logsdon’s Farmhouse Ales and joins a new pod with nine food carts for indoor/outdoor seating. It will allow the cidery to showcase a dozen of their own ciders on tap, including a new line of non-alcoholic ciders founder Nat West been developing, as well as six beers.

Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider
2425 SE 35th Place
Opening March 24th
Regular Hours: Weds-Thurs 11a-9p, Fri-Sat 11a-10p, Sun 11a-9p
Farmhouse Carts Info here.

Nat just got the keys on Monday, and he’ll be doing a quick build-out, somehow adding a bar and tables by next week. Over the coming months, the cidery will slowly redecorate the site and host a grand opening in July. Reverend Nat’s is in the process of moving out of their North Loring industrial space and will take up production at the new site as well. The new location marks a shift in focus from the cidery Reverend Nat’s was planning to be at the start of the pandemic, but one that will look a lot more like the funky, experimental operation Nat started back in 2011.

The Pandemic Pivot

Back in 2017, Reverend Nat’s was growing like a weed. When he founded the cidery, Nat gained a reputation for experimental ciders like Tepache, made with fermented pineapple juice, wild-fermented ciders, and a cider made with boiled and reduced juice. Over time, Reverend Nat’s grew rapidly with more commercial ciders like his Cascadia line, demanding more of the cidery’s attention. The original space, a warren of rooms with a small tasting area, couldn’t handle much more growth, so Nat took out a lease on an enormous space in the “Albina Hole”—a warehouse amid gritty railroad tracks situated under a snarl of freeway overpasses and the Fremont Bridge. It was a place to grow production, but not really one to visit.

By 2019, Reverend Nat’s had grown to 8,000 barrels—sizable even for a brewery—but the City had his new space on endless hold. The company employed 29 people, and had taken on new investors. “At the time, we were pursuing a grocery store strategy. I’m comfortable telling people that we were chasing 2 Towns,” he told me. But then Covid hit and everything changed. “The pandemic was brutal on people who weren’t well-distributed to grocery stores,” he said. In a few months, he’d lost most of his staff and he was out making home deliveries himself.

Nat and I met last fall, and he was pretty low. “I was burned out.” He gestured to his left. “The business was headed in this direction, and yeah, we failed in that direction.” But that was the moment something shifted, and he had one of those pandemic epiphanies. “I’m fundamentally an emotional guy when it comes to this business. When I thought about the end of Reverend Nat’s, I realized I had a lot of passion. I had gotten cut off from a lot of things I wanted to do. A lot of places have used the pandemic to ask, ‘What am I doing?’” Then he gestured the other way. “I started this business to make the ciders I want to make. Fortunately, I realized I had a chance to go in a completely different direction.”

New Home

Because a brewery formerly occupied the space (and before that, a winery), it is a nearly turnkey operation for Reverend Nat’s. The whole building is 5,000 square feet, a bit smaller than this first place, but with an easier flow. Somehow, Nat plans to build a new bar and install taps in a week, but he won’t be able to do a major remodel by the time they open. Over the coming months, he’ll move the equipment over from the North Loring space and begin making cider then. They’ll redecorate as they go for a grand opening in the summer when the transformation is complete.

The taproom itself is small—no bigger than the one in his first building—but the new site has expansive outdoor seating. Thirty-fifth Place has broad sidewalks, and he plans to put tables in front of the building. Around the side is a large pocket where the food trucks are nearly fully populated (one spot is still available!), along with covered and open seating for scores more visitors. It looks like a great neighborhood gathering spot, a great place for dogs and children as well as cider-sipping adults.

Little Beast and Olympia Provisions, home pub for Rosenstadt, are less than two blocks away, and Nat is also excited to offer beer. He’s always been connected to the beer industry, and will curate a nice taplist for people hanging out at the food carts who may prefer an IPA or pilsner to cider.

Unlike last fall, Nat was peppy and enthusiastic when I met him this week. After its growth spurt in the late teens, Reverend Nat’s volumes collapsed in 2021. But it’s been growing since, up to 2,500 barrels in 2022, and already well ahead of that pace in 2023. We sampled Sidra Bravo, a Spanish-style cider last made in 2019, as he showed me around, and he is happy to get back to products like that. He was especially excited about his new non-alcoholic ciders. He’ll make them like he does his other ciders, blending different bases together—they’ll just have the alcohol removed first. The cidery will still make standards like Revival, Sacrilege, and Cascadia, but with twelve taps, they’re going to need a lot more as well. That will take Reverend Nat’s back to its roots. “With the new space, it’s simultaneously a twelve-year-old business and brand-new,” he said, laughing.