Spruce Ale at the Siletz Brewery

I walked into the Siletz Roadhouse, two years after my first visit and about two hours after lunch. It looked the same as I remember—wood paneling, tables, chairs, a bar, and a pool table on the far side of it. For those of you who might have become accustomed to the sort of microbrewery that really is more of a cushy restaurant—and, oh yeah, they have some good beers on the menu—well, the Siletz Roadhouse is more of a bar that—oh yeah—serves food as well.



But the Siletz Roadhouse also feels a little bit like a community center—there’s a huge room off to the right—and while I’ve never seen it and I don’t know if it actually happens—I like to believe that there are events where the people of Siletz crowd in and fill the place up. With a town population of 1,121, I figure a significant percentage of local residents might be able to squeeze in. I’ve only ever been here in the afternoons, when there are only a few people hanging around and the place feels nice and sleepy.

While I could have sat at one of the tables, everyone who was there already had taken seats at the bar and so I pulled up a barstool as well. I’d like to say I did it because I didn’t want to stick out as a non-local, but I’m pretty sure everyone there knew that already. The guys at the bar were talking fishing, mostly, some car talk as well as perused the beer menu. Not that I needed to, I already knew exactly what I wanted—a pint of Spruce Ale.

It had been a bottle of Spruce Ale that had caught my eye in a store in Ashland and caused me to buy that first pint of Siletz. Spruce Ale? I had never heard of such a thing, and the bottle was nicely designed, but when I first tasted it, and got a hit of the evergreen notes blended in with the malty flavor of the beer—making everything brighter, a little bolder—well, I was immediately hooked. Now I’ve said it before, I’m not the biggest beer fan and thus not really a connoisseur, but this was a beer I could get behind. And I did—ordering a nice pint.

Lest you think I am the only one liking this Spruce Ale, I'll mention that it won a gold medal from the North American Brewers' Association, and a silver medal in the World Beer Championships.

I also took a look at the food menu, for the Roadhouse does indeed serve food. There were no less that ten different kinds of burgers—culminating in the granddaddy of them all, the Roadhouse Speed Bump, a full pound of beef, shaped into three patties of 1/3 lb. each, and topped with two onion rings on top. Granted I’m a wimp when it comes to eating large amounts of meat, but I think that Speed Bump might just burst my tires.

I settled, instead, on the patty melt—a burger covered in melted cheese and grilled onions and served on rye toast. The best thing about lunch at the Roadhouse is that it comes with their homemade potato chips, which might look burnt to the casual observer but let me tell you there are light and crispy bits of potato bliss. And if you lift up the top slice of rye bread on your burger, and put some of the chips inside, things get even better yet. Imagine, if you will, oozy melted cheese, a slew of grilled onions, and the salty crunch of potato chips—mmmm.

You should also try to imagine, if you will, me seated at the bar of the Roadhouse—next to half a dozen local guys talking fishing. My burger arrives and sits before me on its red and white checked paper, looking like a happy picnic, and this presents a problem. You see, it is rather dark in the bar area. The tables by the windows are flooded with light, but the bar is dark. The bar is dark and I need to take a picture—a picture of my burger. Do I grab my burger and my camera and traipse casually on over to the table by the window with the good lighting—not bothering to glance at the local guys who must be wondering what on earth the crazy girl is doing photographing her food.

Yes, my friends. Yes, I do.

And the local guys were complete gentlemen. They didn’t start laughing and talking about what a nut-job I was until after I left town. At that point, they must have had a field day.



The other difference between one of those citified microbreweries and someplace like Siletz, is that in Siletz, they guy sitting next to you at the bar might just end up being one of the brewmasters. And when I asked if I could get a peek into the brewery he said of course, and he left his drink (not beer, I’ll have you know) and his perch at the bar and walked me next door to the brewery.

I remember meeting Randy Kenyon, one of the Siletz brewmasters, the last time I passed through Siletz. I thought it was him at the bar when I saw him, but I wasn’t sure. When I told him this he said he thought he remembered me—which either means he has a very good memory, or there aren’t an awful lot of visitors passing through Siletz these days, or maybe he was just being polite.

Like last time I was here, Randy was nice enough to show me around the brewery—a not terribly large hangar sort of a building filled with tall metal tanks, boxes of bottles, and a loft filled with bags of grain—the ingredients for making all the Siletz brews.



As with before, Randy answered my novice questions and our chat turned into a basic lesson how beer is made (any inaccuracies in the retelling are mine, not his). He showed me how the grains are put in a large container called the mashtun (and when I say large, I’d guess several hundred gallons large). Water is added and the mixture is crushed—this is where the starch breaks down into sugar. The mash is eventually drained through the false bottom of the mashtun. Some of the grains lingered behind that day. The spent grain goes to a local farmer who feeds it to his livestock.



The mixture at this point is called wort (at least I think it is—have I mentioned the large beer I had at lunch? Any mistakes here are definitely mine). This is then boiled, which concentrates the sugars and it is this stage where the hops are added to give the beer its flavor. The mixture is then chilled and moves into the fermenting container, where oxygen and yeast is added. The beer stays here for a period of time—which differs depending on whether it is a lager or an ale. The yeast feeds off the sugars and releases alcohol and carbon dioxide, this is how your beer becomes boozy.



The next stage is where the beer conditions—the yeast absorbs, the beer smoothes, and is eventually bottled by this machine, which can fill 45 cases in an hour. And that, my friend, is more or less how beer is made (any inaccuracies the fault of the large Spruce Ale I had consumed at lunch—did I mention I don’t drink much?).



But what about the Spruce Ale I like so much? How do they get it to taste so lovely and wintery? Spruce tips, my friends, hand picked from Oregon spruce trees during a brief two to three week period in the spring. The idea came from a brewing book that Randy had, and the beer was a seasonal offering until they realized they could freeze the spruce tips without ill effect. They now have a cooler filled with spruce tips to last the whole year long. But they have to keep them in a dedicated cooler because these spruce tips are fragrant things. One time they stored them in the kitchen freezer at the Roadhouse and the cook got made at them because it made all the meat taste like Christmas.



And what of this brewery, tucked away off the main road in western Oregon? It’s a small operation—700 barrels a year (and if you’re a neophyte, as I am, let’s just say that a barrel is 31 gallons). They started out not even bottling the beer—keg sales only. This wasn’t the worst thing, as they sold to the college students in Corvalis (location of Oregon State University) in the winter, and beach-bound partiers on the Oregon coast in the summer. These days they sell the bottled beer throughout the state.

When I ask Randy if there are plans for expansion—say, to one of the two states I seem to be living in these days, both of which border Oregon—he remains noncommittal. It’s expensive to expand, he explains. And then he tells me an interesting story.

Seems that uncertainty is afoot in the beer world at the moment. There’s been a drought in Europe that has impacted the grain harvest, producing lower yields than normal. And with a favorable exchange rate for the Euro, European breweries have been buying up US grain, causing a spike in prices. Randy told me that some grains they use for brewing have increased from $2.50/lb to $8/lb. And, of course, the bigger breweries are grabbing all they can.

It may be the case that you notice a change in flavor profile on some of your favorite craft beers over the next year, as the specific type of grains they use may not be available—or might be too expensive due to high demand and limited supply. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal confirmed this, expect craft beer prices to jump by up to a dollar a six-pack.

Guess it’s good I don’t really love beer. Hopefully by the next time I have a chance to take the winding backroads to Siletz, the grain crisis will have passed. Until then, I don’t mind taking a general pass on beer. After all, my favorite beer is available only in Oregon.

But at least I know where to come back to, whenever I want more.