Photo Credit: Full Sail Brewing
Imagine sailing in the beautiful town of Hood River, OR and thinking wow this is so beautiful. Then imagine drinking a beer from a local brewery. That is why Full Sail Brewing opened in an old Diamond Fruit Cannery. The cannery had been abandoned for 15 years before what is now Full Sail Brewing opened up in 1987. I know what your thinking an old cannery why? That seems so hard. It was a very a difficult road but with hard work and dedication the transition happened and at the time they named it Hood River Brewing.
At that time beer was being made in open fermentation tanks or old dairy equipment and a lot of the breweries had varying success with that. However, for these guys there was no point in brewing the beer if it wasn’t fantastic so for the better part of 1987 they were installing their new system. They had their first crew in September 1987 and they were ready to start brewing. What was awesome is they were not only opening at the height of the craft beer movement but also the windsurfing movement. The windsurfing obsession had storefronts in Hood River filling up with gear shops. That first year Hood River Brewing put up 287 barrels which was really good for craft beer at the time.
So with that big success Hood River set out to do what the “Beer Literati” said was nearly impossible: putting their beer in a bottle. The original bottling machine was little machine called Mimi which was designed to bottle wine. To make it even better you had to do it all by hand. Even though it was a struggle Full Sail was able to get their beers into bottles and not long after the Full Sail Amber that we know today became their best selling beer and had won a gold medal at the 1989 Great American Beer Festival.
Photo Credit: Full Sail Brewing
Thankfully they don’t bottle beers with Mimi anymore and kiteboarders are a lot more prominent now. However, a lot of things have remained. Full Sail still makes their beer by hand and their hops and barley come from local farms. They also use water from Mount Hood and so they do whatever possible to be sustainable. Specifically they have their own award-winning water treatment plant, distribute all of their spent grain to local farmers, and they also were one of the founding members Hood River Green Smart Taskforce.
Come to Janey’s tomorrow night to try some of Full Sails delicious brews at 7 PM! Until next time Hoppy Travels!