Forest Grove’s Off
the Rail Brewing Co. has powered down after a dozen years of brewing up
Black Sabbath inspired beers. None of their beers contained copious illicit
drugs or bats, but beers like War Pigs Wheat and Over the Mountain Stout
at least indicate what was blaring in the 12-barrel brewhouse run by brewer Dan
Bragdon and his wife Antoinette.
“We kept to ourselves,” said Antoinette, which explains why
the Bragdon family—their kids have all done time at the brewery—were phantoms
of the local beer scene despite self-distributing to many neighborhood watering
holes. For my local, that meant Nick’s Famous Coney’s in the Hawthorne
District, which always had Over the Mountain Chocolate Stout on tap. Silver
Dollar Pizza downtown was a reliable source for Sweet Leaf Amber, while
two of The Waypost’s five taps in the Eliot neighborhood recently proffered
Coal Porter and Paranoid
IPA.
In the end, the Bragdons didn’t point to lagging sales but
said it was a “personal decision. It wasn’t business.” In an era with
increasing competition from ever-opening breweries (around 175 in Oregon) and
ever-expanding ones at that, OTR Brewing self-distributed to accounts from
Portland to Corvalis. “(The brewery was) more of a passion and a hobby. Dan and
I are happy and positive with our decision.”
I’d learned about the closure at the beginning of this year,
but per Antoinette’s request, kept mum. When the story involves medical issues
warranting emergency responders as well as a son returning home after being
stationed in Afghanistan, getting the scoop on a rare Oregon brewery closure
matters very little. Perhaps what’s most telling is that in the two months
since, absolutely nobody seems to have noticed.