Hundreds of craft beer lovers turned out Sunday in Southeast Portland to say goodbye to a beloved friend, as Hair of the Dog Brewing, a groundbreaking brewery whose contributions to craft beer in Portland and beyond are incalculable, opened its doors for the final time.
As always, founder Alan Sprints was in the brewpub greeting customers, who turned out to get a last tap pour of beer straight from the source. Sprints earlier this year announced his impending retirement and the brewery’s closure.
“I’m both excited about the prospects of the future and sad that it’s coming to an end,” Sprints told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Sunday. “But I can be real proud about what I’ve done, and the response from people has been overwhelming. So it just reiterates how special the beers were to so many people.”
Pete Herder is one of those people. The 54-year-old Happy Valley resident said he had been a fan of the brewery since Hair of the Dog’s original brewery location in Southeast Portland’s Brooklyn neighborhood, where Herder would buy bottles from loading dock sales.
“It’s heart-breaking to see someone who has worked so hard go into retirement, but that’s the way of things,” Herder said. “Alan has been true to his craft, and that’s what makes this place special.”
Sprints’ craft has been strong, creative beers, many of which employ barrel-aging and bottle-conditioning. The pioneering brewer is credited with introducing Portland craft beer to the use of aging beer in wooden barrels, a practice that was unheard of when he opened Hair of the Dog in 1993.
“I never liked that full feeling of too much beer,” Sprints previously told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “So when I started drinking beer, I gravitated toward stronger beer, beers you could have one or two of but get the same feeling as if you have six. So when I thought about opening a brewery, I thought if I made those … that I’d have a place.”
And for nearly three decades, he has had that place. Sprints named his beers after friends or ideas, giving the complex creations simple identities such as Adam, Matt and Greg, or Doggie Claws and Blue Dot. And then there was Fred, a golden special ale named after esteemed beer writer and historian Fred Eckhardt, an influence on and friend of the brewery who inspired Fredfest, an annual philanthropic beer festival held on Eckhardt’s birthday.
But at age 63, Sprints is closing up shop, a decision influenced by recent struggles exacerbated by the pandemic’s economic effects. Asked about his feelings seeing the loud and crowded tasting room Sunday, Sprints said he was somewhat conflicted.
“Part of me is proud that we have such a vibrant beer scene; the other part of me wishes that some of those people would have been coming here before I made the announcement,” he said. “It definitely is hard not only for me, but a lot of businesses right now are having a hard time after the pandemic, and people just haven’t come back like they were. Maybe things could have been different if it were like this all the time.”
After Sunday, Sprints says he will figure out what to do with the Central Eastside building, which he owns, as well as the brewing equipment. And until inventory is depleted, online bottle sales will continue.
But he is beginning to move toward much-neglected hobbies.
“I do ceramics and glass work. The garden really needs my time,” he said. “I could probably spend two months out there every year just working in the garden. I’ve got probably the next five years planned out pretty good.
“I’ll at least not have the day-to-day demands that this place has. It’s been seven days a week for almost a year now, and I don’t know how much longer I can do that, but I want to be able to enjoy the rest of my life and not have to close just because I can’t do it anymore.”
Rick Smith, 72, has been coming to the brewpub since the ‘90s, and in recent years has been joined by his sister Jo Vincent, who said “the regulars and wait staff here were like family.”
“We consider this our church, celebrating things with like-minded people,” Vincent said. “So, when your church closes, what are you going to do? I don’t know yet.”
Added Smith, with a resigned sadness: “Things happen, and things unhappen. That’s life, that’s fate.”
That life cycle is what struck Wendy Sprints on the brewery’s last day. The founder’s sister has been a key component keeping things running smoothly since Hair of the Dog moved to its current space in 2010 and opened the tasting room.
“Everything has a life, and this has been a really good one,” she said. “So many places, they close and you never get a chance to say goodbye. I’m really proud of how he did this.”
Dwayne Smallwood is the founder of Bridge & Tunnel Bottleshop & Taproom in Astoria. He was at Hair of the Dog on Sunday to pay tribute to a place that had great influence on his own craft beer journey.
“I wanted to get here for this,” Smallwood said. “When I got into craft, this is one of the places I’d always come to. I’d meet all these famous brewers who would come here from all over the world, and it cemented my passion.”
Sprints will now take that legacy into retirement, leaving a huge void in Portland’s craft beer scene. Sprints said he wondered how things would be remembered.
“Sometimes the brewer with the loudest voice is the one who gets remembered, and I always felt like I was humble and didn’t have a very loud voice so maybe I wouldn’t get remembered the same as some other breweries,” he said. “But I have had heart-felt messages and conversations with people about how important both the beer and the place are, and so I know for those people it’s going to live on.
“I couldn’t ask for anything else.”
— Andre Meunier; ameunier@oregonian.com; sign up for my weekly newsletter Oregon Brews and News, and follow me on Instagram, where I’m @oregonianbeerguy
