While eating around a few new Austin restaurants last month, it didn’t take long to figure out which brewery locals hold in high esteem.
There was the golden light lager pouring at the New Orleans-inspired cafe Uptown Sports Club. The bright IPA at chef Fermín Nuñez’ new Mexican seafood restaurant, Este. And there, at the fantastic dive bar Nickel City, the crisp pilsner with a hipster-friendly Campari-Fernet boilermaker.
And what did those three beers have in common?
They all came from Meanwhile, a south Austin brewery opened nearly three years ago by a pair of former R&D brewers at Portland’s Breakside.
But despite being a beer fan — a pilgrimage to Jester King was a big part of the trip — I wasn’t aware that one of Austin’s best breweries had a Portland connection until I met a friend at Meanwhile’s 3.7-acre cart pod, soccer field, performance stage, play area, taproom and brewery complex.
That’s on me. One sip of that crisp, clean Secret Beach IPA at Este should have made the Breakside connection crystal clear.
Will Jaquiss and Nao Ohdera left their positions in Breakside’s R&D department and opened Meanwhile’s 15-barrel system in October 2020, around six months later than anticipated (a global pandemic might have had something to do with that), with plans to brew 50 different styles during their first year of operation, focusing on sessionable ales and wood-aged sours (light work — that’s half the number brewed at Breakside in 2013, the year Jaquiss was hired).
Both Meanwhile founders have deep Portland ties. Jaquiss is the nephew of Nigel Jaquiss, the Pulitzer Prize winning Willamette Week reporter, while Ohdera is the brother of Kei Ohdera, the chef and co-owner of Northeast Portland butcher shop and deli Pasture.
When I returned to Portland, I reached out to Meanwhile, then hopped on the phone with Jaquiss. Turns out I had reached the brewery at an inflection point — Nao Ohdera is moving with his family to Colorado, where his wife recently took a professor position at Colorado State University.
“Nao and I are best friends, and it’s a pretty sad transition,” Jaquiss said. “He and I essentially co-founded this company, so it’s going to be a bit of a transition over the course of the next few months.”
Jaquiss spoke with The Oregonian about Meanwhile’s sprawling brewery campus, why Texans prefer pilsners to IPAs, and when we’ll see Meanwhile beers in Portland. Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.
Golden Hour at Meanwhile, an Austin brewery complex with a taproom, food cart pod, beer garden, soccer field, performance stage and more.Courtesy of Meanwhile Brewing
Q: What did you take away from your time brewing in Portland? Blindfolded, I might have guessed that Secret Beach IPA was a Breakside beer.
I briefly worked at Rogue out of Newport, but I was fortunate to be one of the first hires for Ben Edmunds and Jacob Leonard when they opened their production facility down in Milwaukie. And basically everything I know about brewing I learned from Ben.
Q: Such as?
A: Ben has a meticulous, systematic approach to brewing focused on gradual, constant improvement. Look at how Breakside IPA has evolved over the past decade, winning gold in 2014 at GABF (the Great American Beer Festival), bronze in 2017, to now winning silver in the strong pale ale category at World Beer Cup. That’s a testament to his ability to hone in on a recipe and guide it through different crop years and the evolution of the market.
Q: Your pilsner is also well loved at some great Austin restaurants, and it’s very good. Out of the three or four I tried down there, yours is the only one I would order again.
A: Our pilsner is definitely inspired by pFriem and Von Ebert and Upright and Heater Allen and Wayfinder and all the great pilsners in Oregon. Breakside’s pilsner is actually a little softer, doughier. Ours is more mineral-y, with a tannic backbone, more of a northern German style.
But there are some other fantastic brewers here. Austin Beer Garden Brewing — ABGB — they’re basically a helles and pilsner machine, with 2,000 barrels a year and 90 percent of that is those two beers.
Q: I didn’t try that one! Next time. But that actually anticipates my next question. How have you found Austin’s beer taste differs from Portland?
A: Yeah, I mean it’s so hot down here, I think it’s actually been a privilege to be able to focus on lagers in a way that I didn’t necessarily get there back in Oregon.
IPA is definitely the most popular craft beer style in the United States, and here in Texas as well. But there is this Czech and German heritage in this area that has informed the beer drinking to this day, so there’s just a lot more openness to lagers, and different styles of lagers too. So I could make a Vienna lager, or even a dunkel, some of these darker lagers, and they’ll move. I did not see that same sort of openness necessarily in Portland, for lagers. And then, it’s just so hot here. You can’t slam 7.5% IPAs all day.
Q: One of the things that impressed me most was the scale of your brewing complex. I can only think of one or two breweries in Portland that have a play structure for kids, and here you guys have the stage, the soccer field, the big open beer garden and more. Was it easier to make that happen in sunny Austin than it would be in Portland?
A: There’s a very cool, not necessarily beer garden culture, but coffee garden culture, here. Places like Cosmic Coffee, Radio Coffee, really thoughtful spaces that are large and take inspiration from beer gardens, but are places you can work all day, and have a beer afterwards. Us bringing the family element was kind of natural, because one, we’re a family brewery, and two, a lot of young families love going to breweries. I think this is something that was needed, and I think it’s something that people will continue to embrace more and more.
Q: I noticed Jester King had a sweet play area, too. As a father of two young kids, I was jealous.
A: That’s funny. After Jester King saw our playscape, they contacted me, and asked who built that for you, and it’s Chris Levack, a local sculptor, and he also built their play structure for them. It’s all natural wood and copper, so you don’t have a lot of bright plastic sitting out, it just sits in that forest in a cool way.
Q: Any chance we’ll see a Day One truck bringing your beer up to Portland soon?
A: If we do any fun pop-ups in Oregon, they’ll just be small drops, tap takeovers. Maybe we’ll come up for the hop harvest in fall. But we’re just really focused on Texas right now. Our laws changed in 2013 to allow more business models in beer — originally you could only be a gigantic production brewery with no taproom, or just be a brewpub with no distribution. Since then things have really opened up. It’s an exciting time to be in craft beer in Texas.
Q: Last question — given your connection to Nigel, were you ever tempted to go into journalism?
A: No. I’m not anywhere near as talented as he is. Writing is really difficult.
Read more:
If Feast Portland is canceled, why is Austin’s Hot Luck fest still happening?
Three new Austin restaurants — and three great swimming holes — to try on your next trip
— Michael Russell; mrussell@oregonian.com
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