A Trip to de Garde Brewing
Located in Tillamook, Oregon, de Garde Brewing creates its craft beers by blending ancient brewing traditions with the spirit of experimentation. The Oregon Coast provides the brewery with rich microflora and yeast to incorporate into its drinks. None of the beers served by de Garde Brewing are fermented using laboratory-cultured yeast.
All beers offered here are cooled in a coolship. After the brew has been amply wort cooled, it is aged in oak barrels for the period that each beer demands. The beers may be aged for six months to more than five years before they are bottled conditioned.
They happen to be among the handful of breweries in all of America to use spontaneous fermentation throughout the process of beer production. It is an award-winning brewery which won the title of Best Brewery in Oregon in 2016 from RateBeer, and was placed fifth on the list of Best Breweries in the World.
Husband and wife duo Trevor and Linsey Rogers started de Garde Brewing as a garage production but soon started up their brewing facility at 114 Ivy Ave, Tillamook, Oregon with the growth in demand for their brews.
You can visit the brewery any day between Thursday and Sunday for your taste of their signature beers. If you need any additional information before planning your visit, you can reach out to de Garde Brewing at-815-1635 or visit their website.
Sample a Range of de Garde’s Naturally Crafted Wild Ales
The brewery provides customers with on-site bottles of their limited edition brews. Don’t forget to taste the Bu Weisse, their flagship beer. It is a 2% ABV Berliner Weisse. You can also sample a range of rotating wild ales, such as krieks, lambics, and gueuzes at the facility.
Most of the sales incurred by de Garde occur on-site, and they rarely ever sell kegs outside of their tasting facility. Their beers are produced in limited quantities, with a 1,000 bottles maximum each for most offerings.
Here is a list of the beers you can expect from the de Garde Brewing tasting room currently:
- Earl Desay: 7.5% ABV, spontaneous farmhouse ale, aged in oak barrels with earl grey tea for a year
- Premiere Desay: 8% ABV, spontaneous farmhouse ale, aged in oak barrels for one year
- Lee Kriek: 7.1% ABV, spontaneous wild red ale, aged in oak barrels with Morello and Montmorency cherries for three years
- The Vigne: 7.2%, ABV, spontaneous wild ale, aged in oak barrels with Zinfandel grapes
- The Bluest: 7% ABV, spontaneous wild ale, aged in oak barrels with blueberries
- The Orchard: 6.5% ABV, spontaneous wild ale, aged in oak barrels for two years with peaches, apricots, and nectarines
- Ivy: 6% ABV, spontaneous wild ale, aged in oak barrels for two years
- The Law of Winter: 6% ABV, spontaneous wild ale, aged in oak barrels with cider apples, cinnamon, vanilla beans, allspice, ginger, and orange peel for years
- The Kriek: 6.5% ABV, spontaneous wild ale, aged in oak barrels with Montmorency and Morello cherries for two years
- The Samognier: 8.4% ABV, spontaneous wild ale, aged in oak barrels with Viognier grapes.
- Block 15/de Garde Winter Amusement: 8% ABV, blend of Amber Saison and Wild Red Ale, aged in oak barrels as per usual
- The Maison: 5.5% ABV, spontaneous wild ale, aged and blended in oak barrels for three years.
A humble amount of the bottles corked at de Garde Brewing are distributed too. If you wish to know where you can pick yourself a de Garde Brewing beer bottle from without having to visit the tasting room, you can contact them at [email protected].
Make Your de Garde Brewing Pilgrimage
Visiting de Garde Brewing in Tillamook is a little less than setting about for a pilgrimage. The brewery has risen to cult status in the brewing world for its natural yeast driven wild ales. You need to plan your visit here beforehand, as the brewery is open to visitors for a minimal duration.
The exclusivity does not end there. People from all over the world make a stopover at de Garde Brewing and hope to pick up a bottle or two from their limited production batches. Undoubtedly, de Garde Brewing provides some of the best wild ales to be found in the entire nation.
If you wish to visit de Garde Brewing but do not have the gumption to try their bottled varieties, you can have a pour from their brews made available on tap rotationally. Housed in a beautiful, industrial-style building, plan a visit to de Garde for the experience alone. They even manage to host events at their tasting room from time to time.
Seating will never be an issue when you visit de Garde Brewing, as they have plenty of tables to accommodate both you and your family. The staff that works here deserves a word of praise too. Friendly and acknowledging, you can reach out to them for any query that you might have regarding your drink. They will be more than happy to serve you with their knowledge of the subject. If you come with your vehicle, you will find ample space for parking too.
They also offer indoor and outdoor seating. Several food trucks park themselves across the parking lot, so the availability of food will not be a concern either.
If you are looking for a quiet and charming brewery to sit down and have a conversation, de Garde Brewing is definitely a place you should consider. There are no TVs at the facility, keeping with its rustic temperament.
It doesn’t matter whether you live in the locality of Oregon or are simply passing through, you will not regret a drop into de Garde Brewing. If you want to sample yourself some Belgian style farmhouse ales in America, this is the brewery to plan your visit to. Relax with your wild ale or pick up a few bottles to-go. Customers flocking to de Garde Brewing are a testament to the variety of people it caters to.