April 13, 2018
CapitalPress.com
5
Oregon’s second-largest hop grower adds on-farm brewery
By JAN JACKSON
For the Capital Press
ST. PAUL, Ore. — B&D
Farms, Oregon’s second larg-
est hop grower, will soon add
an on-farm craft brewery.
Leading the operation is
26-year-old Austin Smith,
who is a fifth generation hop
farmer. He believes he can
pull the best hop cones from
the drying room into his own
brewing vats and make the
best beer anywhere.
Born, raised and schooled
in the heart of the Willamette
Valley, Austin graduated with
an agriculture degree from
Linn Benton Community
College. With partners Jace
Kelly and Tyler Bothwell, he
expects to be open as Trellis
Brewing Co. by early sum-
mer.
“On the hop farm side of
things, it was pretty natural
to pick up a knack for beer
making,” Austin said. “It was
2014, when my friends and I
started making beer in my ga-
rage. By 2016, my uncle (Ben
Smith) suggested we turn an
old workshop we weren’t us-
ing into a meeting room or a
brewery or something, and
that’s all the encouragement
I needed.”
His father, Dave Smith,
agreed that “as long as he
could get free beer and a
Jan Jackson/For the Capital Press
Austin Smith is a fifth-generation hop grower and first-generation brewer.
place to hold meetings, he
was in,” Austin Smith said.
Austin, who likes brew-
ing with friends over work-
ing alone, met his partners in
college. They started with an
online recipe downloaded to
their cell phones.
“We did a lot of experi-
menting with hop, malt and
yeast combinations and we
got a lot of start-up help from
highly awarded and decorat-
ed home brewers like Tom
Litwin and Paul Long from
Newberg,” Austin said. “Of
all of the regulations from
the county, OLCC (the Ore-
gon Liquor Control Commis-
sion) and the Department of
Ag we had to meet to run a
successful commercial brew-
ing operation, renovating the
old building was probably
the toughest.”
They had to redo the
whole ceiling electrical wir-
ing to bring it up to fire code,
add new plumbing, make it
handicap accessible and meet
all the commercial access
and parking codes for county
roads, he said.
“We chose our old 1980s
workshop to house the brew-
ery, because it sits in the midst
of the hops fields adjacent to
our hop processing operation.
Two years ago, I drew a rough
sketch of what I wanted and
the power equipment it was
going to take to run it,” he
said “My aunt and I then sat
down and worked on how to
use materials around the farm
to carry out our true-to-the-
farm theme.”
The walls in the tasting
room are made of shiplap
wood that came from a 1930s
migrant camp and the bar is a
thick highly polished timber
they found on the farm.
Hoping to pull craft beer
aficionados from Portland and
beyond, Austin is most ea-
ger to serve the people in his
hometown of St. Paul as well
as the bicyclers, kayakers,
fishermen and wine country
tourists that travel the back
roads to the river. By next
year he hopes to add the staff
he needs to offer “from the
ground into the glass” tours
during commercial hop har-
vest.
“My great-great grandfa-
ther started raising hops in
1895, but because we also
raise sweet corn, beans, grass
seed and nursery stock, I’ve
always just called myself
a fifth-generation farmer,”
Austin said. “Now I can add
that I’m a first-generation
brewer.”
For more information on
Trellis Brewery and Tasting
Room, email Austin at aust-
ingsmith7710@gmail.com.
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