CRUX-A-POSITION
Bend’s newest brewery blasts off
BY PAT R I C K NEW SON
C
rux Fermentation Project, which opened
its doors June 30, sits on an 11-acre plot
of land adjacent to Highway 97 smack in
the center of Bend. Open space for hop-
growth, concerts, barbecues and a dog-
park pale in comparison to the majestic
East Cascade view reflected in the glass,
copper and stainless steel of the new
brewery in town. Most of those shiny
tanks at Crux haven’t had a chance to be
LARRY SIDOR
Closer to public dissemination is a deliciously hoppy
Northwest Pale Ale I sampled from the fermenter, as
Sidor showed me some of the more storied equipment
he has at his disposal. The mill, for example, is the first
that Sidor ever operated, 38 years ago as a novice at
Olympia Brewing in Tacoma, Wash.; the hop-vac, gifted
to Sidor from BridgePort Brewing as a favor; and Sidor’s
personal beer cooler, sitting beside his cluttered desk
within earshot of the bar, has “seen more hops than
most Oregon breweries,” he reckons, due to its decades-
long former occupation as the daily-refreshed hop-
sample storage locker at a large producer. And all this
sits in a former Aamco shop and mill supply store.
The Crux hopper is just down the hall, in the main
pub area. A wooden sliding door opens to a walk-in,
temperature-controlled room from which waft rich
scents of pine, skunk and citrus permeating the public
forum with the obvious quality of product.
For Sidor, quality product is the primary goal. After
working for years on the systems of others, Sidor’s own
fermentation project, complete with open-top
fermenters, barrels and other avenues of brewing
exploration, is to employ the rock-climbing term, the
crux, the most difficult and satisfying part of Bend’s
beer scene. ■
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Larry Sidor, brewer, owner and wrench-wielding
auteur of the Fermentation Project, leads me through
his facility. It’s “a brewery that happens to be a pub,” he
says. Sidor is sensitive about the subject of brew pubs
without breweries. At Crux, however, transparency is a
part of the aesthetic. Conditioning tanks fill the glass-
walled room behind the bar; recycled wood strapped
with old iron belts form the counters and pub tables
which, when not choked by crowds, will function as
packaging and boxing stations for the eventual bottling
line Sidor aspires to install. Before all that, though, the
first project must be completed: beer.
Sidor, former brewmaster at Deschutes, whose
parting gift to his previous place of work was the
Chainbreaker White IPA, has not recently released any
beer, but is holding in-tank an East-bold IPA hopped
with Centennial, Cascade and Bravo, registering a citric
7.5 percent alcohol by volume.
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