Cannon Beach gazette., December 30, 2016, Page 4A, Image 4

4A • December 30, 2016 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com
Views from the Rock
Distillery takes whiskey to a new ‘Strata’
W
hat brings people out to Cannon
Beach at 8:30 on an icy Sunday
morning?
Whiskey, of course.
Jason and Julie Powell of the Seattle sub-
urb of Duvall, Washington, left their home
at 4 a.m. and arrived in Cannon Beach
about four hours later. He’s made the drive
at least four times for Cannon Beach Dis-
tillery’s nine whiskey releases. “It’s always
different,” Jason Powell said. “Everything’s
good here, but we make a point of coming
for the whiskey releases.”
Broder is the one usually at the counter at
255 N. Hemlock, serving up samples of agave,
rum, gin and of course malt whiskey, when
you can get it.
Brik joined the team in 2015.
The distillery won a silver award for un-
aged rum — the highest ranked rum to receive
a medal —and a bronze award for smoked
whiskey at the American Distilling Institute’s
2016 Spirit Competition, the largest compe-
tition for craft spirits in the world. Only three
smoked whiskeys qualifi ed for any medals last
year, and Strata was one of them.
Product is created at the distillery’s mid-
town location (and future tasting room) and
stored in barrels at the shop. All production is
done in Cannon Beach proper. “We do every-
thing 100 percent from scratch,” Selberg said.
“We match the grain, ferment it, still it, bottle
it, label it — three people do everything.”
CANNON SHOTS
R.J. MARX
Dave Grotz of Silverton had not tried Can-
non Beach Distillery’s whiskey but reminisced
about a liqueur in Germany “that was unlike
anything in the world,” he said. He hoped to
fi nd “the same thing here.”
Debbie Redford of Seattle was among the
fi rst in line at 8 a.m. She knew about the popu-
larity of the event and wanted to make sure she
got a bottle.
Like others in Seahawks’ caps, Christmas
mittens and snow boots, Redford drove through
the night to get ahead of the crowd. They knew
that the limited edition was going to be worth
the wait — 120 bottles of the distillery’s Strata
2, a peated single malt whiskey, available only
in Cannon Beach — was going to be worth the
wait. There were no phone orders, no internet
orders. The only way you could get a bottle
was to wait in the line. Doors would open at
11:50 a.m.
“Please do not email or call to claim a bot-
tle,” owner Mike Selberg warned in an email
blast to distillery faithful. “I cannot legally sell
a bottle unless you are in my shop. There will
be no pre-orders or holds.”
According to Selberg, Strata is a blend of
very traditional Scotch whisky ingredients and
mashing techniques, infused with the distill-
ery’s own distillation and Solera maturation
systems.
“This really isn’t Scotch,” he said. “It’s a
single malt whiskey, made from the same thing
as Scotch whisky but the method is complete-
ly different. I wouldn’t say we’ve matured it
faster or we skirted some sort of maturation —
we just distilled it in a fundamentally different
way.”
While whiskey drinkers place great stock
in the age of the product, “the purity you distill
something at is really going to dictate how long
it has to age,” Selberg said. “We distilled it at
the very top, the highest purity you can legally
distill a whiskey at and call it whiskey. There’s
as little material for maturation as possible.”
As a result, Selberg and team can produce
a sought-after product in as little as two years.
“We haven’t had a whiskey last more than
about three hours after its release,” Selberg
said. “They all sell out.”
Strata 2
R.J. MARX/CANNON BEACH GAZETTE
At the head of the line, Debbie Redford from Seattle, Julie Powell and Jason Powell, both
of Duvall, Washington.
R.J. MARX/CANNON BEACH GAZETTE
Pax Broder presides over the tasting room at Cannon Beach Distillery. Along with sales, he
has a key role in the production process.
‘Artistic approach’
Selberg, 32, went to high school in Col-
orado but spent every summer in Cannon
Beach and made his permanent residence
here after turning 18. He studied biology at
the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma,
Washington, where he met future business
partner Andrew Brik.
“A mutual friend got us into home-brew-
ing,” Selberg said. “We started making beer
as a hobby thing.”
Working as a bartender in Cannon
Beach, “the idea got fl oated about distill-
ing.”
“I had some friends who were interested
in it, so I tried to help them out and teach
them how a still works, because you learn
distillation as a chemistry technique,” Sel-
berg said. “I understood the science. ”
With the combination of skills, Selberg
got to work.
“I had a knack for it,” he acknowledged.
“I was making things I appreciated more than
what I was drinking normally. I’ve always
been a connoisseur of spirits and it just
clicked.”
With a tight-knit business community in
Cannon Beach and year-round tourism, Can-
non Beach Distillery launched fi ve years ago
as “a more artistic approach to spirits.”
“We do everything 100 percent from
scratch,” he said. “We match the grain, fer-
ment it, still it, bottle it, label it.”
Building a team
Two years into the project, success led Sel-
berg to recruit Pax Broder, who visitors may
consider “the face of the brewery.”
A tragic beginning for the year 1881
I
t was eight o’clock, Jan. 3, 1881. The New
Year had come and gone, but construction
of the Tillamook Rock lighthouse carried
on. The men had been at it for 525 days, living
in canvas A-tents fastened through ring-bolts
embedded right into the basalt of Tillamook
Rock. This was necessary to keep their make-
shift homes from being blown away by com-
peting winds that often reached over 100 mph.
The construction crew had survived the
daily geysers of saltwater which rained down
on them ceaselessly. Constantly soaked, living
on meager rations, and toiling long hours, the
hearty crew continued in their progress. In fact,
the soon-to-be infamous lighthouse was nearly
complete.
For an example of the hard work involved,
imagine this: The workmen spent 224 days
simply blasting away at the craggy rock,
which resembled a melted Hershey kiss at the
summit.
More than 4,000 initial pounds of basalt
had to be removed before construction of the
lighthouse could begin.
Construction materials were brought out to
the rock by several ingenious techniques using
ropes, jibs, and makeshift booms.
For months the men worked tirelessly
during the day putting the lighthouse together
piece by piece. At night they would deter any
ship veering too close to the treacherous rocks
surrounding Tillamook Head.
To accomplish this feat they used blasting
charges, set fi res, and hollered if need be.
On this particular January night, a storm
tore across the sea from the southeast and
pelted the unlit lighthouse.
This was not unusual weather for those
living on Tillamook Rock. Even Mr. Wheeler,
the appointed superintendent of construction
was notably reticent until one of his workmen
appeared. The man reported hearing voices
Publisher
David F. Pero
Editor
R.J. Marx
Reporter
Lyra Fontaine
Sales/Advertising Manager
Betty Smith
Production Manager
John D. Bruijn
Circulation Manager
Heather Ramsdell
Classifi ed Sales
Jamie Ramsdell
Advertising Sales
Holly Larkins
Brandy Stewart
SUBMITTED PHOTO
A skiff makes its way through the treacher-
ous waters to Terrible Tilly.
REFLECTIONS
ELAINE TRUCKE
and said he may have seen the running light
of a ship heading dangerously close to the
rock. Wheeler sprung from his makeshift home
to investigate.
From the abyss of the storm came the
disembodied voice of the captain, H.R. Raven
of the Lupata, calling out to his men, “Hard
aport!”
Wheeler immediately ordered his workmen
to place all lanterns in the tower; as speedily as
possible a large bonfi re was started.
The Lupata was a British ship on her way
from Hiogo, Japan, bound for Portland, Ore-
gon.
Now, merely 200 yards offshore, she rode
perilously close to the rocky reef which jutted
out from Tillamook Rock. To compound
matters further, Captain Raven was relatively
green in his duties, having only taken over
CANNON BEACH GAZETTE
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recently from the previous captain.
“Her yards were aback, and she seemed
to be working out of the dangerous place,
but soon afterward the red light disappeared,
and no further cries were heard from those on
board,” says E.W. Wright, author of Lewis
and Dryden’s Marine History of the Pacifi c
Northwest.
That night the workmen went to bed
believing that their endeavors had saved the
British ship. The next morning they awoke
to fi nd the topmast of the ship plainly visible,
sticking several feet out of the water. The men
had heard the rigging and ship yawn with the
effort of changing course, but what they did
not know was that Captain Raven had mistak-
enly turned directly for a reef jutting out from
Tillamook Rock.
Just a few days later an article in the New
York Times read, “A Ship’s Whole Crew Lost.”
The numbers are confl icting, but records
indicate that there was a crew of 16 to 17 and
one dog on board.
A Cablegram from San Francisco states:
“Lupata wrecked Tulamook Rocks; crew un-
doubtedly lost, 12 bodies ashore.”
On that fateful night the entire crew of the
Lupata was lost, with the exception of the
ship’s dog that swam safely to shore. On Janu-
ary 4, 1881, the lighthouse crew negotiated the
dangerous rock, which posed several threats
to depart from, and braved the deadly waters.
Once they landed on the beach they began to
bury the bodies that had washed ashore.
In an ironic twist of fate the Lupata tragedy
occurred just 19 days before the Tillamook
Rock Lighthouse became offi cially operational.
In the end, it could be said that the Tilla-
mook Rock Lighthouse, commonly known as
Terrible Tilly, was as unlucky as the Lupata.
To learn why, please visit the Cannon Beach
History Center and Museum.
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But it was the release of Strata 2 — a
layered whiskey based on a single malt Scotch
style — that brought the lines to Cannon Beach.
“We start with 100 percent heavily peated
malted barley which we get from a British
malting house that supplies all the major
Scotch distilleries,” Selberg said. “We ferment
it at a very high purity, so it won’t be as com-
plex as Scotch, but will taste mature in a much
shorter amount of time. You retain all that
smoky Scotch fl avor and aroma, with a much
lighter body and much cleaner fi nish.”
The biggest misconception about whiskey
is that longer in the barrel is necessarily better,
he added.
“It really comes down to your distillation
technique — the period you take it out and
how much oxidable material you can take
from the still,” Selberg said. “This one really
wouldn’t benefi t from a long-term maturation.
It would basically take on more barrel tone.
But any oxidable material is pretty much
matured in two years.”
Gary Liebrecht of Mercer Island spends
about 20 weeks a year in Cannon Beach.
Accompanied by his canine friend Isabella,
11, Liebrecht said he doesn’t drink but was
buying a bottle for “a friend who’s supposed to
be a connoisseur.”
Liam Sullivan of Portland stood near the
front of the distillery’s sale line after driving
out early from Portland, despite what he de-
scribed as “a little snow on the east side.”
Sullivan wasn’t buying for friends or
connoisseurs — he was buying for himself.
“Everything this guy produces is top-notch,”
Sullivan said. “It’s fantastic liquor. I wandered
in here about three years ago before I moved
out here and have been here ever since.”
“I don’t blame people for not wanting to
wait in line,” Selberg said. “The only way
that we could fairly release it, is fi rst-come,
fi rst-serve. We get people who drive down
from Seattle, western Idaho, San Francisco
— sometimes it’s crazy how far people would
drive for whiskey.”
Want to try some Strata 2?
Too late. Sold out.
LETTERS
Unsung heroes
Sadly, many of us take our public em-
ployees for granted until some event alters
our perception. As I routinely drive over
U.S. Highway 101 south of Seaside, I’ve
noticed the stretch of road near the Circle
Creek RV Park has been slowly deteriorat-
ing, and knew it would be expensive to fi x,
involving thousands of tax dollars.
But fortunately, someone at the Oregon
Department of Transportation (ODOT) was
thinking outside the box, and came up with
clever and relatively inexpensive solution
to the problem — they’ve put up simple
signs that state “Rough Road.” Now every
motorist is warned and able to slow down
to avoid damaging their vehicle or worse,
losing control. And ODOT has saved tax-
payers thousands of dollars.
I say bravo. More thinking like this is
what America needs right now. So, who-
ever it was that came up with the idea, you
are my unsung hero.
Cleve Rooper
Cannon Beach
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