Full Sail Brewing Company

About this Brewery

Determined to make world-class beer in our own backyard, one of our first, and perhaps best, decisions was to invest in new, state-of-the-art brewing equipment. Other micros had been brewing with varying degrees of success in open fermentation tanks or old, cast-aside dairy equipment. But we weren’t taking any chances: the beer had to be great or there was no point in brewing it. So we bit the bullet, laid down our borrowed cash, and spent the better part of 1987 installing the new system. By September, we had our first crew on board – a classic mixture of beer geeks and boardheads – and we were ready to brew. Yeah, our operation was tiny and the work was nonstop, but to be in Hood River at the forefront of not only the craft beer movement, but also the rise of windsurfing, was thrilling. Microbreweries were springing up all over the Northwest. The windsurfing craze was in full swing. Hood River’s storefronts were filling up with gear shops. And we put up a whopping 287 barrels that first year. Things were really humming. Our original bottling line was this cute little red Italian job that we nicknamed Mimi. Designed to bottle still wine -- a whole different beast than carbonated ale -- Mimi proved to be every bit as temperamental and capricious as you’d expect an Italian prima donna to be. What’s more, Mimi was a manual bottling line. Every operation had to be done by hand. Nonetheless, with Mimi’s help we succeeded in putting our beer into bottles, simultaneously silencing the critics and making great beer as close as the corner store for the first time in generations. Not long after, Full Sail Amber became our best-selling beer and garnered us our first heavy metal: A gold at the 1989 Great American Beer Festival. And we continue to do whatever we can to be sensitive to the environment that lured us to this amazing place: By operating our own award-winning water treatment plant; distributing our spent grain to nearby farmers; using a sustainable filtration system; packaging our products in recycled paperboard; and becoming a founding member of the Hood River Greensmart taskforce. We love our community. So we support over 300 events and charities each year, with a focus on those in our local area. Our most significant commitment by far, however, came in 1999 when our little brewery reached a turning point. For years, we’d been thinking and talking and dreaming about the idea of becoming an employee-owned company. So many people had put so much work and love and dedication into Full Sail, and we wanted them to share the same pride of ownership we did. But that’s not the whole story. The reason we started Full Sail in the first place was to build a company that was completely different from the ones where we’d previously worked. It wasn’t about business as usual. It was about finding our calling in life -- about truly appreciating our “human resources,” and balancing work, life, family and friends in a way that makes life truly worth living. It was in that spirit that we became an independent, employee-owned company in 1999, divvying up the company between the 47 of us. Of all our accomplishments, this is the one that makes us most proud.

Locations

Full Sail Brewing Company

Address

506 Columbia Street
Hood River, Oregon 97031