USA, OR: Cascade Brewing sold to local group that includes founders of FlyBoy Brewery

Cascade Brewing, a pioneer in the popularity surge of fruited sour beers nationwide over the past decade, has been sold to a local group that includes the founders of Tigard’s FlyBoy Brewery, Cascade announced on April 2.

Oregon beer icon Art Larrance, who founded Cascade in 1998, has decided to retire, Cascade said in a news release. The new ownership group is a team of brewery and taproom owners that includes Mark Becker, Ramie Mount, Brian Kovach and Greg Laird.

“I’ve known (Mount) for a few years - he’s probably one of the biggest sour beer enthusiasts in the world,” Larrance said when reached by phone Thursday afternoon. "He’s been coming to our place and drinking beer for a long time.

“He put together a good team,” Larrance continued. “That’s what is the most important thing to me. They’ll be able to take Cascade Brewing to the next plateau.”

Becker is a former homebrewer who founded FlyBoy Brewing with his wife, Kristi, in Lake Oswego in 2014, then in 2017 opened FlyBoy Brewery and Pub in Tigard. Mount and Kovach are former software engineers who took over and own the Lake Oswego location, which now operates as FlyBoy Taproom, selling FlyBoy beers alongside a wide taplist. And Laird last year co-founded Parallel 45 Brewing in Independence.

Financial terms were not released. Cascade said the deal is a “phased transition sale” but did not elaborate.

Both the existing production team and pub management will remain in place, and the Cascade Brewing Barrel House, Blending House and Lodge at Cascade Brewing will stay open, Cascade said.

Reached by phone on April 2, Mount, who assembled the ownership team, said the group has no intention of changing what Cascade does.

“We’re huge fans of Cascade and of what Art has done over the past 25 years,” Mount said. “We hold him in high respect. Our only goal is to continue that growth and continue Art’s vision."

Mount said the new owners plan to work with the existing team at Cascade "to scale the good thing that is in front of us already.” He said they plan no changes to the creative team or brewing approach.

Cascade began life making pub ales, like most breweries at the time. But in 2006, increasing competition prompted the brewery to change course under the creative guidance of brewmaster Ron Gansberg and take a path less traveled: sour beers.

They created an aging and blending program, and in short time the Portland brewery would be widely hailed as a pioneer of the Northwest-style sour beer movement. Cascade’s House of Sour would become a tourist destination for those seeking to partake in the city’s renowned beer scene.

“This has exceeded my expectations,” Larrance told The Oregonian/OregonLive during the House of Sour’s ninth anniversary party late last year.

Gansberg left the brewery two years ago, but Cascade’s reputation for quality and creativity remained. Cascade’s offerings include ales such as its Kriek, a a barrel-aged red with cherries, its Manhattan NW, styled after the Manhattan cocktail, and the classic Sang Rouge, a blend of sour red ales aged in wine barrels; or the Sang du Chene, a blend of sour strong blond and triple ales aged in three types of oak casks: foudres, puncheons and hogsheads.

Gansberg developed Cascade’s own strain of lactobacillus bacteria – the souring agent that infects beer and increases acidity. His experimentation with fruit widened, and Gansberg’s vision and commitment to developing the brewery’s sour and barrel-aging program would be widely credited for Cascade’s rapid rise.

Soon the experiment would pay off: Cascade’s Kriek would collect bronze, its Vlad the Imp Aler would collect silver, and its Bourbonic Plague would collect gold over two years at the prestigious Great American Beer Festival. The New York Times would name Kriek the best sour beer in America in 2011.

“I’m not the ‘imagineer’ like Ron,” Larrance said. “I was more the facilitator. I was so lucky to work with him and some real good people through the years.”

Larrance has a deep history in Oregon’s brewing industry. Now 75, he was among the original visionaries of Portland’s craft beer industry, part of a group that founded Portland Brewing Co. in 1986, the era’s fourth brewery in Portland.

He would go on in 1988 to help create the Oregon Brewers Festival, the huge celebration of craft beer held every July in downtown Portland’s Waterfront Park. He will remain as owner of the festival.

Larrance, who will remain as an adviser during the transition as legal approvals are sought, said he’s happy about the sale, especially that “they’re giving me beer privileges for the rest of my life.”

“Now I get to be like Fred Bowman and Kurt Widmer and Dick Ponzi.”

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