EUGENE, Ore. (KMTR) – A Eugene business that's specialized in teaching others how to make beer is now expanding to sell beer itself with a brand new brewpub.
The nearly decade old “Valley Vinter and Brewer” brew supply businesses on 13th Avenue and Oak in Eugene has changed its name to “Falling Sky Brewing” and is now in the process of building a new brewpub restaurant near the University of Oregon.
Falling Sky is building the new pub behind its current brew supply store, which will remain open.
Crews hope to open the restaurant for business with a grand opening on February 7th, 2012. Inside, the pub will seat around 70 people. Outside, 25 people will be able to sit on a patio area during nice weather.
Falling Sky's brewers have been brewing out of their home for years as hobby. About one year ago, they decided they wanted to start a restaurant and pub to serve their own products.
To help with the restaurant side of things, Falling Sky's brewers found a local Eugene-area restaurateur with 15-years of restaurant business experience in Ithaca, New York, also the people behind Eugene's Field to Table Catering business.
“It's going to feel like a café. Big groups, small groups are going to be able to come hang out,” says Robert Cohen one of the businesses partners that helped put together Falling Sky's restaurant side.
“It should be very social and convivial. And I think the product offering from the beer to the barrel to tap wines to our sodas, to every item on our food menu, everything should be memorable in some way,” says Cohen.
As Cohen notes, Falling Sky says its drink will carry variety. Along with brewing their own traditional beers like stouts, browns, ales and others, Falling Sky says its plans to make harder to find beers like braggots made with meed and herbal beers. Falling Sky is also planing to make its own sodas.
“We dabble in a lot of different things, we can bring inspiration in small batch creativity,” says Michael Zarkesh, a co-founder and brewer at Falling Sky Brewing.
“Where other breweries are kind of locked in to having a production schedule and for us, we could be out here talking to customers and be like, 'oh, everyone wants a Dunkelweizen?' then we can make a Dunkelweizen in a couple weeks if we can coordinate and work together,” says Zarkesh.
Zarkesh says he's also hoping to work other local brewers to sell their product, like 2 Towns Ciderhouse, which sells hard apple cider made in Corvallis.
Inside, the building Falling Sky has some interesting equipment as well. The copper kegs came form a closed brewery in Tokyo, Japan. The windows separating the dining area and beer making area are the original windows that used to be on the outside of the building. Outside, the patio is fenced in with old wood beams recovered from a demolished McKenzie River covered bridge.
Falling Sky says it will open its restaurant with Happy Hour and dinner service to begin with, seven days a week. After that, it is planning to introduce lunch and brunch.
