A Texas-Sized Beer Garden with a Top Chef at the Smoker
Grand Fir Brewing, an acclaimed brewery in Portland, Oregon, is opening a second location. The Outpost is expected to open soon near Happy Valley, Oregon, and it will be the brewery’s first satellite. The location is about 15 miles southeast of Grand Fir’s brewery in Portland. (Photo credit: Ezra Johnson-Greenough.)
“We are opening our first satellite location of Grand Fir Brewing!” said founder/brewmaster Whitney Burnside. “I’ve always wanted to have Grand Fir near our home in Oregon City so this is a dream come true.”
Grand Fir is owned by husband and wife team Whitney Burnside and chef Doug Adams. Burnside was Portland’s first female brewmaster at 10 Barrel Brewing PDX and has brewed at Pelican, Elysian, and Upright. She fell in love with fermentation while making artisan cheese at the Herbfarm Restaurant in Woodinville, Washington. Doug Adams is a Top Chef finalist with a resume that includes Bullard, Imperial, and The Woodsman.Top Chef nerds like me might recognize that he was a top-three finalist on Season 12 (set in Boston, 2014-2015).
The brewery opened in November 2022, and it has earned plenty of accolades and hardware since. Five months in, it won silver and bronze medals at the Oregon Beer Awards and was named best new brewery in the state. In 2024 it added three more Oregon Beer Awards medals and was named small brewery of the year. Then, in May of that year, three medals from the World Beer Cup. The year ended with Great American Beer Festival Brewer and Brewery of the Year honors (501-1000 barrels).
Grand Fir’s growth comes at a time when beer sales are struggling nationwide. A recent tank expansion should increase output from about 1,000 barrels in 2025 to an expected 1,400 this year, and 2,000 or more is projected for 2027. To help meet those expansion goals, the brewery hired Jake Watt, a two-time, back-to-back Great American Beer Festival gold-medal winner, to join Burnside and Cassidy Mack-Rife on the brewing team. Grand Fir also has a supper club, The Bitterroot Club, tucked behind the Portland brewpub.
The Outpost
The Outpost will be at 15252 SE Highway 224, where OR-224 and 212 meet at the edge of Happy Valley and Damascus. The 7-acre site is surrounded by a nature area, and nearby Rock Creek flows into the Clackamas River. Carver Park, a popular swimming, floating, and picnic area, is less than a mile away.
“You will be able to get off at the Carver Clackamas boat ramp and have a beer at the GF Outpost in about 3 minutes,” says Doug Adams. “We are excited to create a place where people can come off the water and come hang with us and enjoy some beer and some barbecue.”
The space was once home to Bigfoot Growlers and, more recently, Ruzzo’s Retreat, a taproom for the Ruzzo’s hard citrus brand. At the Grand Fir Outpost, visitors can expect:
- An 1,100 sq. ft. indoor taproom
- A nearly 13,000 sq. ft. beer garden
- A year-round heated solarium
- Parking out front, with spillover in a tree-lined field out back
Abel’s Garden Center’s large nursery surrounds the beer garden. Grand Fir hopes you will eventually be able to browse the plants with a beer in hand.
Burnside says she has had her eye on the spot for a while. “I’ve had my eyes on this location for a long time,” says Whitney Burnside. “Driving our daughter to preschool in Happy Valley I would go that route coming down from our house in Oregon City and I’d pass by and think about how cool it would be for a taproom that fits our vibe of having a lot of outdoor space, fire pit, music – it checked all the boxes.”
Beer, Barbecue, and Things to Do
The taproom will get new equipment, a fresh coat of paint, TVs for sports, and Grand Fir’s signature Pacific Northwest branding: trees and ferns. Behind the bar, beer will spill from 30 draft lines. Half will pour Grand Fir’s own beers, and the rest will pour beers from other breweries.
Adams plans to put the outdoor space to work. That’s where he’ll do the grilling and operate a newly acquired smoker from East Texas. “First and foremost I want to introduce the community to Whit’s phenomenal beer. And then just make it a really fun place where people can get something from the smoker outside. People can look forward to things like a Bitterroot Club-style steakhouse night one weekend, or another weekend smoked chicken, or a crawfish boil, or a crab boil – really activate that space and keep it moving.”
On weekdays, the pub will offer a small menu with BBQ sandwiches, clam chowder, seasonal salads, chips and queso, and custom sausages. Permanent on-site food trucks will offer a full set of other food options.
Texas-Sized Vibes
Grand Fir is going for Austin, Texas, beer garden vibes on the patio. Plans include a stage for live music, a heated solarium with its own TV, a large fire pit with Adirondack chairs, and an enclosed area where kids can roam and play. Behind the building is a grassy field where they envision drive-in-style movie nights, with folding chairs and popcorn, during the warm, dry summers.
“We really wanted to find a space where we could get super creative with programming, so it’s awesome having that space so we can make all of our ideas a reality,” says Doug Adams.
Burnside and Adams are also parents, and that shaped the plan. “One of the main things for us is since we are parents is we would love to go somewhere in the area that is not so Chuckie-Cheese, a place where we can have our daughter and she can have a good time and have a lot of stuff to do. This is going to be a really great location for people to bring their families while mom and dad have a beer,” says Whitney Burnside.
“We really want the space to feel like you can just come in, get a beer, get food from a food cart or from us and sit down in the big beautiful beer garden and enjoy a pint, while the kids run around,” says Doug Adams.
Grand Fir Brewing’s four-year anniversary is coming up in November. The Outpost is planned to open some time this fall. We’ll update this post when an exact date is clear.
Grand Fir Brewing Outpost
Taproom, beer garden
15252 OR-224 Ste A
Damascus, OR 97089
Grand Fir Brewing (original location)
1403 SE Stark Street, Portland, OR 97214
grandfirbrewing.com
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