Travel Notes: Bandon, Coos Bay, the southern Oregon Coast

Lighthouse in Bandon, Oregon

We spent the Fourth of July weekend last month on the southern Oregon Coast, in the town Bandon. Bandon is one of my favorite places to visit and we were last there two years prior; I wrote a beery post about that trip at the time, and this one is somewhat supplemental. With some notes about Coos Bay, to the north, and a quick stop in Reedsport on the way home.

Bandon

The city of Bandon is located on the Coquille River, approximately 24 miles south of Coos Bay on Highway 101 and 89 or so miles north of the California border. With an estimated population of about 3,050, I’ve always found it to be a charming and quiet little town. It’s a bit of a tourist town, but a mellow one.

I’m happy to report that Bandon Brewing Company is brewing all of its beers in-house now. (To be fair, it’s been two years since our last visit, so it would be weird if they weren’t.) Bandon Brewing specializes in pizza and beer and is located in Old Town Bandon. When we first visited two years ago, equipment was present but not yet installed, and owner Jon Hawkins was occasionally commuting to Portland to brew the beer.

We stopped in to check things out after grabbing dinner at Tony’s Crab Shack, which is just as eclectic and unpretentious as it sounds. (Beer with dinner: a bottle of Full Sail Atomizer Pale Ale.) I ordered a sampler tray of several Bandon brews and then noticed something quite unusual: not a single IPA on tap!

Bandon Brewing beer board

Hawkins was there that evening, and we struck up a conversation as I ordered. He’s happy to be brewing in-house now as well, and revealed that he had just hired a new brewer: Owen Woods, formerly of Portland and West Coast Grocery. Woods was to be starting in the coming weeks after our visit.

In the meantime, I sampled the following beers (with my quick notes):

  • Bandon Lager: 4.8% ABV, 8.8 IBUs. A bit of corn/DMS, grainy and crisp. Maybe touch of green apple.
  • Bullard’s Bitter: 3.7% ABV, 29 IBUs. Has a roasted note that’s a touch acrid. Mellow, probably a bit of diacetyl… Does that make it authentic?
  • E-Rock Amber Ale: 6.1% ABV, 54 IBUs. Tasty with good malt body and subtle sweetness and gentle hop bitterness. (Based on the IBUs, probably the closest thing to an IPA on the menu.)
  • REO Red Ale: 5.6% ABV. Fruity esters, unfiltered look. Malty, sweet, fruity. Caramel.
  • Camp 7 Coffee Porter: 5.8% ABV, 34 IBUs. Smells like a bag of freshly roasted coffee. Strong coffee flavor, totally appropriate, melds great with the porter style. Best in flight.

Bandon Brewing sampler tray

And a bonus: Hawkins came by the table and dropped off a zwickel sample of the newest beer and the brewery’s first (kettle) sour ale, Blueberry Sour. The beer was still in the tanks but was to be released soon. For a first sour beer, it was pretty good and it had a prominent blueberry character to it.

Blueberry Sour from Bandon Brewing

Incidentally, Bandon Brewing is not the first craft (micro) brewery for the town. According to The Brewpub Explorer of the Pacific Northwest, published in 1996, that distinction goes to the original Bandon Brewing Company founded in 1993 by Bob Hawkins (no relation as far as I know). This was a seven barrel brewery that brewed four standard ales and a winter seasonal: BogWater Wheat Ale, BogWater Porter, BogWater Scotch Ale, a bitter, and a spiced Winter Warmer.

There was some pre-Prohibition brewing going on as well. You can read a bit about that in Southern Oregon Beer by Phil Busse.

More pictures from Bandon Brewing:

Bandon Brewing, brewhouse

Bandon Brewing, fermenters

Bandon Brewing surfboard

Bandon Brewing car

Elsewhere in town, I’m pleased to report that the Bandon Farmers Market still sells beer, wine, and cider from its “beverage station” that you can drink while you peruse the market vendors. In the theme of drinking local, I bought a pint of Endless Summer Blonde from 7 Devils Brewing Saturday morning while we browsed.

Of course a stop at The Beverage Barn was in order. We visited last time we were in town (read about it here) and picked up a growler then. This trip was shorter, however, so we browsed instead. Suffice to say, it’s still the largest beer, wine, and liquor store in town and little has changed with the overall decor. I ended up buying two bottles of beer from a couple of Roseburg breweries, Backside Brewing and Two Shy Brewing.

If you’re looking for growler fills in Bandon, The Beverage Barn is your best option with a decent selection.

Back in Old Town Bandon, Foley’s Irish Pub serves up standard Irish pub fare along with pints of Guinness Stout on nitro. Go around the block towards the bay is the touristy dive bar that seems to have a good beer selection—sadly it’s on the of the places I haven’t visited yet but it’s on my list.

Around the corner from that is the Stillwagon Distillery tasting room, at which we had a great time and walked out with three bottles of rum. Stillwagon is known for its rum, producing something like 18 different types (flavors) of the spirit. There is a vodka and several whiskeys as well. The pirate-themed tasting room is quirky and fun, and the proprietor was hilarious and delightful. It’s well worth the stop.

Coos Bay

North on Highway 101, the city of Coos Bay sits on, well, the Coos Bay, and at about 16,000 people it’s the most populous city on the Oregon Coast. The city abuts the town of North Bend to essentially make one big metro area, and to the west the city of Charleston bumps up the “Oregon Bay Area” population to around 32,000.

The region’s economy was built on forestry and timber, fishing, and agriculture, and as with many other regions that have struggled as those industries have declined, tourism (and the service industry) has taken on a growing role.

We don’t usually visit Coos Bay, other than to hit The Mill Casino (in North Bend), or to go to the movies. However, 7 Devils Brewing is located there, and ever since our last visit two years ago (when I noted the ubiquity of its beers up and down the region), I’d been wanted to check it out.

The casino was the first stop, and then we checked out the other casino in Coos Bay, Three Rivers Casino. The Mill Casino is the larger and better of the two; Three Rivers appeared to just be a satellite of the main one in Florence and was somewhat limited.

Side note: Each spring The Mill hosts its annual BBQ Blues and Brews on the Bay festival, which is pretty much what it sounds like, featuring a beer garden with craft beer along with blues music and plenty of barbecue.

7 Devils Brewing opened in 2013 and draws its name from the locally-known “Seven Devils” coastline ravines that are difficult to cross (which you can visit at the Seven Devils State Recreation Site). The owners, Annie Pollard and Carmen Matthews, built the brewery with the credo of “local” and “community” in mind, as well as sustainability.

7 Devils Brewing Company

It was a beautiful day (particularly for the coast!) so we sat on the patio. In the corner (marked by the wooden partition wall in the photo above) a band was getting ready to set up for that evening’s live music set. The entire exterior south wall of the building has a subtle stylized terrain map of the region—what might initially look like stains in the above picture. The interior was comfortable and welcoming, with fun decor.

7 Devils Brewing - entrance

7 Devils Brewing - brewpub

7 Devils Brewing - main bar

7 Devils Brewing - side bar

For the beer, there’s a nice selection to choose from, spanning a range of styles. There’s no specific sampler tray option, however you can build a taster flight at $2 per taster (3.5 ounce pours), which means $8 for four. That’s what I initially went for, and then added a fifth. Here’s what I went with:

  • The Hydrant Wheat Ale: 5.1% ABV, 20 IBUs. Unfiltered, light, nicely hoppy. Good hot weather beer.
  • Lighthouse Session Pale: 4% ABV, 35 IBUs. Crisp, nice hop presence with good balance. Easy drinker.
  • South Slough Spruce Tip Pale: 7% ABV, 39 IBUs. Spruce is subtle and lightly spicy. Nice pale. (Note: I had this two years before, in Bandon.)
  • Blacklock Oat Porter: 5% ABV, 45 IBUs. Coffee, very light smoky malt. Roasty, thin.
  • Chinook Redd: 5.8% ABV, 51 IBUs. Very nice, zesty spice note from the hops and good malt body.

I followed up the tasters with a pint of Groundswell IPA (7.7% ABV, 66 IBUs) which is a tasty west coast IPA. In fact I wrote a post about it two years ago, and I think what I wrote then still applies. I’d say the Groundswell was even better this time because it was fresh on draft (and I’m sure drinking it at the brewpub on the patio didn’t hurt that impression either).

7 Devils Brewing - beer menu

7 Devils Brewing - taster tray

7 Devils Brewing Groundswell IPA

Overall I found 7 Devils to be a great stop with solid beers and cool ambiance. It’s definitely one I would recommend and it would be a place I’d frequent if I were in the Coos Bay area more often.

Reedsport

In going home, we decided to bypass the usual route (through Roseburg and past Crater Lake on Highway 138) due to possible holiday weekend traffic by Crater Lake, and headed north on 101 to Reedsport, to return via Eugene. Reedsport is a small town of about 4,100 people, and unsurprisingly, the decline of timber has given way to a rise in tourism.

I don’t have much in the way of observations about Reedsport, other than a couple of things: Defeat River Brewery is located there, and the town—much like the rest of southern Oregon in general—is rural and quite conservative, meaning, Trump and Republican voters. This was immediately apparent when we stopped to visit Defeat River, and parked next to a wooden sidewalk sculpture of the “president.” It was hilarious and actually super weird.

Defeat River Brewery was not (super weird), and it was a pleasant stop with decent beers. To be honest, I was a bit surprised that it was open on a Sunday afternoon, all things considered, and it was pretty empty inside. The bartender had just started working there on weekends a couple of weeks earlier, and was commuting from the Eugene area, and so was definitely not of the conservative mindset when asked about the statue outside. (She didn’t know much about it either.)

I got a taster flight and tried the following:

  • Accept Da-Wheat: 4.73% ABV, 21 IBUs. Crisp and lightly spicy as if rye. Touch of hop bitterness, refreshing.
  • Communion Red Ale: 5% ABV, 45 IBUs. Nicely malty with still a touch of light roast.
  • Paradox Hazy IPA: 6% ABV, 50 IBUs. Not bad, still slight onion greens, a bit of clashing bitterness.
  • Thor CDA: 6.5% ABV, 65 IBUs. Brown and murky. Similar nose, with piney/earthy hops. Ok, lightly hop-spicy and a little muddled.
  • Pioneer Stout: 5% ABV, 47 IBUs. Decent, roasty.

I also grabbed small tastes of 1.21 Jigahops! IPA and Grit Pils (pre-Prohibition style with corn). The brewery doesn’t have a kitchen, but welcomes customers to bring in their own food; there are several restaurants on the block. The space had a bit of an historic vibe to it, located in Old Town Reedsport.

It was a relatively quick stop, but all in all I liked what I saw and tasted and would definitely return for another visit.

Defeat River Brewery

Defeat River Brewery sign

Defeat River Brewery bar

Defeat River Brewery beer menu

Defeat River Brewery sampler flight

Defeat River Brewery fermenters

Defeat River Brewery brewhouse

And because I can’t talk about the weird and creepy Trump sculpture without showing you, I’ll leave you with this:

Creepy wooden sculpture of Trump

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