The opening of Brewers Union Local 180

If you have been following events here for the last year or so you will know about Ted, from Oakridge, OR, USA. (He still can't decide which). Ted came here around May 2006 and drank some of our ale, played guitar with Dave and ate our food. He was in the UK for a job inteview as it was one way he could get to drink English Ale a little more often. He only stayed one night and we thought "Well there's a crazy American, wonder if we'll see him again?"

He didn't get the job but saw what we did here and decided that if he couldn't support himself and his family in the UK he would export one of our greatest assets, our ale. However, physically transporting ale over 8 time zones is not very practical, so setting up a brew pub seemed the best option.

So, around September 2006 Dave received an email entitled "Greetings From Oregon plus an Unusual Enquiry".

And progressed:

You may or may not remember an American by the name of Ted Sobel wandering into your inn around the middle of May this year. As a memory jog, he was graciously given a tour of the brewery, consumed around 8 pints of your ale, and was allowed to play an unusually shaped guitar.....

.....The reason for my enquiry, other than shameless flattery, is that I'm in the process of planning a real ale public house in my little town of Oakridge.....

..So, I was wondering if I could come and visit for a bit, help with brewing, see how cellar is operated, etc....

..and so started the task of training an eager and very well intentioned Amercian on the art of brewing real ale, cask conditioning, line cleaning and scowling at lager drinkers...

But the best bit of all. The Brewers Union Local 180, which is the rather long name he's given his Pub, is now well and truly open.

Email received this morning.

It's 1:33 AM here in Oregon. I'm sipping a cider from Canada. Our sales were fantastic on our opening day, more than I expected. 28% was real ale brewed in Oregon, the new home of cask beer. Tomorrow night (tonight later, actually), 250 mountain bikers are descending on the town for the second Mountain Bike Oregon event. They don't feed those people on Thursday and Sunday, so where do you think they should go for a bite and a pint?

We had 15 fire jumpers sitting outside drinking proper pints of cask beer. They don't drink this stuff. Never have, in fact, because it's hard to find.

Pictures forthcoming...

Now we are not going to try and hide our huge pride in Ted. Having complete, and possibly blind faith in his ability to take a style of pub we have here and prove that something similar can be made to work in a country where Ale is considered very niche.

So it just goes to show that Real Ale can be the future of beer and pubs and why we, here at The Woolpack Inn are unashamed in our promotion of Ale as our main beverage.