Dirt Road Brewery a Photo story

 Dirt Road Brewing a Photo story

by Clayton Lynch and Evan Finley

    Dirt Road Brewing is a local brewery/pub located at 13th and main downtown Philomath, OR. Since 2019, Dirt Road has been serving the community fresh  artisan pizza and a wide variety of in-house brewed beer. Despite spending the majority of its time open under COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, Dirt Road is thriving, expanding and has become a Philomath staple.

Dirt Road opened its doors to the public in August of 2019, but founder Chuck Cox has been brewing beer for quite a while. It all started in his garage with a home brew kit. Overtime, the brewing system in Cox’s garage grew larger and more advanced as the positive feedback from friends and family grew. Cox says opening the pub was a part of the natural progression. Before Cox started Dirt Road he was a builder and contractor, as most of the operations of the brewery and pub have been taken over by his head brewer and staff, Cox continues to build houses on the side.

Dirt Road’s brewery is currently located in rented space a few blocks from the pub. Brewer Collin Potter (left) and Head Brewer J Shilling (right) are the two man team that are responsible for brewing all of the beer that Dirt Road serves on tap in their pub and distributes to other local tap houses and grocery stores. Both Shilling and Potter are alumni of OSU’s fermentation program. The brewery is currently using a five barrel system that allows them to brew 155 gallons at a time. Brewed beer several temperature controlled fermentation tanks (pictured on the back wall) where it spends anywhere from two to eight weeks, depending on the beer.

Head Brewer J Shilling transfers an imperial milk stout out of the Wild Turkey Bourbon barrel it has occupied for the last 18 months. The milk stout spends the majority of its fermentation in the bourbon soaked oak barrel where it absorbs the residue of the sweet liquor’s flavor. The milk stout will spend a couple more weeks in a temperature controlled stainless steel tank where carbonation is added and then it is transferred to kegs and cans for distribution.

Collin Potter mills grain to make the mash that will be the base for Dirt Roads Douglas Fir Tip IPA. Potter is responsible for day to day brewing operations at Dirt Road. Potter formerly worked at Block 15 brewery in Corvallis (as did head brewer J Shilling). There are a lot of steps to brewing beer that involve weighing and mixing the appropriate grains, adding specially formulated yeasts and hops, to name a few. When not handling the ingredients, there is always some piece of equipment to be cleaned and sterilized. Maintaining a clean environment is crucial to the brewing process as improperly cleaned equipment can drastically affect the quality and taste of the beer. 

These green pellets are dried and compressed hops that are an essential ingredient in Dirt Road’s Douglas Fir Tip IPA. The reason these hops take the shape of something akin to animal feed is because in this form they offer better utilization of the hops than its whole fresh counterpart.

Collin Potter is cleaning out the leftover mash from their masher. Mashing is the process of agitating and heating a mixture of barley, water, and different grains to activate malt enzymes and turn the grain starches into fermentable sugars. That leftover mash you see being pulled out of the masher will be given to a local farmer to use for pig feed as a way to help limit waste.

The Dirt Road pub has 16 beers on tap. The selection of beers changes with season, but head brewer, J Shilling, says you will always find a couple IPA options and lagers on tap, but the remaining taps are rotated out based on season and popular demand. Shilling says that they have to maintain a balance between pursuing their own creativity and making available the beer that their customers want. Even so, they are always working on special projects and seasonal releases. Dirt Road’s Pizza is fantastic and has been their food staple since they opened, but this might change soon as they have acquired the neighboring building and are expanding the food prep and seating areas. More space will allow them to expand their menu items and much needed indoor seating area. This expansion is not only limited to the restaurant, Dirt Road is also building its own brewery facility behind the pub that will allow them to double production. They hope to be in their new space by Fall of 2023.