Shortly after launching The Ale Apothecary in 2012, founding brewmaster Paul Arney — fresh off his stint as assistant brewmaster at Deschutes Brewery — told me that his father, Ralph, didn't see a future for him in the family business.
"He saw the writing on the wall. There's no future in running a small drug store." But that suited young Arney just fine since, as he'd also told me upon our first interview, he grew interested in brewing but, "brewers are science-driven. I'm driven to be an artist and I want (The Ale Apothecary) to be art-driven."
In that sense: mission accomplished. His wild elixirs — wild as in relying on spontaneous fermentation, as opposed to "clean" beers fermented with standard ale or lager yeast strains like over 99% of all beers out there — have become some of the most celebrated funky beers made in Oregon, with global adulation. But in this current climate with beer consumption stagnant and beers such as Sahalie, Spencer and Ralph (named for Arney's daughter, son and dad, respectively) not selling well enough, despite being complex, imaginative and crazy delicious, Arney and his wife, Staci, are bowing out.
"This was always going to be temporary," says Arney from the brewery's tasting room on Century. "Art is temporary."
The Arneys are selling the business to a new family, and one that absolutely knows what they are getting into, since they recently folded their wild-ale brewing company, Wolf Tree Brewery. Joe Hitselberger and Taryn Arvold and their two young children recently relocated from the coast to Sisters, after shuttering Wolf Tree's ranch-based brewery in Seal Rock and the taproom in nearby Newport.
As a stock sale, they're getting everything from the brand, the Ale Apothecary inventory of beers that are already bottled as well as maturing in multiple oak barrels. Equally crucially, they gain the tasting room on Century Drive, adjacent to hoppy Sweet As makers GoodLife Brewing and the German beer bar, Prost.
Wolf Tree's beer had already been served at The Ale Apothecary during 2023's Tree Beer Fest, which only featured a dozen breweries. It shows how analogous the two farmhouse breweries actually have been. Hitselberger founded Wolf Tree in 2013, mere months after The Ale Apothecary launched.
Hitselberger said keeping The Ale Apothecary name was the obvious choice.
"There's a lot more value in the name; it's much more established. I didn't want Wolf Tree to absorb Ale Apothecary; I want Ale Apothecary to absorb Wolf Tree." He's leaving the door open to having the name live on, possibly as a series, and in the short run, making remaining Wolf Tree inventory available at The Ale Apothecary soon.
Also helping them through the transition and onward will be long-time Apothecary brewer and wearer of many hats, Connor Currie.
"My first meeting after Paul was with Connor," says Hitselberger. "He's the lynchpin in this whole thing moving forward. His intimate knowledge is critical for us. If he wasn't a part of this, we wouldn't be either."
Arvold, who is an Advanced Cicerone (the beer industry's counterpart to wine's Sommeliers), adds that their iteration of The Ale Apothecary will brew clean beers as Arney had begun doing under The Ale Pharm imprint, just as Wolf Tree brewed styles from IPAs to stouts.
"We're going to see what's not being offered and focus on ones that we want to drink, like a having a classic pale ale." Patrons can eventually expect to see a Berliner Weisse or perhaps an amber ale, in the vein the craft beer industry was initially built on. More frequent events and the introduction of a mug club are likely additions after Labor Day.
As he exits, Arney assured me that the entire experience of launching, building and even selling the business was absolutely worthwhile, especially having gone into it "with no expectations." Just as Arney's own father, who sadly passed away in May at the age of 80, encouraged him to blaze his own path, Arney says The Ale Apothecary gave him the "freedom to do this exactly the way I wanted...as DIY as it gets...and that's a big luxury, not just for a business but in life, in general."
