PENDLETON, Ore. — The assembly line is taking bets.
It’s Thursday night and about a dozen friends and family have gathered at a repurposed car dealership in east Pendleton, Ore., to help Rodney and Kelli Bullington bottle a batch of vodka ahead of Oregon Grain Growers’ grand opening.
Cliff Bracher, a business partner with the Bullingtons along with wife Judy, was taking $1 wagers for anyone willing to guess how many bottles a transparent container of newly proofed vodka would produce.
The team quickly got to work after the bets were recorded, the crystal clear liquor flowing from the container to six machines that quickly filled the bottles placed under them.
From there, the bottles were handed to volunteer hands ready for a cap and seal, before moving further down the line to get the “Ouragon Vodka” label slapped on them, a reference to the Beaver State’s original name.
“When we say everything is handmade, we mean it,” Rodney Bullington said.
What Bullington and his partners think sets Oregon Grain Growers apart, besides being the city’s first microdistillery, is its commitment to agriculture and locally sourced ingredients. (Even the family’s six-month old Newfoundland is named Barley.)
The red wheat used to make the vodka is grown in La Grande, Ore., while the corn used for Oregon Grain Growers’ white whiskey is from the Brachers’ farm just north of Pendleton, Ore.
The grain sits in giant sacks on the distillery floor, some of the base ingredients used to start the two-week process.
To start, the grain is ground into a coarse flour and thrown into a 1,000-ton tank of near-boiling water, which allows the distillers to remove the starch from the grain.
After malt is added to sweeten the concoction, it’s pumped into a fermenter where the temperature is lowered to below 100 degrees and yeast is added, a necessary step to converting those sugars into alcohol.
Following three to five days in the fermenter, the mixture is transferred to the still, a brassy, steampunk contraption that Bullington calls “Sputnik.”
The still strips the alcohol and boils, guiding and condensing the resulting steam back into a liquid in a separate vessel.
If the intended product is vodka, which starts out at 190 proof, the distillers will add filtered water to bring the proof level down to 80.
The assembly team made quick work of bottling the vodka, creating a jovial atmosphere in the process.
Judy Bracher told her assembly mates about her days at Eastern Oregon University, where she and her friends would take an Oregon-exclusive brand of wine to the eastern border where they would exchange it for Coors Light with Idaho college students.
Judy said she and her husband saw contributing their grain to Oregon Grain Growers as a way to add value to their crops and were impressed by the Bullingtons’ vision.
That vision includes a unified aesthetic that evokes Eastern Oregon from the early to mid-20th century.
Hanging on one of the walls is an old movie screen from a local grange hall that features old painted ads from the East Oregonian and Hal’s Hamburgers, in addition to countless other businesses that have long since gone defunct.
Many of the materials used in Oregon Grain Growers’ tasting room not only evoke the era but embody it.
The tables are made of the wood mezzanine the owners tore out when they bought the property. And a bar previously served as a bench in a former speakeasy in Athena.
A carpenter by trade who used to work on high-end tract homes, Bullington’s cousin Hugh Tucker said designing the furniture was a breath of fresh air compared to the exactitude of his old projects.
“It’s perfectly imperfect,” Tucker said.
Those invested in Oregon Grain Growers are hoping for a perfect grand opening, and their previous sales point to success.
During the brief time it was open during Round-Up week, Oregon Grain Growers sold 260 bottles of liquor.
After the grand opening, the Bullingtons plan to open the tasting room a few days a week, with plans to eventually expand it into a full-service restaurant and cocktail bar.
But until then, Oregon Grain Growers seems to be heading toward what Rodney and several others mentioned was the ultimate goal of the distillery — a fun hangout spot.
