Looking around the space surrounding the old barn on NE Benjamin Road that houses his brewery and taproom, Wolves & People Farmhouse Brewery owner Christian DeBenedetti sees a perfect spring photo opportunity.
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He shifts his half-empty (or half-full?) glass below the yellow-and-orange daffodils on a picnic table in the brewery’s beer garden, picked from his plot no more than 200 feet from where he sat (which is currently covered with wild mustard, which will be harvested and used in an upcoming grisette beer called Florette). The scene provided a perfect spring backdrop on an outlier of a sunny day in early April and reminded his followers on Instagram that the seasons are finally shifting.
This was welcome news for a brewery beer garden that operates all year but shines in the sun.
Sitting next to the brewery’s new head brewer Shilpi Halemane, they toast a glass of the now-award-winning dry-hopped Saison, Traveling Companions. The beer had received a gold medal from the Oregon Beer Awards no more than a week prior, and they put a keg on tap to celebrate the occasion (as of press time, it’s still on tap).
“We’re super proud of getting an award for a very traditional farmhouse beer — a mixed culture blended saison with linden blossom,” DeBenedetti said. “In a way, it’s a rather simple beer. But that’s what makes it special. It didn’t need a lot to stand out.”
This was before he knew that two of his brewery’s beers, Instinctive Travels and Pesca, would win coveted Good Food Awards the following week. DeBenedetti and his team welcome the recognitions as they launch into their busy season after a big shakeup late last year.
The Six-Year Anniversary Shift
Wolves & People celebrated its six-year anniversary last September, shortly after which two longtime employees departed, leaving DeBenedetti to rebuild his brewing and operations staff nearly from the ground up.
DeBenedetti said he knew he needed to be selective in his hiring for this next phase in the brewery’s life.
“What I’ve been amazed and gratified by is the number of talented people that have gravitated to the operation,” he said.
Late last year, DeBenedetti hired Hanna Laney, a former small business owner who operated a family ranch in Newberg, to head up operations and logistics. He then bolstered his taproom staff to prepare for the spring and summer rush. And then in March, he brought on veteran mixed-culture brewer Shilpi Halemane, who had recently left Logsdon Farmhouse Ales after seven years.
“It’s been incredible to see [Wolves & People] grow,” Halemane said. “It’s quite something now. I feel like I joined at the right time when all the headaches are out of the way,” he added, laughing.
Wolves & People’s New Brewer, Shilpi Halemane
Halemane began homebrewing because he couldn’t find the beers he wanted to try.
The reason he couldn’t find these beers? They’re old-world styles that require years, decades, and even centuries of experience to perfect. Lambics, Flanders Red, Oud Bruin, and others are primarily produced by European breweries that have been refining their recipes and processes for centuries.
American craft breweries largely went the way of the IPA, which is a faster fermentation process and easily marketable, meaning breweries can turn a batch of beer into profit far faster than the time, expertise, and effort it takes to make a great farmhouse beer.
His background as an engineer provided the income and fastidiousness necessary to develop the processes that make these complex beers great, even on the homebrew scale. After a few years, he decided to enroll in Oregon State University’s Fermentation Science program and pursue brewing full-time.
Graduating the program in 2013, he interned at several breweries before landing a job as a production brewer at Widmer Brothers Brewing in Portland, Ore. for two years, always with the intention of returning to mixed-culture and barrel-aged beers.
In 2015, he had the opportunity to brew for Logsdon Farmhouse Ales, a family-owned farmhouse brewery in Hood River, Oregon, eveuntually rising to the head brewer position. Over the years, his interest and passion for mixed-culture beers grew due to their uniqueness and complexity.
What is a Mixed Culture Beer?
According to The Fermentation Association: “Mixed fermentation uses multiple microorganisms as fermenting agents. The most common are yeasts Saccharomyces (known as brewer’s yeast) and Brettanomyces, and the bacteria Lactobacillus and Pediococcus.”
Editor’s note: Mixed culture beers are commonly known as “sour beers,” much to the chagrin of many brewers. They span the color and flavor spectrum, ranging from tart lemon flavors to deep red wine characteristics to barnyard funk. The best way to know what these taste like is to try some yourself at your local bottle shop or brewery.
“Here’s a thing that every brewer knows but not a lot of consumers know: Recipe writing is really easy,” Halemane said. “The recipes are all pretty similar. You can pretty much screw up a good recipe 100 times after you write the recipe, and you can take a really boring recipe and execute it perfectly and make a wonderful beer. But there are so many things after the recipe that make the recipe into a great beer, and that’s what I focus on.”
Halemane said he’s excited to continue his brewing career at another farmhouse brewery that leaves the door open for experimentation, as well as has access to an abundance of local, unique ingredients.
“There are hazelnuts, honeybees, they’ve got some fruit [on the property], and I like those kinds of things,” he said. “Maybe we culture up some yeast from the property, or work on what they’ve already done here. There is a lot of potential.”
Not to mention, the brewery is in the middle of wine country — a unique opportunity for a brewer who wants to make “beer from here.”
“I love brewing with wine grapes,” he said. “It’s probably my favorite fruit for brewing and it’s very underutilized — which is silly because it’s the oldest beverage — other than mead — it’s the oldest fermented beverage.”
Since Halemane started, he got right to work. In the first month, he brewed a batch of dry-hopped saison aging in puncheons (large, 500-liter oak barrels) with Brettanomyces added (a yeast that provides a signature farmhouse funk). He also brewed two Belgian-style blondes with different yeast strains, a batch of Landbier (a house recipe malt-forward dark lager), and four batches of Wild Queen fermented with yeast cultivated on the farm. Undoubtedly, there have been more recipes between the interview and press time.
“Shilpi [Halemane]’s passion for those things was so obviously motivating for us to bring him into the Wolves family,” DeBenedetti said. “He has an amazing resume, amazing history, amazing palate, amazing beers he brewed at Logsdon — we’re thrilled.”
What’s Next at Wolves & People
Around the same time as the six-year anniversary, Wolves & People finalized the purchase of the farm from DeBenedetti’s parents. For the brewery, this means security and opportunity; the farm can morph into the brewery campus that DeBenedetti dreamed of when he traveled around Belgium visiting old-world breweries.
Since 2020, Wolves & People has added more outdoor space, brought its taproom from a small room in the back of the barrel storage area to the front garage door and built outdoor structures to protect visitors from the elements.. The brewery has scaled from 300 barrels of beer in 2020 to 600 barrels in 2022 and they project another spike this year. DeBenedetti also planted a five-acre field of barley and plans to add more unique brewing ingredients to the property in the coming years.
Wolves & People has also packaged more of its beer in 500-milliliter bottles for specialty items and four-packs of 16-ounce cans for the more standard products.
Mostly, for DeBenedetti and his team, it’s about finding the right size for their brewery and getting beer to the people who are looking for it — not necessarily the whole world.
Wolves & People beer has made it across the Atlantic to Sweden and Denmark. It has popped up in North Carolina, New York, Texas, and Virginia. It’s a mainstay around bars, stores, and restaurants in the Pacific Northwest.
But for Newberg-native DeBenedetti, the goal is and always will be to cultivate an inviting and relaxing atmosphere at the farm.
“Being from Newberg — I was born here, raised here on the farm — there’s a real connection to it,” DeBenedetti said. “There are so many memories of growing up with the hazelnut harvest. To be able to do this and continue to grow it and see it succeed and have support from people in Newberg is incredible. I have people coming in that I went to grade school with, teachers that I remember from so long ago that have become fervent supporters. It’s so magical.”
To learn more about Wolves & People Farmhouse Brewery, visit www.wolvesandpeople.com.
Wolves & People Farmhouse Brewery
30203 NE Benjamin Road, Newberg, OR 97132
(971) 832-8736
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