Working Hands Fermentation

story by DON CAMPBELL |

by MICHAEL PETERSON

Sometimes all it takes is fresh energy and a good idea.

In a region swimming in good beer and creative cider, Working Hands Fermentation continues to blossom into a premier destination for the fine art of the froth and bubble, dispensed from a public house that’s artful, functional and a swell place to sit your butt down for a palate-pleasing beverage.

Formerly the sole province of Slopeswell Cider up in Hood River’s Heights district, Working Hands’ three owners — John Terhaar, Kasey McCullough and Ellen Woods Potter — found a certain chemistry combining their brewing talents and knuckle-busting DIY work ethic (hence the company name) to organically grow and expand a respected neighborhood watering hole.

Away from the more tourist-driven downtown proper of Hood River, Working Hands brews an astoundingly diverse and complex array of lager and other-style beers, and old-world cider, from its 3,700-square-foot building (and outdoor area, weather-permitting) that’s rich in art, nostalgia, live music and trivia nights, and a prestigious membership “mug club” that bears out the folksy, comfortable nature of this local business.

e initial Slopeswell incarnation took up half of the brewery’s present space. When the workout studio next door to the north vacated, the vigorously hands-on owners took a nerve-wracking and scary nancial risk — in the time of Covid — and doubled the size.

e southern side is 21-and-over, with the other side all ages. e business now o ers a full kitchen under the restaurant moniker “Deb’s” and the guiding hand of Chef Ryan Hunter, as well as the full brewing and cidery operation that’s bursting at the seams.

e Terhaar, McCullough and Woods owner team are a sum greater than its parts, with a combined skillset that proves to be a deft, and winning, combination. Terhaar (ofcial title: wholesale supervisor) lived nearby in the early Slopeswell days of 2016 and began to frequent the place. “I was living down the street and would come in for cider,” he says. “ ey asked me if I wanted to work. I started pouring cider back then and expressed some interest in ownership, and a few years later they asked if I’d like to come on. I said sure.”

In January 2020 he signed on. “I saw a lot of potential,” he says. People loved the neighborhood hub and it had a full cadre of regulars. Terhaar, though, felt it was more of a hobby cidery and lacked robust management. “ ings have changed a lot since then.” e cider maker at the time had no interest in brewing beer. Enter Kasey McCullough. As ownership changed in 2020, they’d talked regularly about adding beer to the proceedings. McCullough came to them through other sources. “Everybody had the same ideas at the same time,” Terhaar says. “The universe allowed it to happen. It worked out pretty well.”

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McCullough is now head brewer and co-owner. Initially headed for pre-med at Boise State University and then Oregon State University, he wandered into a class at OSU where the cool kids were making beer (and earning a degree doing it). He was hooked.

Post-college, he’s built quite a curriculum vitae. Terminally bitten by the beer bug, he earned accreditation at the famed Siebel Institute of Technology — the oldest brewing school in the U.S. — and became a master of authentic lagers.

The next several years would find him traveling far afield in his brewing pursuits, first at Ninkasi in Eugene, Ore., then to a major stint in San Antonio, Texas — a region then not known for its craft beers — working on a start-up brewery called Southerly.

“ e beer scene, especially in south Texas, was pretty poor,” he says. “ ey had a lot of really restrictive laws. e rst brewpub in the city had opened just a year before that. Guys making really poor homebrew were just opening up stu . As a professional, it was pretty embarrassing.”

Being a pro, McCullough found himself touring throughout the greater South as a consultant for other startups and developing successful canned beer programs for Texas retailer HEB. Su ering burnout and needing to deal with some family a airs, he headed back home to Oregon, for a three-year stint at a small Bend brewery before getting hooked up with Hood River’s Ferment where he built up its kombucha program and other beers.

“I kind of got done with startups,” he says, “doing all this work for somebody else.” Looking for a way to concentrate on his own specialty, lager beers, he was lured away from Ferment and into helping what would become Working Hands with its beer o erings.

Completing the triumvirate, Ellen Woods Potter also turned her passion for beer into a career. After leaving Dufur, Ore., post-high school, she headed for Washington State University and found a job at the Paradise Creek Brewery, Pullman’s only brewing establishment. ere she developed a taste for craft brewing. After nearly three years, graduation found her based in Texas as a ight attendant.

“I started really getting into craft beer,” she says, “and not just in Texas but everywhere I went. All around the world, I was drinking local beers.” She then signed on with