Gavin Lord wants to create something elegant. Something subtle and delicate, but complex.
The context is beer.
But listen to him and Giselle Kennedy Lord talk about their new endeavor, Hetty Alice Brewing, and certain themes emerge. Family. Friends. Community. The complex intersection of all those things. And by the end, you come away not even thinking about beer. You come away thinking about life that’s well-lived.
Because Hetty Alice Brewing is a love story.
A love and passion for beer, sure. But beer is really just the beginning of the story. Or, perhaps better put, it’s just a result of it.
More than that, it’s about the love of family and friends. About a couple’s devotion to each other, their child on the way, and the things they want to create. About a beloved grandmother whose life inspired admiration and positivity. And about creating a community where friends and family can gather to eat, drink and enjoy.
The whole conversation — and endeavor — traces back to Gavin Lord’s maternal grandmother, Hetty Alice, the woman after whom Lord chose to name his dream brewery as a tribute.
In 1928, Hetty Alice Gourley was born in a dirt-floor house in Oklahoma, the youngest of seven children. Life was difficult, and Hetty Alice’s lasting memory of her father was of watching him chase her mother through the house with a broom. Her mother, Odessa, fled with her children to California, but she had so little money Hetty would have to go live with an older sister.
The hard years couldn’t break her.
“Hetty had a lot of reasons, especially late in life, to be bitter, and to be mean,” Gavin says. “There would be many moments, many milestones in Hetty’s life, where she could have made the decision that life was out to get her, the world was out to get her, and that she was going to be bitter and mean and grumpy about it.
“And she just was relentlessly positive. She was relentlessly warm and welcoming to new people. She was very, very generous, even though she lived her whole life and never had a lot of money. All of those things are things we want to emulate.”
Hetty, who passed away in 2013, had a freedom that came to her late in life, Giselle says. Her kids were grown, husband Glenn Frink had died and “she kind of had this moment.”
“She was like, ‘Oh, I can just live life the way I want to, and I can do what I want,’ but she had a deep love for the people around her,” Giselle says. “But always with this levity and this fun, and that freedom to live life how you see fit while still contributing to the community around you, loving your people and really leaning into what you have is how I remember her.”
Giselle Kennedy Lord and Gavin’s Lord’s own part of this story begins at the University of San Francisco in 2003.
“I invited him to a party and he didn’t show up,” Giselle says.
“I was 17, so you got a long way to go, a real long way,” Gavin says. “My brain was still in a nascent stage.”
It emerged, however, and their life together evolved into myriad forms. Early on as a graphic designer, Gavin and two friends opened a cooperative art gallery and studio, providing affordable space to 20 resident artists, including Giselle. Then the homebrewing years, which hinted at a different future.
Giselle’s interests and experience provide a chapter of their own. Art, dance, cooking, a master’s degree in gastronomy, then her eventual passion: documenting the agricultural ecosystem and sustainable food production as a videographer.
“I married a superhero,” Gavin says now of their wedding a decade after they met.
Gavin had grown up in Silverton, and he and Giselle started talking about Portland after they finished college in the Bay Area. “Great food city. Great beer city. Less expensive. Lots of ag,” she says.
In 2009 they made the move, and Gavin’s brewing passions grew. He took classes at Chemeketa Community College in Salem and eventually — after some local brewing industry jobs and the couple’s four month adventure in Southeast Asia — he attended the Brewing Program at the University of California Davis, where he earned his Institute of Brewing and Distilling diploma.
That led to a job as a brewer at Full Sail Brewing and the couple’s next move: Hood River. There, Gavin learned alongside a brewer named Josh Pfriem, whom Gavin followed in 2014 to a start-up brewery, pFriem Family Brewers. Gavin became pFriem’s head brewer, overseeing all aspects of the world-class operation during a period that saw massive expansion in both production and reputation.
But pandemics have a way of changing things and exhausting people, and after seven life-altering years, Gavin resigned.
Pfriem, the co-founder of the brewery that bears his name, said losing his head brewer was not only tough on the brewery, it was tough on his emotions.
“My stomach sank,” Pfriem said in an interview. “How do you replace Gavin Lord? Rarely in my life and career have I been able to have such a great partner in the brewery that was so dedicated, so hungry, so willing to put in massively long days, whatever it took in pursuit of making the best beer we possibly could.”
Pfriem also said Gavin was a “big-as-life personality” in every way, someone who surrounded himself with people who live to the fullest. Gavin also connects with the changing brewery world of today, Pfriem said.
“There’s definitely a new wave in craft beer,” Pfriem said. “Craft looks different now than it did five or 10 years ago, and Gavin has a great niche and will connect with people. That’s what Gavin does.”
Setting out with an eye on his own brewery dream and how to make it happen, Gavin began looking for a location. He toured Modern Times Beer’s Belmont Fermentorium, which had closed in Southeast Portland.
His hosts? Mat Sandoval and Conrad Andrus, two former Modern Times brewers also in the nascent stage of making their dreams happen — and looking for a third partner to run the contract brewing side of their business plan.
It clicked, and Lord joined them to open Living Haus Beer Co. at Southeast Belmont Street and Sixth Avenue, but with a caveat: The brewery would also eventually be home to a second operation, Hetty Alice Brewing, run as an alternating proprietorship.
At least one similarity quickly emerged. Andrus and Sandoval planned to name their beers after beloved family members, such as its Delores Pils. The three discovered the parallel with Hetty Alice.
“He saw that we were naming beers after our grandparents, and we knew it was sort of meant to be,” Andrus says. “I found it funny and great that it ended up working out that way because it somewhat aligns with our own personal values. We all respect and care about where we came from.”
The alternating proprietorship means the brewhouse is busy. Gavin oversees the contract brewing Living Haus performs, and the team makes beers for other breweries. The rest of the time, when the trio isn’t making Living Haus or contract beers, Hetty Alice beers are produced.
Giselle has a day job as well, as the marketing manager for Neutral Foods, a carbon neutral food company that operates in five states. In addition to her video documentary work for the nonprofit Ecotrust, her résumé includes working as the national communications director for the nonprofit Slow Food USA, and in Hood River she owned a company throwing pop-up dinners around town.
With that communications, visuals and brand marketing experience, she is introducing Hetty Alice to the world.
“It feels precious and important to tell the Hetty story in a way that feels both true and compelling to people,” she says. “The experience of eating and drinking is really important to me. Both of us like to host people. And so how do we bring this beer into the world in a way that people will enjoy it as much as possible?”
And Hetty Alice Brewing, appropriately, avoids the brash marketing often associated with beer brands.
“This is Gavin’s vision, but I think very much influenced by the life we’ve lived together,” Giselle says. “I love that it’s his grandmother. I love the sort of femininity in that, that women like beer.”
The 37-year-olds envision food and beer pairing events, though casual and familiar rather than the white tablecloth experience. Giselle is writing a book about rare and endangered heirloom food varieties and wants to plan gatherings exploring gastronomy and experimentation around that.
The Lords anticipate finding partners for a restaurant where they can host such events, a step Gavin says is in the dream stage.
That’s a memory to create down the road. For now, Gavin and Giselle have a different one they hold dear. During a family trip to Sayulita, Mexico, an aging Hetty needed to “just chill” most of the time in the house. Gavin would bring her vodka and tonics.
“She was so delighted with this whole arrangement,” Giselle recalls. “Gavin would say, ‘Grandma, you want another one?’ and she would say, ‘Oh yes.’ Which is why it’s in the branding. Because it’s like, ‘Why not? I’m not going anywhere.’
“And that’s the spirit we’re trying to capture,” Giselle says. “Seize the moment and just enjoy the people around you and the food and drink in front of you.”
It returns their story to that delicate combination, whether it’s beer or life and how to live it.
“There’s a lot to be said for subtlety. There’s a lot to be said for elegance. There’s a lot to be said for making something that is delicate and yet complex, and that’s what I’m trying to do with Hetty Alice,” Gavin says. “This is the vision I think Hetty would be most proud of.
“It is something I aspire to,” he says, “and I hope that Hetty can achieve.”
What to know about Hetty Alice Brewing
- The beers: The motto is “Fun beer to drink!” and Gavin Lord says Hetty Alice beers will live at the “beautiful intersection of drinkability and complexity … drinkable enough we can sit here and drink three and it’s not gonna get in the way of our experience of communicating with one another.” He will produce two to three new beers a month, and the first two beers are the Pilsner and IPA flagships in cans and on draft, plus a draft-only Fresh Hop IPA with Amarillo hops. In mid-October, a second batch will be released, including the IPA again and a new beer, Industry Lager, described as a “crisp, clean, low alcohol-by-volume lager with Citra and Mandarina Bavaria hops” in draft and cans.
- The planet: An important part of the brewery’s story: the environment and the planet. That responsibility is expressed in ways such as the use of paper-based holders for four-packs, and digitally printed cans — designed by their friend and fellow resident in their old college studio space, artist Miriam Diaz — that makes the cans truly recyclable, unlike the plastic labels widely used on the market.
- Where to find the beers: Hetty Alice Brewing is represented by Day One Distribution and can be found across Portland and throughout much of Oregon, east to Bend and south to Ashland, in restaurants, bars and bottle shops, including but not limited to Belmont Station, Saraveza, Market of Choice, The BeerMongers, John’s Marketplace, Loyal Legion and Cascadia Heights. They are not available over-the-counter at the brewery.
- Contact: hettyalicebeers.com
— Andre Meunier; sign up for my weekly newsletter Oregon Brews and News, and follow me on Instagram, where I’m @oregonianbeerguy.
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