John Harris got into brewing before craft beer looked anything like it does now.
In the mid-1980s, Oregon’s beer scene was still small, experimental, and largely being invented by the people working in it. John found his way into McMenamins, started brewing professionally, and eventually spent the next several decades moving through some of the most important breweries in Oregon before opening Ecliptic Brewing in Portland.
His career makes this episode feel less like a conversation about one brewery and more like an oral history of Oregon craft beer through the eyes of somebody who was there for much of it.
We talk about the early McMenamins brewpubs, his move to Deschutes when that brewery was still getting started, 20 years at Full Sail, the beers he helped develop along the way, and what he learned before deciding to build a brewery of his own.
In This Episode
The early Oregon craft beer scene
Getting started at McMenamins
Brewing at the Hillsdale Brewpub
Experimenting with fruit beers
The story behind Hammerhead
Moving to Bend
Joining Deschutes Brewery
Black Butte Porter
Mirror Pond Pale Ale
Obsidian Stout
Jubelale
How small breweries grow
Beer laws and distribution
Twenty years at Full Sail
Learning the business side of beer
Why John eventually left
Starting Ecliptic Brewing
The astronomy behind the Ecliptic name
Seasonal beer and food
Beer names and branding
IPAs, fruit beers, sours and changing tastes
Brewery collaborations
Exporting beer to Japan
Staffing and brewery economics
Guest
John Harris
John Harris is a brewer and the founder of Ecliptic Brewing in Portland, Oregon.
He began brewing professionally at McMenamins in 1986 before moving to Bend and joining Deschutes Brewery in 1988. John later returned to Portland and spent 20 years with Full Sail before opening Ecliptic Brewing in North Portland in 2013.
That timeline puts him inside several different eras of Oregon brewing, from the loose experimentation of early brewpubs to the much larger craft-beer industry that followed.
Learning to Brew at McMenamins
John’s first professional brewing job came at McMenamins, where the modern rules of craft beer had not really been established yet.
The brewers were experimenting because there was room to experiment. They tried different ingredients, played with hops, made fruit beers, changed recipes, and learned by making beer over and over again.
John talks about brewing at the Hillsdale Brewpub and how different that environment was from the more controlled production breweries he would work in later. There was a sense that if somebody had an idea, they could try it and see what happened.
That included Hammerhead, which became one of McMenamins’ best-known beers. John had a hand in changing the hopping and helping the beer evolve into the version people came to recognize.
What stands out in his story is how informal the process could be. These were not century-old American brewing traditions being handed down. A lot of the people involved were creating the tradition while they were working.
Joining Deschutes
In 1988, John moved to Bend to join Deschutes Brewery, which was still in its early stages.
The job put him in another young brewery just as it was beginning to establish its identity. John worked on beers including Black Butte Porter, Mirror Pond Pale Ale, Obsidian Stout, and Jubelale, all of which would become closely associated with Deschutes.
The brewing philosophy was more rooted in traditional beer styles than what John had experienced at McMenamins, but the company was still small enough for him to be involved in shaping what those beers became.
He also began seeing a different side of brewing. Once people know and expect a particular beer, creativity is only part of the job. Consistency becomes just as important.
A customer who buys a Black Butte Porter expects it to taste like Black Butte Porter every time. Producing that kind of consistency while a brewery grows requires different systems, tighter processes, and a lot more control than making something interesting once at a small brewpub.
Twenty Years at Full Sail
John eventually returned to Portland and joined Full Sail, where he spent about 20 years.
That period gave him a much broader view of the beer business.
He was still brewing, but he was also learning more about sales, production, distribution, planning, and the financial side of getting beer into the hands of customers.
That distinction comes up repeatedly in our conversation. Brewing beer and running a brewery are not the same job.
A brewer can make something incredible, but somebody still has to figure out how much it costs, how to package it, where to sell it, how to distribute it, and whether enough people are willing to buy it to keep the business alive.
By the time John left Full Sail, he had spent decades learning both sides of that equation.
Building Ecliptic Brewing
Eventually, John wanted to create something of his own.
He opened Ecliptic Brewing in North Portland with a concept that connected his career in beer with another longtime interest: astronomy.
The name comes from the ecliptic, the apparent path the sun follows through the sky during the year. That idea became part of the brewery’s identity and also gave John a natural way to think about seasonality.
Beer changes with the seasons. So does food.
That became part of the concept for Ecliptic, which John built as both a brewery and restaurant rather than simply a production facility.
The astronomy theme gave the beers, artwork, and names a shared identity without forcing every product into the same mold. It was something personal to John, but it also gave the brewery a direction that customers could immediately understand.
Watching Beer Trends Change
By the time John opened Ecliptic, he had already watched the beer industry reinvent itself several times.
Styles become popular and then fade. IPAs grow. Fruit beers come back around. Sours develop a larger audience. New hop varieties change what brewers can make. Customers start expecting constant variety.
John talks about the challenge of balancing that desire for new things with the need to keep making dependable beers people already know they like.
That tension runs through modern craft beer. Brewers want to experiment, and many customers want them to experiment, but breweries also need products people will repeatedly buy.
John has seen both sides because he started when simply making unusual beer was enough to feel experimental.
Collaborations and Selling Beer Beyond Oregon
The conversation also gets into collaboration, one of the stranger and more interesting parts of craft-beer culture.
Breweries compete for customers, but brewers often work together, visit one another, share ideas, and make beers together. John talks about collaborations with other breweries and some of the relationships that grew out of those projects.
Ecliptic also began selling beer outside Oregon, including in Japan.
That introduces an entirely different set of problems. Shipping, freshness, distribution, pricing, and relationships with people thousands of miles away suddenly matter just as much as the recipe itself.
It is a long way from the small brewpub environment where John started.
The Economics Behind the Beer
One of the most useful parts of the episode is hearing John talk about what customers do not usually see.
Ingredients get more expensive. Packaging changes. Labor costs rise. Shipping matters. Restaurants need staff. Distributors take their share.
Even an ingredient choice can become a business decision if the price changes enough.
A brewer may want to use expensive fruit or a particular hop because it makes the beer better, but there is still a point where the customer looks at the price of a six-pack and decides it is too much.
John has spent enough time in the industry to understand both impulses. He still cares about making interesting beer, but he also knows the brewery has to work as a business.
That perspective is probably the biggest difference between somebody who loves brewing and somebody who has spent decades trying to make a living from it.
A Career Through Oregon Craft Beer
John’s career runs through McMenamins, Deschutes, Full Sail, and eventually Ecliptic.
That makes his story unusually useful because each stop shows a different stage in the growth of Oregon craft beer.
He started when small brewpubs were still experimenting with what American craft beer could be. He helped make beers at Deschutes that became standards. He spent two decades learning the larger business at Full Sail. Then he took that experience and opened a brewery of his own.
By the end of the conversation, the episode is not really just about Ecliptic anymore.
It is about what happened to Oregon beer while John Harris was standing behind the brewhouse watching it happen.
Useful Links
Ecliptic Brewing
https://eclipticbrewing.com/
McMenamins
https://www.mcmenamins.com/
Deschutes Brewery
https://www.deschutesbrewery.com/
Full Sail Brewing
https://fullsailbrewing.com/
Oregon Hops and Brewing Archives
https://guides.library.oregonstate.edu/brewingarchives/oral_history
More Interviews
Salt History, Food Culture, and Why Salt Matters with Mark Bitterman
https://maxwellskitchenpodcast.com/maxwells-kitchen-podcast/2023/04/12-episode-111-mark-bitterman-the-history-of-salt-from-a-james-beard-award-winning-author
James Beard Award-winning author Mark Bitterman talks about salt, food culture, traditional production, restaurants, building The Meadow, and what happens when a simple ingredient becomes an entire business.
Music Millennium, Vinyl Records, and Record Store Day with Terry Currier
https://maxwellskitchenpodcast.com/maxwells-kitchen-podcast/2022/12/12-episode-99-terry-currier
Music Millennium owner Terry Currier tells the story of another longtime Portland business, from record stores and vinyl to Napster, streaming, Record Store Day, and surviving decades of change in an industry that never stops moving.
