Logsdon Farmhouse Ales to close downtown Washougal brewpub

A little more than three years after arriving in downtown Washougal, Logsdon Farmhouse Ales is leaving.

The brewery’s downtown Washougal taproom, which had been closed since March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, resumed onsite service on April 21. But the reopening will be short-lived.

The brewery’s husband-and-wife co-owners, John Plutshack and Jodie Ayura, recently announced they plan to move Logsdon Farmhouse Ales to Southeast Portland later this year. The couple will close their Washougal brewpub — which replaced Amnesia Brewing at 1834 Main St. in the heart of downtown Washougal in 2018 — on Saturday, May 8.

“To our patrons in Washougal, we hope you make the trip down to Portland once we are moved, but we are happy we get to invite you back to our taproom … before we leave,” Plutshack said in a recent Craft Beer Scribe blog post. “We have missed serving you the last calendar year during the pandemic.”

In early 2018, the news that Logsdon Farmhouse Ales, then an award-winning brewery operating out of a 100-year-old barn in Hood River, Oregon, was a relief to downtown Washougal boosters worried about the departure of Amnesia, the city’s first downtown brewpub. The Logsdon Farmhouse Ales owners moved into the 6,500-square-foot Main Street space in early 2018, and told the Post-Record then that they had signed a 10-year lease with Lone Wolf Development.

This week, Plutshack told the Post-Record the building’s owner had decided to sell the 1834 Main St. facility.

“We were left with no choice to leave except for purchasing the building,” he said. “While we are saddened to leave Washougal, we are really looking forward to getting up and running at our new space in Southeast Portland.”

Logsdon, founded in 2009 by former owners David Logsdon and Charles Porter, specializes in saisons, barrel-aged mixed-culture beers, lagers and English ales. It has won multiple medals at the Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup competitions, and was named Small Brewery of the Year at the 2018 Oregon Beer Awards.

Logsdon is the second East Clark County brewery to close in the past year. Mill City Brew Werks in downtown Camas closed in July 2020. Camas Slices, an East Coast style pizzeria, will share the former Mill City Brew Werks space, at 339 N.E. Cedar St., Camas, with a new brewery — the Camas Brewing Company.