Assembly Brewing, 2019-2025

George Johnson has run out of patience. The man who built a brewery after decades of consideration and four years of active negotiations to secure his building is calling it quits. In one of the saddest announcement of recent memory, The New School broke the news early this morning that George was closing the brewery for good on May 11th. Just a year ago, I wrote about the Assembly for its fifth anniversary, as it was opening a satellite location in Northeast Portland. Alas, Johnson told The New School:

“We also want to acknowledge the challenges we faced along the way. The craft beer industry is dynamic and ever evolving and we navigated through various hurdles, from heightened costs and market fluctuations to the impacts of global events. Each challenge taught us resilience and adaptability. Unfortunately, the hits kept coming and we no longer have a financial cushion to weather the storms ahead.”

Click through to read George’s whole statement, which is very gracious and quite positive (he added, “we are filled with hope and excitement for what the future holds”). Assembly will close their original Foster Road brewery and pub, but will keep their second pizza place on Alberta open.

A Landmark Brewery

Most six-year-old breweries haven’t been around long enough to be considered landmarks, but the moment George Johnson opened Assembly, it made history. Johnson, a Detroit native, was the first Black brewer to found an Oregon brewery, and that was a big deal in a city and state where racism was an overt part of the legal structure (there’s a reason Portland and Oregon are so White).

Johnson placed Assembly on Foster Road, one of those busy commuter thoroughfares studded with gravel, autobody, and plumbing stores, along with dive bars and diners. It’s a working class neighborhood and seemed to embody Johnson’s plucky ethic. That, too, made Assembly stand out—aside from Zoiglhaus, no other companies dared set up breweries south of Powell Blvd. and east of Cesar Chavez.

Pizza was probably Assembly’s biggest calling card, even ahead of beer. Johnson was one of the first to bring the pizza of his home town to Portland, and he did it right. As I wrote last year:

“During this period, he was also making pizza at home, perfecting the art of the Detroit-style pie. There is a correct way to make this kind of pizza, and, [according to Johnson], most Portland places don’t make it properly. He’s worried it’s giving the style a bad name. When he got serious about opening a brewpub with pizza, George returned to Detroit to learn how to make pizza at scale. He trained with Shawn Randazzo, the late chef who was instrumental in popularizing Detroit-style pizza. Randazzo gave him the recipe for his own dough, and that’s what you’ll taste when you order a square of Assembly’s pizza.”

In terms of beer, Johnson wasn’t aiming to set the world on fire. He started homebrewing 32 years ago, and you could see the effect of classic American brewpubs on his beers. He liked porters and stouts; he liked malt. “My philosophy is to brew balanced and accessible ales for the people,” he said.

But that fit in with his vision for Assembly, which was serving the people. His beer was the right fit for the neighborhood, and so was his spacious, welcoming pub. He commissioned beautiful murals for the walls of the brewery, which drew people in—and also told part of his personal story: “The mural in the dining room is based on Diego Rivera‘s Detroit Industry Murals, housed in the Detroit Institute of Arts,” he wrote. “This was my favorite room in the museum since I was a child.” It typified his working-class, people-first ethos.

In six short years, Assembly made its mark in a way few breweries have. Portland has a lot of breweries, and it even has a lot of great breweries. It has fewer essential ones, however. For many reasons, Assembly was a unique brewery, an indispensable fixture in our city. Its loss represents a huge blow to Portland, Oregon, and even craft brewing more broadly. I suspect I speak for a lot of people when I mention grief at hearing the news. This is a loss we won’t soon be able to replace. And we’ll never replace George Johnson among Portland’s brewers—his patience, kindness, and gentle grace were one of a kind.

RIP