Restless Ruse

“There’s a lot of curiosity here. people want to learn, they want to go deep, and they care about craft. It’s also the kind of brewing scene that doesn’t let you drift; it’s just extremely high calibre. There are so many good breweries, and it keeps us on our toes. Even if you get accolades, we’re constantly trying to get better, like make something 1% better every time.”

As well as the original Portland brewery, Ruse now has two pizza restaurants under the Crust Collective name, one over the river in Vancouver, Washington, and one back in Portland. “We make the pizza and serve our beer exclusively at those places,” Shaun says. “We’ve got cocktails at one of them. It’s been really fun.”

The fun is real, but so is the complexity. Running three venues changes how you brew; it forces you to think about cadence, staffing, what sells, what you can risk and what you can’t. And yet, the striking thing about Ruse is how openly Shaun embraces such risk, leaning into constant movement rather than falling back on one or two volume beers to keep the lights on.

“If we were a bigger grocery-store brand… you probably need flagships to hold your shelf slots,” he says. “For us, not being locked into ‘we have to brew this again in three weeks’ keeps creativity high… There are breweries where you clock in and brew the same pale ale forever. I’m glad we don’t do that.”

Of course, this approach means not every beer going out the door is going to be a huge hit, but it seems that being a brewer in this city means you get your own volunteer quality department. “A cool thing about Portland is the brewing community,” explains Shaun. “It’s our peers too; we share ideas, but we also give honest feedback. Some bigger breweries do blind tasting panels every week for QA/QC. We’ll even put peers into panels to get feedback.”

This feedback, through the industry and direct from customers in its venues, has undoubtedly helped Ruse evolve over its lifetime. “When we first opened, we had an extensive barrel program,” Shaun says. “We did a lot of mixed culture, saisons, that kind of thing. We worked with a local yeast lab to make proprietary strains, and we leaned hard into mixed fermentation early on.

“But we were always making hoppy beers too, and over time we’ve become more known for the hop side as well. These days, on a typical board we might have four hazies and four West Coast IPAs at the same time.”

This of course shows a brewery that’s listening to the market, but also reflects Shaun’s own status as a massive hop nerd. He talks about hops the way some chefs talk about seasoning, not as embellishments, but as structure. The foundation of Ruse’s hoppy beers are the classic workhorses, as Shaun explains. “Mosaic, for sure,” he says. “We lean into Mosaic a lot. Citra and Mosaic are kind of like salt and pepper, they lift everything.”

Then he gets into the fun territory of creating depth without tuning everything to the same deafening note. “We’ve also been using more Columbus Cryo as an under-layer,” Shaun says. “It’s such an expressive, dank hop — if you use too much, it takes over and that’s all you smell. But if you use just enough, it lifts the tropical notes in other hops.”

He gives a specific example, because brewers can’t help themselves. “We’ve got a beer with Nectaron, Krush, and Strata, and then just a sprinkle of Columbus Cryo, it makes it pop.”

Of course, Oregon is close enough to such ingredients to get specific, and very picky. “Yakima is the big growing region, but Oregon grows a ton too,” Shaun says. And he’s convinced you can taste where hops come from, at least sometimes. “I feel like Oregon-grown versions of [Cascade and Centennial] have a terroir character.”

He also lights up when discussing working with limited and experimental hops. “There was a developmental Oregon hop we used, HQG-4, which is now called Thora,” he says. “It was super limited.” Getting it involved a bit of local networking. “You can only really get it through the Hop Quality Group… but Breakside down the street is a member. I was like, ‘I really want to try this hop, can you sell me a few boxes?’”

Ruse’s story has always been one of flux, moving organically from mixed fermentation into full-blown hop obsession, with perfectly natural segues into pizza and waterfront real estate, all without letting the brewing fall into a rut of core releases. 

And it keeps one eye outward, getting involved in international festivals and collaborations. Shaun mentions a previous UK tap takeover and an odd moment of cultural perspective. “We made something together that was so pale,” he recalls, “and the British team were kind of like, ‘What is this?’ They loved it in the end. It’s fun to see how what we do lands with drinkers in a different scene.”

Back in Southeast Portland though, the daily reality revolves around showing up, constantly improving, and not getting stuck. “It’s easy to forget how inspiring it is,” says Shaun, “but I still walk in after all these years and I love coming in every day.”