Pelican and Grand Fir Brewing Team Up for Five-Course Lager Dinner

Tonight's dinner at Pelican Brewing in Pacific City brings together two of Oregon's most closely linked brewing figures: Pelican brewmaster Darron Welch and Grand Fir Brewing's Whitney Burnside, whose professional history stretches back to Burnside's three years on the Tillamook coast working under Welch at Pelican itself.

Doors open at 5:30 p.m. for the welcome reception, with the five-course dinner service starting at 6:00 p.m. at 33180 Cape Kiwanda Drive. The centerpiece of the evening is the world debut of Mr. Lagers Neighborhood Collaboration Lager, brewed by Welch and Burnside using all Oregon-grown ingredients. The beer's promotional tagline, "Won't you be my neighbor?", leans into the reunion spirit of the whole event.

Burnside's path from Pacific City is the throughline that makes this dinner more than a standard brewery collab dinner. After leaving Pelican, she moved to 10 Barrel Brewing in Portland, where she and Welch first collaborated on Bird-Day Volume I in 2021, a beer brewed to mark Pelican's 25th anniversary. Then in November 2022, she and her husband Doug Adams opened Grand Fir Brewing in Portland. Adams is also one of the two chefs building tonight's menu alongside Pelican's Sabrina Chapman, which makes this a dual collaboration across both the brewing and culinary sides of both businesses.

Chapman and Adams are pairing what the event describes as thoughtful, seasonal cuisine with a light lager focus drawn from both breweries' tap lists. The menu opens with a Dungeness Crab Tostada finished with avocado, sweet hot jalapeños, and spicy peanuts, served alongside Pelicano Extra! Cerveza Lager, a Pelican brew that Burnside helped develop during her time at the brewery. The evening closes with a Pot de Crème built from dark chocolate, Heartwood Stout, fresh whipped cream, cacao nibs, and Jacobsen Salt Co. sea salt, paired with Pelican's Raspberried at Sea Ale with Raspberries. The full middle three courses have not been announced publicly. Ingredient suppliers for the menu include Three Sisters Nixtamal, Groundworks Organics, Bluebird Farms, Rubinette Produce, McFarland Springs, Foods in Season, and Woodblock Chocolate.

The event is 21 and older. Reservations can be made by emailing events@pelicanbrewing.com or calling 503-965-3674. For Welch and Burnside, the collaboration lager and tonight's dinner mark the third chapter of a working relationship that started on the Oregon coast, detoured through Portland, and has now circled back to the same stretch of Cape Kiwanda shoreline where it began.