Maris Otter, a variety of barley malt that’s been around since the 1960s, has a name that’s hard to ignore. It’s a staple of British ales and a favorite among home brewers seeking the creamy, biscuity depth it can bring to a drink. It’s also an accidentally perfect name for a beer ingredient whose profits will go toward sea otter conservation. Malted grains, like Maris Otter, provide the essential sugars required for fermentation in beer brewing.
The Oregon Otter Beer Festival, now in its fifth year, began as a simple pitch. The Elakha Alliance, the only nonprofit in the country with a primary focus on sea otter reintroduction, would use the aptly named malt to its advantage for a fundraiser. Partnering with Oregon breweries to craft a beer with Maris Otter malt led to its annual festival. The festival has raised between $30,000 and $40,000 each year and has always sold out. Tickets are available at ElakhaAlliance.org.
This year’s event is Saturday, April 11, from 7 pm to 10:30 pm at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry’s Turbine Hall. Tickets grant patrons access to beer tastings from participating breweries, local wineries, and cidermakers, as well as food and live entertainment throughout the evening.
Fort George Brewery in Astoria, which has participated in the festival for years, will debut “Otter-Matic” this year, a pub ale built around the malt. Brian Bovenizer, Fort George marketing manager, describes the beer as leaning hard on what the barley malt does best.
“It’s over 50 percent Maris Otter, and then a mix of some other malts to round it out,” he says. “It really just leans on that one.” The result is an uncomplicated pub ale, creamy and malt-forward.
Beer has been an entry point for many festival patrons, but it doesn’t take long for them to become passionate about and connected to the cause driving the Elakha Alliance — supporting coastal ecosystems through restoring sea otter populations.
Chanel Hason, who has been with Elakha since its founding and has built the festival up from its initial one-page concept, describes the buzzing room each year as a mix of craft beer people and ocean conservation people, with significant overlap. “It’s a great way for breweries to engage with their community and showcase something besides beer that they support and value,” Hason says.
She emphasizes that the festival isn’t just about great beer, it’s also about bringing a keystone species back to Oregon’s coastline. Otters are essential for maintaining the health and diversity of both kelp forests and estuarine marine ecosystems, according to Elakha’s research.
The fundraising goal this year is $50,000, which will go toward Elakha’s research, tribal engagement and outreach work. Oregon is the only state on the West Coast that historically had sea otters and currently has none, a gap that Elakha has spent five years building the scientific and political groundwork to close. Last year, the organization received a $1.56 million federal grant to write a formal reintroduction proposal, a three-year process.
“There’s still a lot to plan, but that’s the benefit of the last five years, we’ll really have a solid foundation of planning and research to make a sea otter reintroduction the most successful on our end,” Hason says.
For Fort George, the partnership hits close to home. Bovenizer says environmental causes feel personal when you’re brewing on the Oregon coast. “We don’t have any of our native otters, so it’s something that we definitely see daily,” he says. “We’re trying to do as much as we can to make sure our habitat is restored to what it was, or kept from getting worse.” For Fort George and the other breweries that return year after year, the pun with the malt name has outgrown its original coincidence.
The Fifth Annual Oregon Otter Beer Festival, hosted by the Elakha Alliance and Oregon Zoo, is 7 pm to 10:30 pm, Saturday, April 11, at OMSI, 1945 SE Water Avenue in Portland. Tickets are limited to people 21 plus and are $75 at ElakhaAlliance.org.