Westward Whiskey

Westward Whiskey is the Portland, Oregon American Single Malt producer that grew out of one of the earliest modern craft American whiskey operations on the West Coast — House Spirits Distillery, founded in 2004 by Christian Krogstad on Portland's Distillery Row. Krogstad came to Oregon in 1991 for a craft brewing apprenticeship and a job with McMenamins (the Pacific Northwest brewery and historic-property restoration chain), and his brewing background directly shaped what would become Westward's editorial production identity: brew like a Pacific Northwest pale ale, distill like a Scotch single malt, age like a Kentucky bourbon.

The production philosophy is genuinely distinctive in the American whiskey landscape. Westward starts with a pale-ale-style mash bill of 100% Pacific Northwest two-row malted barley, fermented with ale yeast rather than the distiller's yeast that most whiskey producers use — which produces a beer-like wort with fruity ale-fermentation esters that show up in the final spirit. The distilled spirit then ages in new charred American oak barrels (the bourbon-tradition aging vessel rather than the used-cask aging of Scotch tradition) for a minimum of 4 years before bottling. The result drinks like nothing else in the American whiskey field — closer to a craft pale ale's flavor character than to either bourbon or Scotch reference points.

In 2018, Distill Ventures — Diageo's craft-spirits accelerator program — made a substantial investment in Westward's parent House Spirits, providing the global distribution and capital platform that let Westward scale beyond its Oregon and West Coast origins into national and international distribution through the early 2020s. The brand was repositioned as Westward Whiskey (separated from the broader House Spirits portfolio, which also includes Aviation American Gin and Krogstad Aquavit) to focus the editorial identity around the single-malt-whiskey production category.

The product range covers Westward American Single Malt (the flagship — the original Westward expression), Westward Stout Cask Finish (finished in casks that previously held Pacific Northwest craft beer stout, a regionally-distinctive technique), Westward Pinot Noir Cask Finish (using Willamette Valley Pinot Noir casks), Westward Cask Strength, and a range of single-barrel and limited bottlings. The Portland Distillery Row visitor experience at 65 SE Washington Street runs through the working 14,000-square-foot production facility, with the 28,000 additional square feet of barrel storage at the nearby Clackamas warehouse anchoring the broader aging program. For visitors building a Portland craft-spirits day, Westward is the essential single-malt anchor of the entire Distillery Row corridor.