This non-descript industrial park in Wilsonville will soon be home to Vanguard Brewing.

Beer has a way of bringing people together in a way few other things can manage.

And in a way, that’s the ethos behind Vanguard Brewing, Wilsonville’s newest brewing company.

“We’ve always wanted to be our own boss, be in charge of our own destiny as much as we can,” said Don Anderson, who owns Vanguard along with wife Lin. “I love beer, I love to talk beer, I love to make beer and I love to share it with people.”

“It’s begin able to produce a product and watch with satisfaction how people feel when they drink it,” Lin Anderson added. “There’s something almost indescribable about being able to produce a product that you can watch someone enjoy.”

Soon, the couple hope to make that feeling permanent. The Andersons plan to open a 15-barrel brewery and tap house in warehouse space on S.W. 95th Avenue in Wilsonville, probably by the time summer rolls around. When it opens it would be Wilsonville’s second brewery after the McMenamin’s Old Church. The Neighbor Dudes Tap House in west Wilsonville also has plans for a future brewery.

While the Andersons have secured the space in which to operate, the rest remains in the works, a paper dream at this point.

Still, they are confident enough in their plan — and beer — to have already moved into the marketing stage. To be fair, that element was pushed up in recent weeks, thanks to a well-received article in local beer blog newschoolbeer.com. But that isn’t dampening their enthusiasm.

“We’ve been working on this for a year now,” Lin Anderson said. “I’ve been more involved with the business end and finances and getting everything collected together to make this happen. All the pieces are lined up, we’re just waiting for signatures on the dotted lines at this point.”

For his part, Don Anderson will be the lead brewer and likely will be found in a planned 800-square foot tap room when he isn’t mixing mash or cleaning the fermenters. He’s garnered plenty of experience as a brewer, starting with his first homebrew batch in 1990 and advancing to his current position as a full-time brewer with Lake Oswego’s Stickmen Brewery.

“We’ll hire folks for the tap room, and we’ll self-distribute beer to start with,” he said. “We’ll try to build a customer base. It’s not going to be bottled or canned, we’ll have keg sales only, and we’ll just kind of build the business from there.”

The brewing world in Oregon, the Andersons said, is more collaborative and less competitive than most people would suspect. Brewers from well-known companies regularly share recipes, techniques and generally have gone out of their way to cultivate a thriving community in the Portland metro area and further afield.

They hope to continue and expand on that with Vanguard Brewing. At the same time, Don Anderson also wants to buck a recent brewing trend toward the use of more and more exotic ingredients, including jabenero peppers and other products not normally associated with fine ale.

“I love all different styles,” he said. “I love a big, super hoppy Northwest IPA, wheat beers, all across the board. But part of the thing we’re going to try to do with Vanguard, is I see more and more brewers getting esoteric, and the market is driving that, everyone wants the newest and greatest.”

Those are fun, he said. But what happens when you just want a good, old-fashioned stout or pale ale?

“So that’s what we’re doing,” he said. “Back to the basics. We’re going to have a giant IPA — it’s the Northwest — maybe we’ll have one batch of experimental stuff on the side, but the main line will be the basics.”

To find out more and keep up with updates, visit http://facebook.com/vanguardbrewing.

Brewing Equipment Made Locally

Vanguard Brewing will join a host of other metro area breweries when they install stainless steel brewing equipment designed and fabricated in Canby by Global Stainless, a business owned by Lake Oswego resident Guinevere de Amblia.

Every piece of equipment is custom built for the brewery’s specific operation, including its space and scale.

Finally, backing the Andersons is their own version of a Kickstarter campaign. Intended to help push the new business over the edge, the Founders Club will be introduced to the public in the coming weeks, probably through Vanguard’s Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

“It’ll let people participate,” Anderson said. “And it’s been successful for other breweries in the community to both help build community and help the owners out financially.”