Gary Fish came to Bend nearly 14 years ago figuring he would open a nice little brewpub and restaurant downtown, work on his golf game and get in some serious skiing.

No chance.

”I’ve been up skiing three times this year, and that’s three times more than last year,” Fish said.

The Deschutes Brewery, the pub and restaurant on Bond Street in Bend that Fish opened in 1988, still is what Fish originally envisioned a place where locals and tourists alike can meet friends, quaff a pint of ale or tackle a burger or order of nachos.

What has changed is, Fish no longer has time to stand behind the bar to pour pints and chat with customers like he did a decade ago.

Instead, Fish, 44, now watches over Deschutes Brewery Inc., a multimillion-dollar company that includes the downtown brew pub as well as a 65,000-square-foot production plant in southwest Bend off Colorado Avenue that now is the largest producer of craft beer sold in Oregon.

According to the most recent tax data available from the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, Deschutes Brewery shipped just over 46,000 barrels of beer through Oct. 31 of 2000. For the first time, Deschutes Brewery is poised to overtake Widmer Bros. of Portland in annual sales; Widmer sold more than 43,000 barrels of craft beer in the state through Oct. 31.

For tax purposes, the OLCC computes all beer as though it was sold in barrels. In fact, however, about 57 percent of Deschutes Brewery’s output goes out in bottles, at just under 14 cases of bottles of 24 each per barrel.

Widmer, with its trademark hefeweizen and ales such as the raspberry-flavored Widberry, still is slightly ahead of Deschutes Brewery in overall sales. Widmer shipped approximately 120,000 barrels in 2000, compared to Deschutes Brewery’s 95,000.

Deschutes Brewery sells its flagship ale, Black Butte Porter, and other brands such as Mirror Pond Pale Ale in five Western states and Hawaii.

But this isn’t a competition, say both Fish and Kurt Widmer, president and brewmaster of Widmer Bros. There’s plenty of room in the craft beer business for all companies, both men say.

”Together, we compete against wine, hard liquor and such things as alco-pops like hard lemonade,” Widmer said. ”We have a lot of admiration for what Deschutes Brewery does. They run a good shop and we like working with them on joint projects.”

The craft beer industry doesn’t just compete against wine and hard liquor.

After all, the sales of all craft breweries in Oregon combined are just a fraction of industry leader Anheuser Busch, which sold nearly 700,000 barrels of beer in Oregon through Oct. 31 in 2000, according to data from OLCC.

However, industry statistics show that craft beers make up 10 percent of overall beer sales in Oregon, compared to 3 percent of sales nationwide, said Jim Parker. He’s the executive director of the Oregon Brewers Guild, an industry group dedicated to representing microbreweries in the state.

”Deschutes Brewery is probably one of the biggest success stories in craft beer brewing in the nation,” Parker said.

”They’re a model that many people look to, as in, ‘How do you grow a company with quality?’ They do it all right.”

Parker said the most recent study by the Institute for Brewing Studies, a national trade group, listed Deschutes Brewery as the 11th largest domestic specialty brewing company in the nation.

”They have one of the highest growth rates in the country,” Parker said. They’ve proven they’re no fluke. One thing they’ve done exceptionally well is, they’ve kept track of distribution and most importantly, ‘Who’s watching the beer.’ They only distribute in the West, but their reputation far exceeds that. Internet chat rooms are full of comments about Deschutes Brewery beers.”

What’s a craft beer, anyway? Parker described it as the amount of beer produced as well as the product that eventually ends up on the store shelf.

”Most craft breweries make in a year what the big guys spill in an afternoon,” Parker said. ”The process is the same, turning grain into liquid. But craft beers most often are more full-bodied, more flavorable and much more diverse.”

So, what’s on tap for Deschutes Brewery?

The company’s increasingly crowded production plant will reach its annual capacity of about 107,000 barrels by the end of next year, Fish said, meaning the double-digit annual sales growth for a time will slow by choice.

”We aren’t going to do anything that will compromise the quality of our product,” he said.

Fish has purchased a parcel of land that was scheduled to be a skating rink just below the production plant, and the company is conducting studies to figure out how best it should grow in the future.

”We continue to evaluate opportunities,” Fish said. ”We have a passionate group of people here that enjoy doing subtle tweaks to the product. That’s the creative part. The rest is a lot like work.”

The work has paid off, though. In the spacious lobby of the production plant are two dozen medals from various competitions, including the most recent a silver medal from the 2000 Great American Beer Festival in the foreign-style stout category for Deschutes Brewery’s Obsidian Stout.

The company also plans to continue its contributions to charity. Fish several years ago began the annual Sagebrush Classic, a golf tournament and culinary event that has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for children’s causes. Deschutes Brewery also is a major contributor to the Deschutes United Way.

In 1999, Deschutes Brewery received a Sam Walton Business Leader award from the Wal-Mart Foundation for its contributions to Bend. Fish is a former Bend Chamber of Commerce citizen of the year.

”I see no reason to leave (Bend),” Fish said. ”I don’t know anyone who does business in Bend that can’t make more money somewhere else, but we love to set objectives here and meet them.”