As Hop Cycle Brewing Co. owner Tom Walsh battles cancer, his brewpub in downtown Banks is up for sale.
Walsh said his current treatment will continue through July. He’s motivated to sell the business, which includes a commercial kitchen and brewing equipment, a forklift, the trademarks associated with the business and more.
The business is up for sale for $750,000, or best offer, with alternative financing arrangements possible as well.
Hop Cycle opened in 2018 after Walsh and his wife Diane—who raised their family just outside of Banks—decided to fill a gap in the town’s commercial sector: a brewpub
The two drove through town saying “Banks needs a brewpub!” for about 20 years, Walsh said.
“We just didn’t know we were supposed to build it,” Walsh added.
After 30 years at Intel, Walsh retired in 2015, and he and Diane began work on building Hop Cycle.
“We found it delightful to be “thrown together” in this intense but joy-filled project, and loved building community through hospitality,” Walsh said. “We always said “we leave the love in” when we cook, and recently a patron spontaneously said “the love shows in the cooking” which was nice to hear.”
The pandemic reduced Hop Cycle’s business, but Walsh said they “struggled on,” and even expanded in June 2020.
Hop Cycle welcomed locals and visitors to the Banks-Vernonia State Trail, which starts just a few hundred feet away.
“In addition to the obvious riff on “hop on your bicycle” – the “cycle” of the hop is Field, Kettle, Fermenter, Glass; which is roughly like Labor, Love, Patience, Joy,” Walsh explained in an email to the Banks Post.
Over the years, Hop Cycle also hosted “meet and greets” for candidates for governor and other state offices, and business events for groups like the Banks Chamber of Commerce.
“We were recovering [from the pandemic] fairly nicely in the fall of 2022 when we suddenly lost Diane,” Walsh said.
Hop Cycle reopened in January 2023, and Walsh ran the business with the help of friends and family. In 2024, he remarried and ran Hop Cycle with his wife Sarah.
Chas Hundley is the editor of the Banks Post and sister news publications the Gales Creek Journal and the Salmonberry Magazine. He grew up in Gales Creek and has a cat.
