Double Mountain Brewery Blog

BOTTLES ROLLING NORTH!

The wait is over! It is with great pleasure that we announce the debut of our half-liter bottles at retailers throughout Western and Southwestern Washington. Our core brands – Kölsch, Vaporizer Dry-Hopped Pale Ale, India Red Ale (IRA) and Hop Lava Northwest IPA – will be on shelves and available for purchase immediately, with seasonals and other specialties to follow. Distribution will be handled by Alpha Distributing of Kent, WA, our wholesaler of record in the market since 2011.

Here’s a list of places to find the bottles today:

99 Bottles
Beer @ a Time
Beer Junction
Bottleworks
By The Bottle
Chuck’s 85th St. Market
Downtown Spirits
Gravity Beer Market
Ken’s Market Queen Anne
Last Drop Bottleshop
Met Market Sandpoint
Met Market Uptown
NW Liquid Gold
Pear Deli
Pint Defiance
Tacoma Boys
Tacoma Co-op
Whole Foods Westlake
World Beers

Stay tuned for more as they come online in the next couple of weeks.

As for returns, it’s different from Oregon due to the lack of a deposit. We will be soliciting finer retailers to serve as drop-off stations for the empties, on a volunteer basis. Our good friends at Bottleworks in Wallingford are on board as our first partner. Thanks guys! Looking forward to adding more soon.

For those about to Rock! 6th Anniv Party is March 16

DOUBLE MOUNTAIN 6th ANNIVERSARY PARTY
with headliner HELL’S BELLES
Saturday, March 16 at the Brewery
11:30am – 11pm

It’s that time of year again when we toss up the big tent, fill the taps with all we’ve got and throw a shindig to thank all our friends for another great year. Our Anniversary Party has become a Northwest institution, and this year’s 6th Anniversary gig will carry the fun even higher.

The all-day party will culminate with the awesome musical stylings of Hell’s Belles, the all-girl AC/DC cover band that has torched stages across the nation. HB will be supported by a strong roster of local acts including the rockin’ country of Brewer’s Grade (formerly known as Unwound); surf rockers Audio Amigos; and local acoustic acts Shed Shakers and Sid & Al.

On the beer front, three bars will be dispensing a total of two dozen different Double Mountain ales and lagers, many of them from the brewers’ reserve stash. We will be doing half- as well as full-pours into a souvenir glass mug this year, to enable our fans to sample a wider variety. Pizza by-the-slice (new this year) and sandwiches will also be available.

$5 admission for adults includes the souvenir mug; kids are welcome with parent/guardian until 5pm. Hope you can make it our way!

More Bottle Retailers

Just in time for the holidays… more stores! Bottles have been shipping all week to “specialty grocery” stores in the Portland region, including New Seasons, Zupans, Market of Choice, Food Front and more. (Whole Foods is still a couple of weeks out.)

Here’s our current retailer list: (pdf here)

N Portland
Barrel, 7401 N Burlington
Bridgetown Beer House, 915 N Shaver
Hop And Vine, 1914 N Killingsworth
Hop Haven, 2130 Ne Broadway
New Seasons Arbor Lodge, 6400 N Interstate
Saraveza, 1004 N Killingsworth
Williams St. Market, 3508 N. Williams

NE Portland
1856, 1465 Ne Prescott
Alberta Co-Op, 1500 Ne Alberta
Beaumont Village Market, 4130 Ne Fremont
Bi-Mart Halsey, 12321 Ne Halsey
Bottles 5015, Ne Fremont
Cork Wine Shop 2901, Ne Alberta
New Seasons Concordia , 5320 Ne 33rd Ave
Yong’s Market, 2626 Ne Dekum

NW Portland
Caps and Corks, 1000 Nw 17th Ave
City Market, 735 Nw 21St Ave
Elephants Deli, 115 Nw 22nd Ave
Food Front #1, 2375 Nw Thurman
Pearl Speciality, 900 Nw Lovejoy
Thurman Market, 2576 Nw Thurman

SE Portland
39th Mini Mart, 935 Se 39th Ave
Beer Bunker, 7918 Se Stark
Beer Monger, 1125 Se Division
Belmont Station, 4500 Se Stark
Cheese Bar, 6031 Se Belmont
Clinton Market, 3400 SE Clinton
Garrison’s Fine Wines, 1401 Se Morrison
New Seasons Division, 1954 Se Division
New Seasons Hawthorne, 4034 Se Hawthorne
New Seasons Sellwood, 1214 Se Tacoma
NW IPA , 6350 Se Foster
Otto’s Sausage Kitchen, 4138 Se Woodstock
Portland Bottle Shop, 7960 Se 13th Ave
Sheridan Fruit Co., 408 Se 3rd Ave
Zupans – Belmont, 3301 Se Belmont

SW Portland
Barbur Foods, 9845 SW Barbur Blvd.
Food Front #2, 6344 Sw Capitol Hwy.
Johns Market, 3535 Sw Multnomah Blvd.
Pc Market Of Choice #12, 8502 Sw Terwilliger Blvd.
Ross Island Grocery, 3502 Sw Corbett
Zupans – Burnside, 2340 W Burnside
Zupans – Macadam, 7221 Sw Macadam

Beaverton / Hillsboro
Hank’s Thriftway, 661 S Baseline, Hillsboro
Main Brew, 23596 Nw Clara Lane, Hillsboro
New Seasons Cedar Hills, 3495 Cedar Hills Blvd, Beaverton
New Seasons Orenco Station, 1453 Ne 61St Ave., Hillsboro
New Seasons Progress Ridge, 14805 SW Barrows Rd., Beaverton
New Seasons Raleigh Hills, 7300 Sw Beaverton-Hillsdale Hwy, Beaverton
Uptown Market , 6620 SW Scholls Ferry Rd., Beaverton

Lake Oswego / West Linn / Tualatin
Palisades Market, 1377 SW McVey Ave. Lake Oswego
Zupan’s Lake Grove, 16380 SW Boones Ferry Road Lake Oswego
Birradeli, 18749 Martinazzi Blvd Tualatin
New Seasons Mountain Park, 3 Sw Monroe Pkwy Lake Oswego
Pc Market Of Choice #5, 5639 Ne Hood St. West Linn

Eastside / Gresham / Mt. Hood
Brewligans, 275 E Columbia River Hwy, Troutdale
Hoppy Brewer, 328 N Main St., Gresham
New Seasons Happy Valley, 15861 Se Town Center Dr. Clackamas
The Beer Den, 38905 Proctor Blvd. Sandy
Thriftway Hoodland, 68280 E. Hwy 26 Welches

Columbia River Gorge
A & J Market, 265 2nd Street, Stevenson WA
Feast, 320 East Jewett Blvd, White Salmon WA
McIsaac’s Market, 4990 Baseline Drive, Parkdale
Volcanic Bottle Shop, 1410 12th Street, Hood River
Whistle Stop Espresso, 50341 SR 14, Carson WA

Astoria
Astoria Cooperative, 1355 Exchange St Suite 1 & 2
Hondo’s Brew & Cork, 2703 Marine Drive

We’d like to thank all of our new retail partners for the shelf space and the warm welcome. We’ll be doing demos at a bunch of these stores over the coming weeks; check us out on Facebook to see when we’re coming to a store near you.

And don’t forget: our half-liter bottles are refillable! So please don’t crush them, take them back to a participating DM retailer and they’ll make sure it gets back to us. (and give you your deposit back.) More info on our returnable bottle program at www.DMReturns.com.

Bottles are shipped and on the shelves in P-Town at…

Alberta Co-Op
Bailey’s Tap Room
Beer Bunker
Beer Monger
Belmont Station
Birradeli
Bottles NW
Brewligans
Bridgetown Beer House
Caps and Corks
Fixen To
Hop And Vine
Hoppy Brewer
Interurban
Johns Market
Portland Bottle Shop
Saraveza
The Beer Den
Uptown Market

More to come very soon; we’ll keep updating this list going forward.

Bottles Rolling to Portland!

Well folks, the wait is over… After more than five years in the works, we’re shipping our first truckloads of bottles to the Portland market. Our core brands – Kölsch, Vaporizer, India Red Ale (IRA) and Hop Lava – will be on shelves and available for purchase on October 15 at fine bottleshops in the Portland metro area!

Our unique half-liter bottles will retail single-serve for approximately $3.99 per bottle. The bottles are made of thick-walled glass, allowing them to be cleaned and reused many times. Retailers who sell Double Mountain bottles will be segregating returned bottles for a return trip to the brewery. Visit www.DMReturns.com to learn more about this green program and to find participating retailers.

We will be all over Portland for a few weeks, pouring samples and meeting our glorious fans at various bottleshops. The fun starts at Belmont Station, 4500 SE Stark, Portland, on October 15th from 5-8pm. In addition to bottle samplings and keychain giveaways, the Café side of the Station will be pouring some tasty DM draft selections including Killer Green Fresh Hop IPA, Killer Red Fresh Hop IRA, and Ferocious Five Bourbon-Barrel Brown Ale.

In addition to Belmont Station, the Double Mountain crew will be pouring samples and having fun at the following accounts in October (all gigs start at 5pm):

Wed. Oct 17th – Hop and Vine, 1914 N. Killingsworth

Thurs. Oct 18th – Bridgetown Beerhouse, 915 N.Shaver

Fri. Oct 19th – Saraveza, 1004 N. Killingsworth

Mon. Oct 22nd – The BeerMongers, 1125 SE Division

Thurs. Oct 25th – Main Brew, 23956 NW Clara Lane, Hillsboro

Fri. Oct 26th – John’s Market, 3535 SW Multnomah Blvd.

Tues. Oct 30th – Uptown Market, 6620 SW Scholls Ferry Rd.

Fri. Nov 2nd – Bottles NW, 5015 NE Fremont

Please note that the initial release is limited to Portland-area bottleshops, with grocery stores and other markets to follow sometime in the near future. Cheers!

Killer Green & Red Draft Locator — The Essential Listicle

It’s the question on everybody’s lips…the frantic word-of-mouth… the 2am phone calls to the brewery. “Where can I get the Killer beers?!” Have no fear, we’re here to help.

So here is the list of the first wave of accounts who’ve taken delivery of either Killer Green or Killer Red, or in some special cases, both. Please remember to call your fave establishment to verify if it’s currently on tap, waiting to go on tap, or formerly on tap, a.k.a. gone.

We will update this list once more at the end of next week, when all 200 kegs tagged for wholesale should be out in the bars.

North Portland
Bridgetown Beer House
Fire On The Mountain – Interstate
Fixen To
Hop And Vine
Interurban
Mississippi Pizza Restaurant
Saraveza

Northeast Portland
Alleyway Cafe And Bar
Binks
Bottles
Concordia Ale House
Dove Vivi
Hop Haven
Hophouse Irvington
Laurelthirst Pub
Mc Peets Portland Pub
Moon And Sixpence
Podnahs Bbq
Radio Room
Rose & Thistle Pub
Spirit Of 77
Tabor Tavern
Tiga

Northwest Portland
Henrys
Life of Riley
NW Public House
Wildwood Restaurant

Southeast Portland
Apex
Apizza Scholls
Belmont Station
Blitz Ladd
Cheese Bar
Conquistador
Dig a Pony
Dot’s Cafe
East Burn
Fire On The Mountain – Burnside
Foster Burger
Green Dragon
Hawthorne Hophouse
Here After
Horse Brass
Kay’s Bar & Grill
Landmark Saloon
Lardo
Match Box Lounge
M-Bar
Muddy Rudder
North
Observatory Lounge
O’Malleys Pub
Pizza Roma
Produce Row Cafe
Side Street
Slingshot Lounge
Vincentes
Woodsman Tavern

Southwest Portland
Goose Hollow Inn

Corvallis/Eugene
Bier Stein
Hot Mama’s Wing’s
Les Caves
River Tap -The Dalles
Sawtooth Roadhouse
Sixteen Tons

Bend
900 Wall
Brother John’s Ale House
Brother John’s Public House
Platypus Pub
Riverside Market Bend
Summit-Saloon

Gorge/Mt Hood
Brian’s Pourhouse
Burro-Loco
Columbia Gorge Hotel
Divots Restaurant
The Beer Den
Thirsty Woman
Trillium Cafe

Seattle
Cooper’s Alehouse
Pine Box

at long last, BOTTLES!

Well it’s finally happening. After 5+ years, more than a thousand brews, and a seemingly endless number of requests, our fair Double Mountain brew is finding its way into some spiffy brown glass containers of the bottle variety. This is a milestone for us on par with our first live concert, first kiss, first… beer. Anyway, it’s a big deal for us and we’re glad that so many people feel the same.

There is a lot of ground to cover here so we’ll try to keep it brief. We’ve always planned on bottling, and we’ve always wanted to do it a little differently than most of our comrades. One of our first equipment purchases was a 1975 Krones 16-valve, long tube filler, affectionately known as “the boat anchor”, which we imported from Germany. It was set up to fill returnable German half-liter bottles – the same bottles we’re using today (see photos and below). It sat in the corner of the brewery for a year while we tried to figure out where we could set it up, due to lack of adequate floor space. We eventually threw in the towel and sold it to a start-up brewery in Green Bay, where it is apparently getting along just fine.

This time around, we are fortunate to have the budget to buy some really nice new equipment – namely, a GAI 12-valve monoblock rinser/filler/capper, imported from Italy. It features double-pre-evacuation of the air in the bottle, resulting in the lowest possible contact with oxygen. This translates directly into good shelf life. Our labeler is a reconditioned Krones Rotina model that a major workhorse, too. It is very comforting to know that we will be treating our product in a consistently gentle and high-quality manner.

First up on the filler was IRA, which seems fitting since it was our first year-round beer. Matt, Greg, Kyle, and a cast of other employees and friends teamed together to knock out 150 cases Thursday afternoon. (A special shout-out to our man Ted Webber, who showed us both the ropes back in the day as our co-worker at Full Sail and is now a big kahuna at Hood River Distillers. Ted took the afternoon off from work to sweat it out with us and show us how it’s done in the big leagues.) We packaged some Kölsch this morning.

We’ll be selling the bottles immediately out of the Taproom for $3.50 per bottle, $50 for a case of 16. Supply may be a bit limited for a while, meaning that not every one of our four bottled varieties (Kölsch, Vaporizer, IRA and Hop Lava) will be on our shelf at all times. (We are firmly in what we’re calling “evaluation phase”… also known as “working out the kinks”.) Our plan is to slow-roll our bottle production until we’re ready to supply retail stores. Once that faucet goes on, it pretty much stays on. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we build our program. Feel free to call ahead and see what’s in stock.

About our bottles: in addition to being a great size and shape, our unique half-liter (16.9 oz) bottles are uniquely strong. Extra glass in the mold makes the bottles more durable and thus perfectly suited for reusing, unlike nearly all American glass on the market today. (But it’s otherwise common in Canada, Europe and pretty much every other part of the globe.) It is much, much more energy-efficient to clean and refill a returnable bottle a dozen times than it is to make (and then destroy) a dozen “one-way” bottles. We’re doing it this way because we can.

We encourage you to bring your bottles back to us so that we can put them back into service again. We’ll even pay you an extra five cents on your deposit, just for being good. Our plan is to have retailers in local markets return empties to us to keep them out of the evil glass crushers. Check out www.dmreturns.com for more info, which will eventually include a search function for finding a participating location nearest you.

Big shout-outs to Hale Construction, Columbia State Bank and our investors for making this all possible; to our fabulous staff, who have worked without complaint through many months of on-the-fly construction; and most importantly, to you, our fans, for your ongoing support.

Oh and check out our Facebook page for photos, videos and info. Cheers

A Slew of DM Events for OCBM

Wow, it’s quite a busy time here in DM land. We’re 99% finished with our taproom expansion — just in time for the arrival of the really big crowds here in Hood River — and our shiny new bottling line gets fired up for its inaugural run in a matter of days. (More on that later.) Meanwhile, we have a great list of happenings this month in celebration of Oregon Craft Beer Month. Without further ado:

Hope you can find an opportunity to join us. We’ll be looking for you. Cheers, Charlie D

Taproom closure schedule — update

A quick heads up that construction in and around our Taproom will be causing some limited-service and closed-for-the-day situations for a few more days. Here’s the current schedule:

Sat 5/5 & Sun 5/6: Kitchen closed but serving beer & wine; 21+ only, since we are not serving meals. Four & Twenty Blackbirds food cart will be serving tasty sandwiches etc from noon-9pm and hopefully on Sunday, too… check out our Facebook page for up-to-date info.

Thurs 5/10: REOPEN the kitchen, back to full service, yeah!

There you have it. A big shout out to the folks at Hale Construction and all the various subcontractors who are making our job go so fast. For example, this week’s work in the kitchen (which was kicking out pizzas as recently as Sunday):

Pretty unheard of for a kitchen remodel of this scope to take less than two weeks. Keep it coming fellas!

More photos on the way soon. Cheers to all our loyal and wonderful patrons for keeping us company through this project. It’s gonna be worth it!

Expansion Update

As you may have heard by now, we here at Double Mountain are in the middle of a big expansion project. Here are the numbers:

-1,500sf of new Taproom space in 4 Fourth Street, the building next door;

-A brand-spanking new bottling line! and automated keg line. (Bottles will be
arriving sometime later this year.)

In other words, Big Stuff Is Happening! The crew at Hale Construction is doing tremendous job of fast-tracking our project so that we can be open before things get seriously busy this summer. Here are a few photos of what all is happening in our current and new digs:

The bad news is that in the short term we’re going to be feeling some pain. Our kitchen is scheduled to be closed from April 30 through May 8, and we will be without some of our beer taps at times. Free live music is on hiatus for the moment as well, hopefully returning in mid-May.

We’re going to try to stay open for limited beer service, and we’ll be working with some food vendors to provide good eats in place of our regular fare. Our staff will do their very best to provide you with a comfortable place to spend some time. So please pardon our dust and noise if you can, and we’ll have things back to normal — and better than ever — as soon as possible. Thanks as always for your support of Double Mountain!