Double Mountain Brewery Blog

Standard Porter & New Year’s Eve

In keeping with our vow to (almost) never make the same dark beer twice, here comes our latest, “Standard Porter”. It’s is a dark-chocolately-brown-colored brew of medium heft, featuring bittersweet-cocoa notes, restrained fruitiness, and a refreshing touch of acidity, courtesy of black malt. The finish is dry and crisp, with a subtle persuasion that says, “hey, c’mon, take at least one more sip. You know you want it.” 5.5% alcohol by volume, 36 BU.

About the name: we’ve made our share of relatively big and/or assertive dark beers over the last year-and-a-half, so by comparison’s sake…you get the picture. After a month of pounding weather and all-round uncertainty, we figured people might be in the mood to settle down with something laid-back and approachable — something you might want to commune with all night. Sound good? We thought so too.

Standard Porter will be available at the Taproom now through January, and on tap at your fave local beer bar starting January 6, for a limited time.

Also want to give everyone the word on our New Year’s Eve live music double bill here at the Taproom. Hitting the stage at 8pm is the reunion of local faves Mile Marker 6, known far and wide here in Hood River County for their catchy roots-rock hooks and charming good looks. (!) Squint hard and you might recognize the banjo player, our own Matt Swihart.

After MM6, Portland “world-twang” pioneers TapWater will hit the stage and party until it’s 2009. The TapWater folks have built a nice little following here in HR with their energetic performances in the garage over the past year…should be a blast. As always, no cover.

Lots of beer for your holiday cheer

OK, so let’s see: the economy is in the toilet, Mount Hood Meadows has a 6″ base, and it’ll take me weeks to recover from Monday’s staff holiday party. But none of that matters, because I’m here with good news: our Taproom is chock full of tasty beers to get all of us through the holidays in style.

In addition to the excellent IRB and Brett-Devil mentioned in the previous post, I’d like to bring your attention to three other beers we’re now pouring at the Tapoom. First and most recent is “Ardennes”, a Belgian-style strong golden ale, featuring the yeast strain from Brasserie d’Achouffe in southeastern Belgium. This terrific yeast produces a cavalcade of fruity, spicy, herby tastes and aromas. Matt used straight Pilsner malt with just a hint of light candi sugar, and a judicious amount of Palisades hops. The mouthfeel of this beer exceptionally round and creamy, and provides a nice counterbalance to the amount of alcohol present (9.2% ABV). A stellar effort, and only available at the Taproom while it lasts. (We should have enough to get through to January.)

The next beer of note is “Fa La La La La”, Double Mountain’s offering in the annual winter ale sweepstakes. As with a lot of our hoppy beers, the Fa is quickly becoming something of a cult classic. Matt designed a beer that is broadly in the spirit of Full Sail’s Wreck the Halls (which he developed) and, before that, Sierra Nevada’s Celebration Ale, a beer that many of us regard as a key touchstone in craft brewing history. Fa La La La La is a big, chewy mouthful of a beer, jam-packed with copious amounts of Centennial hops. The piney, spicy notes of Centennials just say “Christmas” to me… anyway, this one too will be on tap for the next several weeks, and can also be found pouring at numerous good-beer outlets in the Portland area. 7.5% ABV, 85 BU.

Last but not least is the long-awaited return of “Alpenbrew”, the beer we developed last year for the fine folks at Mount Hood Meadows, in honor of their 40th Anniversary. (Sidenote: Meadows is gonna get pounded this weekend with snow, woo hoo!) This is probably our most British-tasting ale, and when pressed we tell people it’s broadly in the style of an ESB. Alpenbrew is assertive and characterful yet (as with most of our beers) balanced in its own way. The malty flavors are lean, nutty, and expertly paired with Brewers Gold and Newport hops, providing plenty of hoppy goodness without any strong citrusy notes. I like to think of it as a great Northwest session beer, hope you do too… 5.0% ABV, 40BU.

Unlike the other beers mentioned here, Alpen will be on for a while — at least as long as people are hitting the slopes this season. We’ll be pouring it at the Alpenstube, the Finish Line, and the Mazot up at Meadows this year, and at select accounts in the region, including our Taproom of course.

Cheers folks, here’s to a great holiday season! -Charlie

Birth of the IRB

Hi there, Matt here. Wanted to share the backstory on a project I have been working on for the last several months, and which is now pouring at the Taproom. We’ve christened it “The IRB”, which stands for India Red Blend. It’s cask-aged IRA from new oak and bourbon barrels blended with some wild-fermented Brett strong ale.

I’ve been very excited about the movement in the beer community to take a winemaker’s or a lambic-blenders approach to creating new beers. For the last several years, brewers throughout the Northwest and beyond have been aging beers in new oak barrels, old oak barrels, pinot barrels, and bourbon barrels.

My original interest in cask beers came from when I was head brewer at Full Sail. I was giving a tour to the head distiller at Macallan Distillery. Oh that’s good scotch. Anyway, I remember being very excited to talk to Peter about Scotch whisky and was anxious to show off the brewery. I was touring through the cellars and we stopped to sample some Old Boardhead I had been aging for a year prior to its release. The beer was sitting in a stainless tank, maturing nicely at about 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Peter then made a simple comment:

“What are you doing?” head distiller Peter asked.

“I’m aging the beer.”

“Why?”

“To mature the flavors, promote a more balanced barleywine through some long-term maturation…to develop some slight oxidative notes, reduce the bitterness, enhance the malt,” replied the head brewer.

“Well, if you want to develop those flavors, and you were making whisky, which uses beer as a base for the distillery, and you wanted to promote some oxidation, I would put that whisky in an oak barrel and hold it at cellar temperature. What you are doing now is protecting the beer from aging, you are not developing its maturation flavors, you’re trying to preserve the freshness. I think your approach is flawed.”

So sayeth Peter Fairlie.

Sometimes you can think these things too far ahead and be too smart for your own good.

So it now became time to experiment. Over the next several years, I aged our Old Boardhead and Imperial Stout in several runs of bourbon barrels and was always intrigued and delighted with the changes in the beer. When I finally got to run my own show, here at Double Mountain, I wanted to continue the work of maturation in various forms of oak barrels, but also bring in the art of blending the wine and whisky industries have used for years. I want to create beers that bring a variety of microbiology to the table and are enhanced and improved through the cellar aging process.

So what is the IRB? (Which by the way was pronounced “herb” by several patrons in the Taproom last night…) The IRB is a blend of three different beers. 25% of the blend is Brett Devil- a Belgian strong red with added Belgian candi sugar, fermented with the wild wine yeast strain of Brettanomycces. This beer used IRA as a base, but with some of the hops excluded. The Brett brings forward a slight acidity and tartness and a great fruit aroma. Man I love a light Brett aroma in a beer, my current favorite being The Duchess du Bourgogne.

50% of the IRB is IRA aged in 17 year old Elijah Craig barrels I bought together with Alan Sprints at Hair of the Dog. As soon as the barrel is emptied of the whiskey, it is speedily trucked to Oregon and immediately filled with beer. The whiskey in the wood permeates back into the beer, bringing forward those wonderfully smoky, charcoal, and hickory notes from a good Kentucky Bourbon. It also increases alcoholic strength. The remaining 25% comes from second use of a new oak barrel made from Minnesota and Missouri oak that’s known as a “Bordeaux barrel”. (The first use of the barrel gave us a beer we named IRA from the Wood.) This barrel adds a backbone of tannin and some more wood and vanilla notes.

The Brett-Devil will run out this weekend, so if you want to taste the standard IRA, the Brett-Devil, and the IRB side-by-side, now is the time to do it. We’ll be shipping an extremely limited quantity of the IRB to Portland, so keep an eye out for that too.

Cheers,
Matt