(Portland, OR) – Cascade Brewing may not be a household name yet outside of Oregon but it may be in the near-future. The brewery, who took home gold and silver medals at GABF and whose portfolio has earned mostly A’s on Beer Advocate, sent out an email update today with news about upcoming beers and expansion.
On Beers…
We’re coming to the end of our Fresh Hop, Ipanox, Mouton Rouge and Defroster, but we’ve got lots of new exciting offerings on tap now and scheduled for the near future. Looking for a crisp, refreshing beer? Try our Spiced Belgian Blonde, featuring coriander and sweet orange peel. We also have some lovely O-Rye-on left, our orange-red Rye beer that heralded the return of the constellation Orion. At 7%, this beer is good and hoppy, but there isn’t much left. When the Mouton Rogue disappears, we’ll bring on Nightfall Blackberry. This Soured Blonde Wheat aged for 12 months in oak barrels, then laid on blackberries for another six. It features intense fruitiness with a killer purple color and a foamy pink head.
We’re really excited for the debut of Frost Killer, a malty beer beer full of big roasted malts and ample Northwest hops. This will replace Defroster – look for it on tap in our pub this week.
Coming up, our Holiday Gose is in fermentation – this rich, red beer features 200 lbs of cranberries fresh from the bog, along with hibiscus, cinnamon and sweet orange peel. We’ll start pouring this quintessential holiday beer the first of December. And our Dark Day IPA is aging and will be available the week of Winter Solstice. Right now, we have 40 bbls of this year’s Apricot aging in the tank, and we will be pulling it off the fruit this week. We also have three 20 bbl tanks of Kriek aging nicely.
Our Sang Noir was blended off last week – this big, full-bodied Double Flanders Style Red Ale with distinct barrel notes comes from a blend of several barrel aged beers, with portions of the beer aging in Heaven Hills and Maker’s Mark Whiskey barrels and Pinot Noir barrels. The beer aged on 100 pounds of Bing cherries; some Bourbonic Plague and Blond Quad aged in Minnesota oak was added to bring some sweet high notes and a straight sour pie blend was added to taste to bring the sourness to the front. You can be among the first to taste it at the Holiday Ale Festival Dec. 2 – 6 at Pioneer Courthouse Square. The Holiday Ale Festival features more than 60 beers, most of which have been specifically brewed for the Holiday Ale Festival or are rare or vintage kegs. It’s the only venue in the country to taste the collection of beers. Every year, Cascade Brewing does a special blend with festival director Preston Weesner; what’s leftover from the festival will go to the new Cascade Barrel House for further aging. For more info, visit www.holidayale.com.
Last week, Oregonian beer writer & blogger John Foyston was invited to help blend the next bottling of our Sang Rouge Sour Red: you can read more about his experience here: The Beer Here by John Foyston.
Many of you have been asking when we will bottle Vlad the Imp Aler and Bourbonic Plague, our GABF award-winning beers. As of right now, it’s looking like it will be the first of the year. Brewer Ron is adamant that he will not bottle a beer until he is confident it is the best that it can be – that’s why we love his beer so much! The Bourbonic Plague is a Belgian Spiced Double Porter aged for more than six months in bourbon barrels filled with dates. The hearty sour beer weighs in at 11.5% abv. Vlad the Imp Aler is a wild-yeast blended Belgian Strong Pale Ale derived from a blend of oak barrel-aged 23- and 25-degree Plato sour blonde quadruppel, sour bourbon barrel tripel and sour strong spiced blonde. The beer contains 9.5% abv.
Christmas gifts
Love our beer? Why not give some bottles for Christmas gifts? We’re still selling our Cuvee for $17.95, and our ’07 and ’08 Kriek, ’08 The Vine and our ’08 Apricot for $15.95. These are the ideal stocking stuffers for the beer lover in your life! We also have hats and gift certificates available. And be sure to reserve a keg for your holiday parties. Call the Raccoon Lodge at 503-206-0110 for pricing and reservation.
Expanding Distribution
We’re excited to report that as a result of our presence at the Great American Beer Festival, we’re expanding our distribution. You can already find Cascade beers in Boston, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Oregon. We now have commitments from Philadelphia, Brookly, New York City, Long Island, North & South Carolina and Tampa, Florida. The distributors have verbally purchased all of our available inventory for next year. And these commitments came before we won the Gold & Silver medals! We were one of the handful of buzz breweries at the competition, and the only one doing all sour beers. It’s been an exciting year for us!
Cascade Barrel House is Aging Nicely
Demolition is nearing completion at the new Cascade Barrel House, our new blending and barrel space located at 935 SE Belmont St. in Portland. Everything has been sandblasted, walls have been painted, and we’ve received our final permit to begin the buildout. We’ve got lots of beer in the conditioning room already. Cascade Brewery now owns close to 200 whiskey and wine barrels; 46 barrels are currently aging in the barrel house, with another 100 barrels waiting to be filled. We just picked up Cabernet and Port barrels for our future Port Beer.
We are not sure yet of our opening date, but we can tell you that the 7,000-square-feet of space will be open in the first part of 2010. The majority of the space will be used for barrel aging, blending and bottling. We will also have an on-site pub serving great food to complement our beers on tap.”