"Deschutes Brewery" news and stories

A couple nights ago, in the 90-degree summer heat, I tried making whipped cream. It's a neat trick: pour heavy cream into a mason jar, cap, shake, voila! But beware of shaking the cream too vigorously, thus creating butter. As I did. I'm sure Deschutes' president Gary Fish can feel some empathy.

Last weekend, Bend, Oregon's Deschutes Brewery was ready to release its Reserve Series Black Butte XXII, a supercharged porter brewed with cocoa nibs, then partly aged in bourbon barrels. It's one of Deschutes' crown jewels. That's why it's such a shame that it's mostly going down the drain.

According to Fish, the chocolate used in this year's recipe coagulated in the dark beer, forming a buttery top layer. Uh, yum? "While the beer tastes perfectly fine, the visual in the bottle is not up to our long-held commitment to quality and positive customer experience," Fish said in a statement.

The story starts with a thief: Several decades ago, a burglar tried nabbing a keg of Jubelale, the winter seasonal from Bend, Ore.'s Deschutes Brewery. But the bandit dropped the hefty keg outside, where it froze in the cold weather.

When Deschutes' owner, Gary Fish, found the keg the following morning, half the beer became a Popsicle -- and the other half turned into a super-concentrated, super-delicious version of Jubelale. The serendipitous discovery has since become an annual tradition, with Super Jubel gracing taps at Deschutes' pubs every winter.

"We usually only do a very small batch at the breweries," says marketing manager Jason Randles. "But for our 2010 Reserve Series lineup, we said, 'Let's put some in oak and make it a bit more available for drinkers.'" The result is that, for the first time since 2000, Deschutes bottled the jacked-up Jubel.