Deschutes Brewery has a perspective on beer lost on some college students.
“It’s about the flavor,” Deschutes Brewery Brand Ambassador Tour Manager Aaron Calihan said. “It’s not about getting wasted.”
For the vast majority of its beers, Deschutes Brewery uses whole hop flowers and whole grains to create its unique flavor.
“That’s what makes our beer so damn tasty,” Calihan said. “Better ingredients equals better beer.”
The brewery, located in Bend, has grown from a small brewpub downtown to the largest independent brewer in Oregon and the sixth-largest craft brewery in the country.
Deschutes Brewery’s beers are widely available around campus, including at Rennie’s Landing, which has on tap Mirror Pond Pale Ale — affectionately known throughout the brewery as “pond water” — and Red Chair Northwest Pale Ale, which was named “World’s Best Beer” at the 2010 World Beer Awards.
“I could drink one a day for the rest of my life,” Deschutes Brewery Marketing Manager Jason Randles said. “That beer’s so good.”
Calihan shares the same views about Red Chair.
“I’m a big fan of that beer,” he said. “It’s got all that hop flavor, all the aroma, but not all the bitterness.”
Despite its award-winning reputation, Red Chair started out as an experimental beer at the pub before its notoriety skyrocketed.
“All of a sudden, it became popular,” Randles said. “People started drinking it as quickly as we could make it.”
The rapid growth in the popularity of Red Chair is representative of the growth Deschutes Brewery has seen in recent years, putting a strain on its production and infrastructure.
“It’s really been pushing us to the max,” Calihan said. “We’ve been brewing around the clock, four days a week, for probably the past year or year and a half.”
To account for its recent expansion to Minnesota and South Dakota, Deschutes Brewery has planned an increase in its production, going from 202,750 barrels of beer in 2010 to a planned 250,000 in 2012. The company is planning to install five 50-foot-tall fermenters to increase its beer production.
“We could actually brew more, and we could bottle more, but we don’t have enough room to ferment it all, because that’s where all the time is taken up,” Calihan said. “Forgive the pun, but that’s the bottleneck.”
Even as it expands, the brewery maintains its commitment to quality. It took four years after opening its new facility before Deschutes Brewery released its first bottle of Black Butte Porter from there, as it tried to perfectly match the taste of the beer from the pub.
Deschutes Brewery also opted not to release bottles of Black Butte XXII, a specialty brew infused with liquefied dark chocolate. The chocolate coagulated at the top of the bottles, creating an unappealing visual effect.
“We learn from our mistakes, we celebrate failure, and we grow from our mistakes,” Calihan said. “We know how to do it better this year.”
The biggest fuel for Deschutes Brewery’s ever-increasing popularity is the taste of its beer.
“You can make all the beer in the world, but if nobody’s drinking it, you’ll go out of business,” Randles said.
From four main ingredients — barley, hops, water and yeast — Deschutes Brewery has created a business with a uniquely Oregon flavor.
Oh, and the alcohol adds a special note.
“The alcohol’s really there as a flavor component, meant to keep things balanced, not just get you drunk,” Calihan said. “But that’s a great side effect, no doubt about it.”
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