Bend Brewing Company celebrates 21 years

Published 12:00 am Friday, April 29, 2016

If we were to think of breweries as people, then Bend Brewing Company would finally be old enough to consume the beer it brews. Bend’s second-oldest brewing operation turns 21 this year, and today it celebrates with a block party in front of the downtown brewpub featuring “21 beers for 21 years.”

Head brewer Ian Larkin actually assembled a lineup of 25 different beers to be poured from two trailers as well as inside the pub and on the back patio during the celebration.

“It’s the best beer lineup of any beer festival in the history of craft beer,” said owner Packy Deenihan.

He was being cheeky, but in fact the sheer number of available beers is enough to rival some brewfests. (For comparison, last year’s The Little Woody had 44 beers from 23 breweries and cideries.) It’s all the more remarkable because Larkin and assistant brewer Josh Harned crafted all of the beers in the seven-barrel brewhouse tucked away in the cramped confines above the pub. Not all of the beer is stored on-site, however. The company also has a 1,600-square-foot storage unit at Wall Street Storage, where about 100 kegs and 12 oak wine barrels are stored, giving Larkin plenty of beer to select from for the party.

The beer lineup for the anniversary includes all of the brewery’s standards and seasonals, like Elk Lake IPA, Ching Ching and HopHead Imperial IPA. There also will be limited specialties like Plum Provisional and Lovely Cherry Baltic Porter. The beers cover a wide range of styles to please a variety of palates, from light and delicate to bold and boozy, hoppy and floral to dark and roasty, and even include tart and fruity sours which often appeal to drinkers who ordinarily don’t care for beer. New this year: a special anniversary beer named B-21.

“It’s kind of a take on a Flanders red, we’ll call it a sour red,” said Larkin. The Flanders red ale style originates from the West Flanders province of northern Belgium and is characterized by a long aging process in oak barrels and a tart, acidic quality imparted by the presence of microorganisms other than brewers yeast. For the B-21, Larkin inoculated a red ale with Brettanomyces lambicus yeast and let it age in cabernet sauvignon wine barrels for a year.

“It’s the first (“Brett” beer) I did all on my own, in barrels at the off-site storage facility,” Larkin said. Only seven kegs of the beer were produced.

Using “wild” Brettanomyces yeast in beer is a new direction for the brewery, but they are no stranger to sour ales: Their award-winning beers like Ching Ching, Salmonberry Sour, and Volkssekt Berliner Weisse are created using Lactobacillus bacteria which imparts a pronounced, puckery tang to the finished beer.

Brettanomyces, on the other hand, produces flavors variously described as “barnyard,” “horse blanket,” and “funky” with layers of complexity that can invoke pie cherries, cloves, tropical fruits, leather and more.

It takes longer to ferment and brewers often employ it in conjunction with barrel aging to produce accompanying mellow, oaky character in the finished beer, a process which can take a year or more.

Bend Brewing acquired a dozen wine barrels to be used exclusively for Brettanomyces-influenced ales, which Larkin plans to put to good use.

This is the second year the brewery is hosting a block party for their anniversary, and Deenihan confirmed that it will be a yearly tradition. This year’s party also serves as the kick-off to the upcoming Brooks Street Block Party Summer Concert Series, hosted by Crow’s Feet Commons with Bend Brewing as the official beer sponsor. The series will run monthly throughout the summer.

“Brooks is an oft-overlooked street downtown, we’re hoping to bring energy to the area with the other businesses on the block,” Deenihan said.

The block party, an all-ages event that runs from 4 to 10 p.m., includes live music and is free to attend. Expect a crowd: Brooks Street in front of the brewpub is closed, with a large tent set up for the stage and beer garden (larger than last year’s, according to Deenihan), but even so, it will become very crowded as the evening wears on. Also, plan for alternate transportation: With 25 beers to choose from, you will want a way to get home safe.

Editor’s note: GO! Magazine is proud to introduce our new beer columnist. Jon Abernathy, author of “Bend Beer: A History of Brewing in Central Oregon” and thebrewsite.com blogger, is a local expert. His beer-centric column will appear in GO! every other week.

— Jon Abernathy, author of “Bend Beer: A History of Brewing in Central Oregon” and thebrewsite.com blogger, is GO! Magazine’s beer columnist. He can be reached at jon@thebrewsite.