Black Butte Whiskey hits the shelves

Published 12:00 am Saturday, September 24, 2016

Liquor made from Black Butte Porter

Bendistillery released the fruit of a first-time collaboration with Deschutes Brewery this week: a 3-year-old whiskey distilled from Black Butte Porter.

In 2013, the Tumalo distillery started turning three, 3,000-gallon batches of the dark beer into Black Butte Whiskey, said CEO Alan Dietrich at an unveiling Wednesday at the Deschutes Brewery & Public House on NW Bond Street. Now, the distillery is producing 4,000-gallon batches every month. They age in charred oak barrels.

More possibilities lie ahead, Dietrich said.

“It’s going to afford us the ability to do any number of future projects of varying ages, barrel finishes,” he said; “really the possibilities are endless on what we might tweak to make different whiskeys at the end of the day.”

Bendistillery six months ago started distilling Deschutes’ Abyss, an imperial porter, into another whiskey, Dietrich said.

Black Butte Whiskey is available at the Deschutes pubs in Bend and Portland, the Bendistillery tasting room and in Oregon liquor stores.

Airlines in line for record profits

Noted investor Warren Buffett once warned that investing in airlines was “a death trap.”

He may be rethinking that view now that the trade group for the world’s carriers has predicted that the industry will pocket a record $39.4 billion this year.

Alexandre de Juniac, director-general of the International Air Transport Association, told a gathering in Singapore on Thursday that the $39.4 billion in net profit for 2016 represents the second year in a row that the industry will generate a return on investment higher than 9 percent.

“It seems that we are living in extraordinary financial times,” he said.

By comparison, the airline industry reported $5 billion in combined profit in 2006, with a return on investment of 4.7 percent, according to the IATA.

— Staff and wire reports