Crux celebrates Fourth Anniversary with Cruxapalooza 5

Published 12:00 am Thursday, June 23, 2016

Crux Fermentation Project celebrates its fourth anniversary this month, and their annual “Cruxapalooza” party returns to commemorate the occasion Saturday. This year’s Cruxapalooza 5 takes place all day, featuring 60 taps of beer, two special anniversary brews and live music with six bands.

“It’s Cruxapalooza 5, but Cruxapalooza 1 was our grand opening,” said founder Paul Evers. “It’s confusing, and we like that — we like confusing people a little bit,” he said with a laugh. “Because beer is complex; you gotta think about it a little bit.”

There is plenty to think about in the four years since Crux opened. Evers and co-founder and brewmaster Larry Sidor established the 10-hectoliter (approximately 8.5-barrel) brewery in a former AAMCO transmission shop, opening for business in June 2012. Original plans did not include a kitchen, only a tasting room with snacks. The concept the duo were targeting was “to have a tasting room nested in an operating brewery, versus a brewery stuffed in a corner of a pub,” Evers said. “We wanted the barrier between brewing operations and people sitting in the tasting room to be as minimal as possible.”

It worked, and the concept has proven enormously popular for locals and tourists alike, despite the off-the-beaten-track industrial location: “It’s out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of everything,” Evers said.

The patio and lawn is popular for outdoor seating and family-friendly activities; Evers thinks of the al fresco space as a “craft beer park.”

As a result of this popularity, Crux has struggled with issues of traffic and parking, adding a parking lot on the south side of the property as well as employing traffic flaggers during busy hours. They opened a second 20-barrel brewery on Bend’s north side in November 2015 to increase production. And to better serve patrons enjoying the outdoor experience, this spring they added an outside pouring station with 20 additional taps of beer.

With 24 taps inside and 20 outside, one would think 44 taps would be an ample number for the anniversary party. But Crux is adding a refrigerated trailer with an additional 16 taps, bringing the total to 60. The brewery is preparing for substantial attendance and hoping the extra taps will equate to shorter lines for beer.

The anniversary party will feature two new special beers in the brewery’s “[BANISHED]” series: Bretted Farmhouse and Apricot Wild Farmhouse Sour, each aged with wild yeast cultures in barrels for nine and 10 months, respectively. Both beers were based on traditionally styled farmhouse ales, which were originally rustic, warm-weather beers brewed on the farms of Belgium and France for consumption by the seasonal farmhands.

The Bretted Farmhouse was aged in French oak with wild Brettanomyces yeast, which should enhance the “barnyard” funk rusticity of the style with a complex, possibly winelike profile. The beer will debut during the anniversary, thus there hasn’t been a chance to taste it beforehand. But anyone seeking out comparable ales would do well with The Ale Apothecary’s El Cuatro and Logsdon Farm Brewery’s Seizoen Bretta.

For the Apricot Wild Farmhouse Sour, a version of which debuted during Central Oregon Beer Week, they inoculated the base beer with a proprietary mixed culture of Lactobacillus and Pediococcus bacteria and Brettanomyces yeast (a mixture similar to what is found in the lambics of Belgium) and aged the beer in pinot noir wine barrels. Apricots were added to the barrels as well to lend an earthy, fruity character to the finished beer, which is markedly sour.

Anyone interested in the science behind sour beer will want to attend a special beer seminar on the subject at 1 p.m. Barrel Program Manager Katie Liebl will discuss Crux’s sour beer program and answer questions.

With four years under its belt, what does the future hold for Crux? “I see us as still emerging,” Evers said. “We haven’t hit overdrive yet. I think we’re very tempered in how we proceed. We’re not about going gangbusters; we’re not interested in fast growth. We’re really more interested in meaningful growth.”

Disclosure: Jon Abernathy works for Smart Solutions, a web development and marketing company that hosts the Crux website, as well as several other brewery and beer company websites in Bend, including Deschutes Brewery, Silver Moon Brewing, Bend Brewing Co. and The Growler Guys. Aside from occasional website development work, Abernathy has no affiliation with any breweries listed above or otherwise.

— Jon Abernathy is a local beer blogger and brew aficionado. His column appears in GO! every other week.