Double Mountain .... Now Blogging!

It's not enough that Double Mountain makes some of Oregon's best beer--now they're blogging. Hey guys, why not leave something for the amateurs? Actually, this is a very cool thing, and it runs exactly counter to a problem I complained about back in June. Brewery websites tend to, you know, suck. They're con jobs by the PR department; they tell you less than nothing about the brewery, and afterward you feel like you need a shower.

But with only two posts, Double Mountain has shown how to use the internets to bring their customers into their thought process. In a long rumination, Matt Swihart offers a wonderful anecdote about how he got turned onto barrel aging:

My original interest in cask beers came from when I was head brewer at Full Sail. I was giving a tour to the head distiller at Macallan Distillery. Oh that’s good scotch. Anyway, I remember being very excited to talk to Peter about Scotch whisky and was anxious to show off the brewery. I was touring through the cellars and we stopped to sample some Old Boardhead I had been aging for a year prior to its release. The beer was sitting in a stainless tank, maturing nicely at about 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Peter then made a simple comment:

“What are you doing?” head distiller Peter asked.

“I’m aging the beer.”

“Why?”

“To mature the flavors, promote a more balanced barleywine through some long-term maturation…to develop some slight oxidative notes, reduce the bitterness, enhance the malt,” replied the head brewer.

“Well, if you want to develop those flavors, and you were making whisky, which uses beer as a base for the distillery, and you wanted to promote some oxidation, I would put that whisky in an oak barrel and hold it at cellar temperature. What you are doing now is protecting the beer from aging, you are not developing its maturation flavors, you’re trying to preserve the freshness. I think your approach is flawed.”

As a bonus, Double Mountain has finally gotten their website up and running. It has previously just been a splash page with the address. Now they have info on the beer, brewery, and so on. (They even appropriated a photo from my review--that'll cost you a growler, guys!) Welcome to the neighborhood, gents. Keep up the fine work. This is exactly the kind of thing we want to read.

Oh, and a shout-out Chad Kennedy, who was, to my knowledge, the pioneer of brewer blogging round these parts.