Last week I was invited to a special VIP tour and media event over at Deschutes Brewery, and I wrote about it for my weekend Hop Press article. It was pretty cool, and there are a number of interesting tidbits I learned.

Green Lakes Organic Ale: The Brewery loves this beer, even though it’s more problematic to brew than other beers—due to it’s certified organic status. For instance, not only do the ingredients need to be certifiably organic (or at minimum in the case of hops, salmon safe), but they have to properly prep the equipment before brewing to remove the residue of previous (non-organic) batches—things like vacuuming out the grain conveyors.

Twilight Ale: The breakout summer seasonal—actually one of Deschutes’ most popular seasonals—the hop schedule for Twilight is most interesting. They want to get lots of hop flavor and aroma into the beer without making it bitter like an IPA (“clean” beers are what the Brewery strives for), so to get that with Twilight there is hardly any first-hopping (merely 4 pounds per 150 gallons), no second-hopping, and a ton of third hopping (finishing and aroma hops). And then more hops are added to the whirlpool (the stage where they’re separating hops from the wort).

More to read at the link.