It’s hard to believe that Deschutes Brewery first released The Dissident 13 years ago; at the time, it was a revolutionary beer for the brewery that had its roots in English styles. The most recent variant of The Dissident out now is Peach, and I wrote about it this week for The Bulletin.

“We used whole peaches for this release. They were sourced from Baird Family Orchards in Dayton, Oregon,” said assistant brewmaster Ben Kehs via email. “We have been working with Baird for several years now and they grow outstanding fruit. We brought the peaches in, pitted them by hand, then added them to the foeder. It was a long day!”

The brewing process starts with a base beer of a strong brown ale that undergoes a standard fermentation with a regular beer yeast. It then gets inoculated with Brettanomyces and lactobacillus bacteria to sour and further age the brew.

“The peaches were added to Dissident that had already finished its primary fermentation and was in its secondary fermentation stage,” Kehs said. “(They) were physically added to one of our foeders.” A foeder is essentially a large oak vessel, resembling a giant barrel.

The Dissident is always an interesting beer to drink, and this peach version warms up to ample stone fruit character layered over the sour. Check out my notes and pick up a bottle.