A Deschutes Trifecta

I’ve already stated somewhere that I like everything I’ve tried from Deschutes Brewing out of Bend, Oregon. That’s never happened and I suppose it’s time I actually elaborated on which of their products I have tried and to give some background, right?

Mirror Pond Pale Ale
My first experience with this beer and this brewer was during a history symposium at Grand Canyon National Park a couple months ago. Mirror Pond and Black Butte Porter are available in the cafeteria-style restaurant of the Yavapai Lodge on the South Rim. Nice.

I had a couple of these during our lunch breaks, and found them to be very refreshing and just dark enough to be attractive. (I’ve mentioned already that I have an affinity for darker beers – equating light color with weak taste, rightly or wrongly.) Mirror Pond makes a nice lunchtime accompaniment.

Since that first experience I’ve purchased a couple of six packs of this and it was especially nice to have around when I helped my daughter and her family move into their new home recently. (I stocked their new fridge with three six-packs of beer: Rolling Rock, Mirror Pond and Black Butte. My son-in-law is on a Rolling Rock kick, for which I can’t fault him since I was there once myself. I bought the Deschutes beers thinking that the Porter would be too dark for my son-in-law so he’d leave it alone, and the Pale Ale would be a happy medium that he might be willing to try. I think he tried it, but I’m not going to hold his hand for heaven’s sake, and I’m not going to wait forever before finishing the six-pack!)

Black Butte Porter
This one smells faintly of chocolate and grass in the bottle. It pours as dark as coffee and has an initial faint sweetness to it that builds ever so slightly to caramel. It is mildly warming as you work your way through a glassful and isn’t so heavy that you couldn’t enjoy a few in a sitting. I think if I’m going to convince my son-in-law to step over to the dark side of beers, this will be the beer upon which he takes that first tentative step. (C’mon lad, you can do it.)

Cinder Cone Red
Based on the positive experience with both the Mirror Pond and the Black Butte, I snagged a single bottle of Cinder Cone Red at the local cigar and wine emporium and on tasting it, immediately wished I’d hunted down a six-pack.

In the bottle, the vegetable smell is somewhat off-putting, but this one pours a rich red color (of course) with a handsome cream-colored head. The taste is somewhat sweet with hints of caramel or perhaps licorice.

The bottle sports an attractive, eye-catching label that makes the product stand out on the shelves amongst the other wannabes, which may be why I spotted this amid the myriad other single craft brews on the shelf.

Curious, I skipped on over to Deschutes’ website and found that Cinder Cone is only available April through June. Naturally, I picked up two six-packs of Cinder Cone and stashed them in the closet. (I paid just a tad under 6 bucks each for the six-packs, which makes beer one of the best beverage bargains out there these days, I think.) Then, oh joy, my daughter picked up two more and brought them to me on Independence Day! Now I’ve got those three six packs of Cinder Cone (Yes, “three.” We finished one off on July 4th.) hidden away and I’m hoping I’ll forget about them until say, mid-September, early October.

Add Cinder Cone to your beer wish list and try to find it this year before the stock is gone. Otherwise, pencil it in as something to look for next spring and then in the meantime, go out and get some Black Butte Porter and Mirror Pond Pale Ale!

Links and such…

Here’s the link to the Deschutes website:
Deschutes Brewery

Here’s Deschutes’ Cinder Cone page:
Cinder Cone Red

I’m not a registered member at Beer Advocate (never was much of a “joiner” I guess), but I like to use them as the demographic dipstick by which beers are measured. All three of these Deschutes Brewing beers scored well with the Beer Advocates. Here are the individual reviews:

Beer Advocate on Mirror Pond

Beer Advocate on Black Butte Porter

Beer Advocate on Cinder Cone Red

(And while we’re on the subject of beer review websites, I’d like to give a quick tip of the hat to the guys -and gals? - at Beer Review Online . I am a member of this site and will get around to posting an entry about them in the coming weeks, I hope.)

I don’t know that I’ve ever been able to proclaim a fondness for all the beers produced by a single brewer, and having tried three of their beers, my experience with Deschutes Brewing may not be exactly far-reaching or broad-based. But I know a positive trend when I see one. I try different beers from different brewers and some I like (a lot) and some I don’t care so much about but I always try to stay open minded and sample new beers from a brewer even if they’ve disappointed me in the past. Hey, nowadays when you can buy single bottles of beer to sample, there isn’t any excuse for not keeping an open mind and trying a variety of product. The difficulty comes when you’re pressed for a quick choice and your brain freezes and you can’t recall what beers you really liked. For me, for the moment, I’ll just remember one word: “Deschutes.”