Love a good brewery? Check out the Double Mountain Brewery in the great American Pacific Northwest. Located in Hood River, OR, the brewery was founded in 2007 by Matt Swihart and Charlie Devereux. Their mission: make great beer for craft beer fans.
All their beers are built on a foundation of two-row Pilsner malt (malted barley) from Gambrinus Malting in British Columbia. The Pilsner malt provides the backbone of the fermentable sugars without the grainy proteins so prominent in most US barleys.
When available, they use Gambrinus’ Organic Pilsner malt, which is specially hand-selected by maltster Matthias Haaben. Their specialty malts come from a wide variety of the world’s best suppliers, including Crisp and Simpson in the UK and Durz in Germany, depending on the needs of a given recipe.
The vast majority of our hops are grown within a two hour drive from the brewery, in the Yakima Valley of central Washington and the Willamette Valley just south of Portland Oregon.
They maintain two house yeasts, which come from Wyeast Labs, the nation’s premier craft brewery supplier, located ten minutes “up valley” in Odell. The primary strain, which ferments the majority of their beers, is a unique ale yeast that was sourced from a Belgian abbey brewery. While this yeast doesn’t sport the typically estery aromas most often associated with Belgian beers, it does bring provide an extra layer of complexity and subtle European character.
Their second yeast is a top-fermenting yeast sourced from Cologne (“Köln” in German), which they use to ferment our Kölsch and a few other beers, particularly their stouts. This yeast has a nice rounded profile and a restrained fruitiness when compared to most other ale yeasts.
Their Pilsner and Swibrau Octoberfest were brewed with an authentic Czech lager yeast, and they have used various other Belgian strains for one-off beers, including Devil’s Kriek, a Belgian-inspired cherry beer that’s partially fermented with Brettanomyces yeast to produce sour and “funky” flavors.
They believe in going local too, using water from Hood River. They say that it’s some of the softest water anywhere — even softer that the famed source at Pilsen in the Czech Republic, where the first Pilsner beers were born.
Photo credits: The Double Mountain Brewery site and discovered on Facebook in that order.
Renee Blodgett is the founder of We Blog the World. The site combines the magic of an online culture and travel magazine with a global blog network and has contributors from every continent in the world. Having lived in 10 countries and explored nearly 80, she is an avid traveler, and a lover, observer and participant in cultural diversity.
She is also the CEO and founder of Magic Sauce Media, a new media services consultancy focused on viral marketing, social media, branding, events and PR. For over 20 years, she has helped companies from 12 countries get traction in the market. Known for her global and organic approach to product and corporate launches, Renee practices what she pitches and as an active user of social media, she helps clients navigate digital waters from around the world. Renee has been blogging for over 16 years and regularly writes on her personal blog Down the Avenue, Huffington Post, BlogHer, We Blog the World and other sites. She was ranked #12 Social Media Influencer by Forbes Magazine and is listed as a new media influencer and game changer on various sites and books on the new media revolution. In 2013, she was listed as the 6th most influential woman in social media by Forbes Magazine on a Top 20 List.
Her passion for art, storytelling and photography led to the launch of Magic Sauce Photography, which is a visual extension of her writing, the result of which has led to producing six photo books: Galapagos Islands, London, South Africa, Rome, Urbanization and Ecuador.
Renee is also the co-founder of Traveling Geeks, an initiative that brings entrepreneurs, thought leaders, bloggers, creators, curators and influencers to other countries to share and learn from peers, governments, corporations, and the general public in order to educate, share, evaluate, and promote innovative technologies.
