Great notion brewing plus#

Something I’ve always admired about Russian River is that Vinny has always been forthcoming to homebrewers about his ingredients and recipes, which is something we’ve tried to do with our own processes.

Great notion brewing plus#

Plus it was a double IPA, which I’m a real sucker for. Piney, fruity, dry - just completely hop-saturated. At the time, Pliny was the only beer that blew me away with its hop profile. I lived in Oakland before Portland, and at least once a week my friends and I would go to a local bar called Ben & Nick’s because there was a fresh keg of Pliny. What’s the beer that made you fall in love with beer? It’s a beer I wouldn’t tire being around for long periods.Ģ. Pivo is crisp, refreshing - just a great example of a modern pilsner. But if it’s tropical and hot and you’re stuck on a desert island, you’re not really likely to reach for a rich pastry stout. IPAs don’t age very well, but stouts and lagers do. So what does Dugan do when he’s not revising recipes or chatting with customers? Here, he tackles our Lucky Sevens questions and shares what motivates him as a brewer, the best (and worst) beers in his fridge, and why he thinks hazy IPA plus nigori sake is a no-brainer.įirestone Walker’s Pivo Pils. “It’s crazy to think we were brewing these recipes in my garage three years ago, and now we still can’t make enough.” “I feel truly humbled by the show of support,” Dugan says. This commitment to deliver beer at its peak is not lost on fans, as waiting lines for releases of limited-edition ales routinely start to form outside the brewery hours before.

It gives us the opportunity to retain control of our product and sell the freshest beer possible to the customer.” This model of direct-to-customer sales began in the Northeast and has worked its way west. “Our customers have driven our success, and we’re incredibly grateful for their passion and never-ending thirst.

“We want to continue to focus on selling all our beer directly,” Dugan says. Still, the only way for beer enthusiasts to taste Great Notion’s lineup is to go directly to the source: Nearly every drop of beer is sold on-site, and almost all of it packaged in 16-ounce cans. The 20,000-square-foot space includes a 30-barrel brewery that helped increase production to 2,300 barrels in 2018, up from 950 barrels the year prior. Its taproom and restaurant will open to the public this spring.

With demand far outstripping supply, Great Notion added a second production facility early last year. The sour Heart of Hold won a silver medal at the Great American Beer Festival in 2016, and Double Stack won the same award in 2017. Great Notion also brews up sour ales Blueberry Muffin and Strawberry Taffy, as well as breakfast-inspired imperial stouts spiked with maple syrup and coffee (Double Stack), or toasted pecans, brown sugar, and cinnamon (Sticky Bun). “You can’t really find a brewer around here that doesn’t make at least one now,” he says. Now the brewery is among the style’s most prominent producers - cans are highly coveted currency among traders - and a trailblazer among Portland brewers. Thanks to Great Notion’s turbid trophies, including Ripe, Juice Box, and Juice Jr., local acceptance quickly grew to national attention.