Deschutes Brewery Releases Black Butte XXVIII Today

Since the inception of craft brewing, Oregon has been at the forefront of this industry and one of our state’s most recognizable breweries celebrates another milestone. Today the eighth largest craft brewery, Deschutes Brewery will honor its 28th year in business with the annual release of Black Butte XXVIII in 22 oz. wax dipped bottles and on draft at its pubs in Portland and Bend.

Black Butte XXVIII is part of the Reserve Series from Deschutes Brewery that’s an imperial, barrel-aged version of the brewery’s flagship Black Butte Porter that sits at 11.5% ABV. With this year’s release the brewer’s added peated malt, cocoa, vanilla and sweet orange peel that were all aged in bourbon and scotch barrels.

Today, June 27th, Deschutes Brewery Public Houses in Portland and Bend will host launch parties for Black Butte XXVIII while celebrating its 28th anniversary. From 11:00am until close, both pubs will offer the first bottles of Black Butte XXVIII to go along with culinary delights, music, and games. There will also be vertical flights of Black Butte featuring five years of the highly regarded beer. And if you wear some old school Black Butte Porter apparel Deschutes will award you some swag.

Then in the coming months be on the lookout for a very special release from Deschutes and Bend Distillery as the two have partnered to release a very limited Black Butte Porter Whiskey in the coming months. Here are more details from a recent blog post from Deschutes founder, Gary Fish.

You might have heard about another project of ours from our magical Black Butte laboratory, that is Black Butte 3. That’s right, or maybe you didn’t know….. Well, that little gem was taking an imperial (read: double-strength, or Anniversary) version of Black Butte Porter and aging it in Black Butte Porter Whiskey bottles to create a triple-delicious version of our namesake classic. That was also prepared in wax-dipped bottles and sold exclusively in our pubs and tasting room. If you missed it, don’t feel too bad, many did as the supply was precious……WAIT, did I say “Black Butte Porter Whiskey”??!!

Yup, that’s right. We have been involved in a very secret project with our friends at Bendistilley to create the ultimate elixir. Sometimes when you begin a project on a whim with some friends, without any real idea that it could be that good, or commercial, magic happens. And it did.

We took a batch of Anniversary (read: imperial or double) Black Butte, left out the hops, and turned it over to our friends at Bendistillery. Whereupon, they performed real magic with real newt’s tongue and frog’s eyes and stuff…. Ok, that might not be true. But, they did distill it into some freakin’ awesome whiskey that has been aging in fully charred barrels for the past 3 years. And, we are almost ready to let you try some too. If all goes well (with the OLCC), we will have some for sampling at our pubs and tasting room, sometime this summer. We are pretty excited, if you couldn’t tell….The ultimate Black Butte!!

We cannot wait to try this whiskey. But until then we look forward to today’s anniversary celebration that sees the release of Black Butte XXVIII. Over the coming weeks look for the beer’s availability in limited quantities across most of the brewer’s distribution network.

Deschutes Brewery Portland Public House
210 NW 11th Avenue
Portland, OR 97209

Deschutes Brewery Bend Public House
1044 NW Bond Street
Bend, OR 97701