Interested in getting a keg for your private event?  Call Casey or Martin at the Quimby brewery and they’ll set you up (503)517-4352 x5

From milling the grist to the first sip, the entire brewing process happens at one of the Lucky Labrador’s two breweries.

The Process

Integral to our brewery is our solar thermal water heating system. If the sun was out the previous day we will have captured the sun’s energy and use it to heat our brewery water. The brewer mixes hot water with milled barley in the first tank, the mash tun, bringing it up to 155 degrees Fahrenheit. While the mash steeps for an hour and a half, the starches present in the barley are converted into fermentable sugars. From here we transfer the wort to the kettle, and boil it for another hour and a half, adding hops along the way.

Generally, hops are added in the beginning of the boil to impart bittering flavor and added at the end to give the beer bittering aroma. At the end of the boil we start a whirlpool in the tank, collecting the solids in the middle—a little physics working here—and then let the solids settle to the bottom.

While transferring the wort from the kettle, we cool it down to room temperature through a heat exchanger and add yeast to begin metabolizing the sugars, better known as fermenting. Depending on the style of the beer we leave the beer to ferment for three days to four weeks.

When the beer has completed the fermentation, we cool the tank, causing yeast and other solids to drop to the bottom of the tank. We then rack the beer into a conditioning tank and leave it to age for about two weeks. After the hop profile has mellowed the beer is either ready for a tap line or to get kegged for one of our satellite pubs. Portland Oregon Brewery, the finest beer.

From the barley in the grain room to a pint in your hand, the process lasts about two and a half weeks.