Bridgeport’s Latest Big Brew is a Firstby Ken Kane
“Remember when the only bottled craft beers on the shelf were Redhook, Pyramid and Bridgeport Blue Heron?” asked Bridgeport’s brewmaster, Karl Ockert recently, a bit wistfully. “Those were the days!”
Things certainly have gotten more crowded in supermarket and package store coolers over the years. But with competition comes inspiration.
Take Ockert’s latest brew, Stumptown Tart, Bridgeport’s first-ever fruit-infused beer.
“I’ve never done a beer like this before … period,” said Ockert. “It was a real stretch.”
Inspired by fellow brewemaster Dan Carey at Wisconsin’s New Glarus Brewing Company, Ockert wanted a big beer flavored with real, whole fruit; something akin to that brewery’s cherry Belgian Red. Ockert e-mailed his friend for advice, but was politely rebuffed. “He said he’d tell me about anything else in the brewery, but he wouldn’t tell me about the Red, so I had to come up with this on my own.”
Ockert began with a strong golden ale with very little hops (8 percent ABV but only 8 IBUs). “This is one Northwest ale that doesn’t feature Northwest hops,” he said. But it does feature a ton of Oregon marionberries … literally 2,000 pounds, which works out to more than a pound per gallon. Two-thirds of the original golden ale was refermented with the berries. The other third was aged in French oak casks which had previously held pinor noir from Carlton Wine Studio. After several months of aging, the two radically different beers were blended at the beginning of April.
The result is a pink-purple beer with a big berry
aroma and taste, but with a crisp, dry finish. “I wanted to come up with a beer with some complexity – not just another fruit beer,” said Ockert, “but a beer that had some distinct, other flavors in it and had a nice snappy, tart finish.”
“The beer coming out of the casks tasted entirely different than the fruit beer,” he continued. “Now I know what to expect from a beer aged in casks and what a fruit beer can do. I can play around with different fruits and different casks. So, from here I think we can make a lot of interesting beers using similar strategies,” he said.
“It’s wonderful to make beer like IPA everyday but [all of our brewers are] interested in trying something new” said Ockert. “Everyone is always asking me ‘What do you have new coming up – what are you doing differently?’ Well, this and the other Big Brews are very different. And we may never make this beer again. That’s kind of fun to do.”
Though the label calls it a “Belgian style” ale, Ockert thinks of Stumptown Tart more as a big, Northwest brew. Yes, it contains fruit like many Belgian beers, but it uses Bridgeport’s standard strain of yeast, so it doesn’t have a typical Belgian yeasty finish. Though Stumptown Tart hits the shelves Apr. 24 and is Bridgeport’s Big Brew release for the summer, it shouldn’t be confused with a beer to chug while mowing the lawn.
“It’s 8.3 percent alcohol,” said Ockert. “This is a beer to close the day with, more than an opener!”
