Double Mountain Brewery is introducing a new experimental series of IPAs this year, and Ol’ Greg IPA is the first to be released. The brewery sent me a bottle recently, and in addition to the news of the beer, it looks as though 2020 is the year Double Mountain is making a big activist push for refillable bottles over cans and other containers. More on that in a bit.

Here’s background about this new series and Ol’ Greg from the brewery’s press release:

With this experimental IPA series, Double Mountain Brewery and Cidery is releasing the first of the newest additions to our seasonal beer lineup. For the new decade, we wanted to create something using novel ingredients and techniques, challenging the brewers to leave their comfort zones. Tasking our Head Brewer, Lead Brewer, and Barrel Manager to think outside the box, we created three distinct IPA’s using unique hops, yeast, and malts. The results are, shall we say, tantalizing. Allow us to introduce the first in the series: Ol’ Greg. Aromas of spiced fruit and black currant swim in a sea of all things that are good. Ol’ Greg is available in refillable 500ml bottles and on draft at our Hood River Taproom, SE Portland Taproom in the Woodstock neighborhood, and at fine establishments throughout the Northwest.

Ol’ Greg IPA 7.0% ABV 80 BU
“Do ya love me? Could ya learn to love me? Old world meets new with a Pacific NW IPA brewed with English hops and yeast. Big, bitter, and delicious.” Greg Balch, Head Brewer.

Ol’ Greg is a reference to a sketch from The Mighty Boosh, if you haven’t seen it yet, watch it a few times. Its disturbing, hilarious, and often quoted round the brewery.

I went into tasting this beer with the English hops and yeast in mind. The beer was bottled on January 14, and I drank it on the 31st.

Appearance: Golden in color and a decent clarity with a slight haze indicating it’s unfiltered. Bright, with a white and fine head of foam that offer a touch of fish eye bubbles while creamy, with great legs.

Smell: Spicy-earthy hops, pine needles, and forest floor. There’s some raisin and dried fruit coming out of it, probably yeast-derived. The hops are luscious with black pepper and spicy (mustard) greens.

Taste: Peppery, spicy greens and a zesty earthiness kicking back to that piney, loamy forest floor aroma. It’s lightly bitter as it should be but it’s really this spicy-piney flavor that’s prominent and punchy and I’m finding it really nice. The malts are clean with a touch of biscuity lusciousness, tasty but mellow to let the hops go to work. The yeast isn’t easy to discern but I think it does go a bit in the direction of an English bitter.

Mouthfeel: Medium-bodied with a creamy texture and a lingering bitter/earthy/spicy flavor. Pleasant carbonation and a nice snappy finish.

Overall: Another winner from Double Mountain in my book, with interesting hop characteristics coming out of the English hops (at PNW levels of hopping).

Now, about the refillable bottle angle and the inspiration behind the “This Beer is Electric” label (which might lead some folks to think it’s the name of the beer); the press release included this blurb:

Complimenting this delicious experimental series, each beer’s label highlights the benefits of using refillable bottles. The carbon footprint of refillable bottles is vastly lower than other container choices, making it the best container for the environment. Add the benefit of reduced oxidation, and refillable bottles are better for the beer too. This beer is electric, perhaps more than the electric vehicles of the future.

And the release (and package the brewery sent me) included a letter from owner/brewmaster Matt Swihart going into more detail behind this, and touts the benefits of refillable bottles over other containers, particularly cans:

With these beer releases, you’ll notice the labels are a little in your face and might require more explanation, so here are my thoughts. We have two main goals: beer quality and environmental sustainability. On day one we chose the best tasting container available. Ladies and Gentlemen, that container is a glass bottle. It is 100% inert and has a small neck opening that doesn’t allow oxygen ingress during the fill (unlike the gapingly large surface area of an un-seamed can) thereby preserving flavor stability. Also, worth mentioning is that all modern cans are lined with a thin plastic film to protect the aluminum from corrosively reacting with the beer’s natural acidity. When you drink beer from a can, you, my friend, are drinking beer from a plastic- BPA or BPA like (BPS), lined container. Sunlight you say? Refillable bottles are thicker, blocking 10 times more UV light than a one-way brown bottle. On top of the better flavor in a glass bottle, our refillable bottles can be reused up to 25 times. In 2019 alone, we reused over 55,000 bottles. The life cycle carbon footprint of our Portland-made reusable bottle is less than 2% of an aluminum can. On the sustainability front, reusable containers are always best, and the best choice in the beer aisle. Hell, if you bring a case of empties bottles to one of our pubs, I’ll get you a beer on the house. That’s double the value of deposits. It’s kind of a no-brainer.

I’m all for the virtues of refillable bottles but this does seem to go on the attack against cans in particular, which I find kind of oddly aggressive. It’s true that bauxite mining for new aluminum is very hard on the planet, but as the cans are 100% recyclable (and the aluminum can be recycled indefinitely), I don’t know if the carbon footprint life cycle matches up as quoted. (The bigger issue is that only about half of aluminum cans are recycled, a number which should absolutely be higher.)

At any rate, it doesn’t change the beer in the bottle, which is good and worth picking up. It will be interesting to see how the next beers in this experimental series will turn out.