The Secret History of Jubelale: 30 Years of Deschutes Brewery’s Winter Warmer

Display of Jubelale bottles

Deschutes Brewery celebrates its thirtieth anniversary this year, and while much has changed in the past three decades, the annual release of its winter ale, Jubelale, remains a comforting constant. I consider Jubelale to be an iconic beer on par with Sierra Nevada Celebration and Anchor Christmas Ale, so I thought I’d commemorate the beer itself — and the 30-year anniversary — with a short history.

Gary Fish came to Bend in 1987 with the intent to create a lifestyle business — in the form of a brewpub. By early 1988 work was underway on the new brewery, and though Fish was consulting with Frank Appleton of British Columbia’s Horseshoe Bay Brewery, the business did not yet have a brewer.

John Harris got his start in the industry with McMenamins in Portland, and originally came to Bend to consult on another brewpub project which ultimately fell through. The timing was fortuitous, however, as Fish placed an ad for a brewer for Deschutes; Harris answered the ad and became the very first employee of the new business.

Deschutes opened its doors in downtown Bend, Oregon on June 27, 1988, with a lineup of four beers on tap: Bachelor Bitter, Cascade Golden Ale, Black Butte Porter, and Wychick Weizen. Harris tweaked Appleton’s original three recipes and developed new ones, including the Weizen, Mirror Pond Pale Ale (the first recipe for this beer was almost named Pumice Pale), Bond Street Bock, and Jubelale.

"Jubel-Ale" mentioned in The Bulletin, Jan. 1989

Harris brewed Jubelale (or “Jubel-Ale” as The Bulletin called it in a January 1989 article) for Christmas and modeled it after an English strong ale or winter warmer. He brewed that very first batch on October 26, 1988, and according to the brewing log, it contained pale malt, caramel malt, chocolate malt, and dextrin malt, and the hops used were Galena, Cascade, “Wills” (assuming Willamette), and Tettnanger in the hop back. Starting gravity was 1.065, and the resulting alcohol was 6.25 percent by volume.

Brewing log of first-ever batch of Jubelale

Up to that point, Deschutes was a draft-only brewpub, but as it was a holiday ale, the brewery also released Jubelale in bottles. For this first-ever bottling, the brewery filled 35 cases worth of 750ml bottles right from the tap, and capped every bottle by hand.

“We bought a bunch of used champagne bottles, scrubbed the labels off, soaked the bottles, cleaned them, sanitized them, and filled them,” said Harris in a 2014 interview. The bottles were hand-labeled as well and numbered; Harris still has a bottle from that first batch.

Original bottle of Jubelale, Courtesy of John Harris
Courtesy of John Harris

They hand-bottled the following year’s batch in 750ml champagne bottles as well, and then in 1990 switched to 22-ounce bottles using a mobile bottling service. The beer would be kegged and sent to the bottler, where it would be bottled and shipping back to the brewery. Deschutes used this service until 1993, when the new bottling line at the production plant on Simpson Avenue opened. The first beer off the line was the ’93 batch of Jubelale.

It was during this period that the infamous “frozen keg” of Jubelale incident occurred. The story begins with a break-in at the pub: “They busted in, stole my stereo, stole a keg of Jubel, and stole a tri-tip out of the kitchen,” said Harris. This took place during December of ’90, I believe, and the thieves discovered that full kegs are heavy — too heavy to make it far on foot.

Shortly after the break-in, Harris and Fish were walking to the pub and found the missing keg in the snow about a block away. Harris realized that it hadn’t yet been tapped, and was excited. He said, “Gary! I think it’s the missing keg! This could be awesome!” In fact, the sub-freezing temperature had frozen the water in the beer and effectively ice-distilled it, concentrating the flavor and alcoholic strength in a manner similar to the Eisbock style. The resulting strength was probably nine or ten percent by volume.

This concentrated Jubelale was “great,” according to Harris, so much so that a few days later, assistant brewer Tim Gossack hauled another keg up to the roof in attempt to recreate it. Unfortunately it wasn’t cold enough to freeze that second keg.

However, that original frozen keg of Jubelale did serve as the inspiration for the brewery’s “Super Jubel,” a double-strength version aged in oak and released in small amounts each year. The brewery issued a special bottled version in 2000 (approximately nine percent alcohol by volume, with 1,000 cases produced), and it returned again in 2010 and 2015.

Empty bottle of Jubel 2000
Deschutes Brewery Jubel 2010
Jubel 2015 along with an older bottle of Super Jubel

Through the first few years of Jubelale’s bottling, the brewery used the same basic label design, featuring a festive wreath replacing the usual oval in the logo. These were created by the company’s graphic artist at the time, Ed Carson. In 1995, Deschutes first commissioned a local artist to create an original piece of artwork for the label, and each year subsequently a new artist is selected. A 2015 blog post by the brewery describes this process:

We’ve been brewing this beer since the first winter we were open, then in 1995, we began commissioning local artists to create a piece of art for us that appears each year on the beer’s packaging. Our team looks at several portfolios throughout the year and ultimately chooses an artist that has a unique and interesting style. We don’t really give any guidelines other than it must be different and distinct, festive and wintery, and will look brilliant on a label.

If you’ve seen our “Jubelale Hall Of Fame” at our brewery where we keep all of the original pieces of art, you’ll notice how the designs vary from year to year. You will find everything thing from owls, fish, ice skaters, skiers, snowballs, and sledders. Although some of these pieces are abstract, landscape, painted with light, oil pants, water paints, or collaged, they are all amazing in their own way.

Display of Jubelale bottles

The 2018 label does not feature an artist. Instead, the artwork was created by Deschutes Brewery employees themselves. During the brewery’s thirtieth anniversary celebration this past summer, a large wall was erected and each employee had the opportunity to add to it in paint. The finished result might be described as an amalgam of splatter art that embodies the company motto of “Crafted for Community.”

Deschutes Jubelale 2018 art wall
Deschutes Brewery Jubelale 2018

The other side of the story of this year’s label is: the brewery commissioned four different pieces of artwork from local artists to evaluate, but ultimately the decision makers (including Fish) did not like any of them for a final label. However, one of the designs did make it into early marketing materials, as the blog mybeerbuzz.com revealed in July:

Alternate Jubelale 2018 label
via mybeerbuzz.com

The recipe for Jubelale has changed little, if at all, over the years. One of the things Deschutes strives for with the beer is consistency, although processes and ingredients may vary over time. As brewmaster Brian Faivre told Paste Magazine in an interview in November:

While the recipe for Jubelale has remained the same, it has been through a lot of change. Originally brewed at the small brewhouse at the Bend Public House, it was then brewed on a larger scale at our original brewhouse at the production facility and is now brewed each year on our largest brewing system. In addition to equipment and process changes, the raw materials vary each year. We rely heavily on our Sensory Panel to flavor match Jubelale from year to year and the classic joke amongst the team each Jubelale season is, “It’s the best year yet!”

One of the big changes to the beer took place in 2011. Fish in particular perceived that the flavor had changed over time, and that it had lost character. He and brewmaster Veronica Vega sat down with me in June for an extended interview about Deschutes’ thirtieth anniversary, and one of the topics was that Jubelale reformulation. Here is the transcript of that part of the conversation:

Fish: Well, we went through, three years ago, four years ago [actually seven years ago], with Jubelale, a kind of return to formulation, a deliberate change in formulation to change the flavor profile. Because it was our perception that it had changed over time. And with increasing batch sizes, the Huppmann brewhouse, I mean, efficiency is a great thing. But sometimes it can create kind of, a homogenization of, you know, batch to batch processes. And uh, it was kind of my thought, and I think we were all pretty much in agreement, that we had lost some of the character that was in that beer. And at first, people were surprised and shocked by it, but I think they came around to really enjoying the beer. When it’s a seasonally produced beer, you know, we brew every year it in July and August, and then you don’t have it again, even for a sophisticated sensory panel like ours, your memory isn’t flawless.

Vega: Yeah, because in that example, people always pinpoint Jubel as, “Do you change the recipe from year to year?” That sort of thing. And really, we deal with Jubel the same as every other brand, but I think Jubel has more nostalgia attached to it. And so, with people’s experience with the beer in that winter, it actually locks in the sensory thing with them, to where they think we’re changing the recipe. But we change the process, adjust to the raw materials, just like we would any recipe. But because of that greater link, you know, that includes nostalgia, it just solidifies the memory for them.

Fish: Well I think there’s some other, like Anchor’s Christmas Ale, where the spices change, people debate endlessly which spices we’re using this year. [Laughter] We don’t use spices in it. And yet, that debate rages on. But we want to make the beer that makes our customers happy. And that’s something that we work hard to try and solve these riddles that sometimes aren’t that easy to solve.

Me: So I mean, with Jubelale specifically, what kind of adjustments did you make? Not like trade secret adjustments, but…

Vega: Yeah. Boil, so that was back to [Gary’s] point of efficiency, I believe it’s close to a three-hour boil. Which is not efficient. And there’s truly, like, not a need in terms of hops, isomerization, all that stuff. That excess boil time is more for building the Maillard malt flavors, that sort of thing, in the kettle.

Fish: Seems like we changed some of the mash profile too, to kind of… well maybe that was in the kettle, but to retain a little bit more sugar, not to ferment it out completely dry. And, I’m trying to remember exactly what we did, but it seems like the mash profile, we didn’t want to convert all the starches, so it wouldn’t ferment all the way out, and so that it would have a little more body, a little more mouthfeel to it.

Me: So it’s kind of ironic, you’re basically making it less efficient to try to match up to the inefficiencies of the past, in order to get back to that nostalgia.

Fish: As a simple concept, that’s exactly what we were doing.

Strictly from a technical brewing standpoint, it sounds like a combination of increasing the mash temperature (which would result in more unfermentable sugars, promoting less attenuation and more body) and longer boil to develop kettle caramelization.

Deschutes provides homebrew recipes for a number of its beers, including Jubelale:

Jubelale homebrew recipe

Specific measurements aren’t provided; they are left up to the homebrewer to figure out. For malts, the recipe calls for pale malt, crystal malt, Extra Special (biscuit) malt, Carapils, and roasted barley. Hops are Bravo, Cascade, Delta, U.S. Tettnang, and East Kent Goldings; keep in mind, EKG is a big component of the hop aroma and character and should be used particularly late in the boil.

Veronica Vega highlighted the EKG in our interview: “When Jubel’s at its best, I think it has like this, spiced gumball deliciousness mirrored with that like, caramel toffee and that is, that spiced gumball is the best use of EKG.”

The original gravity is given in a range of 1.062 to 1.069, and final gravity from 1.017 to 1.022. Boil time is 90 minutes, though you could certainly increase this if you choose, and fermentation uses an English ale yeast. Given that Jubelale is 6.7 percent alcohol by volume and 65 IBUs, homebrewers should be able to brew a reasonable home version.

There have been 31 editions of Jubelale since Deschutes Brewery opened in 1988, and it remains a seasonal favorite among the brewery’s fans. And while the brewery has worked to keep the beer as consistent and as close to its roots as possible, it’s no stretch to say that this year’s version is the best Jubelale yet.

Lineup of all Jubelale bottles through 2017

2 comments

  1. Other than the group pictures, is there a listing with pictures of each year? I have a ton of em & would like to add what year they are from

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