203: Destinatian Honey Red Ale

I pass Natian Brewery (pronounced “nay-shun”) almost every day on my way to work, but I hadn’t had the chance to try their beer yet. The signage is prominently displayed in the windows of the Pepsi Plant on Sandy Boulevard, so I’d always imagined a story in my mind about the son of the plant owner having a wild hair about starting a brewery. I don’t know that it’s true (it’s likely not, based reading about their initial funding attempts), but it’s fun to imagine a brewery starting that way. And they are really starting.

Natian is the smallest brewery represented at this year’s Oregon Brewer’s Fest, which runs through Sunday in Portland’s Waterfront Park. Their system is brewing just 1.3 barrels at a time, giving new meaning to “nano-brewing.” By contrast, one of the largest breweries at the festival, Deschutes, has a 131-barrel system. If you’re playing along at home, that’s about a 100 times more beer produced with every batch. How much is a barrel? About 248 pints, according to the Google, or two “regular” size, 15.5-gallon kegs.

I’m sure that sounds like a lot of beer, but consider this: it takes about the same amount of time to brew two kegs as it does to make 200. And when you figure that a festival like OBF asks brewers to bring as many as 10 kegs to last the four days, it’s not a huge stretch to say that tiny Natian is probably the hardest working brewery at the festival, too. When a big brewery brings a beer to the fest, they just shave off 3-5% of a single batch. When Natian brings a batch, they’re brewing 3, 4, even 5 times to bring you 10 kegs of liquid sunshine. That’s commitment. That’s a lot of work.

So I give them a little bit of leeway when tasting their beers, I’ll admit. Sitting at a table with a bunch of fellow beer geeks, I heard a lot of complaining about this beer. I must have a dumb palate (or, as I prefer to think, a really great one), but I didn’t find it offensive. It wasn’t the best beer I had (that honor would likely go to Oakshire’s Espresso Stout or Rogue’s 21), but it was far from the worst (sorry, Great Divide, but that keg of Hoss was infected). Still, the photo below is from the pour-out pitcher, which until this beer was roughly the color of Miller Lite. After this beer, the pour-out pitcher assumed the color of … Destinatian.

I finished mine.

Full, 140-character reviews of the beers I sampled at OBF today can be found on the @33Beers twitter feed. Also, the mayor likes 33 Beers, too.

Beer Name: Destinatian Honey Red Ale
Brewer: Natian Brewing (Portland, Oregon)
Price: FREE*
Sampled: July 22, 2010
Rating: 3/5
Notes: Wouldn’t peg this as a honey or red. Very malty with a spinach-y vegetative finish and surprising bitter linger. Roundly panned, but I didn’t hate it.
ABV: 5.1% abv
IBU: 25 ibu
OG 1.049
TG 1.01
Serving Type: Draft.

* I sampled this beer as part of a media preview of the Oregon Brewer’s Festival. Apparently, I am now “media,” in addition to “awesome.”