Inde­pen­dently hand­crafted in Bend Ore­gon.  In the heart of the always evolv­ing North­west beer scene, we are doing our part to recre­ate the brew­ing wheel.  So we’re going to keep rolling our own way, brew­ing what we love, and sell­ing you every­thing we don’t drink our­selves.  - 10 Bar­rel Brew­ing Company

S1nist0r Black Ale - Gold Medal, 2011 Wold Beer ChampionshipsApoc­a­lypse IPA - Sil­ver Medal, 2011 World Beer ChampionshipsPray For Snow Strong Ale - Sil­ver Medal, 2011 World Beer ChampionshipsS1nist0r Black Ale - Bronze Medal, Out of Cat­e­gory — Tra­di­tional Brewed Beer, 2009 Great Amer­i­can Beer FestivalAddress: 20750 High Desert Lane #107, Bend OR, 97701
Web­site: http://www.10barrel.com/
Twit­ter: @10barrelbrewing
Face­book:10 Bar­rel Brew­ing Company

Pre­vi­ous to my trip to Ore­gon, I had emailed 10–15 brew­eries in which I planned on vis­it­ing to let them know I would be there and would love a few min­utes to chat. The only two I heard from was (review com­ing soon) and 10 Bar­rel. For this rea­son, I made it a point to get to the brew­ery since they took the time to con­tact me back. Look­ing back, I am ecsta­tic that I made that deci­sion because I felt wel­comed with open arms and a full pint glass.

 

Loca­tion, Loca­tion, Location!

10 Bar­rel Brew­ing Com­pany is located in an epic loca­tion for beer, Bend, OR. That brings a lot of pres­sure to an up and com­ing brew­ery in an already thriv­ing area for craft beer. If you are unfa­mil­iar with the lay­out of Bend, 10 Bar­rel is located about a mile east of High­way 97. Big pic­ture, you are look­ing at a beau­ti­ful, scenic drive of about 3 hours from Port­land to get to Bend.

As far as the get­ting to the brew­ery, we walked from a dif­fer­ent brew­ery, and it was very easy to find. If you are dri­ving, it is pretty much on one of the major streets and would be hard to miss.

Another advan­tage I learned (unfor­tu­nately it was at the end of my time in Bend) is that there is a com­pany called Bend Ale Trail that actu­ally put a map together of Bend and all the brew­eries in the area. Hav­ing the map will help you find the brew­ery very eas­ily and on top of that, if you make it to all the brew­eries listed on the map, you get a very cool prize show­ing you com­pleted the trail.

Brew­ery:

We arrived on a Sat­ur­day night and expected to see some­what of a crowd. As we approached, we noticed the brew­ery is in an extremely nice build­ing. It had a dif­fer­ent feel to it than any of the other brew­eries that I had been to in Bend, and for that mat­ter, all of Ore­gon. The feel­ing was that of an estab­lished brew pub, not one that has been around for only a few years.

As we walked in, we noticed the place was absolutely packed. The crowd inside was as diverse as I have seen in a brew­ery with both the younger and older gen­er­a­tions rep­re­sented there. It was busy enough that we had to get our names on the wait­ing list. Since we had to wait, we approached the bar to start sam­pling the beer. As we waited, we began chat­ting with a few peo­ple around us about their thoughts of

the brew­ery. Each per­son told us how fan­tas­tic the place was. We were told they don’t only make great beer, but they have a wel­com­ing ambiance that seems to draw peo­ple in and keep them there. One lady actu­ally pointed me in the direc­tion of one of the part­ners, who was sit­ting out at one of the tables, and asked if I would like her to intro­duce him to me. Of course, I said yes, but I thought about how cool it was that a patron felt com­fort­able enough with the owner to intro­duce me to him. That was pretty awe­some. I will get more into that in a minute.

Finally, our table was ready. Beers in tow, we sat down and ordered a pizza for all of us to share. The pizza we chose was the Hippy Pie. As you can see in the pic­ture, it was a very cre­ative style of pizza. All of us enjoyed the pizza immensely and rec­om­mend this style if you enjoy arti­chokes and olives. Unfor­tu­nately, that was all we had the appetite for since we had been eat­ing all day at other pubs, how­ever, every­thing we saw com­ing out of the kitchen looked wonderful.

Beer:

The beer at the brew­ery was hands down the best beer I had tasted in Ore­gon. Sure, there were some sours I had in Port­land that were fan­tas­tic; how­ever, the beer I enjoyed at 10 Bar­rel was bal­anced and each had solid char­ac­ter­is­tics in them that stood out above the rest in “Beer­vana”. My one dis­ap­point­ment was that the S1nist0r Black Ale, their award win­ning brew, was sold out! A few notes on some of the brews I had:

• “Mike Saw A Sasquatch” Ses­sion Ale– A refresh­ing golden ale, with a honey like sweet­ness and bal­anced with a slight earthy hoppiness.
• ISA– Prob­a­bly my favorite of my entire trip. This brew was very easy to drink with the sig­nif­i­cant hop fla­vors I love in IPA’s. Lots of cit­rus, grape­fruit and sweet ripe oranges, on the nose and palate. This is a beer I wish I could get reg­u­larly in Ari­zona, espe­cially in the sum­mer­time. A fan­tas­tic warm weather ale.
• North­west Red– Although I am not a huge fol­lower of malty reds, I enjoyed this beer more than I thought. It still had a sig­nif­i­cant malty back­bone, what really came through was the hops the pacific north­west is known for.
• Apoc­a­lypse IPA– Another award win­ning beer. Darker than most IPA’s, I was slightly expect­ing less of the hop pro­file to reveal itself. I was dead wrong. The hop pro­file was built per­fectly, allow­ing the bit­ter­ness to bal­ance with the great caramel and roasted char­ac­ter­is­tics of the grain bill.

After going through my flight, I set­tled on the ISA because I knew I would not have access to it in AZ and I wanted to guz­zle as many as I could.

Final Impres­sion:

My opin­ion on the brew­ery was extremely pos­i­tive. As I men­tioned above, one of the part­ners, Gar­rett, knew his cus­tomers and spent time chat­ting with them. Fur­ther­ing my excel­lent expe­ri­ence, Gar­rett sat down with me for a good 20 min­utes to chat with me about the brew­ery and the beer. There is noth­ing bet­ter in the com­mu­nity of craft beer than hear­ing from some­one that has done it right. I hope to run into their beers in the future, and if you are ever in the Pacific North­west, 10 Bar­rel is one place that is not to be missed. Prost!

 

 

 

 

 

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