Portland’s purveyors of German-style ales and lagers at Occidental Brewing now have their own canning line to deliver even fresher beer like the Dampfbier (not a spelling error) dropping this Friday.

New Canning Line

Occidental recently purchased and installed their own canning line. Coming in from Oklahoma, the previously used packaging equipment had to be thoroughly cleaned and rebuilt, but now Occidental can put out more cans, faster than before and of a higher quality control level.

Canning lines are a huge investment, but with rising costs of doing business due to the pandemic, taxes and tariffs, this is an investment into the future. Bringing in mobile canners is a common and useful practice among small craft breweries, but it also costs more and leaves more uncertainty to the product. While the Occidental taproom has remained closed for the duration of the pandemic for anything but pickup, they plan to reopen at some point in 2021 but continue to offer more varieties of cans than ever before and new draft beers for when we can all sit down together again.

The Occidental Pilsner was the first beer through the canning line and now we have Dampfbier.

Dampfbier Release

The strangely named beer is a historical Bavarian style of beer that closest resembles the more modern Steam Beer or California Commons only with a much more German twist to the flavors. Think of a Dampfbier as being a hybrid of lager and weissbier with the clovey and banana spice phenolics of the German classics but with no wheat harmed in the process.

Occidental Dampfbier is brewed with all German Pilsner malt as the base for a very light blonde body. It’s fermented with the brewery’s hose Weizen yeast at warmer than usual temperatures to throw off lots of bubble gum and clove notes in a crisp light ale.

Dampfbier debuts in 16oz cans from the brewery this Friday, February 26th.