Threshold Brewing’s Innovative new Cellar Program conditioning beer in the Willamette River
The key to cellaring beer for maturation is a cool, dark, and relatively undisturbed climate. In Germany they used caves, in Portland, Oregon, Threshold Brewing is using the Willamette River. The SE Montavilla neighborhood up-and-comers have recently began exploring the experimental approach to sea beer aging proven to work by historic finds of preserved ale from sunken vessels.
A modern brewery using large bodies of water to cellar beer is not unprecedented. Just this last year, famous Belgian brewery Cantillon revealed their practice of deep sea beer-aging off the Northern coast of France. Cantillon’s bottles intermingled for months with natural sea life and came out adorned by barnacles and with presumed enhanced aromatics.
Threshold has only just begun their underwater aging experiments and stated that when considering potential bodies of water, their primary aim was to successfully infuse their beer with the essence of Portland.
“Selecting the Willamette River for our aged stouts and mixed culture ales was honestly a no-brainer for us,” said Threshold co-owner Sara Szymanski. “The river is quintessential Portland as well as being easily accessible and with low levels of toxicity for at least a portion of the year. We’re not entirely sure what lives down there but we’re curious to find out.”
So far Threshold has dropped 2 stout varieties as well as their Neptune Baltic Porter into Portland’s local tributary, either weighted down by river rocks or attached to submerged Lime scooters. They plan to check on the drop sites periodically and collect regular samples over the coming months.
Assuming all goes well – and at this point there are no anticipated red flags – craft beer lovers can expect initial Willamette-aged can releases from Threshold as early as next April 2024.