Beer drinking leads to Helles

This month, Lompoc Brewing releases three unique beers that are great for summer drinking: the Bourbon Barrel-Aged Dark Side Porter, Spring Bock and Heaven’s Helles. All three are available at Lompoc breweries and can be found in taprooms and stores around town.

Lompoc began aging some of its beers in bourbon and wine barrels two years ago and has continued the trend, releasing a new barrel-aged beer a few times a year. The porter is one of those beers. Using bourbon barrels from Heaven Hill Distilleries in Kentucky, Lompoc aged this beer for eight months and cellared it for two more before bottling.

With some bourbon barrel-aged brews, there’s barely a hint of bourbon. Those beers might be good nonetheless, but Lompoc’s Dark Side Porter delivers a powerful bourbon flavor that’s hard to match. It’s almost like ordering a whiskey beer-back in the same glass. Like most porters, this beer is also heavy on the caramel, vanilla and chocolate. Beware the dessert-like sweetness, though, as the porter’s 7.7 percent ABV might knock a patron off the barstool.

Lompoc’s latest release is Heaven’s Helles Pale Lager, an annual summer seasonal that was developed for the hot days ahead. At a friendly 5.3 percent ABV, Helles is what Lompoc Production Manager and Brewer Bryan Keilty calls a “lawnmower beer.” The German-style pale lager is light in color and awfully easy to drink—so easy that the neighbor mowing the lawn might knock back two or three before he’s through. With floral notes and a mild dose of hops, Helles is refreshing and crisp. While it’s not usually in Lompoc style to brew such light and clean-finishing beers, this one still stands out as a downright good summer beverage.

Spring Bock’s name might sound unfamiliar to beer connoisseurs. After all, it is made in the German maibock style, which is lighter in color than a bock and takes its German name after the month of May. Spring Bock is almost a maibock, but not quite. Rather than use a new batch of yeast to brew this beer, Lompoc employed previously used tanks from its finished brews. Leaving the surplus yeast from previous brews clinging to the bottom and sides of the fermentation tanks, Lompoc brewers then poured in the Spring Bock wort and allowed both new and old yeast to work their magic.

Amber in color, the Spring Bock is a bit stronger than most maibocks. It balances malty and hoppy flavors perfectly, neither too spicy nor too sweet. Like the porter, it supplies a pretty serious 8.1 percent ABV, which can be a lot to handle, but it’s worth every sip.

With all the beer festivals in and around Portland, Lompoc Brewing gets pretty busy come summer, which translates to even more beers in the lineup. Keep an eye out for Big Bang Red, which should be released the weekend before Independence Day. Additionally, the Sidebar location is a great spot to check out Lompoc’s release parties, which usually fall on Fridays.