Barley's brew wins gold medal

Sep. 17—Tyler Brown had just gotten back to Baker City with a load of fresh hops from Moxee when he was asked about his brewery's award-winning beer that has that funny five-letter word in its name.

Brown was happy to chat about Moxee Water.

This session-style IPA, brewed at Barley Brown's in Baker City, won the gold medal in that category at the Great American Beer Festival on Friday, Sept. 10.

The Moxee in this case is the town in Washington's Yakima Valley, one of the Northwest's prime hop-growing regions.

The flowers from that plant give beer its distinctive bitter bite.

Hops are especially important ingredients in IPAs — India Pale Ale — a style known for its hop-heavy flavor.

Brown said he makes multiple trips in late summer to bring home hops just harvested from fields in the Moxee area.

After the travails of the past 19 months of pandemic, with breweries forced to cut back production and, in some cases, to close, Brown said it was especially gratifying to win a medal at the world's largest professional beer competition.

The gold medal for Moxee Water was Barley Brown's 26th medal at the competition since the brewery entered its first beer in 2006.

"The development of Moxee Water has been a fun project for our brew team led by Eli Dickison," Brown said.

Dickison was picked as brewmaster of the year at the 2013 Great American Beer Festival, which takes place in Denver.

Brown said he and his fellow brewers didn't attend this year's event.

But they watched a livecast of the Sept. 10 awards ceremony while sipping, appropriately, Moxee Water at Barley Brown's Tap House on Main Street in Baker City.

"It was fun," Brown said. "We haven't had a whole lot to celebrate the last couple of years."

Brown was also excited about Moxee Water's gold medal because it's one of two beers brewed at Barley Brown's that uses as a chief ingredient barley malted by Gold Rush Malt in Baker City.

The business, started in 2016 by Tom Hutchison, won gold medals for two of his malts at the annual Craft Malt Conference in February 2021.

Brown said Dickison took it as something of a challenge to concoct a session-style IPA.

IPAs typically have a higher alcohol content than, say, lagers, often in the 6% to 8% by volume range.

But session beers have an alcohol content below 5%.

The idea is that a person can quaff a couple of beers in one "session" — hence the name.

Brown said Dickison and the other brewers "focused on crafting a light, dry, easy drinking beer that has the hop presentation of an IPA, but is low in both alcohol and calories."

"The excellent quality malt that we get from Gold Rush made it easy to get bright clean flavors," Brown said. "I'm incredibly proud to see this beer that's developed a great following locally be awarded a gold medal at the biggest beer competition in the world."

Barley Brown's produced its first batch of Moxee Water in 2018.

Brown said the beer's name actually came from an employee of a hops company based near Yakima.

He said he keeps a list of potential beer names.