Friday, April 4, 2014

Ninkasi Brewing Company offically starts brewing in New Eugene Facilities

NINKASI BREWING COMPANY OFFICIALLY STARTS BREWING IN NEW EUGENE FACILITIES

Ninkasi’s Expanded Brewery Boasts Sustainability and Innovation


Press Release:
EUGENE, Ore.—April 4, 2014With more than three years of planning, countless hours of hammering, welding and commissioning, and hundreds of gallons of its signature teal paint, Ninkasi Brewery Company’s second Eugene brewery brewed its very first batch of beer last week. The first official brew not only marks a new era of growth, but also establishes the brewery as an industry leader in sustainable practices and innovation. Working hand-in-hand with ecoReal Solutions of Portland, Ore., the brewery’s design and construction teams have been able to add numerous sustainable features to the brewery, setting it on the path to reach LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certifications from the U.S. Green Building Council.

“Since the beginning of Ninkasi, we have continuously been in a state of construction with four expansions in the last seven-and-a-half years,” explains Nigel Francisco, CFO for Ninkasi. “Finally, we will have a space that we can grow in to for the next 10 to 15 years instead of constantly adapting our facilities to fit our needs.”

Currently, Ninkasi’s 55-barrel brewhouse has a capacity to produce 90,000 barrels of beer per year. With a second, 90-barrel brewing system installed across the street in Eugene’s Whiteaker neighborhood, the brewery will be able to add an initial 70,000 barrels of capacity with room to grow to 250,000. Perhaps what is equally exciting for the brewery is its gained ability to produce a wider variety of beers with longer fermentation times. 

“With two breweries operating together, we will have the space and capacity to brew more beers, like lagers, that can take anywhere from eight to twelve weeks to ferment,” explains Jamie Floyd, founding brewer and co-found of Ninkasi. “We’ll also have the capacity to brew more under our Rare and Delicious Series, exploring new beer styles and ingredients.”


Sustainability
In partnerships with ecoReal Solutions, a sustainable solutions firm based in Portland, Ore., Ninkasi has been able to make smart upgrades to boost its efficiencies throughout the brewery, aspiring to reach LEED® standards once the brewery is fully operational. This includes investing in materials, systems and processes that will benefit the brewery and its community over time.

Sustainable attributes and performance goals met:
·         10% of all construction materials are made of recycled content.
·         10% of all materials are sourced from regional manufactures (within 500 miles of the brewery).
·         Exemplary use of FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) Certified wood products.
·         Niagara high-efficiency toilets installed throughout the brewery, using half of the water required by standard toilets—and the first to do so.
·         Energy recovery systems that capture hot liquid throughout the brewing process to be recirculated in the brewhouse.
·         High efficiency natural gas boilers that use 40% less energy needed to run conventional boilers.
·         Cleaning-In-Place (CIP) system to reduce water usage and chemical usage when cleaning brewing vessels.
·         Waste water balancing system to pH balance all waste before going to the City.
·         Bulk grain unloading system to cut down on packaging waste.
·         Bulk chemical storage to cut down on packaging waste.
·         High efficiency hop cooler.

Innovation
When working with the GEA Group to install the new 90-barrel GEA Huppmann brewhouse in Ninkasi’s expanded facility, the team realized that the amount of hops used in its brews could make for a less efficient brewhouse. During the brewing process, the hops soak up a significant amount of liquid wort which could be used in the brewing process instead of being captured in the hop filament.

Due to Ninkasi’s commitment to brew without hop extracts, Ninkasi’s teams worked with GEA to develop a proprietary technology that will allow better yields with more hops. This took the form of a hop strainer, which, if successful, will be deployed and used more widely across the brewing industry. In short, the hop strainer allows Ninkasi brewers to pass the hopped wort through a strainer to help remove the hops and also garner as much liquid as possible from the hop matter. 

“We’re excited to be on the forefront of brewing technology and looking forward to the opportunities we’ll have with the new system to produce more beer and more varied beer styles,” says Nikos Ridge, CEO and co-founder of Ninkasi.

Ninkasi plans to operate both brewhouses moving forward, with its expanded brewery fully on-line by May of this year.

This expansion is part of a larger growth project for Ninkasi, which includes a new local distribution facility which opened last April, along with a new administrative building set to open in early June. All buildings are registered to be LEED® certified under the new LEED® campus platform.

Tours of the new facilities will be available this summer. To learn more about Ninkasi’s current sustainable practices visit: www.ninkasibrewing.com/sustianbility


 
About Ninkasi Brewing Company
Founded in 2006 by Jamie Floyd and Nikos Ridge, Ninkasi Brewing Company continues to grow from its first batch of Total Domination IPA, to two brewhouses, a  55-barrel and a 90-barrel brewhouse, located in Eugene, Ore.  Ninkasi’s Flagship beers—Total Domination IPA, Tricerahops Double IPA, Believer Double Red, Oatis Oatmeal Stout, and Vanilla Oatis Oatmeal Stout—are sold throughout Oregon; Alaska; California; Idaho; Montana; Washington; and Vancouver, British Columbia. The brewery remains privately-owned and is committed to community support and giving. Ninkasi’s Beer Is Love program offers in-kind donations and support for organizations throughout its footprint.

For more information, call 541.344.2739 or visit www.NinkasiBrewing.com

27th Annual Oregon Brewers Festival

Oregon Brewers Festival toasts 27th year of celebrating craft beer, 
adds a dozen European brewers to the mix
85,000 beer lovers from around the world will take part in the annual celebration of craft beer

PORTLAND, Ore. — On a sun-soaked July afternoon, there’s no better place to sip suds with friends than the Oregon Brewers Festival, one of the nation's longest-running and best-loved craft beer festivals. Nearly 85,000 fans will travel from around the world to take part in the 27th annual event, which will run July 23 through July 27 at Tom McCall Waterfront Park in downtown Portland. Event hours are Noon to 9pm Wed. through Sat., and Noon to 7pm Sunday.

Admission into the festival grounds is free. In order to consume beer, purchase of a 2014 souvenir 12.8-ounce tasting glass is required and costs $7. Beer is purchased with wooden tokens, which cost $1 apiece. Patrons pay four tokens for a full glass of beer, or one token for a taste. There are no advance tickets sold to the festival; all purchases are made on-site.

In the main tents, the Oregon Brewers Festival will serve up more than 30 beer styles from 86 craft breweries from around the country; there are 88 different beers served, one per brewery plus two gluten-free offerings. From Belgians to Braggots, Pales to Porters, Radlers to Reds and Sessions to Saisons, there’s a style for nearly every palate.
 New this year, the Oregon Brewers Festival has invited eleven brewers from the Netherlands plus one from Germany to send over their beer to be featured in the festival’s Specialty Tent, an area where an additional four-dozen vintage, barrel aged, blends and esoteric one-offs are offered. The festival is also flying over the European brewers, who will be available for daily meet the brewer sessions at the event.
Dubbed NL to PDX (#NLtoPDX), the program started when festival director Art Larrance learned that Portland has a Friendship City relationship with the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands. Upon visiting, he discovered a growing craft brewing movement that reminded him of the Northwest craft beer industry in the 1980s; brewers who are just beginning to explore new flavors and styles.

“Featuring international brewers is a natural extension for the OBF,” explained Larrance. “We want to develop a long term cultural exchange and share our passion, knowledge and friendship with these brewers as part of a collective celebration of great craft beer.”

The Oregon Brewers Festival is first and foremost a celebration of beer, but the event also features five days of live music, food booths, craft vendors, homebrew demonstrations and industry displays. The Crater Lake Root Beer Garden provides complimentary handcrafted root beer to minors and designated drivers; minors are allowed into the event when accompanied by a parent.

The OBF encourages responsible drinking and urges patrons to take the Tri-Met MAX Light Rail, which has a station just one block away from the main entrance. Attendees can also take advantage of the Hopworks Bike Corral, where volunteers from Rotary Club of Portland–Westside’s Cycling 2 Serve Fellowship will watch over bikes for free (donations will benefit Rotary International’s “End Polio Now” efforts to eradicate polio worldwide).
For a complete list of participating breweries and additional information, visit www.oregonbrewfest.com. For high-res photos from past events, visit www.flickr.com/photos/oregonbrewfest/sets/.

ABOUT THE OREGON BREWERS FESTIVAL
The Oregon Brewers Festival was founded in 1988 as an opportunity to expose the public to microbrews at a time when the craft brewing industry was just getting off the ground. Today, that industry has flourished, especially in Oregon, which currently has 166 brewing companies operating 207 brewing facilities in 66 cities in Oregon. Portland alone has 53 breweries — more than any other city in the world. The Portland metropolitan area is the largest craft brewing market in the US with the most number of breweries at 73. A study conducted at the 2013 Oregon Brewer Festival estimated the economic impact of the festival on the local economy to be $31.2 Million; it also showed that out-of-state and international visitors accounted for 52.5 percent of attendees. For more information about the Oregon Brewers Festival, visit www.oregonbrewfest.com.