Three farms are named on the back of this can, and between them they account for everything in the beer. Gigantic Brewing Company has released The Champoeg of Beers, a pale ale built entirely from Oregon-grown ingredients, and the sourcing is the whole point of the exercise.

The malt is Willamette Promise barley from Goschie and Westwood Farms. The hops are Crystal and Simcoe from Lakeside Ranches, joined by an experimental variety from Crosby Farms that does not yet have a commercial name. It is listed only as Hop #106. The beer lands at 4.0 percent, and Gigantic describes the result as bright and expressive.

That unnamed hop is the detail worth pausing on. New hop varieties spend years in breeding programs carrying nothing but a number, and most never make it to a commercial release at all. A brewery working with one at this stage is effectively test-driving it on behalf of an industry that has not been given access yet. Putting it in a 4.0 percent pale ale rather than burying it in a heavily hopped IPA is the choice that makes it legible. At that strength, with Crystal and Simcoe as familiar reference points alongside it, there is room to actually notice what the new hop is doing.

The reason the beer exists at all is a land conservation campaign. Gigantic brewed it as part of Cheers to the Land, a project with the Oregon Agricultural Trust, which works to permanently protect Oregon farmland from development. Fifteen other Oregon breweries and cideries are participating. The can carries a seal reading "this beer protects farmland," and the logic of the release follows from there: a beer that depends entirely on Oregon farms, raising money to keep Oregon farms in operation.

As for the name, Champoeg is a site in the Willamette Valley where settlers voted in 1843 to form Oregon's provisional government. It is also, as the brewery cheerfully points out, a word that outsiders reliably mispronounce. It is sham-POO-ee. The can art comes from Portland artist Amy Ruppel, who also illustrated Gigantic's Zest For Art earlier this year.

The Champoeg of Beers arrives on tap and in cans at both Gigantic locations. The launch party runs Saturday, October 10 from 3 to 6 p.m. at John's Marketplace in Portland, alongside the Cheers to the Land Brew Fest and a pop-up farmers market.

Editor’s Take

Hop #106 is the part worth stopping on. A hop that still goes by a breeding-program number has not yet been through the stage where a marketing committee gives it a name ending in a vowel, which means Gigantic is pouring a variety that most of the industry cannot buy and has never tasted. Somebody at Crosby Farms has spent years crossing plants to see what comes out the other side, and the answer is currently sitting in a can in Portland under a number.

The rest of the bill is the opposite kind of choice. Crystal and Simcoe are known quantities, Willamette Promise is a barley bred specifically so Oregon could grow its own brewing malt instead of trucking it in, and Goschie Farms has been supplying Oregon brewers for decades. So the beer is mostly a careful assembly of the known, with one genuine unknown dropped in the middle of it. That is a pleasingly honest way to field-test something: put it next to ingredients you trust, at four percent, where there is nowhere for it to hide.

The name, meanwhile, is a joke that only works at the brewery's own expense. Champoeg is pronounced sham-POO-ee, which no one guesses on the first try, and Gigantic has gone ahead and put it on a can anyway. Points for commitment to a bit.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.

The Champoeg of Beers Is Brewed With a Hop That Has No Name Yet

Every ingredient in this pale ale was grown in Oregon, and one of them is an experimental hop still going by a number instead of a name. It was brewed to raise money for farmland conservation.

Source & Editorial