PAGE 16 • GO! MAGAZINE
THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 2021 • THE BULLETIN
BEER, WINE & MORE
bendbulletin.com/godrink
Annual Three Creeks brew
is a coffee lover’s delight
BY JON ABERNATHY • For The Bulletin
I
was at 3rd Street Beverage recently, picking up beer for an article and browsing other beers, and happened upon a bottle of Frontier Justice Coffee Stout from
Three Creeks Brewing Company. It’s an annual limited edition beer in the brewery’s specialty Desperado Series, released each fall. I’ve enjoyed the beer before,
so I bought the bottle to revisit it.
Stout and coffee are a natural pairing,
with each offering up complementary fla-
vors and aromas, and breweries have been
crafting coffee-infused stouts for years.
Brewers employ different methods of in-
corporating coffee into the brew, from con-
ditioning with whole beans to adding cold
brew or concentrate.
For Frontier Justice, the base beer is an
imperial stout, and Three Creeks partners
with Sisters Coffee Company each year for
the coffee addition. According to the de-
scription, there are four pounds of Sumatra
dark roast coffee per barrel. I reached out to
the brewery for more information.
“Sisters Coffee Company does a special
dark roast on approximately 40 pounds
of Sumatra beans and then makes a dou-
ble strength cold brew,” said head brewer
Jeff Cornett via email. “Which equates to
about 12 gallons of cold brew coffee for our
10 barrel batches at the pub. We add it into
the brite/conditioning stage before carbing
(adding carbonation) and then serving.”
Originally called Bulletproof Coffee Stout,
the recipe has remained unchanged for
nearly a decade, brewed with 10 different
malts and Cascade hops. It has 8% alcohol
by volume and 55 IBUs.
Frontier Justice looks like coffee when
poured into the glass, an opaque, dark
brown bordering on black with a creamy
brown head of foam. The aroma is compel-
ling, full of roasted grains and dark roast
coffee with a light hit of medium-dark choc-
olate, a drizzle of caramel and cocoa powder.
It’s slightly reminiscent of instant coffee, the
smell of the flakes when you open the jar.
The flavor leaves no doubt that this is a
Five brews
to try
Hop-a-Wheelie
IPA — Boneyard
Beer
Pass Stout —
GoodLife Brew-
ing
Cold IPA —
Ecliptic Brewing
and Wayfinder
Beer
Kia Kaha Hazy
Pale Ale — Crux
Fermentation
Project
Guinness
Draught Stout
— Guinness
Jon Abernathy
Three Creeks Brewing Company’s Frontier Justice
beer for coffee lovers. It drinks like thick,
dark coffee, espresso-like, with notes of
deeply roasted grains bringing to mind
puffed barley cereal, dark bread crust and
chocolate-covered espresso beans. There’s a
nuttiness evocative of toasted quinoa and an
underlying sweet syrup quality with linger-
ing roasty bitterness.
It’s a beer that will pair extremely well
with desserts, particularly those of the dark
chocolate variety: think flourless chocolate
cake, a decadent brownie, or dark choco-
late truffles. A long-aged, sharp cheese such
as gouda or cheddar will complement it as
well.
In the past, Three Creeks has also pro-
duced a barrel-aged version of Frontier Jus-
tice, aged in rye whiskey barrels. This year,
the brewery didn’t create the whiskey ver-
sion, “but we do have an incredible rum bar-
rel-aged version — which has been several
years in the works,” said Cornett.
This rum version is named Immortal Jus-
tice, and according to the description, oak
barrels that had previously contained Fron-
tier Justice were sent to Immortal Spirits
Distillery in Medford. The barrels held rum
for one year, then were returned to Three
Creeks to be refilled with the stout to age for
an additional two years.
The resulting rum-aged stout was
blended with the specialty cold brew from
Sisters Coffee. Immortal Justice is 11% ABV
and 23 IBUs.
Cornett provided me with a crowler to
sample, and I found it to be as decadent and
rich as the description would suggest; lay-
ers of molasses, dark chocolate, vanilla, and
sweet rum amplify the already-considerable
coffee presence.
Both Frontier Justice and Immortal Jus-
tice are currently on tap at the brewpub in
Sisters, and you may still find 22-ounce bot-
tles of Frontier Justice on retail shelves.
e e
Jon Abernathy is a beer writer and blogger and launched
The Brew Site (www.thebrewsite.com) in 2004. He can be
reached at jon@thebrewsite.com.