The Lompoc Brewery in Portland, Oregon has been an on again off again affair. In the 50’s and 60’s the Old Lompoc House was a well known tavern on 1st and Arthur in SW Portland. The New Old Lompoc opened on May 6, 2000. But the Old Lompoc Brewery (as it was formerly known) has been producing handcrafted ales and lagers since December 1996, while the tavern has been open since 1993.
The Lompoc has been a Portland staple for some time, and recently the brewery made a large investment to bottle their beers and distribute them throughout the west. I was fortunate enough to have one of their brews on tap in downtown Portland on a recent trip. There is tradition where The Lompoc is concerned, but does that translate into a brew worthy of BW&B?…
Yes it does! New Old Lompoc’s C-Note Imperial Pale Ale is a 100 IBU brew that has 6.9 ABV and pours a cloudy orange golden color with a thin almost non-existent head. Its nose was fruity with tons of grapefruit and citrus, and a hint of sweet maltiness. This brew uses seven different hop varieties, Cascade, Crystal, Colombus, Cluster, Chinook, Centennial, and Challenger. Hence the “C” in C-Note. So would this be just another hop bomb? Well… yes and no. It definetly is a hoppy brew and that hits you first when you take a sip, but on the back side there is some malty complexity that comes through. So it is a Hop Bomb, but it has other subtleties that make it a little more.
You get the up front bitterness like you would expect then the malt makes an appearance to balance it with some sweetness. The hops then reappear and give it a clean finish. That was what was so surprising the finish was so clean. Usually when you drink an IPA or an Imperial you expect some lingering, but there was none of that here. It just finished and at the end of the drink it was as if you had just taken a swig of bottled water! This is good and bad. The good part is that you don’t taste it on your palate when you are eating or drinking something else. I backed this beer with a great bourbon, and it was the perfect pairing because I got all the great beer flavor, then I got all the great bourbon flavor with nothing in the mix to change its flavor. It is bad, because when you are eating, especially a nice steak having that little bit of hoppy flavor linger on your palate can be a great compliment to your meal.
Now that they are bottling their brew look for it on your shelf. I purposefully began this post with a copy of their logo so you would know what to look for on your next beer run. It is definitely worth a try, and who knows…the “New” Old Lompoc might be the “best” Old Lompoc.
-Don
Beer & Whiskey Brothers 
Man, I love drinking beer in Portland! I’m a little jealous, I won’t lie.
I would have gone for the cheesy name and called this beer the Seven C’s (Cascade, Crystal, Colombus, Cluster, Chinook, Centennial, and Challenger). There’d be a picture of a boat on the label and everything, you know, to make it look all nautical and such. But that’s just me – a badass pirate dude!
Still, a rose is still a rose by any other name, and this one sounds like a keeper. I wonder how long it will take for this puppy to make it out east.