Collaborating with Xicha Brewing to create another tequila-barrel-aged beer

Hmmm, what delicious beer will we make with these…?

You may have heard we won a GOLD medal at the 2025 Great American Beer Festival® Competition (the nation's largest professional beer competition) for Mezcla. We aged this tart farmhouse ale in añejo tequila barrels, and with the help of the Xicha Brewing team, conditioned the blend on fire-roasted pineapple and morita chili peppers to find the perfect balance of sweet and spicy.

This year, we’re collaborating again with our amigos at Xicha. No promises we’ll bring home another medal, but we do know it’s going to be delicious.

Brian takes a break with Charlie of Xicha Brewing to enjoy a Xicha stout along with one rare bottle of Mezcla that remains.

We’re starting with a sour blonde base that we just brewed with the Xicha team last week. Soon we’ll add raspberries from Stahlbush Island Farms in Corvallis, then, we’ll tuck it in to rest on tequila barrels we recently received. Down the road, when the beer tells us it’s ready to spice up its life, we’ll add some sort of fire-roasted pepper to be determined. The result, we hope, will be something like a spicy raspberry margarita—in beer form, of course.

¡Salud!
Brian