Photo by Marcellina

After the derecho storm swept across the region some 10 days ago, Alexandria’s Port City Brewing Company lost power—and stood to lose some 13,000 gallons of beer in that was fermenting in massive tanks.

But today brewery owner Bill Butcher informed that five of the six tanks survived the power outage, with only one having fermented at a higher temperature than intended. Not being one to give up easily, though, he announced in an email that the tank would produce a beer named after the storm that helped create it:

Many have asked us if we were able to “save the beer.” We continue to monitor the beer very closely, and we test and taste it daily. Five of our six tanks appear to be just fine. The 6th tank is a 60-barrel batch of lager beer that fermented at a higher temperature than we intended.

There is a beer style that developed in San Francisco called steam beer, or California Common beer. It is a beer made with lager yeast and fermented at higher temperatures like an ale. This is exactly what happened to this 60-barrel tank of our beer.

As a result, this storm has given us Derecho Common beer.

The beer will be available in August, and in a very limited run—only 120 kegs will be distributed to local bars and restaurants.

As for the brewery’s operations, there’s still plenty of work to be done, he reports: “We have a long way to go to get our brewery back to normal operations. It will take weeks to get caught up with production, and unfortunately, there will be ongoing out of stocks in the market as we try to recover. We appreciate your patience as we work to catch up.”