Deschutes rolls out the barrels for special brew

Usually you’ll find wine in in stacks of aging wine barrels, but not so much in “Beer Town U.S.A.”

Wednesday afternoon, Gary Fish, owner and self-declared “first employee” of Deschutes Brewery, unveiled a new brew.

“Mirror Mirror” is a double batch-brewed version of one the country’s most heralded craft brewed beers, “Mirror Pond Pale Ale.”

This new beer is a 2014 Reserve, 50 percent aged in wine barrels for 10 months at the Mountain Barrel aging facility on Bend’s southeast side.

It’s an intensive undertaking — double batch brewing, transporting, aging, then transporting back again to the company’s main brewery a few miles away — but according to brewers, well worth the effort.

This barley wine is bottled at 11.2% ABV (alcohol by volume), and will be made available in Deschutes Brewery’s expanding territories, but on a very limited basis.

The last batch of “Mirror Mirror” was bottled back in 2009.