Ask the Pros: How Von Ebert’s Volatile Substance Became a Stable Liquid


Today it may be one of the more recognizable IPAs in Portland, but Volatile Substance didn’t exactly hit the market with a roaring start back in 2018.

“It didn’t really catch on for maybe two years,” says Sam Pecoraro, brewmaster at Von Ebert. “I think the key was just having it on tap all the time, pushing it, and it just kept getting better and better.”

These days, Volatile Substance is considered one of the region’s best-in-class IPAs, and it’s got the awards to show for it—including two gold medals in 2021, at both the Great American Beer Festival and Oregon Beer Awards. Its combination of firm bitterness, resiny flavor, and hints of tropical fruit has proven successful and enduring—though the beer has gone through several changes to get to where it is now.

The Evolution of a Pacific Northwest IPA

Pecoraro says he began to conceive the beer back in 2010, years before he started working at Von Ebert.

“At the core, I had this idea, and I wanted it to be a flagship beer somewhere,” he says. “At my previous jobs, it wasn’t the right fit for those breweries. I worked at Breakside, and I don’t think they were in desperate need of a flagship IPA. Before that, I was at the Commons Brewery, and we didn’t really make IPAs until we were basically closing our doors.”

His goal was to build a beer that would become familiar to people in Portland and the wider Pacific Northwest region—a flagship that many could enjoy. To design the recipe, he began with a specific vision of how the beer would taste.

“We very rarely write with ingredients,” he says. “We start with a concept and a 10,000-foot view. For this beer, it’s more about resin and mixed berries—high resin, raspberry, blueberry, moderate grapefruit, and pine, [with] low pineapple.”

With that profile in mind, Pecoraro began to select hops that fit. “Through the years, it’s been some combination of multiple lots of Mosaic, Simcoe, and a little bit of Columbus.” Recently, he says, the beer has moved away from Simcoe and mixed in some Strata. The team still loves the Simcoe lots they’re selecting, but they like them even better in combination with the Strata—alone, the Simcoe wasn’t expressing enough of the full berry flavor that Pecoraro sought.

“For every hop variety, we have a target [flavor] description,” he says. Von Ebert gets its Strata from Indie Hops, and Pecoraro loves the strawberry character that variety brings to the table. “At a low level, it just kind of boosts those other berry notes that we’re looking for.”

To incorporate Strata into such a tried-and-true beer, Pecoraro says, it took at least four trial batches. “We wanted to see what happens if the Simcoe is completely swapped, or if we use 50 percent [Strata], or different lots of each of those,” he says. The results of those trials informed Volatile Substance’s current recipe, and they continue to adjust depending on hop crops and new information.

The Process Behind the Recipe

While the first-wort addition of CTZ consists of T-90 hop pellets, Pecoraro says they use quite a bit of CO2 extract late in the boil. “We’re really concentrating on pre–dry hop aroma,” he says, adding that it’s important to maximize the impact of the aroma at that point in the brewing process.

“We felt that T-90 wasn’t quite as stable throughout fermentation.” That’s led to the beer also getting a mix of T-90 pellets and CO2 extract in the whirlpool. They typically add those hops at the beginning of the whirlpool, Pecoraro says, at or below 185°F (85°C). They spin the whirlpool for about 20 minutes before fully chilling and knocking out into the fermentor.

At terminal gravity, Volatile Substance gets a significant dry-hop addition of Mosaic and Strata. “The beer goes through a pretty wicked refermentation,” Pecoraro says. “Pre–dry hop, we’ll hit around 4.3° Plato, and then we’ll attenuate all the way down to 2.7.”

The expectation of that hop creep plays a central role in the mash regime, too. Pecoraro says he mashes at a relatively high 158°F (70°C). “If we mash cooler, we’ll end up drying out the beer too much, and that’s when the beer is too citrus-forward for me.”

The current grist is a 75/25 split of Rahr Premium Pilsner and Weyermann Vienna. Pecoraro says he’s played around with different types of Vienna malts, but he keeps coming back to Weyermann. Some of the others were too bready, too sharp, or had too much of a bread-crumb flavor, he says. Even at smaller percentages, those characteristics stand out, while the Weyermann variety is a bit softer. He also says that pushing the Vienna past 25 percent mutes the hop flavors too much.

The Rahr Pilsner, meanwhile, is part of the beer’s signature character. “At the ABV we’re at, it really helps boost the berry and pine,” Pecoraro says. “Whenever we’ve pulled back on the Vienna malt, or changed out that base malt, that’s the other time it’s gone more citrus-forward.” He says he isn’t 100 percent sure why that citrus character becomes more prominent otherwise—but he theorizes it could be related to pH, flavor combination, or “addition by subtraction.”

The beer’s water profile leans into sulfate, with a 3:1 ratio of that to chloride. The mash target is 5.4 pH, and it’s about the same for pre-boil. “We adjust with a little bit of lactic acid at the end of the boil, to target about 5.1,” Pecoraro says. He suggests a 4.6 target pH for the end of fermentation.

PNW Style

All that tinkering and fine-tuning over the years has led not just to the awards, but also to sustained success for a core beer and local favorite.

Pecoraro is a bit evasive about what defines the Northwest IPA style, but he says that people generally can expect a bit more malt expression. That maltiness can then guide the amount of bitterness a brewer puts into the beer, with examples falling across the spectrum. The hops are strictly Pacific Northwest hops, in some contrast to West Coast–style IPAs, which can often include a portion of Southern Hemisphere varieties.

Naming the beer was as simple as Pecoraro loving the Violent Femmes—the song “Never Tell” includes the lyrics, “We’re dealing with volatile substance…”

“I love that song,” Pecoraro says. “I remember hearing ‘volatile substance’ and thinking it’s an awesome IPA name. I think our team knows this, but I generally suck pretty bad at coming up with beer names. So, I actually had a good one [here] and held onto it.”



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