Upright Beers Through the Years

A day before Upright celebrates its 15th anniversary, I thought it would be nice to revisit some of its interesting and excellent beers the brewery has made over the course of its run. To select from the scores of candidates, I started by asking founder/brewer Alex Ganum about his favorites, and then reached out to a few other folks for their choices as well. I highlighted a few of my favorites on my consideration of the brewery earlier this week.

Below you’ll hear from three voices. Sean Burke was a brewer at The Commons, a contemporary with a similar orientation to Upright, before he went on to co-found ForeLand. Ben Edmunds worked briefly at Upright before becoming the founding brewer at Breakside (and the two breweries collaborated on a beer for the anniversary as well). Finally, Ezra Johnson-Greenough designed Upright’s labels in the early years before turning to his news site The New School full time. (Fun fact: I met Ezra for the first time at Upright.) We’ll kick things off with a memory from Alex and Ezra of a beer Upright made in its early days. Do read to the end, because I saved a special beer for last.

Alex Ganum, Hand-smoked Series
”I liked all the various smoked beers we did. At the time, Weyermann was the only smoked malt available. I had all these woodworking buddies, and I thought: ‘There has to be a way.’ It was one of those very Portland things—we smoked it at a party in my back yard. It was like a screen door we propped up on a box. We used different wood each year. Forty pounds is how much malt you can put on a screen door! I look back fondly on that process; all those smoking parties were awesome.”

Ezra Johnson-Greenough, Redwood Smoked Lager
”When Upright opened in 2009 I still wasn't fully sold on smoked beers, I had pretty much learned to appreciate every beer style except that one. Sometime before Upright had opened there had been an ice storm that killed a redwood tree in Alex's backyard. Instead of just throwing it in a compost bin, he dried it and threw a party to hand-smoke malt with it for a homebrew. This beer came back as a commercial brew circa 2010 as a dark red lager. Alex built a home malt smoker and used leftover scrap wood that was used to build the original tasting room's taster trays and tables. Something about the full bodied and rich malt character with the cherry-like hand-smoking really gelled and made for the first smoked beer I ever really loved. To make it all even more memorable, people kept coming in and insisting the beer should have a warning label because redwood is toxic.”

Sean Burke, Billy the Mountain
“Old Ale is a marriage of two things that I love in beer. The use of Brettanomyces paired with the big, rich complex base make for a wonderful beverage. It's heavenly to me. This is a beer that I have enjoyed during the dark days of winter and I think shows off the prowess of the brewing team. It's delicate yet powerful. That's hard to pull off.”

Ben Edmunds, Upright Five
”Upright Five remains one of my favorite Oregon beers ever, and my personal favorite Upright beer. The marriage between American-grown "Noble" hops -- I can't remember if it was Liberty or Mt Hood or both that went into that beer -- and farmhouse yeast was something that I'd never experienced before. It was a beer of incredible texture. There was a distinctive leafiness that reminded me of fresh hop beer, and I've only experienced it a handful of times since then. Flavors of grass and wood spice, apricot and stonefruit from the yeast, dry, slightly salty. It was like someone had envisioned an alternative universe of hoppy beer, where newfangled varietals like Citra and Mosaic weren't the popular kids.”

Alex Ganum, Flora Rustica
”That beer was born of my love for Fantôme Pissenlit, the dandelion beer. Vasili [Gletsos] gave me a beer with a bunch of yarrow in it—I loved that beer! Yarrow is my thing. We found a variety I liked and I ended up growing it right in my back yard. I worked calendula into as well, and it was really hoppy. It was a three-flower beer; people forget that hops are a flower.”

Ezra Johnson-Greenough, Fatali Four
”I used to say this was my desert island beer, and it might still be. I had some good chili pepper beers before it (Roots Organic Brewing Calypso) but Fatali Four's interplay of lightly bready tangy lactic tartness with the fruity and bright fatali chili peppers was just so fun and a balance of heat and acidity. The first batch seemed to strike the perfect balance between these flavors like a hot tropical salsa, the batches differed from year to year but my favorite was when it was a blend aged in red wine and gin barrels which added a new complexity to the spiciness. I could drink this beer forever, and did drink many full glasses when it was rarely on tap.”

Sean Burke, Saison Vert
“It's no secret that I love saison and I think Alex and the team of brewers have always excelled at making them. This beer is special to me because of its use of black limes. They are a cool ingredient to begin with but especially so when used in beer. It also shows off what open fermentation does to the flavor profile of the yeast strain that they use and is very food friendly as well as being highly quaffable.”

Alex Ganum, Oyster Stout
”The first time we did that beer with [Roots/Burnside brewer] Jason McAdam. We met at the Horse Brass and he said he was itching to brew something—he suggested oyster stout. We ended up using Scottish yeast—that strain made a really good oyster stout. I wanted to make it ‘juicy,’ so I reached out to Hama Hama Oysters and they said, ‘we could collect the juice for you.’ It took a while for them to collected it, so they froze it. It shows up and it looks so gnarly—it’s medium gray. We used 3% oyster juice by volume. That was a good call, because you’re not getting a lot from the oysters themselves.”

Ezra Johnson-Greenough, Special Herbs
”I grew up reading comics and learned to draw that way before going to art school, so it was fun to go old school with a Dr. Doom and M.F. Doom inspired label for an absolutely stellar beer that still exists today. It started with a beer called Reggae Junkie Gruit, a traditionally un-hopped style of beer with herbs and spices. Upright used spelt, lemongrass, hyssop, sichuan peppercorns, sweet and bitter orange peel with a pinch of hops thrown in at the finish for preservative properties. The base beer was great, but then it ended up being put into Ransom Old Tom Gin barrels and became Special Herbs. To my knowledge this was the first craft beer aged in gin barrels. It picked up a natural acidity and with the extra botanicals. It was tart like a berliner-weisse, not super sour, with so many flavors in there that it reminded me of a saison meets kombucha cocktail with none of that spirit barrel alcohol taste. The beer has a different label now, but Upright still makes it occasionally.”

Alex Ganum, Kopstooje
”We did that beer with Jacob Grier. At the time he was working at a company that imported genever [a kind of Dutch gin]. I modeled the beer around a French biere de garde. I used flaked maize, malted rye, and malted wheat. It had a ton of angelica root and spices. It was a weird beer. One year we aged it in Vermouth barrels. I loved it.”

Sean Burke, Spontaneous Boon Blend
”This is not a beer/blend that many people got to try, just something I got to experience once and it was magical. We were all over in Amsterdam pouring at a beer festival and Alex was stationed next to Brouwerij Boon. Frank Boon's son was there pouring and during slow moments he and Alex were making blends of Upright beers and Boon lambics and geuze just for fun and to have something different to drink. They kept bringing me samples of the blends and they were mind blowing. I wish that could have been an official collaboration, but there was a magic in the fact that it was done in the moment and enjoyed in the moment.”

Hearts’ Beat
"This one requires a bit of back story. Upright released this beer along with Shades, as a reference to the song “Duet Solo Dancers,” subtitled "Hearts' Beat and Shades in Physical Embraces,” from the 1963 album The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. The two wild ales were made with cherries from Baird Orchards—Chelan for Shades and Rainier for Hearts’ Beat. Alex picks it up from there: “We paired this beer up with Shades—it’s a Mingus tune, a real masterpiece. I had to work in a Mingus theme. “The Rainier cherries aren’t too common outside the region. By color you couldn’t even tell it’s in there, but it was so fruity. You pull out such high tannins from contact with the skins. With a big tannin load it gives it great structure. You get this edginess that is a lot like hops. That’s the way we appreciate beers. You’re not just looking for a one-note thing—you want counterparts. It’s like the way music plays, it tells a story.”