A Closer Look at Living Häus

Back in 2011, Mitt Romney made one of the biggest gaffes of his political career when he blurted out to an Iowa audience, “Corporations are people, my friend.” Not a good look for a guy trying to establish his populist appeal. The thing is, he wasn’t wrong. I was definitely not a Romney guy, and I’m not a corporation guy, but over the past twenty years or so, I have come to see that businesses have personalities. That’s especially true of breweries, which may be improvisational or methodical or bro-y or traditional—and on and on. Only the bad ones are generic.

Last year, Living Häus brewing opened up in the former space of Portland’s Modern Times, reconstituted by two brewers who were working there when it died. Mat Sandoval and Conrad Andrus were both established, accomplished brewers, and they’ve been quietly turning out some of Portland’s best beer. (A third member of their team, Gavin Lord, leads a contract-brewing arm of the company and has his own side-brand, Hetty Alice.) It’s always a bit challenging for brand-new breweries to communicate a personality, but Mat and Conrad have done a great job making Living Häus their own. I sat down with the two recently to learn more about their own backgrounds and what they’d like Living Häus to become.

Unusual Origins

Almost no one in Portland is from Portland—most of us come from somewhere else. While people generally adopt local habits and customs pretty quickly, we learn a lot about each other by digging into our past. Both men came from somewhere else, and that has become an important touchstone for a brewery in which the beer names reference family members.

Mat originally came to Portland from San Diego to lead the brewing team at Modern Times when it opened on Southeast Belmont. He’s from Southern California himself, growing up in LA before spending his teen years in Flagstaff. Mat returned to San Diego after high school, and that’s when he later started getting into beer. After his wife bought him a homebrew kit, he started poking around breweries to see if he might switch professions. From 2010 to 2013, he found temp work at a half dozen San Diego breweries. Though he gained valuable experience, he wasn’t making any money, which was even more typical a decade ago than it is now. He go his big opportunity in 2013, when Modern Times hired him a few months after their debut. He worked his way up at Modern Times, and took the opportunity to set up the Portland branch in 2017, heading a team of nearly thirty staff, almost all of them locals.

That made Mat one of the only BIPOC brewers in town, and possibly the only Latino heading production. In San Diego, Latino brewers are not rare. There’s even a steady flow back and forth between the city and Mexico, just twenty miles south. Mat’s paternal grandparents, from Juarez and Chihuahua, immigrated to the US, where his father was born. Portland, on the other hand, has just a handful of Latino brewers. Mat is aware of his visibility as one of the few people of color to own a brewery and head brewing operations. It is evident in the names of his sharp, characterful pilsner, which honors his abuelita (grandmother) Dolores, and the hazy IPA he named for his grandfather, Herman.

Identity is one of those tricky things in America. Mat was a champion of lagers at Modern Times, and he’s quick to talk about that, or how he feels about IPAs—stuff to do with the beer. Having Mexican heritage is a part of his identity, too, though not one he emphasizes in conversation. Yet his experience made Mat aware of representation in the industry. He was proud of who he brought into Modern Times when he was a hiring manager. “Up here [in Portland], I tried to find the best people. I hired one person of color and four women who all became head brewers.” In the six years he’s been here, many more women work in the industry, and more people of color as well—and it’s part of his still-developing legacy to have helped make this shift.

Conrad’s family is from Utah, where he was raised. I went to the High School for the better part of three years there, and I can tell you that beer is a controversial subject. Salt Lake City is the seat of the Mormon church, and for decades it was hard to get beer, and beer couldn’t be stronger than 4%. Paradoxically, it had some of the country’s first craft breweries, and more than a few impressive brewers have come out of the state. Conrad gestured briefly at this context, and what it was like growing up in a place where the word beer still carries the stigma of something slightly disreputable.

Conrad and I both did the same thing when we got out of high school—we came to Oregon. Conrad’s sister Rachael was the first envoy to the state (she now brews at Oregon City Brewing), and he joined her in Milwaukie (that’s the city south of Portland, not the one in Wisconsin). Before long, Breakside opened their production brewery there and he managed to pick up some shifts tending bar. He got his big break when he started actually brewing at Culmination when it opened. That’s when I got to know him—Like Living Häus, Culmination made an impressive debut and quickly gained a reputation for its excellent IPAs. He left Culmination after five years and spent the next two years at Modern Times with Mat before it closed. His roots are reflected in the names of the core line in the form of Bethine, their helles, which he named for his grandmother. Their IPA, Harris, was named for his grandfather.

“I Do Want to Be the Best”

Mat and Conrad are quiet and reserved—possibly one of the reasons Living Häus hasn’t gotten more attention. But if you want to see the flicker of passion and ambition, start asking about their beer. When I asked what their goals for the brewery were, Mat paused before saying “I do want to be the best.” This isn’t an uncommon aspiration, but brewers usually deflect when you ask about it directly. When you have three award-winning brewers behind a place, though, you expect them to aim high. I honestly don’t know why anyone would go through the trouble of starting a brewery if they didn’t want to be the best—and thought they had the chops to do it. At Living Häus, they want to be known for their lagers and IPAs.

Originally, the two thought they’d be making a lot of hazies. They knew lagers were going to be a central focus, but recognized that in the US, you need to have a strong hoppy line. They both worked at breweries that were pretty famous for hazies, and figured that’s where their audience would want to go. In the months since they’ve opened, however, regular IPAs have been far more popular. “We’ve made maybe three hazies in six months,” Conrad said, laughing.

The IPAs they have made are pretty typical Northwest versions. They’re clear, dry, and somewhat bitter, but also juicy and aromatic. I think Mat is a little scarred from some of the blowback he got in Portland for being from Southern California. To him, a classic SD IPA is a magnificent thing to behold, but so far they haven’t offered one. “They gotta finish between 1.5 and 2P [that’s very dry]. A mouthful of pith and pine; gotta be at least 70 IBUs.” It was one of the few times he got truly animated during our conversation. There’s a bit of that in his pilsner, too, which is stripped down and bitter—and a bit of a surprise hit among patrons. I’m hoping enough people encourage them to do a proper San Diego IPA that he agrees to do it. It’s clearly in his bones.

Conrad is behind Harris, the full time American IPA. Of their first batch of beers, it was the one that stuck out to me. (I might like a recent one-off, called Cousin Shannon, even more.) It’s got plenty of sticky aromatics, but it’s lean and clean, with a robust bitter backbone. I’m starting to see people return to classic American hops, which give this beers a retro touch amid modern processes. Citra leads the way, but Harris has Centennial and Chinooks as well, and they add the resin and pine.

The website’s splash page highlights the greenery.

The beer world is in a weird place right now, with breweries putting 9% double IPAs in 19.2-ounce cans alongside six packs of 4.5% Mexican lagers. Mat and Conrad are positioning Living Häus to live in that space between extremes—but leading with characterful, classic styles. They aren’t spinning out two new beers a week, and in fact, they’re working on dialing in a tight range of well-made, accomplished beers. Perhaps the habit of naming them after family helps them focus on quality. “I mean,” Mat said, “I’m not going to name a beer after my grandmother that’s just going to be a flash in the pan.”

We all have multiple identities, and another of Mat’s is thinking about young people who want good beer but can’t afford it as easily as he did. “I grew up as a punk rocker, and I’d like young punk rockers know they can come have nice things, too.I want people to think of our brewery as something that’s accessible,” Mat said, and Conrad agreed. “That’s what I want for beer—that it’s for everyone.”

They’re slowly growing the environment to suit the vision referenced in the name. Plants stationed around the pub are starting to send their tendrils out over the brick and concrete walls. It’s an industrial location at the east end of the Morrison bridge, in a building born the same year as Prohibition, but the owners hope it will become an organic, welcoming space. They’ve done their part, making an inviting space and brewing up great beer. And they’ve even seeded the menu with relatives, as if to say, welcome, folks—we’re all family here.