Upright's Remarkable 15-Year Run
Upright founder Alex Ganum
Depending on how you reckon these things, modern American brewing was either 44 or 32 years old in 2009. What proponents called craft brewing had already gone through one boom and bust cycle and was finally getting its second wind. On the other hand, you could argue modern brewing was actually just coming into being. Brewery counts were about to jump sixfold, and nearly everything we consider “modern” about beer emerged in the years following.
I have been thinking about this a lot since Alex Ganum emailed to tell me his brewery, Upright, was turning 15 in April. I’ve seen a lot of brewery openings in Oregon, but my memory of Upright is colored by my impression that I was witnessing the future when I stepped into his underground brewery on N. Broadway. He was making unusual beers and generally just thinking about beer in a way that was unprecedented at the time. Unlike so many things that define a moment, however—desktop computers, flip phones, the Prius—fifteen years later Upright doesn’t feel dated. To the contrary: the thing that made news of this anniversary so disorienting is that it has remained one of the most inventive, interesting, and unexpected breweries its whole run. It seems impossible it could be this old.
Almost since its first batches, Upright has remained a touchstone brewery for me. Alex is one of the most curious brewers in the world, and his style preferences have morphed in waves over the years, from rustic Belgian/French farmhouse ales to lagers to hoppy ales to cask ales (with a dose of wild ales as one important stabilizing through-line). They often predict where the market will head, and perhaps, at least in Portland, anyway, help guide it there. The brewery is little-known outside the Northwest, and I have often felt that had Alex left his internship at Ommegang and gone east to Vermont, Upright would have become Hill Farmstead-buzzy. On the other hand, perhaps the Portland he discovered in the mid-aughts was central to what Upright became. In any case, it is one of the best breweries in the country, and far too obscure for its accomplishments. Fifteen years seems like an excellent moment to reflect on what Alex has accomplished—and perhaps encourage a new generation of drinkers to discover its pleasures.
The first of Alex's beer that really stopped me in my tracks was Four. In early versions he used a sour mash in this wheat-heavy ale, giving it a lemony spritz that perfectly complemented the fluffy wheat base. It was just 4.5%, and suggested both witbier and Bavarian weissbier, but was like neither. It was my beer of the year (Satori) for 2009.
Brewing Intuitively
When Upright debuted, it had a more coherent lineup than it ever would again. Alex offered four core beers numbered and, following a mostly-forgotten Belgian naming convention, named Four through Seven. They were roughly in the farmhouse tradition: Four was a wheat beer, Five was a hoppy amber, Six a dark rye saison, and Seven more a classic Belgian saison. His background and the way he spoke about beer at the time really made it sound like he was creating a Belgian-style brewery. Back in 2009, he wrote: “These are beers inspired by historical records and the dedicated few who have kept traditions alive, drawing from our city and region for resources and raw materials.”
I have no doubt that sticking to farmhouse beers was was the plan, but thanks to several intervening circumstances, it wasn’t how events played out. It didn’t help that farmhouse beers had a limited audience, but even if they had, I expect the beers would have evolved. The tell was right there in the name.
“I use intuition a lot. I feel you have have to come up with a plan and roll with it. You have to have a creative spark. I don’t want to make beer like everybody else.”
“Upright” is an allusion and an homage to Charles Mingus, the famous upright bass jazz musician. Aside from his genius, what distinguished Mingus was his approach to group improvisation. He liked to experiment with different personalities and musical approaches to produce sounds that emerged through prepared spontaneity. That has been Alex’s approach with beer as well—and it was evident even in those first four beers. We were able to shoehorn them into a single category of beer only because it was so broad and undefined. In fact, each one of them was an improvisation on a different theme. Four, for example, explored wheat, acidity, and drinkability. Five took so much inspiration from the UK that Alex even made a version with English yeast. Six was similar enough to abbey ales that it became one of the source beers Benedictine Brewery used for their flagships. That they were vaguely Belgian-inspired wasn’t what made them Upright beers. It was that they took recognizable beers as a template for improvisation. That’s Upright’s DNA, and it has guided every phase of the brewery’s journey.
It’s not surprising that Belgium played a big role in those early beers. After his internship at Ommegang, he’d worked as an assistant to Dan Pedersen at BJ’s Brewhouse. Dan was one of the first brewers to start exploring Belgian styles in Portland in the early 2000s. Alex pointed to the time, as well. “Maybe a lot of that had to do with the fact that half the beers at places like Belmont Station were imports,” he said. Thinking a bit more he added, “I just liked those beers. They’ve always spoken to me. Back then they really spoke to me. I wasn’t trying to fill a void, but no one was making those beers then.”
He also recalled that 2008 was the year of the great hop shortage, which helped nudge him toward characterful beers that didn’t rely on hops. “It was bonkers. I remember calling everybody. They'd say, ‘I’ve got these ‘06 Chilean Cascades; they’re eight bucks a pound.’” Fortunately, that didn’t last long, and regular supply allowed him to explore hoppier styles—as he soon would with his zingy year-round pilsner, a surprise to all of us who had the brewery pegged as “Belgian.
Alex managed to find one of the last bottles of Gales Prize Old Ale, the inspiration for Billy. He recreated an English old ale the way it would have been made in Burton in the 19th century, inoculating it with a British strain of wild yeast. It was a luscious, balsamic-and-sherry ale that made me understand why these beers were so beloved in their day.
Source: Upright Brewing
Curiosity Without Boundaries
IPAs were still a few years from sweeping the US, but they’d fully conquered Oregon by the turn of the century. However, good, fresh pilsners were almost impossible to find fifteen years ago. I asked Alex when he released Engelberg Pilsner, and he guessed 2012—but it was actually two years earlier, about a year after Upright opened. “If you wanted craft lager, it was Heater Allen, which wasn’t very easy to find,” Alex said. Brewing a pilsner, any pilsner, was an unusual move, but Upright’s was dry and assertively bitter. Now every brewery makes a pils in town and we tend to have a hard time distinguishing them in the scrum of new releases, but Engelberg was actually one of the more important watersheds in the city’s trajectory.
In recalling the beer’s inspiration, Ganum name-checked a beer I’d never heard of—one no longer made, in fact. “Paulaner Extra Dry. It’s like a light version of a German pils; lighter body, very dry.” Of course, Engelberg doesn’t taste anything like whatever that beer was. It starts out with fairly stiff hopping—of a kind the 4 million-hectoliter Paulaner has never used. “Goschie Tetts!” he said, when I first mentioned Engelberg. (That’s Tettnanger grown by Goschie Farms near Silverton.)
He uses an uncommon Munich lager yeast, and actually gives it a lot of credit for the flavor profile. “When people compliment Engelberg, I feel like they’re tasting the yeast,” he said. This is an important part of the way Alex thinks about beer. As we spoke, he reliably started with the yeast whenever I mentioned a beer—of any style. I didn’t notice it too much when we were talking about the farmhouse beers, but it came up again and again, with IPAs, wild ales (Brettanomyces strains), cask ales—and it really stood out when he discussed the pilsner. Even before he opened, yeast was a big part of his thinking—and he built a glassed-in room to house open fermenters. “Every fucking thing is affected by the yeast!” he said at one point.
Fun facts about Upright
First batch of beer was Billy the Mountain.
Alex was originally inspired by the model of Hair of the Dog, with its production brewery and no pub.
The New School’s Ezra Johnson-Greenough designed his early labels.
One of Alex’s early inspirations was Westvleteren, but not that Westvleteren. Rather, the farmhouse-like Blonde was the one that impressed him.
Before he got a job brewing in Portland, Alex worked at Belmont Station, which meant easy access to Belgian imports.
He was drinking beer at Amnesia Brewing (now StormBreaker) and thinking out loud about opening a brewery when a woman at a neighboring table told him about the Left Bank site he still occupies.
The space that became the original tasting room was leased by a bike-frame manufacturer, but they backed out and he decided to lease that space as well.
In 2015, Willamette Week named Engelberg Pilsner its beer of the year.
Alex co-founded Grain and Gristle, a wonderful Northeast Portland bistro he sold just before Covid (which, sadly, it didn’t survive) as well as Old Salt Marketplace, a restaurant and butcher shop that closed in 2018.
In 2014 Alex started dabbling in IPAs more seriously—but not, of course, the kind anyone else was making. He wasn’t hop-averse and had actually made IPAs in the past, but when Supercool came out, it had the virtue of seeming very Upright-ish. He used a Belgian yeast strain that really inflected the profile, which had interesting stone fruit and lime notes. It had a lean mouthfeel and finished dryly—and with a fair pop of bitterness. At the moment hazy IPAs were sweeping across the country, Upright’s hoppy ales were headed a different direction.
“Hops are super fun!” he said. “Being a farmhouse brewery, people thought we hated them.” Supercool was a hit for the brewery and IPAs have followed in a steady stream. It might look like a trickle compared to most breweries, but they’ve added another regular (Money Avenue) and routinely have a one-off on as well. “It was us just meandering through [the times]. You had to have a beer on called an IPA.”
Still, house IPAs have always followed the Upright tune. “The frustration in making IPAs now is that the expectation is so specific,” Alex told me, echoing a lament I’ve heard from him before. He likes the bite of kettle bitterness and more going on than just pure juice—malts and yeast are usually playing their part. And in his restless way, he is liable to stop production on a beer or change it—as he did with Supercool, shifting to an English yeast. That can be frustrating to fans like me who fall in love with a particular beer, but it’s the other side of the coin for a brewery that is always off on the next improvisation.
The first version I had of this beer was the 2018 vintage, and it still remains one of the finest wild ales I've ever had. Made from stocks of barrel-aged saison and blended like a grand cru, that year it was fruity, herbal, and woody. The acidity came through the way it does in a nice Riesling, which is to say, balanced and harmonious.
Traditionalism With a Twist
By the time Upright installed their first cask engine a few years ago, I was conditioned to expect surprises. Alex had been into cask since the start—right after the brewery’s debut, he put a firkin of strong ale on at Belmont Station. Nevertheless, I was surprised. Yet this is another example of that “prepared spontaneity.” When he’s making a beer, he grounds it in a traditional style. The inventiveness works because it’s tethered to familiar ingredients, processes, or traditions.
In this way, cask ale was a perfect realm for exploration. It’s very simple, but fussy, and requires a lot of attention all the way through pouring it in one of the taprooms. The inspiration, as often, came from another brewery. At one of their 9th or 10th anniversary party, Alex had drunk too many high-alcohol special beers. The next day, “I thought, I’ve been drinking all these Machine House beers—I’m going to make a bitter.”
Things took off from there. “It was a combination of starting with this yeast strain from Timothy Taylor. It’s a great strain and easy to use, a killer yeast strain.” He experimented with the style, and at the following year’s anniversary party, he drank only low-alcohol bitter, and felt great. “The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a perfect way to fill out the line.” Early last year, he opened a second taproom in a modest neighborhood out by the airport on 72nd and Prescott, installing three cask engines. “I’m a big believer in the idea that when you find something that’s working, you roll with it.” He also installed a Czech-style side-pour tap for lagers. It’s a neighborhood taproom, not a destination pub, and he’s hoping it turns into a local for the Cully/Roseway neighborhoods.
Open fermentation helps lager yeast express itself, and Upright has made fine use of it in theirs over the years. An especially Czech-y example is the very lightly smoked (and cleverly named) Prague Rauch (4.5%). It's appropriately full and sweet, and the dark malts are just kissed with a bit of smoke--as if someone poured a shot of Schlenkerla in their U Fleku.
Evolving Legacy
In the past fifteen years of modern American brewing, we’ve gained a huge amount, but also lost something. Those years mark both the rise of social media and the commodification of “craft” beer. When Alex founded Upright, it was common for breweries to talk about making the beer they wanted to drink—but commercial realities meant many ended up following the market wherever it led. That’s not bad—it’s an industry’s dawning maturity and breweries’ recognition that they need to sell beer. Yet it means that we have fewer funky little breweries around that will sacrifice volume for creative freedom. Probably a decade ago, Alex told me that 1,200 barrels was about his largest ambition—enough to make the business a success while allowing him to make the beers he wanted to make. That hasn’t changed.
“I hope to see a return to that more straightforward way of running a brewery,” he said. “In the social media age, you have to make so many new beers. I think breweries should just do what they want to do, and I feel like that space is diminishing.”
Upright could retool their lineup and sell more beer. Yet that’s just not the way Alex thinks. Years ago, he had a rare media event to showcase some of his new wild ales. As things were wrapping up, one of the reporters asked how he planned to market these unusual beers. He froze and it was clear that question had never crossed his mind. In the years since, marketing has become a bigger factor in his thinking, but he’s still committed to keeping Upright Upright. “Mingus was really the perfect fit to the way we do things. His music had so many unconventional themes, but he was 100% behind what he was doing. He was stubborn to a fault,” he said, and paused. “I maybe have too much of that in me.”
He continued. “For me, the brewery is simple and straightforward, but it’s very personal. It’s been very close to me and dear to my life. It’s been so hard the last four years, but it made me reflect. I just fucking love making beer.”
For those of us who have discovered Upright, that love is evident in each release. I am hoping we have another fifteen to enjoy Upright’s latest creations—and I’m curious to see where the improvisations will take Alex next.