Upright Brewing

Well the brewery's Month of the Barrels has kicked off to a great start. For those of you who haven't heard we are tapping a different single-barrel keg for four Fridays in a row. Here is a rundown of the beers:

July 2nd - a keg of Lambicus Six was tapped (and drained by the end of the weekend). It was simply a batch of our dark rye beer aged with brettanomyces for over a year in what was a Pinot Noir barrel. We were happy with the complexity it gained over that time which yielded a Flanders-esque brew. If you missed out expect it to be pouring at Bailey's Taproom on the 31st as part of their third anniversary barrel aged beer fest.

July 9th - Rose City Seven, our entry to the organic fest this year. It spent several months in a barrel that housed our Billy the Mountain Old Ale which uses a different strain of brettanomyces called claussenii, giving the beer a gentle acidity and some earthy notes to contrast the big floral component coming from hibiscus, rose hips and rose petals, all of which were added directly to the aging beer.

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So after leaving the brewery blog hanging for quite some time there's a good deal of beery news to report:

We just released a draft-only batch called Engelberg Pilsener, named after Mt.Angel. It's German-style: light, dry and full of hoppy flavor. We made a simple single malt (Canadian pilsener malt) and single hop (Mt. Angel-grown tettnanger) recipe using a Munich lager yeast. The finished beer came out remarkably dry so for the second batch set to be released around the third week of July we coaxed just a bit more mouthfeel and residual sugar out of it and used a different hop variety, hallertauer mittlefruh. The beer is currently on tap in the tasting room and at a handful of bars around town. When the second batch is ready both will be on hand to taste side-by-side.

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Since we now have an additional three taps at the brewery tasting room we're able to pour more seasonal beers and play around with extra-small batch projects. The first few of these were the Anglo-Saison, the Scottish Six and the De Ill Ganumberg, all of which were variations of year-round beers brewed with different yeasts and made only in five gallon batches.


Side note: De Ill Ganumberg was jokingly named after De Ranke Guldenberg, a wonderful Belgian beer that Gerritt (last name ill) and I (last name Ganum) propagated some yeast from. We got lots of questions about that one.



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I'm happy to announce that the brewery's little tasting room is beginning to settle in. We've setup an extra three taps for a total of nine, hung more local art and are getting ready to open Fridays by the end of the month. John Foyston recently gave us a nice writeup in Mix which has already begun to attract some new visitors to the cast of regulars and we're hoping to bring even more people this Saturday for the citywide brewery event Zwickelmania.


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I'm often asked for food suggestions to accompany our beers, the last request being amusing in that it was texted to me while I was in front of a fish counter pondering the exact question myself. I was in the mood for some sort of seafood and excited to see fresh mackerel in the case, a fish that is unfortunately somewhat rare to find in such beautiful whole form. I asked the man behind the counter to bag one up for me and my close friend Christian who also doubles as Upright's most important assistant and general helper (she named the Turkey on Rye for instance).

After picking up a few more things we headed home and to the kitchen to prepare dinner. Mackerel is a very flavorful fish and I didn't want to obscure its own character so I filleted it and gave it a simple coating of salt, nothing else. That went into a hot oven to roast until just done, although like salmon it's a fish that is easy to cook and forgiving of a little extended cooking time. Alongside the fish we served up some bacon-fat sauteed dandelion greens and jasmine rice seasoned with cumin and fresh thyme.

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