Beer Sherpa Recommends: Upright Fantasia

Upright Brewery recently convened a media event to introduce the specialty beers they'll be releasing throughout the year. Upright, for those of you who may not know, is a small brewery that--well, let me tell you an anecdote by way of introduction. During the event we were sampling one of the beers and Willamette Week's Arts and Culture editor Martin Cizmar asked founder Alex Ganum how he planned to market the beer. Mind you, breweries are businesses, an arrangement that obliges breweries to convey their products to consumers in exchange for money. In nearly every case I can think of, the brewery would have had a ready answer. Instead, Alex got a surprised look on his face and admitted he'd never considered the question.

Upright's name is an allusion to the jazz musician Charles Mingus, and never was there a more appropriate choice. Like Mingus, Ganum (and his conspirators Gerrett Ill and Bobby Birk) thinks only in craft, not dollars and cents. Unlike Mingus, Upright's beers are rarely challenging--they are more often compositions of layered nuance and balance. The barrel-aged selections are usually so balanced they don't get mentioned with awe alongside the more famous American wild-ale producers, which are more aggressive. That's a shame, because they are making some of the most interesting and accomplished beers in the country.

Take for example the lineup Upright will be offering this year. Hearts' Beat and Shades are sister cherry ales, the former made with blood-red Chelan, the latter Rainier cherries. Hearts' Beat plays on the depth of fruit flavor, which thrums with tannins and rich flavor, while Shades keys off the fruit's acidity, which tends toward white wine. Fatali Four and Billy the Mountain are longtime faves--well, Billy's a fave to a small group (me included; it's in the Beer Bible), but we really love it. And then there's Oregon Native, which gets its vinousness from the use of actual pinot grapes and aging in pinot barrels. That one, still too young to render a final judgment, has the potential to be a spectacular beer. Rarely do the delicate flavors of pinot noir grapes survive commingling with beer, but in the young version of this one, they were perfectly intact.

But for Sherpa purposes, the beer I want to bring to your attention is another long-time favorite, Fantasia. It's a lightly tart beer made with tons of peaches. It has always been one Upright's signature beers, but five years in and it's still evolving. For this batch, the brewery decided to try to preserve the unique ecosystem of microorganisms that developed as a result of wild yeasts and bacteria from the fruit skins. Birk was tasked with taking off the metal hoops from the barrels and removing the old fruit, then reassembling the barrels in preparation for the new batch of beer and peaches.

What all this trouble produces is a beer that smells like a warm, tree-ripe peach on an August afternoon. It tastes the same, and you might imagine a dribble of juice running down your chin. Because of the acidity produced by the wild microorganisms, that flavor and aroma is set and preserved; the acidity also balances the fruity sweetness and gives it a dry, crisp (and balanced) finish. It is hard to imagine anyone who wouldn't smile after a mouthful of this beer, from the most hardened, cynical beer geek to that cousin who only drinks Rainier.

Fantasia goes on sale tomorrow at the brewery, which is open from 1pm to 8pm. There's a three-bottle limit, but you can augment with a nice draft pour while you're there. I believe Four Play was on tap at the event, and that alone is worth a trip to the brewery.

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"Beer Sherpa Recommends" is an irregular feature.  In this fallen world, when the number of beers outnumber your woeful stomach capacity by several orders of magnitude, you risk exposing yourself to substandard beer.  Worse, you risk selecting substandard beer when there are tasty alternatives at hand.  In this terrible jungle of overabundance, wouldn't it be nice to have a neon sign pointing to the few beers among the crowd that really stand out?  A beer sherpa, if you will, to guide you to the beery mountaintop.  I don't profess to drink all the beers out there, but from time to time I stumble across a winner and when I do, I'll pass it along to you.

That Old-Timey Old Ale, Billy the Mountain

Once, very early in my homebrewing career, I tried to brew an imperial stout. Unfortunately, the recipe included too little dark malts and what I got looked like iced tea. Consulting Jackson, I concluded that I had brewed an Old Ale. Thus was I introduced to the style.

The designation "old ale" is itchin' for abuse. Anything can be old. Old as in "sitting at the back of my fridge too long" or "made a long time ago, like Blitz lager." Even in England, where the style should have some meaning, breweries regularly take liberties with the style. Adnams has a beer they call an Old Ale, but it is just 4.1% and is "a mild ale style beer brewed with East Anglian pale ale and Crystal malted barley and Boadicea hops." An old ale that is a mild. Hold that thought a minute.

Breweries have long made very strong beers. Humans love intoxication, and there will always be demand for heavy hitters. Back in the day, the British referred to these with affectionate names like "crackskull," "stingo," and "huffcap." (Huffcapping was big in the winter of 1749-50. Kidding.) These beers were not only strong, though, they were also aged for months or years in oak. Old ales had other names like "stale" for this reason. After a year on wood, Old Crackskull would have taken on lots of character from wild yeasts. It would have gotten that sere, leathery quality we now associate with Belgian beers. In this context, the "old" referred to the time the beer had spent lounging around in barrels. Like stinky old cheese.

The opposite, of course, was "mild" ale, the fresh stuff breweries sent out lickety-split so publicans could start pouring it before the brettanomyces got busy. Old and mild were opposites. (Now, back to that Adnam's Old Ale. Their use of old to describe a mild is therefore a beautifully perverse turn of phrase. Adnams wishes to evoke a sense of the kind of beer old granddad may have enjoyed in the pub back in the fifties--you know, mild ale. One could say--and I would support it--that this use of metaphor is no less useful or poetic to the average punter in Southwold.) It was, however, regular practice to blend the two at the pub in order to spice up a mild with a bit of tartness from old ale. This may be where the word "stock" came from, yet another euphemism for old ale.

There are almost none of these kinds of old ales left in Britain. The two that spring to mind are Gale's Prize Old Ale (now made at Fuller's) and Greene King's Strong Suffolk. Americans have never really taken to the style, preferring their own super-hopped take on a barley wine. (The difference between old ales and barley wines? Damned little. Or anyway, semantic. Barley wine was a much later name used to help move product.) In America, actually right here in Portland, however, Upright's Alex Ganum, has shown an admirable enthusiasm for the kind of old ale you might have found in the days before microscopes had detected the existence of yeast.




Billy the Mountain
The name comes from a half-hour-long Frank Zappa song, incidentally--I think that's Ethell the tree on the label. The image I have omits the side text, which reads "a regular picturesque postcardy old ale"--a wink to the lyrics, which describe Billy as "a regular picturesque postcardy mountain." It's a psychedelic song in which Billy, flush with royalties from posing for postcards, goes on adventures that involve the draft, red-baiting, and Las Vegas. Good times. Anyway, we're here to discuss beer, so on to the other Billy the Mountain.

The first batch of the beer in 2009 was inoculated with brettanomcyes. Alex experimented in 2010 by blending 80% of the brett-inoculated Billy with a portion of sweet mild Billy. This year he's completely switched the ratio--just 20% brett-inoculated. By chance, I happened to have a year-old bottle at our annual holiday party last month. They strain Upright uses is a pretty gentle brett (I'm 90% sure it's claussenii, which is purportedly a British strain and therefore the one to make a beer like Dickens drank). Even after a year and even with an 80% blend (robust), I found that it "added a lovely tart snap to an otherwise hearty, sweet, English-style ale." In other words, not a face-melter.

I wondered if this year's would therefore be sweet--it doesn't have a lot of soured beer in it nor have those yeasts had a chance to do much to the base beer. But it was quite impressive. Here were my notes:

Balsamic nose, with a bit of berry jam. Reminds me of a Flanders brown. There's a tart undercurrent that has that balsamic tartness, but its enclosed in a dense, sweet, gingerbread beer. A touch of oak, too. Heavy and still, it would cloy if it were not brightened by the lovely tartness. There's some spiciness in here, and a long, port-like finish.

It's easily one of the most interesting beers around, and one that will age for years. Given the amount of sugars left in the bottle for the wild yeasts to snack on, I expect it will change enormously over those years. If you drink a whole bottle yourself and listen to Zappa, you too will go on adventures. Oregonians are fortunate to have so many wonderful historical recreations around, and this is one of my faves.

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Full Disclosure: the brewery gave me the bottle of this year's beer to taste, which is why I didn't throw it in the cellar, as all my instincts begged me to do.

Beer Month Notes, With Pictures

And Oregon Craft Beer Month rolls forward, leaving tired livers in its wake. Notably, Puckerfest has delivered a tour de force of great beers, one that continues tonight when Block 15's Nick Arzner brings a four-pack of his wonderful barrel-aged beers. If you haven't been to Puckerfest yet, definitely go. I've been really impressed with the pricing structure; it encourages you to get many small pours. Many of these beers are exceedingly rare, so Belmont Station could be charging a mint. Anyway, I've been sipping and snapping (pics) of beers as I go along, and here are a few highlights.

Flat Tail Corvaller Weisse
I have now tried exactly one of Dave Marliave's Flat Tail beers, which looks impressive when you compare it to the previous total (100% increase!). At some point I'll make it to Corvallis and do a proper survey. In the meantime, I was quite pleased with the Corvaller Weisse he brought for Puckerfest. Just 3.6%, it was a great example of how flavorful small beers can be. Lots of lactic tart with a wheaty background, crisp and light, perfect for that summer we may one day get. A very nice example. Below are Dave and his beer.



BJ's Enfant Terrible
It's probably sends the wrong signal to call this a zombie beer, but I mean it only in the best sense: it's the last keg of a 2007 batch of brett-aged beer made by Vasilios Gletsos when he was at BJ's. (There's another zombie at Puckerfest, Roots' Epic.) Sometimes aged beers get mellower, sometimes they don't. Brettanomyces is not a gentle yeast, and it has roughed this beer up pretty good. Still, I enjoy tastes of the past. Plus, it was purty.



Upright Lambicus Six and Blend Love
Four Uprights were pouring last night, but two were aged in gin barrels. Let us speak no more about that. (Gin fans should consult Nicole, who likes a nice gin-soaked beer.) The two I liked were Blend Love, the kind of sour that brings folks together, and Lambicus Six, which divides them. Blend Love was a toothsome mixture of tart and sweet, shot-through with rich, summery fruit flavor (raspberries, cherries, and strawberries). Lambicus Six, made with the rye-based Upright Six and aged with a lambic blend, was deeper, funkier, and much more sour. Some of the sour-heads were giving it a big smile, others wrinkling their noses. I smiled.



Breakside Beach Saison
This is not a Puckerfest beer, nor is it sour. Rather, it's a pretty traditional Dupont-style saison made with Dupont's yeast. (A yeast Breakside's Ben Edmunds and I used in a Grisette collaboration I'll tout heavily next week.) This is a classic saison: rich with tropical fruit flavors, crisp, dry, and moreish. It's a fantastic beer, and I could drink gallons of the stuff.


Deschutes White IPA (But Not That One)
Before last night's Timbers game (another topic about which we shall not speak), I stopped in at Deschutes to see what was shaking. In addition to the usual goodies--a nice pils, Armory XPA, Black Butte XXXIII--they have a remarkable beer called Chainbreaker White IPA. This isn't the White IPA that came from the collaboration with Boulevard--still not released--but a milder, super tasty version. It's not remotely an IPA: nothing in it has even distant familial connections to that old style. Rather, it's a hoppy wit, or a spiced wheat pale, or something. It's a soft, delicate beer that has a spine of zesty hops that merge perfectly into the spices. I suspect they used sage in this recipe, as they did in the collaboration brew--in any case, my mind couldn't shake the connotation. It's one of the most interesting beers I've tried in a long time, a fusion brew that actually finds breaks new ground in tastiness, not just bizarreness.

The Dutch Liquor Genever: Don't Call it Gin

Last Friday, Jacob Grier put together a classic Dutch tasting: a liquor called Genever with a beer back. In the Netherlands, they call this combo "kopstootje" (an word translated, enigmatically, as "little head butt"). On hand were a representative of Bols, a genever producer, and Alex Ganum, who brewed the beer specially for the pairing. I of course asked the dumb American question right off the bat--let's hope I was alone in this regard--"So, what's genever, some kind of Dutch gin?

Gin is made from a neutral spirit and gets its character from infusions of botanicals, notably juniper berries. Genever is also a botanically-infused liquor--in fact "genever" means juniper in Dutch. But genever is based on a mixture of distillates--a bit less than half from neutral gain spirits and the other portion from corn, wheat, and rye mashes--more like whiskey than gin.

Tal Nadari, the Bols rep, said that in a Dutch bar there might be as many as a hundred genevers available. I asked what made them differ was the infusions. "No," he said, "botanicals are nothing." It is the blend of "maltwine" distillates that made them distinct. Some may have a greater proportion of corn--making them sweeter--or rye, making them spicer. The blends are guarded by the master distiller--Nadari himself didn't know the proportion in Bols.

Gin came later--the bastard child of refined genever. According to Bols, "the result of an attempt to copy genever gone awry." Whether because of the vaunted maltwine base or because the botanical infusions are lighter and less intense, Bols Genever does taste different. You can actually taste the base liquor, which is soft and slightly sweet. The herbs are richer and less dependent on juniper than gin, and the result is a liquor pleasant to drink straight. There's absolutely no burn or kick--just a smooth, herbal, almost rainwater fresh quality.

Kopstootje
Of course, people don't drink it straight. In the Netherlands, the version of beer-and-a-shot is light lager and genever. For our tasting, Upright provided a crisp biere de garde as the accompaniment. Alex infused the beer with similar herbs found in genever, as well as rye, wheat, and corn. He also used a lager yeast--a nice touch that kept the beer clean and light. The herbal infusion was understated, though there was a lovely woody note Alex guessed came from angelica root. Personally, I found both the genever and the beer preferable on their own--they needed neither augmentation or dilution. They were fine together, but I found myself going back and forth, enjoying them concurrently, rather than simultaneously. (Genever is also apparently versatile in cocktails as well.)

On the other hand, I'm always a fan of ritual, and the "little head butt" is pretty entertaining. The tradition holds that the bartender fills a genever-specific tulip-shaped shot glass all the way to the brim. Further, actually, until the meniscus arches up like a little dome. Since you can't hoist a glass this full before you down it, you have to slurp it first. Then comes the beer chaser, and finally, an amused "prost!" If you're out for a night on the town, one round of kopstootje might be in order. You can currently find the Upright/Bols Genever pairing at Beaker and Flask, Broder, Clyde Common, Cruz Room, Grain and Gristle, Hop and Vine, Irving Street Kitchen, Spints Alehouse, Spirit of '77, St. Jack, the Temple Bar, and the very lovely Circa 33, which hosted us for the event.

More pics:

Alex Ganum is on the far left and to his right is Tal Nadari. Jacob Grier is second from right.

All in a line.


Head butting.

Mini Brand Dissection: Upright and Four Play

There is little doubt that when Pyramid decided to scrap their iconic labels and adopt their new look--an artistically indistinct, anodyne melange of colors reminiscent of what you'd expect to find on the wall of a doctor's office--the designers thought it was brilliant. They obviously didn't intend people to mock the brewery as a sports-drink wannabe. And thus did the control of the brand pass from Pyramid to the people. It's an iron law: ultimately, the customer gets to decide how she feels about your brand.

I was reminded of this phenomenon when I saw Ezra's post about the release of the new Four Play, which features a surprisingly un-Upright-like label. Erza commented:

Jeff, there is no "brand." The 4 year round beers labels are designed consistent but there never has been a guide on seasonal and one-offs and that was purposeful from the beginning that those beers would have no rules. In fact it has been a personal goal of mine that if you hold those labels up next together they all contrast. So this is EXACTLY what I was wanting.

So, here's the thing: there's always a brand. The brand is the image that represents the brewery; it's the visual representation of the brewery's personality. The question becomes, does what you put on the label communicate what you want to say about the brewery?

Brand
If Upright Brewing was a person, it would be the ultimate urbanite: educated, sophisticated, and elegant. The name is a useful symbol--it refers to a musical instrument, which is a functional non sequitur for beer. It suggests jazz, but more than that, it suggests improvisation and lyricism. Of all the music forms, jazz may be the most laden with context; the improvisation requires communication between musicians and a shared understanding of the history, vocabulary, and discography of the form. Great jazz musicians riff on each other in a sly, knowing way. All of which makes "Upright" a perfect name for a brewery that demands a lot from its audience. Alex folds layers of meaning into his beers--like jazz compositions, you find references to the history and lineage of beer styles. They aren't recreations--Upright's not a cover band--they're improvisations.

The label art suggests this. Ezra's comment that variability is the one constant is appropriate: a different label for every new riff. Variability is a huge part of the brand. But there's variability and then there's variability. Discord may suit a composition, or it may damage it. Four Play is discordant: the question is, in a good way or a bad way?

Art and Context
Ezra is a gifted artist and much of his art--especially beer labels--is arresting. I have personally witnessed occasions when people bought beers based solely on his label art. As an intellectual exercise, Four Play makes sense. The double entendre here involves the base beer--Upright's Four--and the phrase foreplay. The connection continues to the beer, which is lush and sensual. The label is intended to evoke this.

I think, for folks like Ezra, Alex, and Gerritt, the meaning of the image is different than it would be for someone like me. They're all in their twenties or very early thirties (corrections solicited), and sexuality is one of the most generational of impulses. For anyone over forty, the photo of a lightly-clad woman in a sexual pose almost necessarily indicates objectification. In popular culture up until about the mid-90s, that would have always been the case. Of course, things have changed and women have taken control of their own images. Within feminism, there's a huge debate about what constitutes objectification (obviously, I'll avoid that rabbit hole). No matter which side of the debate you take, it's clear that context matters.

Message
The problem, of course, is that art and commerce are both communications. To be communicative, they need a sender and a receiver, and the receiver always has veto power over the way they interpret the image. Artists claim this is a type of theft, but it's inevitable. For businesses, the point is more freighted; if the receivers--customers--apply a different meaning than the brewery intended, there can be trouble.

For a lot of folks, a cigar's never a cigar, and beer label with a scantily-clad woman in a suggestive pose means objectification, first and only. (Which is how the discussion played out at The New School.) For those folks, this is going to offend. There's no right or wrong here. In communications, objective reality isn't the point.

Lesson
I don't really have an opinion about whether the label is appropriate or not. I know the people behind the message, and I know that there's no effort to objectify women. (In fact, Upright probably has a higher percentage of women drinkers than any brand in Oregon.) What I don't know is how the label will be received--part of the Upright brand, or a misstep. The 2010 vintage of Four Play had a risque label that to my mind didn't come close to the line of misunderstanding (it also features Ezra's art--a bonus). The 2011 vintage? We'll see.

From the Mists of Time, Two From Upright

Imagine the year 2020. We're all flying around in our electric hover cars and communicating telepathically through digital neural implants. Cloned cyborg monkeys do all the physical labor, freeing us up to blog and tweet. You're sitting in one of Portland's 237 brewpubs and a guy walks by in a t-shirt that says, "Upright Brewing, Still IPA-free since 2007." Sadly, it's not to be. Not the cyborg monkeys--those are mathematical certainty--the Upright tee: alas, Upright has brewed an IPA after all.

It's called "Safe as Milk" in homage to the recently-passed Captain Beefheart, and like him, it's not usual--at least, not in these parts. Here's Alex Ganum describing it:

"We decided to make a traditional English-style IPA. It has half the bitterness and hop charge that some popular west coast or American IPA's have, but hey, it's a start.... The Willamette hops that we got from the 2010 harvest were especially nice, and so it was an easy decision to make the English-style IPA with them as the sole flavor and aroma hop. Roughly 40-45 ibu's, not excessively hopped or carbonated for that matter, yet still displaying the wonderfully woody and floral Willamettes in the forefront. "

What Alex neglects in this description is the minerally structure that really signals a British-style IPA, achieved through amendments made to Portland's unadulterated, feather-soft water. You notice this on the tongue as a slightly chalky character; it makes the beer a bit more bracing and brings those relatively low levels of bitterness into sharp focus. It's a fascinating beer, a standard deviation or two beyond what's considered normal on the West Coast, and therefore a respectably offbeat offering from Upright.

While Safe as Milk is a nice beer and worth tracking down, the current vintage of Billy the Mountain, Upright's version of a traditional old ale, is a stunning beer you must track down. Alex wrote at length about it at the Upright blog--too long to excerpt here, but worth checking out. To summarize briefly, it starts as an 8% strong ale made with a blend of caramel, mild, black malts, and a touch of molasses to create a rich, sweet base beer. It's aged in pinot barrels with brettanomyces clausenii, the native strain isolated in England a hundred years ago. There it sits for a year, developing acidity and character (and another percent of alcohol). Alex conditioned it with a new batch of Billy to keep carbonation levels low. It won't be still, but like a nice English ale, it will neither be lively.

What results is a beer I expect is a very authentic recreation of the types of beer you could buy in London a hundred year ago and more. Here's Martyn Cornell, from his stellar book Amber Gold & Black:

Arctic Ale and other super-strong English 'stock' ales were brewed to lie in wooden casks or vats for at least a year, often longer, where they would be worked on by Brettanomyces-type yeasts lurking in the wood, which took over from the standard brewing yeasts to consume the more complex sugars found in quantity in strong beer worts. Indeed, 'Brett' yeasts were first isolated by the Danish brewing scientist Niels Hjelte Claussen in or just before 1903 from an English 'stock beer.'

Ganum's mixture of malts, use of an English strain to ferment the first wort, and the process of aging in barrels with the English brett are all perfectly consonant with the old way of producing English stock ales.

So, what does it taste like? We tend to put beers in boxes and keep them sequestered in our minds from other boxes, and so English old ales and Flanders oud bruins or reds have nothing in common. Except they did--quite a lot. Billy the Mountain has many of the qualities we associate with English strongs--a creamy body with a bread-pudding quality of dark fruits and cake--but also a vinous tartness that evokes the Burdgundies of Belgium. Contra Ezra, the brett here do contribute a sour sourness--not the dry, horse-blanket notes you get from brettanomyces bruxellensis. Yet they're gentle, and marry approachably with the sweeter, fuller notes of the malt and molasses.

It's definitely an A rating beer, but not one that will last forever. I have a couple bottles, one for now and one for the larder, but I may head back down to Upright for another pour. It's a perfect rainy-January ale.

How to Brew Oyster Stout

A video description, hot off the presses. The video below was shot as Alex Ganum and Gerritt Ill brewed the 2011 batch of Upright's Oyster Stout:

The process, in case it's not totally obvious, is this. In addition to 72 large oysters added near the end of the boil, Alex and Gerritt dumped in about twelve gallons of oyster juice (or brine or...). It smelled of the fishy sea. But, as Alex describes, the final result is pretty subtle.

Upright's Amazing Apparent Attenuation

Last night, Upright held a press event at the brewery to celebrate their first anniversary and launch of two celebratory beers. (Reviews to come.) Press events, for those of you who haven't had the pleasure, generally follow a pretty standard script: a pour of beer upon arrival, a tour of the brewery and subsequent pours, and all the while Q&A as things progress. I find that the questions generally elicit the most fascinating information, and so it was last night, when Upright's Alex Ganum talked about how finicky his yeast is.

Alex uses a French farmhouse yeast strain, and these are notoriously difficult to work with. The most famous, and famously difficult, is Dupont's, which requires high fermentation temperatures (over 85 degrees; regular yeasts do better below 70) and then craps out before it's fully done, requiring a brewery to nurture and coax it along for days or weeks. Alex's isn't as bad, but it bears some of these hallmarks. He ferments it in the mid-70s, and then has to wait while it meanders along--sometimes for three weeks in the open primary fermenters. Other yeasts would take less than a week. But even then, the fun's not over. Once it goes into the tank, the beer keeps evolving.

Alex knew the yeast was efficient even a year ago when I first visited the brewery; it's attenuation was on of the attractions. After a year of working with the beer, though, he's started to realize that it may be too much of a good thing. Because those yeasts keep munching, he can't bottle or keg for a long while without worry of foamy pints or explosive bottles. He prevailed on the Widmers to do a lab analysis for him (which they happily did, and gratis, contrary to the suspicion some hold that they wish to crush the competition) and the results were shocking. Upright's beer was reaching levels of attenuation in the mid-90s, sometimes as high as 97%.

What is attenuation, and why is this remarkable? Let's start with the science. Here's White Labs, a commercial brewers yeast company:

Yeast consume the sugar in wort, and turn that sugar into CO2, alcohol, and flavor compounds. When yeast finish the fermentation process, they shut down, clump together, and fall to the bottom of the fermentor, or "flocculate." When yeast flocculate, it is easy to see that fermentation is done. But how can the brewer be sure? What if the flocculation is minimal, and yeast and CO2 stay in solution. How does the brewer really know when fermentation is done? The answer: by testing the degree of attenuation. Apparent attenuation percentage is the percentage of sugars that yeast consume. Attenuation varies between different strains. The fermentation conditions and gravity of a particular beer will cause the attenuation to vary, hence each strain of brewers yeast has a characteristic attenuation range. The range for brewers yeast is typically between 65-85%.

Typical ale yeasts are comparatively inefficient. The kinds of beers most appreciated in Beervana will have an attenuation of around 70%, give or take. Lager strains are roughly the same. Most Belgian strains--wild yeast excepted--are more attenuative, but still, few get out of the high 70s. So, a beer with an apparent attenuation of 97% would have almost no residual sugars.

Alex's yeast is the Energizer bunny--it just keeps going. As a homebrewer and craft beer fan, I find this charming. So farmhousey! But I imagine it's driving Upright crazy. For one thing, it costs a lot of money to let beer just sit in a tank. If it takes a beer twice as long to finish fermenting, a brewery can only produce half as much beer per tank. Beyond that, Upright can't risk letting any beer but the most bone-dry out of the brewery for fear that it will continue to ferment in kegs and bottles. From a business perspective, you want predictable and fast, not idiosyncratic and farmhousey. Charming is not a prized characteristic in the behavior of yeasts.

On the other hand, the yeast produces some amazing beer. The Four Play, in particular, really benefits from this strain, for reasons I'll mention in my future review. Most beers with this kind of attenuation would taste thin and bone dry, but somehow the production of esters counteracts the dryness. And how the beer remains creamy and silky--never thin--is a mystery to me. Chemists out there, please weigh in.

When Alex founded Upright, he wanted the beer to be marked by the character of the yeast and the qualities of farmhouse brewing--local ingredients, handmade beer, idiosyncratic styles, and a flavorful rusticity. A year in and he and co-brewer Gerritt Ill have managed to pull this off. I wonder if sometimes they feel this yeast is punishing them for their success. Ah brewing!
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Spints, Six, and Oyster Stout

Entering Upright Brewing is probably as close as you can get to approximating the experience of visiting a speakeasy. The Left Bank building is an urban island in the middle of two major streams of traffic, at the fork where Broadway and Weidler split, right at the nexus of I-5. I don't know that there's a building more cut off by major thoroughfares in the city. You might be able to park at the edge of this island, but careful!--you might also get caught up with the flow and find yourself shooting across the Broadway Bridge.

Once you do get parked, you enter what appears to be a vacant building. Renovated, promising, but vacant; I'm never sure if the front door is going to open when I get there. But it does and you make your way to the elevator and descend a floor to an industrial little hallway. As you stand there, certain you've taken a wrong turn, you do hear murmurs coming from around the corner. Following those you arrive at the basement brewery, which really is just a brewery. The tables around which folks gather appear ad-hoc, as does the gathering itself, like you're at a secretive one-time party. By the time you have a beer in your hand, you feel like you've earned it.

On Friday, Sally and I stopped in for the release of the Upright's oyster stout--a style that is the current front-runner for 2010 trend of the year. I have tried a great many styles of beer, including some of the most obscure, but I've never had an oyster stout. (I hope to get a pint of Fort George's before it disappears, too.) It's a bizarre idea: putting oysters into a beer. No doubt the drunken inspiration of a Londoner who figured that the effort to pair seafood and stout was redundant. The effect, by all accounts, is subtle. You get a briny, sea-water note.

Indeed, that's how Upright's was. The basic stout is burly and heavy. I don't know what the alcohol content is, but it's the unfermentables you notice, with a density akin to Turkish coffee. I didn't get any of the brine at the outset, but when the beer warmed up it emerged. I suspect that you could serve this beer to ten people without identifying it and maybe one would pick up the brine. Knowing to look for it helps, but still, you have to look. (Upright also had five gallons of a strong ale that was heavy and sweet, but finished with a nice cherry tang. I actually liked it better than the oyster stout, but with just five gallons, it's long gone now.)

After Upright, we headed to Spints for dinner--my first visit. By chance, they had Upright Six on tap, and I had a pint. I've had less Six than any of the regular line-up (actually, just once, before the brewery opened), and was delighted to find it on tap. Six is the dark rye beer, which tastes not at all like ryes people normally expect. Since the rye backs the tart, farmhousey quality, it doesn't have the same insistent tannic character. Rather, the tartness pulls out spicy notes and elongates them. Fantastic beer.

As to Spints, the atmosphere is great, but the cuisine is not exactly in my wheelhouse. The food is based on heavy, meaty German cuisine, and I like light, fresh vegetable-rich food. They did bring out a plate of amazing bread, and I'll visit for that alone. An apple bread, two ryes (the dark was fantastic), and a sweet white bread. The beer list is also exceptional, and I think the rumors about pricing are inflated. They have four volumes of glassware (12, 16, 20, and 23 ounces), and the prices for beer range widely depending on Spints' cost. I went with the 16 ounce glass and paid five bucks. That's on the high end, but not excessive. As for the selection, it's exceptional. I won't declare it the best in the city based on a single visit, but it's definitely in the conversation.

Upshot? Put it on your short list for places to visit for a good pint.

Style of the Year--Oyster Stouts?

There used to be this phenomenon in Hollywood (could be there still is) wherein two studios would simultaneously get an idea for a movie so that you'd see two, slightly different takes on a similar subject. Oregonians may recall the year of two Prefontaine movies. I notice a similar phenomenon in brewing--certain styles pop into vogue. I have no idea why this happens in Hollywood, but given the level of interaction and camaraderie in the brewing world, it isn't so surprising with beers.

Anyhoo, it looks like 2010 might be the year of oyster stouts, a style only marginally more widely brewed than gose. The first I heard of this was at Upright's blog, from early last month:

So last Thursday was one of my most memorable brew days ever - in a good way. It began a couple months ago when friend and fellow brewer Jason McAdam visited Upright to bullshit around....

The only part that required a good bit of thought was how to incorporate the oysters? In the end we decided to add roughly ten gallons of oyster "liquor" that Jason picked up fresh from the coast off a train. We didn't want to brew an oyster stout without any oyster meat though so we also picked up eight dozen DeCourcy oysters from B.C. and cooked them during the kettle boil. After eating all the wort-soaked meat we cleaned and saved the shells to add later to the beer, post fermentation, like dryhopping.

And now, from The Daily Pull, I see that Fort George is going for one, too. The following is from Brady's interview with the brewery's owner/brewer Jack Harris:

Oyster Stouts were quite common a couple of hundred years ago. I first made this beer while working at Bill's Tavern a few years ago and the research I did at the time did not give me a very good idea of a process. I couldn't find any readily available commercial examples either. Descriptions of the beer varied from a nice stout with no discernible oyster character to a very briny flavor. My attempt at Bill's Tavern created a nice robust stout without much oyster evident. It did completely screw up my wort chiller with little shell flakes clogging everything up. I had to back-flush several times during knock-out and then strip the whole chiller down.

Our attempt here at Fort George used the same technique of putting two bushels of whole, live Willapa Bay Oysters into the hop-back (they were scrubbed very well on the outside first) and running all 8 1/2 bbls of beer through them. We made this beer on the evening of our Seafood and Belgian beer brewer’s dinner in hopes we could use them as hot appetizers, but after eating a couple they turned out to be too bitter for most palates. We were much more careful to not get oyster shell in the chiller.

I have yet to sink my teeth into either of these beers, but I'm looking forward to it. I may even have to make a road trip if Fort George isn't sending some our way.

________________
Photo: Annalou Vincent
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Upright Brewing's New Blog

The track record for brewery blogs is mixed. If you look to my left-hand column, you'll see a drop-down menu for seven--now eight--blogging breweries. When a post goes up on one of these blogs, it's generally fascinating. Brewers are interesting, and what they brew and how they decided to brew it make for good reading. Trouble is, brewing is itself a full-time job and so blogging is intermittent at best. Now Alex Ganum from Upright Brewing has joined the club--and as you would expect, his recent posts are interesting. It doesn't hurt that Alex is a pretty good writer:

Flora Rustica is a Northwest-style saison inspired by the small and adventurous brewers of Belgium like Brasserie à Vapeur. The name comes from the Roman goddess of flowers and also the fact that this beer has roots in the past. It uses yarrow, calendula and hops which all play into the profile differently. The yarrow shows bright lime and herbaceous notes in the aroma while the hops provide a spicy and grassy character. As it warms the calendula comes through more strongly as a tea-like flavor while the beer finishes appetizingly dry, bitter and invigorating.

I'll add Upright to the blogroll. In the meantime, I thought a full post here welcoming Alex would encourage him to believe that we will read along if he keeps the blog current. On the other hand, don't kill yourself, Alex--do get some sleep from time to time.

The New Saisons

"The most endangered species among Belgian beers are the Saisons. "

That was Michael Jackson, writing a bit more than a decade ago. But, like the bald eagle, the rehabilitation has worked--it's time to take saisons off the endangered list. With a number approaching double digits released and available in Portland in the past year, you can't even call them rare anymore. We had three at the Oregon Brewer's Fest. Standing Stone had their version in town a few weeks past. Alex Ganum founded a brewery that was inspired by them. And then with almost no fanfare, Full Sail recently released Saison a Pleine Voile (don't say Full Sail Saison a Pleine Voile, or you'll be repeating yourself). Every time I go into Belmont Station it seems there's another US brewery with a new version. Oh, and for good measure, the venerable ur-saison maker Dupont released their newest product to the US market, Avril. The season of saisons? More like the year.

History of the Style
In a certain sense, none of these nouveau saisons can be considered authentic, because what defined them was a rustic style of production. Thus their commonly used alternative designation, "farmhouse ales." Jackson describes them as part of Europe's "industrial archaeology," dating back to a time when farms were only beginning to mechanize.

This led to idiosyncratic, site-specific characteristics, like Lefebvre, where the fired kettle is subject to winds. "If the fire was high [due to wind], the hot spots on the surface of kettle would caramelize the beer to a greater degree." In other breweries, beer was exposed to wild microorganisms, giving them a funky zing. Pipaix, one of the oldest producers, still uses a steam system (they call it brasserie à vapeur) and equipment dating to mid-century.

You get the picture--these were very small, ramshackle breweries (one has a sense many weren't really commercial concerns) that produced beer as unique and specific as the farm on which they were located.

A wonderfully romantic history, but not so useful in identifying style. With a scattered collection of unique beers, was there a style? Marc Rosier, brewer at Dupont, described saisons this way: "It must be a good, honest beer. It should have character. It is essential that it have soul." Whew--glad we cleared that up.

The lore surrounding the style always starts with the name, which is French for "season." According to legend, these beers were brewed during the cooler months and laid down to get them through summer--hence "season." I find this unpersuasive, for two reasons. First, we know that saisons were brewed at all strengths: "children's" (I kid you not), "family," "double," and "regal." Dupont's new Avril is in the small example, but is clearly related to the family--the baby, I guess you'd call her. It is a beer to be drunk when brewed; at 3.5%, it wouldn't last a month--hardly something to be laid away for the hot months.

But the other reason is the yeast. Those who have brewed with the dreaded Dupont strain know that it is very hard to work with, and that it loves the heat. (I have documented my foibles here.) The yeast loves temperatures over 80 degrees--purportedly even as hot as 90 (!). And yet they didn't brew in the summer? Makes no sense. (Alex Ganum, though he uses a different saison strain, has commented that he's got to keep it pretty warm, too.)


The New Saisons
In any case, there appear to be a few hallmarks to the style. Generally robust, they have the fruity-ester character of ales--often tending toward citrus and specifically lemon--but also a long, dry finish due to incredible attenuation. They are likely to have a bit of lactic zestiness, sometimes even a mild brett quality, but aren't funky. Most are pretty-well hopped and have a spicy quality. Even though they're on the biggish side (6-7%), they aren't heavy. Finally, effervescence is key--they should roil with a vigorous bead and sport a pillowy head.

A lot of the saisons I've tried over the years have seemed more like biere de gardes, their cousin from across the French border. That style is heavier and sweeter, lacking the hop character and that lovely dry finish. One shouldn't be a fanatic about style, but those qualities that make a saison so lovely are so rare as to be cherished and savored. I can't really criticize a sweeter saison, but I do like finding ones closer to the original.

Fortunately, the ones I've tasted lately are far closer to my sense of the style, and far more tasty and interesting. I hope to come back again and again to newer version of the style, but here are four recent examples, just to demonstrate the range.

• Saison a Pleine Voile. I believe this beer is part of Full Sail's Brewer's Share program, where assistant brewers get to man the kettle and brew whatever their hearts desire. John Harris mentioned it a couple of months ago, but I don't remember the details. Unfortunately, I didn't take notes when I had this last week at the Pilsner Room, so what follows is impressionistic. It followed the style in the key ways--cloudy golden, a thick, creamy head (though not a huge amount of effervescence), and a rich, spicy-yeasty aroma. Based on the bead, it didn't surprise me to find that it was thicker and creamier than I expected, but it was still quite dry. It was nicely hopped, spicy, yet very approachable. I must go back for a second taste--it was wonderful.

• Boulevard Tank 7. I could find very little information about this beer, which I tried at Belmont Station. Boulevard does a regular saison, and I'm not sure how this one deviated from it. This beer, too hit most of the marks for a "typical" saison. Yeasty nose marked by a fair bit of lemon. An austere, bone dry, alcoholic example. It has insistent hopping, and this combines with that dryness, which seemed the result of brettanomyces--think aged Orval--to produce a rather sharp-elbowed beer. One admires it more than enjoys it. But admire it I did.

• Upright Seven. Although all the Upright beers are sort of farmhousey, this one is what I'd describe as the most like a typical saison. (And I use that word, again, with all due caution.) Upright's yeast is softer than Dupont's, and although the beers finish out very dryly, the fruity esters still dominate. An orangey, lively beer with a dense, creamy head, it also sports pronounced hopping. (Magnums to bitter--as is the case with all the beers but Four--as well as Mount Rainier, Liberty, and Hallertauer.) Yet it does finish crisply. I haven't had it since visiting the brewery, and need to try it again, too.

• Standing Stone Saison. To repeat a review from late May: The head was creamy and sustained and lacing decorated my glass as I drew, with regret, to the end. The aroma hints at the flavor--phenols and spice, and an interesting yeast character. It's a dense beer and not particularly effervescent, yet though it's heavy, it doesn't cloy. The first sweet note gives way to phenols, an almost minty note, and pepper. Given the heavy body, you think it can't finish dryly--with my first sip I feared the Ardennes effect--but it does. There are hops enough to clip any sweetness in the aftertaste, and you're left with a crisp finish.

One other to throw in the mix, though it's not currently available in Oregon, is Goose Island Sofie. Lisa Morrison shared a bottle with me at the Brewers Games. It was vigorously effervescent, light-bodied, and gentle. I recall plenty of hopping and tropical fruit flavors. The specifics have left my mind, but the fondness remains--it was a good one, too, should you find a bottle.

The upshot? The 2009 crop of saisons has been amazing. And I hope we don't stop seeing them anytime soon.

____________
Great Beers of Belgium, 3rd Ed. He may actually have written the words when the first edition of the book came out in '91, but I don't have a copy. Anyway, you get the picture.

Upright Tasting/Meet the Brewer

I have been a little bad about pointing out all the Meet the Brewer events that happen around the city. I hope you've been adequately informed. That said, this one caught my eye. Alex Ganum will be at Belmont Station on Friday (4500 SE Stark, 6-8pm), and he'll have the full slate of Upright beers. For those of you who haven't tried them all, this is a good chance to do so. (And in fact, it may be the first time Seven has been on tap anywhere--but don't quote me on that.)

For those of you who may have missed it, I recently did a full review of Upright.

Upright Brewing - Early Impressions

Upright Brewing
240 N Broadway St.
Portland, Oregon, 97227
Tasting Room Hours: Sat-Sun, Noon-5pm

We learned almost a year ago that a new brewery was coming to the Left Bank Project, in the fork where Weidler and Broadway split in two. Founder/brewer Alex Ganum described his vision for Upright Brewing then:

Imagine combining the spirit and methods of rustic French and Belgian style farmhouse brewing with the positive energy and downright beautiful ingredients the Pacific Northwest offers us. 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. In addition to the year-round brands expect to see several unusual special releases including barrel-aged beers, sour beers, fruit beers, smoked beers, and many other distinct brews.

I have been saying that Upright's beers speak with a Flemish accent, but maybe French is more accurate. Having interned at Ommegang and assisted Dan Pederson at BJ's (who was one of the earliest Portland brewers to experiment with Belgian styles), this isn't entirely surprising. Yet he takes great pains to emphasize that his beers aren't brewed to style. He would pour a beer, then describe how it behaved, not what it was. His vision does not include telling beer writers what styles inspired him. This is disorienting--you're always trying to get a bead on the beer and the style the brewer was shooting for. Ganum doesn't want to be pigeonholed, so he gives you very little to work with.

Guess what? This makes him all the more Belgian. What other country cares so little for the dictates of style?


The Brewery
The brewery is a ten barrel system, already outfitted with pinot casks for barrel-aging--with quite a bit of room to grow. Following Ommegang's example, Ganum uses open fermenters in a small, sequestered room, accessible by beautiful fir doors. (The restoration of the Left Bank means lots of beautiful fir.) The day I visited, a batch was near the end of primary fermentation, and seem dangerously exposed. Not to worry, Ganum said cheerfully, "as long as you keep your brewery clean, you shouldn't have any problems. And you should keep your brewery clean anyway."

He uses a French saison yeast (perhaps this one)--not Dupont's. His doesn't require the exotic conditions of Dupont's, although it apparently needs a little heat. The day I visited, he had a heater going in the fermentation room. It's a very nice yeast, finishing out to bone dry gravities but somehow leaving the beer tasting smooth and sweet. It is versatile and distinctive, but not aggressive or overly "Belgiany." Funky flavors are mostly absent, but subtle, earthy ones reward the observant.


The Beer
Let's start with the naming convention. Upright's can be said to be in the Rochefort system, following the specific gravity of the wort. (Not, as you might have surmised--as I did--the batch numbers.) So "Four" comes from a wort of roughly 1.040, "Five" of 1.050, and so on. Ganum prefers this to the baroque names many beers have. (The brewery name comes from the Upright bass--he's a jazz fan.)

Four (4.5%).
We had a discussion just before I left about which of Ganum's beer would emerge as favorites. He thinks it will be Four, which is his most distinctive. (I agree, but assessing mass tastes has never been a great forte of mine. In any case, it's my favorite.) A cloudy wheat beer (50% of the grist) Four is made with a sour mash, which gives it a lip-smacking tartness. I was recording Alex so I didn't have to take copious notes, and he gave a great description of the process:



Ganum may not like to refer to established styles when he describes his beer, but I have no such compunction. I'd put this halfway between a weissebier and a Berliner weisse. It lacks the banana/clove quality of a weisse, but isn't as sharp as a Berliner. Rather, it's cleanly tart and acidic and very quaffable. The wheat is evident, as are the Hallertauers. It's a very classic-tasting, accomplished beer. We didn't have any cheese or a salad to pair with Four, but I bet they would have gone wonderfully together.

In addition to the regular Four, there's a batch on wood to which he will add cherry puree, lactic, and brettanomyces claussenii (a purportedly gentle brett). Thereafter, the inoculated barrel will continue to add funk to future batches.

Five, (5.5%).
Upright's yeast isn't in-your-face, but I had the opportunity to see just how much it contributes when I tried two batches of Five--one on Upright's usual yeast, one on an English ale yeast. Five is an golden, slightly cloudy ale with a creamy, frothy head. The English version was a fairly pedestrian beer. Slightly nutty but underhopped, it was sweetish and bland. But on the saison yeast it was a totally different bird. It had a rather pungent nose (absent the other Upright beers--odd) and was marked by a strange bitterness--"herbaceous," in Alex's words. The hops come forward, and the malt plays a more supportive role.

Six, (6.7%).
If people don't resonate with the names of Upright's beer, my guess is that they'll refer to six--the only non-golden Ganum brews--as "the brown." But more than brown, it's a rye (15-18% of grist), and also has a touch of black barley. It is also highly attenuated, but has a round, fruity/raisiny character. Malt-forward and creamy, it is the most familiar of Upright's beers.

In addition to the base beer, there are three variants on wood: one with Turkish chiles, one with standard brettanomyces (not the claussenii), and one with chocolate. The plan is to release them simultaneously.

Seven, (8%).
If BeerAdvocate is any guide, all Upright beers are going to be classified as "saisons." Seven seems closest to the mark. It would be considered a strong saison, but the character is right. An orangey, lively beer with a super dense, creamy head, it sports pronounced hopping. (Magnums to bitter--as is the case with all the beers but Four--as well as Mount Rainier, Liberty, and Hallertauer.) It was still a bit green--Alex poured it from the tank--but already finishing out to be a dry, refined beer. I'll have to try it again on tap, but after Four, it was my favorite.

Others.
Upright's submission to the Organic Beer Fest is an unhopped Gruit ale made with a bit of spelt, lemongrass, two types of orange peel, hyssop, and sichuan peppercorn. Upright's yeast is especially suited to a gruit because it finishes so cleanly. We sampled a bit from a batch still in the fermenter, and it was already past the cloying stage. A nice combo of herbs, with the peppercorn adding a delicate spicy-herbal note. A Rauchbier may or may not also be on the way. The brewery hand-smoked the malt themselves over redwood. Unfortunately they had some yeast issues. If it's not up to snuff, they'll have to dump it.

Final Notes
You can now find pubs around town pouring Four (EastBurn) and Five (Belmont Station, Bailey's, Concordia Ale House). Tonight Six makes its debut at Seraveza, when Sarah will tap a fresh firkin at 6pm.

Upright will ultimately be bottling their beer. They are currently trapped in that terrible Kafkaesqe process of trying to get their labels approved by the Feds. Samurai Artist is the man behind the label art--variants of the image seen at the webpage and on my little audio clip.

What's Going on Here?

In the manner of Stan's ongoing series, here's one for you. Care to hazard a guess why these little lovelies are meaningful? Hint: they reside in Upright Brewing, Portland's newest brewery.

Upright Brewing ... Now Upright?

If my Twitter feed didn't lie (and how could that happen?), Upright Brewing now has beer out. Two nights ago--that was the day the Blazers beat Houston--a keg of strong ale went on at Belmont. I figured I'd catch a pint yesterday and have an early review up for you today. Ummm, no. It blew, apparently that first night.

Anyone get to try it? Thoughts?

[Update: Bill has a review.]

Upright Brewing

Angelo has a great interview with Alex Ganum, whose Upright Brewing will be up and running by the end of the month. To jog your memory, this is the place that will be located in the Left Bank building, right in the fork in the street where Weidler and Broadway split. Ganum is a Belgian fan, and his beers will deviate from the standard NW style--fantastic news for those of us who like variety. You should read the whole interview for bits that may interest you, but this passage was the part that caught my eye:

Do you plan on having a flagship beer?

AG: It’s safe to say that in Portland the hoppiest one will probably become the flagship although it would make me smile if our more sessionable wheat beer became the most popular as I plan to promote flavorful beers that aren’t too high in alcohol.

What is the first beer you are planning on making?

AG: The first brew will be the a variation of the aforementioned wheat beer that will be matured on cherries in used pinot noir barrels. After that we’ll start production of our four standard year-round beers along with single batches of a redwood smoked lager, a traditional old ale and perhaps a farmhouse inspired gruit.

He also talks about the particulars of the brewery and his inspirations and interests. Go read it at Brewpublic.

Upright Brewing Update

Well, while I've been a beery laggard, Angelo's been interviewing Upright Brewing's Alex Ganum. I actually got an email recently asking if Upright was still on track, and thanks to Angelo, we have an answer.

Ganum and Upright Brewing have gone to great lengths already to close in on an opening date some time in early 2009. The brewery-a production-only endeavor-is situated in the dynamic Left Bank Building on 240 NE Broadway close to the Rose Quarter. Ganum, a 28-year-old Argentinian Michigander...

It's a pretty brief interview, but worth a look. And the coolest thing is the picture of Alex in a Smeirlap t-shirt. Smeirlap!

Upright Brewing Company

A coupla days ago, the Mercury blog brought my attention to a most promising new brewery slated to open in the Leftbank Project, Upright Brewing Company. The Leftbank project is along North Broadway, just as it starts to bend toward the Broadway Bridge (map). The owner/brewer is Alex Ganum, who writes this about his vision:

So, what kind of beer will we be crafting? That’s a difficult question to answer, but imagine combining the spirit and methods of rustic French and Belgian style farmhouse brewing with the positive energy and downright beautiful ingredients the Pacific Northwest offers us. 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. In addition to the year-round brands expect to see several unusual special releases including barrel-aged beers, sour beers, fruit beers, smoked beers, and many other distinct brews. Upright Brewing Company will always be a hands-on, local producer of honest craft beer.

Patrick Coleman, who wrote the Merc post, called Ganum up and got more detail:

I recently called Ganum to get some more information. He told me he plans on crafting beer in the rustic, French and Belgian "farmhouse style." He'll be using two open fermentation tanks and a distinct house yeast. Ganum's strain of French yeast—with possible Belgian origins—is expected to produce beer with "a nice mix of spicey flavors and earthiness and mustiness."

Ganum blanches at the idea that his products will be straight-up, Belgian style brews. "The beers in the brewery are going to be atypical of Portland and America itself," he explains. He doesn't seem too concerned about the difficulty of producing beer through open fermentation (there are only a couple breweries in Oregon doing it) having learned the methods with Brewery Ommegang in Copperstown, New York.

Along with the openly fermented rustic brews, Ganum will also have a conical, closed fermentation tank for special batches of smoked and fruit beers.

I will try to grack Ganum down, too, because this isn't particularly clear. I'm not sure what he means by "straight-up Belgian style" beer. Belgians are a lot like Oregonians--they have a hard time brewing anything to style. Even breweries famous for a particular beer tend to screw around with seasonals. They're brewing very hoppy beers in Belgium now, apparently in homage to West Coast beers (borrowing styles and bending them at right angles is a specialty of Belgian brewing). It sounds like the beer will be brewed using Belgian methods and with Belgian yeasts (note that it's open fermentation, not spontaneous)--to me, this signals pretty straight-up Belgian style. All of which suggests that there's more to learn.

But in any case, this seems like Very Good news indeed.