Upright Brewing Company is happy to to announce the first weekend of our brewery tasting room! We plan to have the doors open every Saturday and Sunday between noon and five for you to come down and enjoy our beers at the source. You can expect the following six available this weekend to try on draft:

Four - sessionable wheat beer

Five - hoppy farmhouse ale

Six - dark rye beer

Seven - strong saison

Flora Rustica - yarrow and calendula saison

Reggae Junkie Gruit - hop-less beer with herbs and spices

Hope to catch you there!

Upright Brewing has three special beers for summer in the works - a traditional Belgian-style wit, a hop-less gruit and a unique farmhouse saison, all of which use herbs and/or spices.

The wit uses a traditional recipe including wheat, oats, bitter orange peel and coriander, fermented with a distinct strain of yeast. We anticipate the beer to finish lively on the palate and have a classic cloudy appearance.

The gruit was made with a blend of lemongrass, bitter orange peel, hyssop and sichuan peppercorns along with some spelt as part of the grist. It’s an invigorating beer that you can expect to see at the North American Organic Beer Festival at the end of June.

The farmhouse saison was brewed today using fresh yarrow leaves and flowers picked from the brewers garden (pictured) and dried calendula flowers. The fermentation is already off to a great start and giving off great aromas from the open top tank. We’re really excited about this one!

The wit and saison are still without names so if you’ve got any ideas please comment. Extra consideration will go to names with any sort of Mingus, Zappa or Ween connection.

We’re making beer! Upright Brewing Company is in full production mode right now and the photo attached to this post shows the very early stage of fermentation for batch number six as viewed from above our open top vessels. Brewer Gerritt Ill and myself began by filling thirteen used pinot noir oak barrels with two different long term projects before starting our year round brews. Look for Upright’s first farmhouse style ale to be available in most beer-centric establishments within a couple weeks and catch us at this year’s North American Organic Brewers Festival the last weekend of June where we will be pouring a hop-less spelt beer made with several different herbs and spices. We should also have our weekend tasting room open by that time as well and are looking forward to meeting more of Portland’s beer lovers in person.

Cheers!

Upright Brewing had the pleasure of receiving the bulk of it’s equipment yesterday, squeezing it downstairs and into the brewery in what was a fun and exciting day. Within the next few weeks we hope to finish the installation of the vessels and prepare the brewery for production, a bit later than expected but as a friend commented not long ago, “a couple months behind schedule is like being six months ahead”. We can’t wait to fire up over here and are looking forward to sharing a brew or two with visitors once we’re underway.

Many of you know that Portland is the beer center of the entire world, a bold statement that strengthens every day. People here love craft beer and are showing tremendous support and enthusiasm for what we wish to accomplish here in the basement of the leftbank.

The brewery is currently under construction and coming together beautifully with an expected completion date in late January, at which point we will begin producing special batches of a barrel-aged sour cherry beer, a barrel-aged old ale and a redwood smoked lager in addition to our four farmhouse inspired year-round offerings.

Upright will have a small tasting room with other local beers on tap until our first batches are ready, so we hope that you’ll stop by once we start brewing to say hi and check out our open fermenters in action.

As Oregon Beer Month is culminating in the wonderful Oregon Brewers Festival this weekend, it seems like an exceptionally appropriate time to introduce Upright Brewing Company to the Leftbank website and it’s visitors. more

No confirmation yet, we’re waiting to “cross the t’s and dot the i’s” but Leftbank is well on the way to having an on site craft brewery. Plans call for a small production facility specializing in progressive farmhouse style beer with open tank fermentation. This traditional brewing method will be unique to Portland and captures the essence of the great rustic breweries of France and Belgium. For craft beer enthusiasts there are few things more exciting than watching the vigorous rumble of fermentation in the tank.

Hops for the process are set to come specifically from family operated Oregon farms while the bulk of the brewery’s malt will be certified organic from Great Western Malting in Vancouver Washington. Some of the beers will be matured in used oak barrels secured from local wineries. Many of these special barrel-aged beers will have fresh fruit added during the extended fermentation combined with special yeasts and bacteria to produce beers of exceptional complexity.

Seeing these traditional methods combined with hybrid geek/tech management and utilizing local agriculture is something Leftbank is proud to stand behind, and heck what’s not to love about great beer.