What is open fermentation?
- Open fermentation simply refers to vessels with no top or lid in which beer ferments. This is a historic departure from modern conical tanks that have been common in beer production for decades now. Conical tanks are favored for the safety their closed designs offer from a microbiological standpoint, and also their ease of yeast harvesting which is taken from the bottom post-fermentation. With open vessels, yeast can be harvested in its best form from the top at peak fermentation, only a few days in. This top-cropped yeast is always in prime form, allowing the beer produced in subsequent batches to shine.
 
Are there other benefits to open fermentation?
- Yes, the small height to width ratio of our open fermenters favors a profile with softer phenols and a wider ester range, ultimately yielding beers with great nuance and expression. Over the years we’ve found this to be true with nearly every yeast strain, although not all yeasts are appropriate for the open vessels as many do not form a layer that can be harvested for future batches.
 
What yeasts do you use in the open fermenters?
- Most of our openly fermented beers use a combination of two Belgian yeast strains. We start the first generation with a 65/35 split and try to maintain that over the course of roughly 12 generations, but there is certainly some degree of variability. Each strain has specific characteristics that we feel combine to create our house character.
 
Which Upright beers are open fermented?
- The Saison Vert, Supercool IPA, Pathways Saison, and many one-off and seasonal beers are produced in one of our three open fermenters.
 
Can I go inside the open fermentation room?
- Normally we don’t allow anyone in the open fermentation room, and today won’t be an exception.
 
What is bottle conditioning?
- Bottle conditioning is a process in which beer is packaged still (without carbonation) with the addition of fresh yeast and a sugar solution, allowing a fermentation to happen in the bottle. Fermentation creates carbon dioxide, and because the gas has nowhere to go in a sealed container, it dissolves into the beer, carbonating it naturally over a short period, typically two weeks. Bottle conditioning is surprisingly rare in modern craft beer production, where the common practice is to force carbonate by injecting CO2 into the beer while still in tank, then packaging it. The subject of bottle conditioning is a long and complicated matter, but the most important point is that it makes for beer that will develop with time - a truly living beverage with evolving nuances and very well suited to the styles of beer we like to produce. At Upright every bottle is conditioned.
 
When was my beer bottled?
- Packaging dates are always stamped on the case boxes and represent the bottling day when conditioning begins. Most beers aren’t released for anywhere between two weeks to several months after that date.
 
What does the vintage year indicate?
- Seasonal beers we feel are appropriate for cellaring have a vintage year on the back label. The vintage year notes when the beer was bottled and not necessarily brewed or released. For instance, the 2016 vintage Fantasia was brewed in 2015 with peaches from that summer’s harvest and released in 2017.
 
Should I age my beer?
- As stated above, seasonals that are good candidates for aging have a vintage year on the label. We always feel that our beers are ready to be enjoyed once released and will condition them in-house as long as that takes. Some beers will evolve nicely well beyond that but we suggest drinking most within one year.
 
What are farmhouse-style ales?
- There’s an irony in trying to categorize something that defies categorization, but there’s also merit in giving people unfamiliar with that same something a starting point for their own exploration. Farmhouse-style beers are a recent label for styles that cover an enormous range, with history that dates back over one hundred years. The best way to learn is through experience by tasting examples, but there are two noteworthy books that do an excellent job covering them. One is Farmhouse Ales by Phil Markowski, and the other is The Secrets of Master Brewers by Jeff Alworth. In that book Jeff has a great chapter on rustic French ales that really speaks to us here at Upright.
 
Where do you source your fruit?
- The majority of our fruit comes from Baird Family Orchards. Over the years this has included several varieties of peaches, nectarines, apricots, and cherries. We also produce a beer in collaboration with Patton Valley Vineyard using their pinot noir grapes, and have worked with John House of Ovum Wines on a beer with southern Oregon gewürztraminer.
 
Why is Supercool IPA so tasty?
- What sets the beer apart are two unique processing elements: a cool, open fermentation with saison yeasts, and a special dry hopping accomplished with a HopBob.
 
HopBob – what’s that?
- The HopBob was developed by Upright brewer Bobby Birk. It’s a custom built perforated metal basket that allows us to dry hop the Supercool while still active in the open fermenter. The beer passes through the basket under its own natural movement, making plenty of contact with the hops. The unique flavors and aromas extracted by the HopBob combine with the unique fermentation method to create a profile with attractive depth versus a one-note character. In the Supercool you may find notes of cedar, tangerine, dusty lemon, diesel, tropical fruit, white pepper, under-ripe apricot, and more.
 
I love the Engelberg Pilsener. Can you tell me more about it?
- Absolutely. The Engelberg was first produced in early 2010. At that time few locally produced lager beers were available, so we decided to make our own, mostly because German style pils was something we wanted to drink ourselves. It found a place in the market and became our first mainstay outside of farmhouse-esque beers. The Engelberg hasn’t changed much over time. The recipe revolves around an authentic yeast strain and Oregon grown hops, and for several years we used a French pils malt. We’ve always been happy with the beer but decided in early 2018 to revise it with newly available ingredients, namely a different strain of yeast and a pils malt grown in Idaho.
 
What’s the story with the Frequencies Series?
- When the brewery started in 2009, many of our first one-off beers became annual releases. Over time we’ve dropped some of those to make room for new ones, but there are also beers that we don’t necessarily intend to produce more than once, or perhaps they’re trials for beers that may later become regularly released. The Frequencies Series is simply a label theme for these one-offs. Each one features artwork relating to sound waves by designer Lloyd Winter.
 
Is the Ives label a series too?
- The Ives is a beer we put out occasionally under no set schedule, and with some degree of variability from batch to batch. It’s typically a blend of three to five casks taken from a lot of over 20 that have the same base beer, a barrel fermented raw wheat ale with an unusual mash regime intended to draw out the fermentation slowly. We taste the barrels from time to time and will come up with a blending plan based on these tastings. That may lead to a basic blend of only Ives casks, or it may include other beers we have aging, particularly ones with fruit that can lend a contrasting layer to the wheat forward Ives base. Each release will have a similar label inspired by the great American composer Charles Ives, with a short description on the back and a blend number up front.
 
Pathways Saison is year round? No way!
- It’s true. Being a small batch beer with only 25 or so casks in rotation, we’re still able to allocate it so that bottles are available year round and you can find it on tap full time in the brewery tasting room and our affiliated pub, the Grain and Gristle in NE Portland.
 
How much beer is barrel aged at Upright?
- There are roughly 150 oak casks that we use, some of which date back to the very beginning. Casks that continue yielding tasty profiles are given extra attention and may be part of the brewery indefinitely. The bulk of our barrels contain the Four Play, Pathways Saison, or Ives, three beers we feel embody our house character, while the rest of our barrels have a variety of annual releases or one-off projects.
 
How big is the brewery?
- Upright does small volume, with annual production typically around 1000 bbls. The brewery was envisioned as a hands-on producer from the onset, with all the details such as equipment, layout, processes, et cetera, all revolving around that. For instance, the mash tun is sized to be mixed with a simple paddle, the open fermenters are cleaned by hand with nothing but a brush, and the bottling line is completely manual, just to name a few examples. We feel that a hands-on approach is fitting for a brewery focused on historically styled beers and also enjoy working that way.  
 
Will Upright ever expand?
- Nope
 
How did you get the equipment down there?
- This is a very common question from people who visit. The brewery is in the basement of the Leftbank building, originally built as the Hazelwood in 1923. Our build out began in 2008 and one of the challenges was getting the brewhouse, fermenters, and conditioning tanks inside. Most of them came in through a rollup door on the SW corner of the building, slid carefully down a wide flight of stairs, and then carted across the basement horizontally into the brewery. Some vessels came through a different path that is more difficult to explain, but the important part is that they made it.
 
Why did the brewery end up in such an unconventional location?
- The original plan was to find an inexpensive site on the outskirts of the city. The opportunity to be in the Leftbank came about when someone working with the building’s owner overheard a conversation between myself and a friend regarding the search for a spot. She leaned over and asked, “so you’re looking for a place to build a brewery?”, and the rest is history. A fun note about that story is that it was just up the street, on the patio of Amnesia Brewing when they were on Mississippi ave.
 
Why isn’t the tasting room open everyday?
- It’s easier for us to focus on production by not being open seven days a week.

I have a question not answered above, who should I send it to?
- Alex at uprightbrewing@gmail.com