Interview: Upright Brewing founder Alex Ganum

  • Home
  • Beer
  • Interview: Upright Brewing founder Alex Ganum
Craft Beer Portland

Photo courtesy of Alex Ganum

INTERVIEW CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE

What’s the criteria for a beer that you brew at Upright?

A bunch of different things. We have a handful of beers that we brew year round, tinker with and make them better, changing ingredients, but seasonal beers or one-off beers, it’s the same as the annual beers. We make tweaks for fun or if we think we can get a better direction or try new things. If we see a tank’s going to be empty next week, we definitely focus on beers we enjoy drinking at the bar.

Does it make your job easier or harder to have so many other craft breweries in Portland?

I think it’s easier. We have a lot of breweries, because there’s a really big audience here. It’s just a big thing between the breweries and audience. To isolate them from each would be weird. Competition’s not a huge issue out here anyway because there are so many people looking for beers. Most craft beer drinkers aren’t so brand loyal that they won’t drink other breweries’ beers.

What was the most recent beer that you brewed, and what was your approach?

Our most recent beer we did was for Cheers for Belgian Beers, where all the breweries used the same strain of Belgian yeast. We made Belgian stout and left it on the cooler side so it wouldn’t be too fruity. We got coffee from a local roaster, Heart Coffee Roasters, so a lot of the subtlety in the coffee came through in the beer.

What’s your top selling beer, and why do you think that’s the case?

Locally, we sell draught wise a lot of German style pilsner called Engelberg. It’s a really easy drinking beer that bars and restaurants like, because there’s not too much in the way of local pilsners available. Otherwise it depends on time of the year. Our wheat beer, the Four, does well for us in July and August. In the wintertime it really evens out quite a bit.

Who’s a brewer you’ve never brewed with before that you’d most like to brew with?

Oh gosh, I really like Ron Jeffries over there at Jolly Pumpkin. I drink his beers whenever possible. They’re really quirky. They have a lot of character and individuality. I also like a lot of simple pub beers, low alcohol, simple stuff, and a lot of brewers are doing that stuff, and I go see them every week and hang out.

What music do you like to listen to while brewing?

We usually have music on that has a lot of horns. The brewery’s loud, so it takes horns for it to come through, stuff like louder jazz, punk, soul, stuff like that.

Where and what do you like to drink when you’re not working?

Everything. Everything. I really like wine, booze and cocktails. We have a lot of distilleries popping up out here, which is super cool. I mix it up when I go out drinking. Drinking wine, I stick with mostly Washington, Oregon, and California wines, but I also go with French stuff too. There are some really killer French wines out there, especially the whites.

If you could travel to any city in the world right now, primarily to drink beer, what city would it be and how come?

Probably Düsseldorf because we’re going to brew an altbier for the Oregon Brewers Festival and I wouldn’t mind sucking down a bunch of altbiers to figure out to make it. And it would be cool to go to Düsseldorf, regardless of whether or not we were making that beer.

If you could only drink one more beer, and you couldn’t brew it, what would it be and why?

Jeeze. I’ve got hefe on my mind these days, maybe a really fresh Schneider-Weisse sounds really good. I’d like a liter of it.

Address: 240 North Broadway, Portland, OR 97227
Tags:

Joshua Lurie

Joshua Lurie founded FoodGPS in 2005. Read about him here.

Leave a Comment