New beers

Today we kegged an American-style IPA. For real. 

I can't tell you how many times I've heard, "I love the fact that Upright doesn't make a bunch of IPA's and other over-hopped beers", or something to that effect. The truth is that the brewers here love hoppy beers, and half the time we're out at the bar you're likely to catch us drinking a pint of Pale Strider or Hop Lava. So after more than three years and hundreds of brews, we decided it was finally time to have some fun and make a good old IPA. No twists, no odd processing or ingredients, just a grip of pale malt, pinch of vienna and special roast and plenty of nugget, columbus and santiam hops. We snagged a pitch of yeast from a brewery down the street and let it rip in our conical fermenter. I'm drinking my first glass of it as I write this. Smells and tastes like it should, with an extra long and bitter finish. We don't normally use such resiny hop varieties and it's great to sense the extra oils as part of the mouthfeel. If you're looking for the beer, it goes under the name Supercool, taken from one of our favorite comedy sketches by the Upright Citizens Brigade. 7.3% and 65 IBU's.

Besides the Supercool IPA we've got another one-off draft beer in the works - an amber Bavarian-style hefeweizen. Last year for the Oregon Brewers Festival we produced an openly fermented extra pale version that reminded us how delicious hefe beers are, and lately I've been quaffing my fair share of the excellent Occidental Hefeweizen. After getting the bug to do one here again, I decided to go the amber route, similar to Schneider Weisse, just to mix it up some. That should get brewed next week and be out and about only a few weeks later as they tend to ferment and condition quickly. By then the weather should be more appropriate, right?

Another thing I'd like to point out is that the brewery just had its website redesigned by former tasting room darling Annalou Vincent. It's 95% done at this point, with some minor changes to the formatting and photos likely to happen over the next few weeks. I hope it will be easier to navigate and find information (besides being easier for me to update) and simply look better too. What do you think? Annalou, who moved back to her hometown of Bellingham Washington just opened a fantastic new joint named cheese meat(s) beer with her talented partner Travis Surmi. If you find yourself up their way, stop by!