#craftbrewing

Making way for the next batch.

On the wild yeast side of brewing, I combined two barrels and two carboys into one barrel and a keg for the refrigerator today. Also, several weeks ago the 750 ml bottles were primed and stored and I have been checking on the progress since. For the keg, I am keeping CO2 pressure topped off for a few weeks until it is complete. I usually don’t rush carbonation but the conditioned bottles, four weeks later, I can tell the Flanders Red sour ale for the summer is tasty and complete.

Dieu du Ciel, 2017

Upright at Eight

This weekend, Upright Brewing celebrated eight years in a tiny basement of the Leftbank building. It has the same funky brewery smell and cramped quarters as when we first visited. The only indication time has passed is by examining the barrels lining the walls. This time I stood near a particularly well loved cask that had been filled nine times since 2011. 

Despite all the barrels and the encroaching brew kettle, the space and comfortable, homey. A dog pads behind the barman as he changes kegs. Beer nerds peer at the beer fermenting in the backroom. At one picnic table, a group tries to workout the rules of an esoteric card game from the seventies. They pore over the cards and their strange numerals. At another table a baby sleeps in his car seat. 

We went on Sunday, after the official anniversary celebration, but the taps were still stacked with fancy treats – the ever popular Engelberg Pilsener, the cherry infused Four Play, the last keg of 2015′s Fantasia. Sarah got the Schade IPA, an imperial strength hophead’s delight brewed with Ben Schade from Old Salt Marketplace. I went with the Barleywine brewed in late 2014, boiled eight hours, and matured in both rum and bourbon barrels.

Sarah made the more prudent choice. Not because the Barleywine was bad. It was just 13.7% ABV. It’s rich, sweet, and very bitter. This is an old school American barleywine in the tradition of Bigfoot. It’s sticky with both malt and resin. I loved it. But the Schade IPA had layers. It had depth. And it left Sarah more able to converse intelligibly. 

I followed up with a very subtle, very balanced glass of Ives, an unblended lambic-style ale. It’s not spontaneously fermented, but aged with bacteria and yeast harvested from some of the best casks in the cellar. This is what lambic should taste like. It’s been five years since we visited Brussels, the homeland of lambic brewing, but I was immediately transported back to Cantillon. 

Ives is a sour ale, of course, but the acid isn’t punishing. It’s a subtle underripe apple tartness with a gentle squeeze of lemon. It’s only barely carbonated. Ives has endless depths. Everything from fruit skins to old shoes to green grass can be found somewhere in that little glass. I’m excited to see where this experiment goes.

And of course, no anniversary is complete without an Anniversary Saison. Upright’s is a blend of beers aged in four of the brewery’s best barrels – three wine, one gin – with apricot puree. We took a bottle home to enjoy when we – read I – was ready. 

If Upright has a real specialty, it’s these fruit infused, barrel aged, sour ales. The Anniversary Saison really makes that plain. It tastes intensely of fresh apricots, tart and juicy, with a bitter almond core. It’s sharp and bright with woody, botanical undertones. 

I first encountered Upright Brewing six years ago at the PSU Farmer’s Market. They had a booth between a apiarist and a cidery. It was my first introduction to the word saison and the concept of farmhouse brewing. At the time, the very idea of saison and farmhouse brewing was mindblowing. Today, saison is positively mainstream, but Upright remains my favorite farmhouse brewer.