Upright — Outtasight!

I have to go to work tomorrow.

Mondays are bad enough anyway, but after a blissful week off, they are especially rough.  Although this blissful week was interrupted with a stupid cold, my plan of doing pretty much nothing was only slightly tarnished by constant nose-blowing and the occasional coughing fit.

I decided to celebrate my last day of freedom by enjoying an Upright Five.  No, this isn’t some advanced yoga maneuver (if you knew me at all you’d know how ridiculous THAT sounds).  Five is a beer from Upright Brewing out of Portland, Oregon.

Upright’s main mission is combining Belgian and French farmhouse brewing techniques with ingredients as closely sourced to their Pacific Northwest location as possible.  They use a proprietary Belgian-style yeast and brew using open-top fermenters, which allow any wild yeasts floating around to add their little bits of complexity.

And the name?  Upright produces a series of year-round “numbered” beers, Four through Seven.  Each number refers to each beer’s starting gravity, or the measure of how much sugar the beer has before it is fermented.  As they say it, their naming convention “is a nod to the days when breweries solely distributed to their respective neighborhoods with nothing but a number on the cap to distinguish the beers.”

Five is the hoppiest of their offerings.  The Belgian-style yeast imparts the banana and clove notes common to the style, and also gives it a pillowy white head when poured.  The sweetness is effectively balanced by a zippy, peppery bitter hop finish.  Although they’d never use the term, a more apt description would be a Belgian-style Pale Ale.  A very well done one, at that.

Aside from the year-round offerings, Upright also produces seasonal brews showcasing all sorts of techniques, from using seasonal ingredients and different yeasts, to blending and barrel aging.  If you see one at your local fine bottle shop, grab it.  It probably won’t be there long.

*sigh*  Back to work.  Maybe I’m suffering a relapse…