Hopworks Urban Brewery IPA
Hopworks Urban Brewery was the first stop during the one day that we had to spend in Portland, Oregon during our recent cross-country adventure. In preparation for our stop in Portland I had spent time reading blogs about the beer in Portland (Brewpublic is a great one, BTW), following discussions on Beeradvocate, and recalling parts of our previous stay in Portland the year before. All in all, what it came down to was that picking just a few beer-related destinations in Portland was going to be a very, very hard task.
But among the many destinations that drew our attention, Hopworks stood out. Not only did they produce beer with a stellar reputation, but they were leading a trend towards more eco-friendly brewing, and their food had a good reputation as well. So we could hit them up as our first stop, and know that both good beer and good food would be on the menu.
Hopworks is a fairly new brewery, having opened in March of 2008. Since then they’ve earned increasing attention for both their beers and their approach to building a sustainable brewery. They call themselves “Portland’s first Eco-Brewpub”. All of their beers are produced organically, and much of the food that is served in their brewpub uses local and/or organic ingredients.
They’re small, producing about 3000 barrels per year, but turn out a number of beers including a lineup of 6 standard offerings and several seasonal or one-off batches. When we were there they had 12 beers in total on tap, two of which were on cask. Included in the sampler we got were the 6 regulars, a kolsch, a lager, and their Deluxe Organic Ale aged in bourbon barrels. The last was part of their single-barrel series that had been announced just shortly before our arrival, where they are kegging individual casks of barrel-aged beers.
The one thing that stood out as we tasted our way through the sampler was how clear-tasting all of the beers were. Each beer had a distinct and clear set of flavors that really stood out so that each was entirely unique relative to the others. All of them were quite good, and a few, such as the IPA, DOA, and barrel-aged DOA, were very good. In fact, the barrel-aged DOA was really quite remarkable, and warranted an extra glass after the sampler had run its course.
And so we thoroughly enjoyed our long lunch at Hopworks, as we recovered from the relatively brief (4-hours) drive down from La Conner, WA. We had a beer or two, some good sandwiches, and shot a couple of games of pool afterwards. A great time, all things told!
As a memento of our stop we picked up a 22-oz. bottle of their IPA to bring home with us. Hopworks doesn’t have a bottling line of their own, but is was one of the several breweries in the Portland area who contract with Green Bottling to bottle their beers once in a while. I love Green Bottling’s business concept, where they come to your brewery with their mobile bottling line and bottle your beer for you. I’d love to see something like this pop up for the handful of New England brewpubs that don’t bottle their own beer (Cambridge Brewing Company!). The existence and success of such a company is proof to me, yet again, of how incredible a beer culture Portland, Oregon has.
As for Hopworks IPA, it is brewed using Canadian pilsner malt, German Munich and Caramunich malts. The hops include Amarillo, Centennial, and Cascade, the last two classic northwest-IPA hops. The beer is brewed to an original gravity of 1.061 (15 Plato), with 75 IBUs and finishes at 6.6%. Head brewer and founder Christian Ettinger was recently quoted as saying, “It’s a very dynamic beer, but it’s not very bitter. The little bit of malt helps mask some of that bitterness, and allows us to add more hops.”
The IPA pours a slightly hazy, coppery gold, with a striking white head that leaves a thin film on top of the beer. The nose has pine, douglas fir, and citrus hop aromas, and smells like your hands do after rubbing fresh hops between your palms. Along with the hop aromas there is some sweet and bready malt kicking around. The palate opens up with resin and piney hop flavors surrounding your palate and laying down a layer of bitterness. Citrus hop flavors follow this, rounding out the hop profile. The “little bit of malt” is very subdued and plays a distant second fiddle to the hops, most notable in the rounding sweetness it provides. All told, the palate is all about hops, and the malt really does just help to soften their blow. Bitter, but not overwhelmingly. The finish is all hops, with pine resin and bitterness rolling along.
This is a classic northwestern IPA. If you like hoppy IPAs then this is one for you, and (another) one of the reasons that you should move to someplace like Portland where IPAs like this are not as rare as they are out here. There is enough of a malt backbone and structure to keep the beer interesting, while allowing it to achieve its chief goal of delivering loads of hops to your palate.
Hopworks was one of our favorite beer-destinations on the trip, and for good reason. Not only were the beers all excellent, as this one demonstrates (even now, several weeks after our stop), but the brewery just had such a fun character, with the eco-brewing practices, the nice people, and the great space – with old bike frames and seats used as decorations around the brewpub. Even their bottles are pretty awesome, with a graphic of a bike-chain running vertically down the bottle with the phrase “Ride your bike” underneath it. If you ever have the chance, definitely check this place out.
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