Hopworks Celebrates Tenth Anniversary with Salmon-Safe IPA Festival

This post was developed in collaboration with Hopworks Urban Brewery, a supporter of Good Stuff NW.

How does a fantastically successful Portland brewery celebrate its 10th anniversary?

Well, if its founder is Christian Ettinger, it takes a whole year to do it justice. It started with an event in April when he looked back at his roots as a homebrewer, getting his first job as the head brewer of what would become Laurelwood Brewing Company, then, finally, establishing his own Hopworks Urban Brewery in Portland in 2008.

Brewmaster and founder Christian Ettinger.

At that time, his passion for sustainability and the environment was behind the decision to rehab an old industrial building on a moribund strip of a major eastside thoroughfare. It involved rethinking the building's mechanical systems, electrical systems and storm drainage systems from its roof and parking lots, as well as the use of water, the main ingredient in making beer. Critical to its function but a source of much waste in the industry, Hopworks now only uses 3.39 gallons of water per gallon of its finished product, compared with an industry average of more than seven gallons per gallon of beer.

This focus on systems led Ettinger in 2015 to seek out certification as a B-Corp, a designation that “uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems.” Hopworks became only the seventh brewery in the world to earn that designation. Later that same year, Hopworks was the first brewery site in the country to achieve Salmon-Safe certification, an eco-label based on an assessment that considered the site’s stormwater management, water use, chemical and pesticide reduction, water quality protection and enhancement of urban ecological function.

Which leads to the second part of the year-long celebration, the first annual Salmon-Safe IPA Festival being held at the brewery on Saturday, August 25th.

The festival began taking shape when Hopworks issued a challenge to 35 craft breweries across the country to make an IPA-style beer using only Salmon-Safe certified ingredients. More than 20 breweries from some of the largest in the country to some of the smallest accepted and were given a list of farmers who produce beer-related ingredients.

“We’re excited to be able to use our skills as brewers to bring attention to what’s going to be the single greatest issue facing humanity in the next decade,” Ettinger said.

“We want to really inspire brewers to ask the questions and make the move toward sustainable sourcing,” he continued. “Salmon-Safe is a first step for sustainable farming, and it’s a gateway to organics.”

Dan Kent, co-founder and Executive Director of Salmon-Safe, said the festival is also a celebration of the hop growers and malt producers who have worked hard to ensure that their farming practices use water efficiently and don’t negatively affect nearby waterways. He said the craft beer industry became a focus for his organization when it found that 90 percent of all hops grown in the United States comes from two salmon watersheds—one in the Willamette Valley and the other in central Washington near Yakima.

“Hopworks has been the champion for Salmon-Safe in the region,” Kent said, and he’s excited at the prospect of working with breweries that may not have been aware of the certification previously.

Gayle Goschie in the hopyard at Goschie Farms.

That appreciation of Hopworks extends to many of the growers who have worked with Ettinger over the years, including Gayle Goschie of Goschie Farms, the first hop grower in the country to be certified as Salmon-Safe.

“From day one I have been impressed with Hopworks’ focus on sustainability and the lightness of its footprint,” Goschie said. She has found that awareness of the availability and quality of Salmon-Safe ingredients has grown from those early days to the point that now brewers are requesting certified hops to use in their beers.

For Ettinger, his involvement with Salmon-Safe and clean water goes back to his childhood growing up in the Willamette Valley.

Chinook salmon from the Willamette.

“I spent a ton of time as a kid swimming in the Willamette and the Tualatin [rivers] and you tried not to open your mouth when you jumped in,” he said. He remembers asking himself why it was so gross, eventually coming to the realization that agriculture and industry had thoroughly ruined these waterways.

“Here we’ve got this abundance of water,” he said, “And in the last hundred years man’s done a pretty good job of destroying this most precious natural resource, and it’s up to us to reverse that.”

“I’m honored to use the power of beer to propel the message,” Ettinger said of his reason for having the festival as part of Hopworks’ anniversary celebration. “Beer is fun, it’s social, it’s light. It’s our task to keep the storytelling simple and meet people where they’re at, make the resources available for them to take the deep dive. But what more fun space to shake the tree and get a little more environmentally aware than over a beer?”

But his not-so-secret agenda?

“This is the world’s first ever Salmon-Safe invitational beer festival with the sole subject being how do we change the world through water and through responsible sourcing,” he said.

Cheers to that.

Purchase tickets for the Salmon Safe IPA Festival on Saturday, August 25.

Photo of Gayle Goschie from USDA "Women in Ag" interview. Photo of Chinook salmon from Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife.

Want to Reverse Climate Change? Have a Beer!

This blog post was developed in collaboration with Hopworks Urban Brewery, a supporter of Good Stuff NW, though the words are all my own.

Oddly enough, it all started a year-and-a-half ago when Christian Ettinger, owner of Hopworks Urban Brewery in Portland, thought he was being pranked. He was at the grocery store with his family when his phone rang. Stopping mid-aisle to answer it, the voice on the other end said he was calling from Patagonia Provisions and that the company would like to discuss making a beer with Hopworks.

"It was a surreal moment because it was hard to believe that a company that I look up to as a business owner had just dialed my number and asked to make a beer with us," Ettinger recalled. "That week we met up and our team learned about Kernza for the first time."

Kernza.

Patagonia Provisions had singled out Hopworks not just because both companies are B Corps, companies certified to have met rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency, but both have a mission of sourcing organic and sustainable ingredients as much as possible.

Patagonia Provisions itself is dedicated to supporting a farming method known as "organic regenerative agriculture"—one that restores soil biodiversity, sequesters carbon and grows crops efficiently without chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Better yet, this method keeps harmful effluents out of the environment, improving the health of surrounding communities and the people in it. Call it organic farming with benefits.

Kernza has an impressive root system.

Kernza wheat fits into this picture because, as a perennial crop, it doesn't have to be replanted every year like other types of wheat. That means it allows long-term storage of carbon dioxide in the soil (called carbon sequestration), rather than releasing it into the air when the soil is plowed each year. Because Kernza lives on from harvest to harvest, its roots can grow to 10 feet in length and are so efficient that the plant needs much less water that other strains of wheat. These long roots also help to reduce erosion by stabilizing the soil, and the plant itself absorbs more atmospheric carbon than annual grains and thrives without the use of pesticides.

Originally a Eurasian forage grass called intermediate wheatgrass (Thinopyrum intermedium), a grass species related to wheat, it was selected by researchers at the Rodale Institute and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as a promising perennial grain candidate. In 2003, The Land Institute, which works to develop staple foods without compromising cultural and ecological systems, took the grain into its traditional breeding program—think Mendel's peas rather than genetic engineering—and began selecting for traits like yield, disease resistance and seed size.

Hopworks production manager Justin Miller.

Calling it Kernza, which was registered as a trademark to protect the name from being applied to other strains, the institute then began talking with its partners about commercial uses for the grain. Patagonia Provisions stepped up and, with the idea of making a beer from the grain, brought in Ettinger and his team from Hopworks to start formulating a beer.

"It was very exciting for us," Justin Miller, Hopworks production manager, said of the opportunity to be the first to work with the organic, sustainable grain. "It very much fits into what we do here at Hopworks."

Indeed, Hopworks is the first commercial brewer to make a beer using Kernza as an ingredient. Miller said it took eight test barrels—at 31 gallons to the barrel, that's more than 240 gallons of tests—and much, much tasting to finally come up with a beer that the teams at both Hopworks and Patagonia Provisions were happy with. Hopworks even went so far as to put a test batch on draft at its Portland pubs, so if you had a pint of Prohibition Double Secret Ale, you got an early taste of it.

The final product.

The final product, dubbed Long Root Ale, contains 15 percent Kernza along with organic two-row barley, organic yeast and a blend of organic Chinook, Mosaic and Crystal hops. The flavor is that of a classic Northwest-style pale ale, a bit peppery with a balanced, clean finish and a sessionable 5.5 percent alcohol-by-volume.

It's being rolled out at most Whole Foods markets up and down the West Coast, and while Hopworks is the first to use Kernza to make beer, Ettinger is convinced the grain has a promising future in the industry.

"Kernza is really paving the way for future discussions about other commodity grains that we use to brew," he said. "As organic brewers we are really excited about the ‘grain to glass’ model, and Long Root Ale is just that."

Top photo by Chad Brigman. Photo of Kernza roots by Jim Richardson.

B Corp Certification for Hopworks Brewery

On the eve of its seventh anniversary, Hopworks Urban Brewery, the only all-organic brewery in Oregon—and one of the few in the U.S.—has also become the first brewery in the Northwest to achieve B Corp Certification. It's only the seventh brewery in the world to earn the designation for using the "power of business to solve social and environmental problems."

Owner Christian Ettinger.

Oregon is fortunate to have 47 businesses so designated, out of more than 1,000 certified businesses in 60 industries in 34 countries. In other words, for a single state, we're doing quite well. In its application for certification, Hopworks detailed its practices, such as using "USDA Certified Organic and Salmon-Safe Certified ingredients in beer, giving of 1% of Powell brew pub pint sales to local charitable organizations, providing organic and local pub fare, maintaining 100% carbon neutral operations and a zero-waste initiative."

But wait, there's more: the brewery has installed a system to drastically cut its use of water. At a current rate of 3.39 gallons of water to produce a gallon of beer, it's using less than half the industry average.

I think we can all raise a glass to that achievement and toast founder Christian Ettinger and his crew for their efforts. We'd expect no less!

Hopworks to World: Can It!

This man is Christian Ettinger. He owns a  brewery call Hopworks. Christian is happy. Very happy. Because he's achieved a big dream. A dream to put his beer in cans.

It was a dream that had to wait a long time. Wait until cans could keep his beer as perfect as the day it went into the can. Perfect from the instant you pop the top and take that first sip right up to the moment you drain it.

You'll find cans of Hopworks lager and IPA in local stores by this weekend. Which will make Christian even happier. Maybe happy enough that he'll make more beer and put it in cans. Which would make lots of Portland beer drinkers happy. Very happy.

Note: It's a can that also has a secret trick you can do with it. See the little red dot down at the bottom? The one that says, "Drink Responsibly"? It happens to be in just the right spot to shotgun the can of beer. But I wouldn't advise that, and neither would the brewery. No sir. It wouldn't be responsible.

Found: A Piece of Beervana History

We used to be big garage sale fans. Dave would scour the paper early Saturday morning, circling his picks in the classifieds, with those offering tools or, especially old woodworking planes, in bright red ink. After a cup of coffee I'd take a crack at the ads and we'd map our route to get to as many of our best picks within the couple of hours of precious weekend time we could devote to the hunt.

In the last few years we've slacked off, realizing that at this point we need to get rid of stuff rather than accumulate it. Though once in a great while we'll come across a treasure that just can't be passed up.

This morning Dave came home from running errands with a real find. Stopping at a sale in the Hollywood area, he noticed some brewpub growlers sitting on a table. One in particular stopped him dead in his tracks. On the front was a sticker announcing it was from Old World Pub & Brewery, an early but short-lived brewery and café that was taken over by Mike DeKalb's nascent Laurelwood Brewing.

We'd gone to Old World to check it out and, while the food was uneven, its beers were spectacular, the work of a young and then-unknown brewer by the name of Christian Ettinger. When Old World morphed into Laurelwood, Ettinger stayed with the company, developing an award-winning array of hop-forward beers that would help define the Northwest style of brewing. As most beer fans know, he left Laurelwood after several years to start his own Hopworks Urban Brewery (HUB), an all-organic brewpub and café on SE Powell, opening the Hopworks BikeBar on North Williams this summer.

The woman who was giving the garage sale rolled her eyes when Dave handed over his money and, pointing at the growler, said, "Portland brewing history!" But, needless to say, he's beside himself with excitement over his treasure, and can't wait to take it to Hopworks and get it filled. The question is, will they notice?

One Nation Under Ale

Sorry to say it, but Fred Arnmisen and Carrie Brownstein's show "Portlandia" doesn't really do the city justice, though, as a comedy of manners and quirks, it can be occasionally amusing. The novel by Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia, comes closer in describing the sustainable utopia that emerges when the states of Oregon, Washington and the northern half of California secede from the United States.

Another effort brands the bio-region that stretches down the West Coast from Alaska to Baja Mexico as Salmon Nation, and we've all heard about the Pacific Rim, a socioeconomic designation for the countries bordering the Pacific Ocean.

Christian Ettinger of Hopworks has borrowed from the independence movement dubbed Cascadia, defined as the territory extending from British Columbia south to Oregon, and created the official beer of the revolution. Called Secession, it is "characterized by an alliance of Northwest hop flavors as formidable as the Cascade Mountain range." Organic and sustainably produced, it's made, as it says on the label, with "malts as dark as a moonless night" and is available in bottles at most stores that carry Hopworks' beers.

But I'd encourage you to get a few friends together, head to a pub that has it on tap and toast what could be a very tasty, not to mention timely, revolution.

Details: Hopworks Secession Cascadian Dark Ale. Available in bottles at retail outlets and at Hopworks Brewery, 2944 SE Powell Blvd. 503-232-4677.

HUB-date: Open At Last!

Had to take a beer break and give you the great news that Christian Ettinger's Hopworks Urban Brewery opened yesterday to throngs of happy hop-heads. So pent-up was the anticipation that by early evening they'd filled to capacity and there was a half-hour wait just to get in the door! And Christian was worried that no one would show up on opening day...

We got a table in the corner with a great view of the amazing bike-frame sculpture over the bar and ordered our first round from the selection of ten beers on tap plus two on cask. Christian came by and informed us that their two cask taps would always have the IPA and the other would rotate with seasonals. The incredible Kentucky Christmas ale, their Abominable Winter Ale aged in freshly emptied Kentucky bourbon barrels, is on now and has to be tasted to be believed. Rich, dry and completely quaffable, it's on my list of great brews.

One of the party got the sampler tray that featured eight beers, six of their regular brews with two seasonals, and all were outstanding. Though Christian isn't known for making flavored beers, his Survival Seven-Grain Stout, finished with 15 pounds of cold-pressed Stumptown Hairbender espresso, is a must-have. The rest, ranging from a pale ale to their ESB, are all, as expected, well-made and among the best you'll find in this beer-crazy town.

And the food? Well, I've been saying that what Portland needs is a pub with outstanding beer and outstanding food and, at this point, I'd have to say Hopworks' pub grub is at the top of the heap. We tried the papas fritas and the chicken wings from the very reasonably priced happy hour menu and found them excellent, the fried potatoes crisp on the outside and tender inside and the wings juicy and spicy.

We also ordered two pizzas, one a sausage and pepperoni combo and the other a feta and artichoke heart pie, and both came out piping hot and delicious. And despite the crush of customers, the staff was efficient and responsive, keeping us well-supplied and happy. The beer and the food disappeared in no time, and we were making plans to return when the HUB-bub dies down a bit.

Details: Hopworks Urban Brewery, 2944 SE Powell Blvd. Phone 503-232-4677.