Christian Ettinger

Christian Ettinger founded Hopworks Urban Brewery on the idea that radical sustainability should be commonplace. The organic, Portland, Ore., brewpub has taken environmentalism further than any brewpub in the country. That commitment is being rewarded with packs of loyal customers, and with some heavy beerfest bling. “Somebody’s going to do it,” Ettinger reasons. “Why not us?”

1. Start early
Ettinger began brewing for a purely utilitarian reason: In high school, it’s easier to make your own beer than to have somebody else buy it for you. This flirtation with brewing exploded into full-fledged love after spending a semester in Cologne, Germany. The city’s Kölsch-centric culture enthralled him. When he returned to the University of Oregon, he convinced the business school brass to let him take on a brewing internship. That turned into a full-time job brewing for West Brothers in Eugene—a pub that named Ettinger brewmaster 10 months after he came aboard.

2. Scared? Good
What’s it like getting tossed right into the deep end? “It was scary as hell,” Ettinger says. There were also fundamental design issues at the brewery. He dumped batches, replaced hoses and rebuilt heat exchangers. “You fall on your face, and then you really grow from those experiences. You don’t grow from success.” Ettinger took that education to the American Brewers Guild, and then to Portland’s Laurelwood Brewing Co. Ettinger came into his own during his six years at Laurelwood, capped by a World Beer Cup win for “champion brewmaster in a small brewpub.”

3. Don’t beg. Take control
“I really had to go out on my own,” Ettinger recalls, “because I wanted to take the sustainable organic thing much further than I’d ever seen it taken. My last job, they weren’t even recycling the office paper. It was going to be too big of a struggle to try and change their entire approach, and I didn’t want to have to beg and plead to spend money where I thought it was important.” He left Laurelwood in 2006, and spent the next two years creating the Hopworks space in southeast Portland. “It’s the ‘duh’ business plan,” he jokes. “Pizza, beer and bicycles. It doesn’t get much more obvious.”

4. Learn from failure
What really prepared Ettinger to open Hopworks was seeing Laurelwood’s precursor, the Old World Pub and Brewery, go under 14 months after it debuted. “It was undercapitalization and a lack of sound understanding of good business practices. Not trying to do it all yourself. You’ve got to beat the odds by being very aware. And then, you have to make a place big enough. When you get enough volume, you can afford to pay great people, so that you can keep developing the business. Otherwise, you’re stuck in the day-to-day operation, and the thing never evolves.”

5. Brew uniquely
“I knew what other breweries around town were doing, and I wanted to do something totally different,” Ettinger says. “Take some different styles that nobody else was doing, a different yeast strain that I knew no one, commercially, was using. You change styles, you modify the flavors so they’re very unique.” Hopworks keeps a brawling Strong Ale and a Coffee Stout on tap year-round, and the pub’s Czech Pilsner beat Pilsner Urquell at last year’s World Beer Cup. “When you have that kind of freedom, you let your mind go and have fun with it, and know that your customers are having fun with it, too.”

6. Beer is survival
Survival Stout, an Espresso Stout brewed with barley, wheat, oats, amaranth, quinoa, spelt and Kamut, was born of two trips to opposite ends of the globe. In Botswana, Ettinger drank fresh sorghum beer; on a trek to Machu Picchu, Peru, he had chicha, a spontaneously fermented corn beer. For Ettinger, the two beverages showed “the importance of staple starch sources for different cultures.” He wanted to create inimitable flavors and “pay homage to the major civilizations that have succeeded, and recognize how different cultures have relied on certain key cereals to survive through the millennia.”

7. Give your hops some elbow room
“Hops are a huge opportunity to go crazy,” Ettinger says. To take advantage of that opportunity, Hopworks’ Pale Ale and IPA forego big, dark, sweet malt bills for light colors and dry flavors that let his Pacific Northwest hops shine through. Ettinger’s IPA is built atop Pilsner, Munich and Caramunich malts, with massive amounts of Amarillo, Centennial and Ahtanum in the boil, hop-back and dry hopper. “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.”

8. Put it all together
Once Hopworks finalizes its carbon offsets (which cover Ettinger’s guilty pleasure, Weyermann Caramunich), Ettinger says he’ll be running one of the country’s only carbon-neutral breweries. Sustainability comes in all sizes. Hopworks employs a specially designed, biodiesel-fired brewing kettle. A new biodiesel processor will produce fuel for the brewery kettle, delivery truck and Ettinger’s 40 miles per gallon Volkswagon TDI, which already has straight-veggie-oil conversion. Spent grains are shipped to an organic dairy farm. Rainwater barrels feed hops growing out back. Parking surfaces are permeable. Solar panels will preheat brewing water. Insulation keeps the gas and power bills down. Kitchen waste is composted. There’s plenty of bike parking. “We’re constantly chipping away at it,” he says. “Nobody’s ever put all these things together like we have.”

9. There is no alternative
It only costs Hopworks an extra eight cents per pint to brew with organic malt. “Anybody with a brewpub has no excuse,” he says. “There’s only one [way] to operate, and that’s responsibly. For me, there was never a choice. When I used to swim in the Willamette River, why did my eyes burn when I got out of the water? Why couldn’t you just jump in, like a mountain stream? Man has done his best to take more than his share throughout modern existence. It’s an opportunity to use less than our share, and try and improve the situation, rather than abuse the situation for profit. And, as it turns out, you can actually make money by operating responsibly. Because you attract people who care.” ■