Beer Sherp Recommends: Ft. George Overdub Session IPA

The idea of a session IPA is irresistible: all the intense flavor and aroma from a traditional IPA without all the booze (and calories, if you care about that). The problem is that they're hard to make. With a standard IPA, brewers have a very solid foundation to work with--lots of malt body and often a touch of caramel flavor--onto which they can build stories and stories (or layers) of hop bitterness, flavor, and aroma. The sweetness and body provided by the malt make it possible to nuke the beer with hops and have the whole thing work.

Session IPAs, on the other hand, are often too thin, or the hops are too bitter, or they lack the intensity you get from a proper IPA. I love the idea, and I order them anytime I see them on a taplist (in the past six months my session IPA consumption outpaces regular IPAs by perhaps four to one). Very rarely am I satisfied by the result. I thought Harpoon's Take Five, mashed in at 161 degrees for maximum body, was spectacular (it was also one of the first I had, setting unreasonable expectations). There have been others that were good, but only one that hits all the marks.

I first had Fort George's Overdub in a can at the Hollywood Theater. I forget the movie, but the beer--whoo boy, that was memorable. Last week I stopped in at the brewery when I was in Astoria, and found the draft version even more delightful. The perfume of tropical fruit, as sticky and fresh as if I were standing in a jungle, billowed from the glass. The flavors followed the aroma, and were supported by just enough bitterness to give them structure and bite--but there was a fine body to support everything (fine to the extent a 4.5% beer can manage). It was that unicorn of balance and intensity in a tiny package. I was tempted to drink 14.

This beer is apparently a seasonal (Big Guns, Fort George's regular-lineup session IPA, is nowhere near as vivid), so seek it out and purchase with alacrity. 

_______________________
"Beer Sherpa Recommends" is an irregular feature. In this fallen world, when the number of beers outnumber your woeful stomach capacity by several orders of magnitude, you risk exposing yourself to substandard beer. Worse, you risk selecting substandard beer when there are tasty alternatives at hand. In this terrible jungle of overabundance, wouldn't it be nice to have a neon sign pointing to the few beers among the crowd that really stand out? A beer sherpa, if you will, to guide you to the beery mountaintop. I don't profess to drink all the beers out there, but from time to time I stumble across a winner and when I do, I'll pass it along to you.

All the New Beers

Several years ago, the Oregon Brewers Guild launched Zwickelmania as a way of bridging over the doldrums of late winter.  Mission accomplished.  I have been absolutely inundated with new beer releases, and many of them are keyed to release on Z-day.  (Which is cool, because whether you're a rank newbie who has only recently learned that beer is made from barley or an advanced stage beer geek who knows the varying character of Wyeast 3711 when fermented at 65 versus 80 degrees, there's a reason to go check out the Zwickel events.)  I have endeavored to sample as many of these as possible, so here's a quick and dirty rundown.

Oakshire Hellshire IV

The annual release of Hellshire has become a big deal for the no-longer little brewery from Eugene.  It comes along with its own fest, which is studded with tons of beers from around the country.  The centerpiece is Matt Van Wyk's barrel aged strong ale, of which there are but a mere 120 cases.  This year's vintage should be in especially high demand; the 2013 Hellshire took gold in the coveted barrel-aged category at the GABF.

Hellshire is a blend mainly of Very Ill-Tempered Gnomes that were aged in bourbon and rye barrels.  There's some rum-aged barley wine in there and a dab of unbarrel imperial stout.  "We're doing a lot of blending and not worrying about style," he said.  "We grab an old ale, a barleywine, an imperial stout."  I found it curious that Matt blends different styles of beer, but apparently this is a thing.  (More evidence of my slow-moving antiquity.)  It's a slightly murky nut-colored beer with a boozy-sweet aroma.  The booze is gentle on the tongue, though, and the beer has a dessert-like quality, rich with chocolate and caramel.  The liquor tracks more like rum than bourbon to me.

The only way you can be assured of getting a bottle is by heading to Eugene.  Hellshire Day looks to be a treat, though, so the trip ought to be worth it.  All the details are here.

Fort George Java the Hop
A bit more than one year ago, I spent my birthday weekend in Astoria, hiking during the day, drinking beer in the evening.   Fort George was pouring a beer I thought was going to be a disaster--a coffee IPA--but was the opposite.  The nose had lots of coffee with a bit of green hoppy underlayment, but then miraculously, the two harmonized in the mouth.  The coffee only inflected the IPA, which was less hoppy than the usual Fort George beer, and the earthy, aromatic notes perfectly complemented the hops.  Java the Hop is back this year in a can, so you can see the effect.  Unfortunately, this year's batch is not quite as perfectly balanced.  The coffee is a bit too assertive, and the flavors compete in the mouth.  (It is a lot prettier; last year's batch looked like pond water.)  Still, my judgment is affected by expectation, and you should definitely give it a try. 

Widmer Upheaval
I'll have more on the making of this beer in a subsequent post, but I wanted to bookmark it here.  Upheaval is the new year-round IPA, and it coincides with the brewery's 30th anniversary.  Appropriately, it has a grist very similar to Hefeweizen, with 40% wheat.  It's a nice way of underscoring the brewery's long history with wheaty American beers.  It's a modern IPA, though, with tons of late-addition hops, and a light, delicate palate.  Widmer has really dialed in their house flavor, so that in-house Alchemy blend lets you know it's a Widmer beer.  I also want to mention that Columbia Common is back out for a second year.  It's small, delicate, and not show-offy, so it's not going to set geek palates on fire.  It's an excellent beer, though, and a great session for, say, watching the Olympics.

Breakside
Breakside has--shocker!--a flurry of new beers.  Last night, brewer Ben Edmunds was showing off the latest saison, called, with tongue firmly in cheek, Suburban Farmhouse Ale.  (Their friends at the Commons brew Urban Farmhouse Ale.)  Jokes the brewery:

Traditionally, Suburban Ales were brewed in garages and backyards in urban middle-class neighborhoods of America. These beers were born out of expendable income and free time as good commercial beer was readily available and affordable. Our rendition was developed in the spirit of that noble tradition. The beer pours with a copper hue and an aroma of freshly mown grass and old copies of Willamette Week Beer Guides.

Nice. They used the French farmhouse yeast strain and hopped it with Australian Topaz.  Ben said the info they had described the hop as having juniper, "Mediterranean Sea" (because Black Sea is just gross), forest floor, apricot, and a few other strange notes.  The juniper is what really comes through--I thought it was a gin-barrel saison.  You can pick up a bit of the sea too, if you're suggestible and look hard enough.

They also have a barrel-aged strong ale called Elder Statesman made with rye-aged barley wine (80%) and a bourbon-aged strong golden.  It is creamy, rich, and very smooth.  Finally, Breakside has bottles of Caramel Salt Stout, which is just what it sounds like.  They caramelized some sugar and added that to the grist and then dosed it with some salt.  The salt is a subtle but evident note, but the caramel could easily just be a component within the stout.  It works and may be my pick of the three.

That's in no way an exhaustive list.  Alan Taylor has made the old new again at Pints by brewing a bitterbier--you know them as India Pale Lagers--called XL-5 Experimental Lager, complete with "hop stuffing" (dry-hopping); Double Mountain has released their two Krieks in bottles (and they also have a 2.6% small beer at the pub); Gigantic just did a five-cask release of Bang On! with different hops in the casks (though they're probably all gone now); Portland Brewing, doing its best to rally in the minds of locals, has the spring release of Rose Hip Gold; and Abram Goldman-Armstrong's new project, Cider Riot, just released their first cider.  More on that on Saturday.

Astoria in June

Better than Paris, France.

You may dream of a summer trip to the Champs-Élysées, with repasts of vino and baguette and views of the Seine, but give me a paper plate of Bowpicker's and a pint of beer at the mouth of the mighty Columbia.  Views of the Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower?  I prefer to rest my gaze on the majesty of grain barges.  Twice in the past two weeks did I visit Oregon's old town, but the second is the one you'll be interested in: I and a gaggle of writers toured Fort George on the occasion of the release of their 3-Way IPA, a collaboration with Lompoc and Gigantic.

We also got a tour of both breweries--the old wee one you can see at the back of the pub and the new 30-barrel system across the parking lot.  But: breweries.  I could tell you about a cool fitting at the bottom of the grain silo that sends organic malt in opposite directions to both brewhouses, or about the pig-shaped hot liquor tank.  But they're breweries, and one mash tun thrills no more than the next.  I hadn't seen the new canning line, and I admit a fascination with packaging, but again, not a lot to say there.  The rilly big shew, however, was our first glimpse at the new second-floor pub space that runs the entire length of the Fort George building (the brewery shares the first floor with the Blue Scorcher Cafe). 

Fort George Expansion
Fort George has grown in increments since it first opened.  Initially, space included a modest pub and the small brewery.  Then the brewery built an outdoor patio for those many sunny days Astoria enjoys.  Then they began steady expansion that took them to neighboring buildings for storage and brewing space.  But except for that patio, the seating space has not grown. (I kid about that sun thing--Astoria is the most humid town in the US, averages 191 days of rain, 67 inches of it overall, and gets less than a week, on average, of temperatures north of 80 degrees.)  Popping a spiral staircase to the second floor way more than doubles it.

The new upstairs is suffused in light that comes in through three walls that are largely warehouse windows.  You get a better view of the river up there, too.  It's essentially a self-contained separate restaurant, with a different menu and a separate bar.  Whereas you get a pretty standard pub menu below, upstairs it's wood-fired pizzas.  The tables and bars are long and beautiful, and I can imagine that when light is scarce around about January, this will be a great place to be.  One of the coolest features is that spiral staircase; the brewery managed to harvest discarded runners from the last upgrade of the Astoria column.  Anyone who's been up that signature landmark will instantly recognize them.  (There are a batch of photos here.) 

New Beers
We were ostensibly visiting to try the 3-Way IPA, and we each received one as it came off the canning line.  (As cool as it sounds.)  Lompoc, Gigantic, and Ft George all all noted for hops, so I expected a face-melter, but instead, it's more a meditation on the eras of Oregon IPAs.  It's got old school hops (Cascade), more modern hops (Centennial), and new hops (Meridian), all in a milkshake-cloudy solution of sweetish (but not heavy) malting.  A summer IPA.

The beer that won my heart is a different collaboration, Tender Loving Empire Northwest Pale Ale.  Leaving aside the question of this new style appellation (it's just a pale), it's a damned tasty beer.  Sweet with honey malt but spiced with a bit of rye, it's electrified by Meridian, Simcoe, and Centennial hops.  It is very close to bright, a minor miracle for Fort George, is light-bodied and very crisp--so much so that I was fooled into asking whether they'd used the 1811 lager yeast.  (Nope.)  They did can it, I don't know whether you can find it in PDX.  All the more reason to spurn France and head to the Sunset Empire.

Astoria Brewing Expansion

Angelo De Ieso and I did break away from the herd for a stop into Astoria Brewing, which is but a quarter mile away.  Astoria Brewing has been shoe-horned inside a small corner of the Wet Dog Cafe since 1997 ("Pacific Rim Brewery" for the first half of that time).  Some time ago, owner Steve Allen decided to expand, and a new brewery will go in a few buildings down the Riverwalk.

Astoria is a very nice counterpoint to Fort George.  Despite the fact that Astoria's flagship is the aptly-named Bitter Bitch, brewer John Dalgren has interest in beer ranging from sessionable lagers to wild ales--beers Fort George is just never going to mess with.  (If Fort George were a band, they'd be something like the Ramones--boisterous, hugely fun, but totally unmistakable.)  My palate was in slightly rough shape when we arrived to try three subtle beers in a row--a kolsch, very light pilsner, and--on my request--a strawberry wheat ale.  John was actually a bit embarrassed by that last one, but it was actually exquisite.  There are few agricultural products finer in this fine state than strawberries, and he captured their lovely flavor, married them to the wheat, and kept everything dry.  It's a hard beer to brew, and it was really dialed in.

Fort George has definitely captured the imagination of Astorians.  But visitors should not be too blinded by its assets to ignore Astoria Brewing.  Dalgren is quietly making very nice beers a few blocks away.  (And the Wet Dog has the better view.)

John Dalgren (L) and Steve Allen

Getting to Know a Beer

The view south from the Astoria Column.

In very rare cases, I order the same beer twice when I go to a pub or restaurant.  Almost always this is the result of poor selection.  If there are beers I haven't tried on the menu but suspect might be tasty (an ordinary circumstance), I feel duty-bound to try them.  This means that I very often pass on a beer I like a great deal.  Fully 78.3% of the time I pass up a beer I know I like, I end up with the lesser one.  It is a huge downside to blogging about beer.

Over the weekend, I was in Astoria under staggeringly blue, warm skies to celebrate my continuing obsolescence.  (Extreeeeeeeemly late 30s if you must know.)  Because I was on a celebratory vaction, I abandoned all regular duties and indulged my native instinct to pursue that which I like rather than that which is novel.  So after less than an hour in town, it was off to one of my fave breweries, Fort George.

Thinking of possibly the annual "North" beer or maybe an 1811 Lager, I decided to at least sample on of the one-off experimental beers, brilliantly named Java the Hop.  It was a coffee IPA, exactly the kind of beer for which I was preparing such adjectives as "abomination" and "horrible miscalculation."  But miracle of miracles: it worked.  The coffee was more an aromatic note than flavor, and the hops were ratcheted way below usual Fort George levels.  Thus did the beer harmonize in a completely unexpected manner.  I always know I like a beer when I think about it the hours or days after I last tried it.  So it was with Java the Hop and, after a day at the beach sunnier and warmer than many I've experienced in June, Sally and I headed back to Fort George.  And then we had another sunny day tromping through the forests around Astoria and another evening at Fort George.  (I should note that Sally was not forced their against her will on account of my birthday trump card; she suggested the third return herself.)

In any case, the point of all this is to say that if you really wish to know a beer, it's not enough to have four ounces or even a pint.  You need to try it on different evenings, in different settings, in different moods.  Only then will you learn its secrets--and your own.  Was it really the beer you liked or the novelty?  Was your mood so good you'd have enjoyed used dishwater, or was it really the beer?  How well does the beer wear?  What more did you discover in the beer after you've tried it on day two or three?  What did you lose?

I am happy to say that Java the Hop remains a remarkable discovery, one I continue to think about even now that Fort George is no longer handily located just down the street.  It will actually come to pain me in coming months and years to think about it because, as a one-off, it will probably disappear from the surface of the planet without a goodbye or longing glance back.  It will reside only as an itch in my brain.  But that's a good thing.  Now I properly gotten to know Java the Hop I, at least, will remember it fondly. And it's also a good reminder that the ADHD attendant with beer geekhood comes clothed in a massive blind spot.  Like bad lovers, we hook up with beers for a few moments, stimulating our adrenal glands before moving onto the next pint for another hit.  This mode may offer pleasures, but they're necessarily different than taking a beer our on several dates and really getting to know it.  You can fall in lust with a beer after a pint; to fall in love you must get to know it more slowly.

Bonus pic 1: the view from Saddle Mountain.

Bonus pic 2: white forest, or the birches
of Saddle Mountain.

Fort George 1811 Lager

Post updated!

There's this funny beer style--actually, I'm not prepared to acknowledge that it is a style--called "pre-prohibition lager." I have no data, but it has the aroma of a "style" that was probably a broad and changing spectrum of different examples brewed in different places at different times. But through the inevitable process of calcification, it has come to stand for this wide rane. Or I could be wrong--but a fifteen-minute spin around the intertubes doesn't dissuade me.

The key features of this style, such as it is now retrospectively characterized, are the use of corn (apparently rice is a permissible, but less-tasty, variant) and pretty assertive hopping. The sources I've seen suggest noble hops would have been used, but this seems the weakest of the contentions--it was more an assumption than a finding. (As always, folks like Bill Schneller can weigh in to correct gross errors on my part. We're all used to gross errors on my part.)

Whatever the historical precedent, though, this is a very good description of Fort George's 1811 Lager, which I tried for the first time on Tuesday. If you want to immediately predispose your customers against your beer, here are two suggestions: 1) brew a lager; 2) add corn. Cardinal sins!

I hope customers are so mesmerized by the shiny blue cans that they ignore the prominent word "lager" and don't read blogs like this. Because, if they manage to get the beer into their glass, they're in for a treat. Despite people's expectations about canned lager, this is quite a lively and assertive beer. I'm not sure what the hops are, but noble sounds about right--or maybe Sterlings or a mixture of nobles and bastard American varieties like Mt. Hood. In any case, it's zesty and spicy, but buoyed by a lovely, summery sweetness. As is de rigueur for an Oregon beer (nod to Stan Hieronymus), it is as cloudy as November Portland skies. And, although it is packed with flavor, the volume doesn't blast at IPA levels, so it has that moreishness you want from a summer tipple. Great beer.

There are far too few crisp, hoppy lagers in this town, and I am delighted to learn that Fort George has added another--"pre-prohibition" or not.


Update. Two tweets from the brewery, which I'll post in order so you can see that my own failures of fact are not entirely unprecedented.

FortGeorgeBeer Fort George Brewery
@Beervana Thanks for the good word! BTW - The hops used are Galena and Czech Saaz.
3 hours ago

and then:

FortGeorgeBeer Fort George Brewery
@Beervana Correction on the 1811 hops ... Saaz and Centennial. It's right on the can!
14 minutes ago

That's a brewery after my own heart. Or brain.

In Astoria

Travel is good for the soul. Even when you decide to just take an impromptu trip an hour and a half down the Columbia River to Astoria, the change is a balm. Take for instance my experience in Rainier, where Sally and I pulled off to get an afternoon jolt of caffeine. In two adjacent parking lots were two venders. The barista (baristi?) was a cheery Eastern European (Ukrainian, Russian?--I'm not good with accents of the region) who made a very nice latte. Then we moved down the line to a guy selling fresh Oregon berries. This was not the huge, watery, under-ripe variety you get in the grocery stores in April. The strawberries were a small, tart mountain variety, and the blackberries had an herbal note. Barely out of the city and I was already having a good time.

Although this will not be principally a beer trip, I did want to scuttle over to Fort George, where a keg of North III appeared on Monday. A winter beer that really impressed last December, I thought it was gone for good. A bit hefty for July, but it made a surprisingly good partner for the albacore sandwich I had for dinner.

Fascinating anecdote
One thing I didn't realize about the Fort George Brewery--it's on the site of the original 1911 settlement of Astoria. Following the War of 1812, the fort they occupied was renamed Fort George after England's king. That's cool enough. But there's an even better part of the story, and an opportunity the brewery needs to exploit.

As it happens, the first woman of English descent arrived in 1814: an English barmaid named Jane Barnes.

To oversee their new empire, the Northwest Company appointed as governor Donald McTavish, a distinguished veteran partner of the firm. In the spring of 1813, as his ship was being outfitted for its voyage to the far side of the New World, McTavish passed the time in a dockside tavern in Portsmouth, England. Behind the bar stood Jane Barnes, a lively, flaxen-haired, blue-eyed beauty. The slumpy old Scot asked her to join him, and in a “temporary fit of erratic enthusiasm,” she agreed. McTavish and Barnes proceeded to the finest stores in Portsmouth to ready her for the voyage.

She was the source of some intrigue, setting off a battle among no fewer than four men (and they're just the ones mentioned in the history books)--including the scion of the local Chinook leader.

So my question: how is it possible that Fort George does not brew Barnes Bitter? An English barmaid visiting the first settlement in Oregon that happens to be the site of the brewery? Synchronicity, folks--exploit it.

Okay, off to seek more modest adventure--

A New Astoria Canning Operation: Fort George

John Foyston, sporting the new "special to the Oregonian" tag on his byline, has a fascinating story about Fort George in today's paper. The ten-cent recap: Chris Nemlowill and Jack Harris bought that cool old (namesake) building that houses Fort George and they have very big plans. Most intriguing to me is this:

The deal gives Astoria its own Brewery Block, and Nemlowill and Harris have lots of plans, beginning with a new production brewery and canning line on the ground floor of the Lovell Building....

Brewer Jack Harris and his crew of helpers will trek to Houston, Texas in March to disassemble a used 30-barrel brew system (930 gallons) and three 1,800-gallon fermentation tanks that they're buying from St. Arnold Brewing and load it onto five trucks for the trek to Astoria. The system will increase capacity nearly fourfold from thee current 260 gallon brewhouse, which will remain in operation in the Fort George Building.

The result will be canned pounders of Vortex IPA--a fitting start, given that Vortex was named after the expedition to acquire the first brewery. (Video here of Chris describing it.) Vortex is also one of their best beers and a fantastic IPA, too, which probably factored into the decision.

Anyway, lots more in the story, so go have a look.

Style of the Year--Oyster Stouts?

There used to be this phenomenon in Hollywood (could be there still is) wherein two studios would simultaneously get an idea for a movie so that you'd see two, slightly different takes on a similar subject. Oregonians may recall the year of two Prefontaine movies. I notice a similar phenomenon in brewing--certain styles pop into vogue. I have no idea why this happens in Hollywood, but given the level of interaction and camaraderie in the brewing world, it isn't so surprising with beers.

Anyhoo, it looks like 2010 might be the year of oyster stouts, a style only marginally more widely brewed than gose. The first I heard of this was at Upright's blog, from early last month:

So last Thursday was one of my most memorable brew days ever - in a good way. It began a couple months ago when friend and fellow brewer Jason McAdam visited Upright to bullshit around....

The only part that required a good bit of thought was how to incorporate the oysters? In the end we decided to add roughly ten gallons of oyster "liquor" that Jason picked up fresh from the coast off a train. We didn't want to brew an oyster stout without any oyster meat though so we also picked up eight dozen DeCourcy oysters from B.C. and cooked them during the kettle boil. After eating all the wort-soaked meat we cleaned and saved the shells to add later to the beer, post fermentation, like dryhopping.

And now, from The Daily Pull, I see that Fort George is going for one, too. The following is from Brady's interview with the brewery's owner/brewer Jack Harris:

Oyster Stouts were quite common a couple of hundred years ago. I first made this beer while working at Bill's Tavern a few years ago and the research I did at the time did not give me a very good idea of a process. I couldn't find any readily available commercial examples either. Descriptions of the beer varied from a nice stout with no discernible oyster character to a very briny flavor. My attempt at Bill's Tavern created a nice robust stout without much oyster evident. It did completely screw up my wort chiller with little shell flakes clogging everything up. I had to back-flush several times during knock-out and then strip the whole chiller down.

Our attempt here at Fort George used the same technique of putting two bushels of whole, live Willapa Bay Oysters into the hop-back (they were scrubbed very well on the outside first) and running all 8 1/2 bbls of beer through them. We made this beer on the evening of our Seafood and Belgian beer brewer’s dinner in hopes we could use them as hot appetizers, but after eating a couple they turned out to be too bitter for most palates. We were much more careful to not get oyster shell in the chiller.

I have yet to sink my teeth into either of these beers, but I'm looking forward to it. I may even have to make a road trip if Fort George isn't sending some our way.

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Photo: Annalou Vincent
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Review: Fort George Brewery

I have been tardy about getting back to the breweries on my recent trip to Astoria. Let us now correct this oversight with a consideration of Fort George Brewery.

Brewers: Jack Harris and Chris Nemlowill
1483 Duane Street
Astoria OR 97103
(503) 325-PINT
Website

Hours: Mon-Thurs, 11am -11pm, Sat 11am - Midnight, Sunday, Noon - 11pm. Live music every Sunday night 8-10pm. Prices: Glass - $2.60, Pint - $3.85, Pitcher - $13, Taster tray - $8, Growler - $14. Beers: A large range of NW-style ales, Belgian interpretations, and regular use of botanicals.

As a region, the Oregon Coast, from Newport north, is starting to look like a mini-Beervana within Beervana. The two pillars are Rogue and Pelican, but Bill's Tavern, Siletz, and Astoria Brewing have all garnered plenty of praise. Since Rogue has a northern outpost in Astoria (and the nicest of all their pubs), you could spend a couple nights on the coast and hit a half dozen stellar breweries, all within a wonderful drive down highway 101.

Fort George is a great addition to this slate, and one born from it. The brewer who took us on a tour, Chris Nemlowill, is a co-founder and co-brewer along with his partner Jack Harris, the man behind Bill's Tavern in Cannon Beach. Chris is also a local. He got his start at Bill's where, fresh from college, with degrees in computer science and marketing, he offered himself an internship. He showed up and told Jack, "I want to do an internship and work for you for 120 hours--for free." Bill took him up on the offer, and he learned how to brew commercial volumes (it almost doesn't bear mentioning that he started as a homebrewer--but of course, he did). In '05 he got a job at Astoria/Wet Dog, and in 2006, he and Jack opened their brewery in the historic Fort George Building in downtown Astoria.

As a transition to a description of the beer, let me post a video clip of Chris describing where their flagship beer, Vortex IPA, got its name (thereafter I'll describe that beer). He and Jack were transporting the brewhouse cross-country and about halfway along, they ran into a spot of weather:



Beer
Fort George brews a lot of beer, and I only tried a little of it. Don't ask me how this happened--clearly blogger error was the culprit. When we visited, on the order of a dozen Fort George beers were available. They seem to fall generally into three overlapping categories: NW-style ales (IPA, porter, stout, pale), Belgians (wit, dubbel, golden), and botanically-infused beers. This latter category reveals Jack Harris' influence--Bill's Tavern is well-known for herbal beers. I tried just three of the dozen, which I guess provides me an ideal excuse to head back soon. (A taplist is posted in the right margin of the Fort George blog.)

• Divinity. Ft. George does a regular wit, which in addition to the usual adjuncts includes lemongrass and elderberry flower. Divinity is this beer re-fermented with raspberries. It tastes much like a standard wit, though drier and more acidic. The berries are perhaps responsible for the more vinous acid--they don't add a strong berry flavor, leaving the base beer mostly intact. Their contribution is aromatic and suggestive. Very fine beer. If the OBF invites them, I suggest sending Divinity. Rating: B+
• XVI Chapel. Named for a malapropism by a guy who helped install the brewery (he referenced Michaelangelo's "Sixteen Chapel"). It's an IPA/dubbel hybrid, dry-hopped three times. The aroma is pure, piney hops, masking any yeast character. That holds true for the flavor, too--the hopping is so intense you don't get any of the nutty malt flavor from the dubbel grist bill nor the abbey ale character. It's a beautiful-looking beer, but the hops flatten out the character. Rating: C
• Vortex IPA. When we were at the brewery admiring Vortex, we discussed the old difficulty of how to describe a beer. IPAs present a special problem because there are so many versions--particularly many that are good but not distinguishable. Fortunately, this is not one of those beers--it is probably the first one since Inversion that seemed new and distinct. A big boy at 7.7%, and Chris says it's 97 IBUs. I just can't believe that, though. The hops are far too nuanced to come on that strong--the aroma is succulent and the green hop flavors are layered without going to the extremes of bitterness. It's deceptive because it's so approachable--the hops are in harmony with the sweet, gentle malt--and you could easily find yourself quaffing it like a session. (I advise against.) As a parting visual, I leave you with the three tasters John, Lisa, and I had. See the lovely, frothy head retention?--even after the beer was gone! Rating: A/A-
  

Food
Chris bought us a taster tray of Fort George's handmade sausage, four varieties, and they were all exceptional. (I have a friend who loves sausage and he always asks why I don't write more about it. Brian: this is the good stuff.) Chris also plopped a nice plate of rough-cut fries with skins, and those were also excellent. But beyond this, I can speak to none of the food. The website has a menu, and it features mostly pub-style food, with a nod toward local seafood.

Astoria's a great place to visit, and if you do, be sure not to miss Fort George. If you exit the town without trying at least a pint of the Vortex, you'll never forgive yourself.