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Coast Weekend’s local
restaurant review
Fort George’s Festival of Dark Arts is a choose-your-own-stout adventure
Review and photos by
MOUTH OF THE COLUMBIA
MOUTH@COASTWEEKEND.COM
S
Something was afoot Saturday
afternoon, Feb. 18 in downtown
Astoria. Despite the drizzle, an
effervescence prevailed. The
sidewalks were dotted with throngs
of young, hip-but-appropriate-
ly-weather-clad professionals,
all wide-eyed and a little louder,
friendlier and sudsier than usual.
They were streaming to and from
the Fort George campus for the
hallowed Festival of Dark Arts.
Approaching Duane Street, the
thrum grew. Music blared from
speakers and second-story win-
dows. Crowds gathered under tents
and spilled from one building to
the next, all cradling little snifters
sloshing with black brew.
At the entrance, along with
the snifter, ticket holders were
presented a handful of wooden
tasting tokens (12) and an elegant-
ly designed passport — a festival
guidebook. “February is Stout
Month at Fort George Brewery,”
the introduction read. “The shortest
and darkest month is the perfect
time to showcase the immense
variety hidden within this style of
beer.” Indeed, the timing is right —
February is the nadir of the North
Coast’s incessantly dreary winters.
And like so many who get creative
when pounding weather locks us
in, Fort George’s preferred outlet
is stout. As co-owner Jack Harris
once told The Daily Astorian: “The
great thing about stouts is that
they’re really accepting of almost
anything you want to throw into
them. They’re really an excellent
food-y kind of beer. There is just
this incredible variety of fl avor and
aroma and mouth feel and texture
that you can get.”
The Festival of Dark Arts is
not just the culmination of Stout
Month but Fort George’s year at
large. In just its fi fth iteration, the
event has become a destination.
Tickets sell out weeks in advance. I
met revelers who came from great
The Scotch egg made for an ideal
festival food: portable, hot and a
nugget of protein.
distances. One couple traveled all
the way from Alaska. They made
the pilgrimage last year too.
Besides the 60-plus stouts —
16 of which were crafted at Fort
George, the others from mostly
Northwest breweries — the hun-
dreds of revelers enjoyed myriad
live arts, including metal smithing,
tattooing, ice carving, dancing and
a full slate of live music. Tipping
back a glass to the soft, psychedel-
ic pop wash of Portland’s Jackson
Boone, the Mouth was in his happy
place.
The dozens and dozens of stouts
— more than any human short of
Andre the Giant could sample in
a day — were scattered about at
eight pouring stations, each with
different selections. Part of the fun
is devising one’s own tasting ex-
pedition. To that end, the passport,
with its list of beers, details and
locations, is integral. (Lovely as it
is, there’s room for improvement:
Rather than alphabetically, beers
should be organized by location.)
In it I scrawled notes and high-
lighted batches I’d like to sample.
I can only imagine the lengths
to which stout fanatics took the
exploration and cataloging.
My fi rst pour came in the
shining din of the Lovell building:
Fort George’s own Matryoshka w/
The wood-fi red pizza on the festival’s menu made for a great accompani-
ment to the stout on tap at Fort George Brewery’s Festival of Dark Arts.
Cocoa Nibs. I traded three tokens
for a 3-ounce pour. (Tokens cost
$1 each, and beers were exchanged
for one to three tokens.) Among
the towering tanks, I smelled then
sipped the Matryoshka. It was
deep, rich, thick and syrupy sweet
like molasses. Aged in bourbon
barrels, there was indeed that
oak-y wooden, booze-y hint. And
at 12 percent alcohol by volume,
it was strong — certainly denser,
heavier and more complex than
what we normally think of as beer.
These would be baseline essences
throughout the day: enveloping,
burly, bottomless. (Bourbon bar-
rel-aged stouts would also become
a recurring theme.)
Next I went for another of Fort
George’s: the All Seeing Pie. It fi n-
ished with holiday-evoking wisps
of apple pie fi lling and cinnamon.
Around Thanksgiving or Christmas
it would make a marvelous substi-
tute for eggnog.
But, of course, there’s a stout
for that too: Fort George’s Keg
Nog was viscous and milky, with
the requisite twinkle of cloves,
cinnamon and nutmeg. With an
ABV of just 5 percent, however,
it wasn’t nearly as stiff as many of
the competing titans. Indeed, stouts
truly run the gamut.
And, as such, I was in need of a
shakeup, overwhelmed by the in-
tensely sugary stouts I’d sampled.
I sought to break the trend and did
so with Sunriver Brewing’s El Rey
Mexican Imperial Stout. Spicy
chili peppers afforded a chiseled,
serrated edge. Fort George’s Itsy
Bitsy Stout, a 4.2 percent Irish
Dry Stout, too had a lightness and
welcoming bitterness that belied a
dark complexion.
Like the scattered taps, there
was plenty of food too, all provid-
ed by Fort George. Though I sam-
pled a reasonable amount, in def-
erence to stout I’ll try to be brief.
First, for a beer-centric festival, the
food could’ve been more entwined
with beer — I mean, heck, they
were painting with stout.
Some food selections — like
fi sh and Scotch eggs — were beer
battered, and those salt bombs pro-
vided necessary ying to the sugary
stout’s yang. The fi sh was fi ne, but
the Scotch Egg ($4) — like a base-
ball on a skewer — was absolutely
ideal for the fest. Steaming hot and
edible with one hand, the shell was
crunchy, the sausage herby, and
the egg precisely cooked. It was
a much-needed nugget of protein
that wouldn’t require a nap — and,
hence, leave room for more stout.
The Mac and Cheese ($8 to $9)
was the opposite, an anchor that
was overpriced and had nonexis-
tent fl avor.
The pizza emerging from that
same wood-fi red oven ($4 a slice),
was much, much better, with a
perfect crust.
Back to the stouts: The Kolos-
sos, from The Commons brewery,
had a pinch of citrus derived from
orange peel, but it stuck close to
the mean. The Suge Knight, from
one of my preferred breweries,
Boneyard, had an eye-catching,
perhaps controversial name, but
a smooth character that was the
opposite of the eponymous rap
mogul. The Kaiju too, from Fort
George, hardly felt “destructive”
as it was described, though the
black tea it included was a wel-
come tweak.
But to that end, I wished for
a few more far-out concoctions
— something like the briny stout
Fort George made a few years
ago by running the beer through a
few bushels of oysters. It’s wholly
possible that those high-concept
stouts were out there, somewhere
on the campus, and I just hadn’t
found them. To be fair, for as
much as I was seeking, I too let
the beers fi nd me. (And some
taps, like the one from the highly
sought after, small-batch pFriem
Family Brewers, blew early in the
day.)
As the 10 p.m. closing time
neared, I wondered if maybe the
rich fl avors were running togeth-
er, blurring in my palate. Then
I had Great Notion Brewing’s
Double Stack. Made with coffee
and “boatloads of Vermont maple
syrup,” it was familiar and robust,
creamy like coffee ice cream. It
was at once a member of the stout
family I’d grown accustomed to
over the evening and yet striking-
ly vivid.
But just like that, my pockets
swollen with more wooden tasting
tokens, the Festival of Dark Arts
was over — like the daylight in
February, gone too soon.