Co-piloting is hard. I was craving a beer. Also homemade sausage. Lo and behold in Astoria, Oregon there’s a brewery and attached pub that makes its own sausages!
At Fort George Brewery and Public House I ordered a pint of the excellent Cavatica Stout. Heather partook of a Dakota Fanning, a concoction containing cranberry juice and Squirt. We shared the sausage appetizer, a platter of housemade pork sausages accompanied by flat bread, cheese, and mustard. The sausage was fantastic. There were four kinds; a sweet Italian, a boudin blanc, one with caraway seeds and one containing bits of Tillamook cheddar.
Fools that we are we ordered more food. Fort George’s fish and chips is made with locally caught albacore tuna. The dense chunks of albacore were battered and deep fried as usual. I prefer lighter and moister cod in my fish and chips but this hearty version was good, though a bit dry. The portion was huge too; I tried to help Heather with her order, but after my albacore steak and melted cheddar “tuna melt” I couldn’t handle more than a few bites. I did, however, make room for the intriguingly monikered North II – Grand Crüe, a Belgiany strong ale with a host of ingredients including pilsner malt, belgian wit yeast, raw Hawaiian cane sugar, oats, and lemon grass. The combination was delicious and lighter than you’d expect. It reminded me of a sweet-tart Madeira wine. The bartender informed us that North II – Grand Crüe will be available at Portland’s Holiday Ale Fest in a couple weeks.
Tiny Astoria, Oregon (population 10,045) has three breweries (that I know of): Astoria Brewing Company, Fort George Brewery and Public House, and an outpost of the Rogue empire. So that’s a brewery for every 3348 residents.
By contrast, within Portland’s city limits 30 breweries (more than any other city in the world) produce beer for 568,380 people. That’s a brewery for every 18,946 Portlanders.
So by my calculations Astoria has nearly 6 times more breweries than Portland!
I’ll be heading back to Astoria when I can, hopefully for more than a day trip, to try the rest of Fort George’s, and Astoria’s, beers.
Heather has blogged more about our trip to Astoria here: Tank Full Of Gas, Chapter X: Astoria, Oregon
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