Fort George Brewery introduces new year-round Pilsner

Hop and Stout focused Fort George Brewery has been building their lager game since the early days of pre-prohibition-style 1811 lager and culminating in their new year-round beer simply named Pilsner.

As lagers overtake all but IPA as the most popular styles of craft beer, Ft. George has introduced some truly crushable offerings like Short Sands Helles Lager, and most recently Scatter Plot West Coast Pilsner. Creating the new classic Czech inspired Pilsner was a careful undertaking with dozens of test brews before brewers felt they got it right.

“We crafted Pilsner to showcase the unique qualities of our water and our region,” says Ft. George of their new Pilsner.

Most craft beer focuses (especially in marketing) on hop varieties and hop products, artisan malts and sexy yeast strains come into play as well while the water often takes a backseat. Like similar beers crafted in this style the Fort George version pays careful attention to ingredients and processes, but with special attention to the water.

“There’s a reason for that. Fort George is located at the confluence of innumerable rivers and streams, flowing out from the great forested coastal mountain ranges - right on the uppermost edge of Oregon State. We have some of the best, cleanest, most brewable water in the world and we brew our beer within a day’s drive of the farms that produce most of our ingredients,” writes Fort George marketing director Kirsten Pierce.

With Fort George’s expansion into a large waterfront brewing and cellar facility on the Astoria waterfront the brewery has finally found the space and time to experiment with with the long, slow, cool fermentation process that a great Pilsner requires.

”We've tasted and trialed every single hop and malt variety available to us and this is where we landed. A beer so good we called it Pilsner.” - Fort George Brewery.

Fort George Pilsner is made with Noble hops, Pilsner malt and Astoria’s naturally soft, clean, slow-sand filtered water. The water, already delicious and balanced straight out of the tap, recalls the quality of the water that inspired the original brewers of Pilsner, in the Czech city of Pilsen, to craft a beer that reflected the tastes and qualities of their region. 

Fort George Pilsner is a year-round packaged Pilsner from Fort George. Pilsner will be available in 12oz 6-pks and on draft, and debuting this weekend in the Pub in Astoria and will hit shelves across the PNW next week. 1% of the proceeds from Pilsner cans go straight to local, environmentally-focused nonprofits through 1% for the Planet.