Pi Beer
Fort George Brewery + Public House

I just got home yesterday from an annual trip to Portland, with a side-trip to Astoria. The Fort George Brewery is brewing this again and our bartender told us it was their entry into this years Fruit Beer Festival held this past week. My wife doesn't like beer as a rule, but loved this so much we bought and filled a beautiful, incredible vacuum 1/2 gallon growler to take home to central Illinois. I am not a beer expert, but any beer that makes my wife happy and forces me to buy an incredible growler to boot, in my opinion is perfect. The beer was light, refreshing and almost cider-like in its drinkability. We'll be returning to the Fort George brewery next year.

I ordered this beer out of a sense of duty to try every beer in the house and to embrace every style of beer publicly available anywhere. However, I was more than a bit leery of spending my early afternoon sipping a strawberry-rhubarb ale. This was the first beer I would order from a brewery that had only just opened four months previously. Yet even with the catchy name (it’s spelled only with the Greek "Pi" symbol on the menu board) I had low expectations.

What an unexpected relief then when I received a delicious and refreshing ale with a bright fruity demeanor. The aroma is faint and the fruit adjunct flavor is not over-played. (I might mention that I never “got” rhubarb. Why exactly does this sunburned celery insist on impersonating a fruit?) Still, every element falls nicely into place here and the beer drinks elegantly as a breezy summer seasonal. The color is particularly sunny gold (where are those strawberries?) and the body is full and well pronounced. Low CO2 with minimal hop emphasis. A welcome surprise.