Photo Essay: Fort George’s Huge Expansion
In one of those cases of lucky timing, Sally and I managed to get to Fort George about ten minutes before co-founder Chris Nemlowill finished his beer on Friday. Just before Covid struck, the brewery had finalized plans to acquire a 12-acre portion of the waterfront that contains five warehouses. It includes a giant building (see above) that now houses BridgePort’s old 60-barrel brewery they, a spectacular view of the Astoria-Megler Bridge, and a pier that goes out pretty far into the Columbia. My sense is that the brewery is more focused on how to get through Covid than what they’ll do with all this new real estate, but in the coming years we should see some impressive sights.
Recall that this is the brewery that began as a brewpub crouched in a corner of a derelict building Chris and partner Jack Harris launched in 2008. It grew to fill most of the building (the Blue Scorcher isn’t going anywhere), and then Fort George bought the neighboring Lovell Building. That facility now contains two breweries, a barrel room, expanded seating, three bars and two restaurants, and even a beautiful little garden. The parking lot between the original building and the Lovell building has been repurposed into outdoor seating, so now the whole block is a beery playland. Thus do I expect Chris and company to do something fun with the new facility.
Below are some photos. Click to enlarge them.
New bottling line, from which Chris grabbed unlabled Fanzines for our tour.
The footprint is huge, as is the height.
Fort George has a rare and lovely sense of history shot through with a bit of romance. When they bought their first brewery in Virginia, a tornado nearly ended their excellent adventure on its way back to Portland, leading to the name Vortex for their IPA (still their best-selling beer, amazingly). They call that little 8.5 barrel system Sweet Virginia. Then came the 30-barrel outfit from St. Arnold, in the Lone Star state, which of course they call Little Miss Texas. It’s fitting they finally found an Oregon brewery to finish the set. BridgePort’s old brewery, “which they called a 75-barrel brewery, but we feel is really about 60,” Chris said, they call Kingpin. Because obvs.
Kingpin, a three-vessel system. You can see at the far end a boarded space on the brew deck for a fourth, which they’ll add at some point.
Chris looking up at the brew deck.
They also picked up these sweet horizontal tanks from BridgePort. They were fabricated by JVNW.
The new facility is just east of the bridge and runs for some distance along the waterfront. In the panorama below, taken from their new pier, you can see how near the water the buildings are. The brewery building is at the far left (note grain silos).
Facing east, away from the bridge.
Facing west, toward it.
Finally, for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, here’s the original brewery block.
The original building, with the pizza pub on top, the original pub lower right, and the Blue Scorcher in its original, honored place.
The parking lot, now acting as outdoor seating
The Lovell Building.
The lovely little garden behind the brewery (the south side).
And the view from the garden at the rooftop patio, grain silo, and off in the distance, Washington State across the Columbia.
From Duane Street, you can look into the Lovell Building and see the barrel room.
Lovell houses Little Miss Texas and now serves as a more expansive drinking space.
Across the street is the picturesque Astoria Building, which drinkers can admire as they sip a glass of beer.