Fresh Hop Cavatica Stout Puts Cascade Where Roast Usually Wins

Four of the five fresh hop beers on Fort George's tap wall are what you would expect. The fifth is a stout. Fresh Cascade goes into Cavatica, which was already carrying more hops than the style asks for.

• Style: Fresh Hop Stout
• Release Date: 2026-09-11
• ABV: 8.8%
• Fort George Brewery (Astoria, OR)

Fort George put five fresh hop beers on its tap wall this week. Four of them are the expected shapes: two West Coast IPAs, a hazy, a barleywine. The fifth is a stout.

Fresh Hop Cavatica Stout is draft only, 8.8 percent, and brewed with fresh Cascade hops. It is a harvest-season treatment of Cavatica, the stout Fort George keeps in its standing lineup.

The combination is less contrary than it first sounds. Fresh hop beers are almost always pale, and the reason is practical rather than traditional. The aroma that justifies the entire exercise is delicate and short-lived, while roasted malt is about the most assertive flavor available to a brewer. Put the two in the same tank and the hops generally lose the argument.

Cavatica is an unusual candidate because it never behaved like a normal stout. The brewery describes it as "a bold, curiously hoppy stout with a strong flavor and a smooth but bitter complexity," a beer already carrying more hop character than the style asks for. Fort George says this version carries more fresh hops still.

Cascade is a fitting choice for an Oregon brewery to reach for. The variety was bred at Oregon State University and released in 1972, and its grapefruit-and-floral signature is the one most responsible for what American craft beer smelled like for the next thirty years. Against dark malt it has something to offer that a softer tropical hop would not: citrus peel and pine read as contrast next to roast rather than competition, which is the same reason orange zest turns up alongside dark chocolate.

Fresh hop beers are brief by construction, and a draft-only one is briefer. Fresh Hop Cavatica Stout is pouring at the Fort George pub now.