Fresh IPA Got Its Name Before the Category Had One

Fort George has brewed this one long enough that the plainest possible name still fits. Fresh IPA returns for another harvest, this year built on fresh Comet hops from McKay Farms in the Willamette Valley.

• Style: West Coast IPA
• Release Date: 2026-09-25
• ABV: 6.4%
• Fort George Brewery (Astoria, OR)

Some seasonal beers accumulate elaborate names. This one never bothered. Fort George Brewery says it has been brewing Fresh IPA long enough that the beer is simply called Fresh IPA, dating to a time when, by the brewery's account, there were not a lot of Fresh IPAs running around. It returns this year at 6.4 percent ABV, brewed with fresh Comet hops from McKay Farms in the Willamette Valley.

The brewery calls it one of its longest-running seasonals and says it gets better every year. Fort George also offers a fair marker of its age: touching a can, the brewery suggests, may transport a drinker back to late September, 2014.

That timing is the interesting part. The name reads today as a category label, but it was applied when the category was still small enough that the plain description was available. What was once a straightforward way of saying what was in the tank has effectively become the beer's proper noun.

The hop is this year's variable. Comet is an American variety with a citrus and herbal character that sits apart from the tropical profiles that have dominated hop selection in recent years. Fresh hopping - using undried hops straight off the harvest - tends to add a green, resinous quality on top of whatever the variety already does. In a West Coast IPA built dry and hop-forward, there is not much malt sweetness to soften it.

Fresh IPA is pouring now in Astoria as part of Fort George's fresh hop run, which the brewery is currently serving as staff shift beers. The hops come from a harvest the brewery describes as brief and notoriously damp, with a cyclone dropping nearly an inch of rain on the North Coast in a single nine-hour stretch.