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One of the state’s most popular beer festivals is hitting the pause button for the second year in a row, citing concerns about hosting shoulder-to-shoulder crowds during the pandemic.
Fort George Brewery’s Festival of the Dark Arts will remain dark in 2022, the Astoria-based business announced in a subscriber newsletter late last week.
The stout-centered event, which sprawls out across an entire city block every February, has become one of the year’s most anticipated among beer drinkers and always sells out well in advance. In addition to a staggering lineup of dark beers is the spectacle of it all: The brewery brings in a lineup of performers and crafters with unusual talents, including sword swallowing, fire dancing, ice carving and blacksmithing.
“When we do a thing, we do it all the way,” the message stated, “which is why we’ve been wrestling for months with the question of whether or not to hold a full-blown, not-by-halves Festival of the Dark Arts. We can see enough into the future to know that we can’t see the future. And in the end, we know we couldn’t do it justice this year.”
Although Dark Arts has been scrapped, Fort George will hold its traditional Stout Month activities, which should include even more house and guest handles devoted to the ink-black beer style and live music. As a pandemic precaution, the brewery says it is making a concerted effort to spread out customers and hold some live entertainment, like trapeze artists and tarot readers, in its courtyard, so layer up accordingly.
Just because Fort George isn’t hosting its epic winter block party doesn’t mean there is nothing similar in the works for 2022. Make plans now to jump online and secure your tickets to the Lupulin Ecstasy Festival on May 21.
That event will take place at the newly completed production facility right along Astoria’s Riverwalk, which houses the brewery’s beer engine, named “Kingpin,” a 60-barrel system formerly owned by Portland’s BridgePort. It’s the first place you’ll be able to sip next year’s 3-Way IPA, and Fort George is aiming to hold a class reunion with every past collaborator on its special annual release.