Fort was one of those Dogfish beers, I kept hearing about and had to try. As far as I could tell, this is not a regular release, so finding one would not be easy. Luckily, I found one lonely bottle on the shelf of a bottle shop and I couldn’t pass it up. Deciding to open this beer meant I had to clear my schedule.
The beer poured a nice red color with fluffy white head and tons of carbonation. This beer had one of those infamous green bottle caps which meant it was one of DFH’s high ABV beers. It weighed in at 18%, so I was not going to get much done after the first sip.
Upfront was all raspberry sweetness followed by straight booze. At such a high ABV, I would imagine it was hard to avoid the alcohol smell. It tasted a little syrupy, which made it tough to enjoy. The tartness from the raspberries made the sweetness a little easier to tolerate. However, there was no escaping the taste of booze. At least there was always that alcohol warmth in the finish to keep me company.
Verdict: Spill It. DFH is my favorite brewery, but I could not enjoy this beer. As always, I appreciate the attempt of trying to push this beer to its limit, but this did not work. The heavy booze and the sweetness left me feeling like I was drinking cough syrup. Fort would benefit from aging to calm the booze and sweetness down a bit. I would not recommend trying this straight out of the bottle unless you like syrupy and sweet. I would buy this again just for the sake of aging because I’m curious if it would get any better with age. The DFH website doesn’t show this as a release this year, but it is still early. Hopefully I can get my hands on another bottle and do a re-visit in a few years.
Fill It or Spill It 
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I had a Fort that was several years old, and also had one that was fresh. It does get better with age, although given your description of it, I am not completely convinced that you’re going to change your opinion a whole lot with an aged bottle.
I personally found fort quite enjoyable, although some of your descriptors are still quite accurate. Very raspberry, very alcoholic. And yes, I cleared my schedule, because both times I drank the whole thing by myself in one day!
Cheers!
I’m hoping to get my hands on an aged Fort to give it another chance. Who knows maybe my mind will be changed, but at the very least it’ll be fun to try again.
Cheers!
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