FORT is a still (uncarbonated) bottling of a single barrel of our Amber that was fortified up to 20% ABV with a distilled spirit of Wildflower beer and left to mature for 20 months.

This is some pretty cool stuff. So back in 2018, we had an idea of raising the ABV of our Amber via fortification. This process of adding a distilled spirit to an already fermented beverage to increase overall alcohol, most commonly associated with the production of brandy, port, sherry and vermouth amongst others, doesn't seem to be applied much in the beer making world. This seemed strange to us, so we thought we might as well find out what would happen. FORT is the product of that experiment and in our opinion, a very worthy one and something well worth exploring in future.

We made this beer by firstly distilling down a few barrels of our beer at Poor Toms Distillery just down the road. We have been working with them distilling our beer for a while and have been really impressed. There is so much fermentation characteristic that carries through to the spirit... very different than a new make whiskey. We then selected a barrel of Amber whose fermentation in terms of sugar rates and acid were at a place which we wanted to halt as would happen by raising the alcohol in solution. So we found barrel 1749 filled with our 15th batch of Amber brewed in April 2018 and removed enough volume to then add the spirit back to the barrel, thus increase the overall ABV from 6% to 20%. It rested in barrel until December 2019 when it was decanted for packaging.

FORT is a fascinating beverage that has us continually questioning what it really is. It starts off with heavy whiskey/sweet sherry notes however the palate is so much smoother and lighter than the aroma suggests, making it dangerously drinkable. We really dig it and have plans to execute this again.

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We packaged Fort in 375ml bottles and each collective member will receive 2 bottles as part of their membership. We have an additional 110 bottles available to collective members which can be purchased on a first come basis, without limits at 2pm Sydney time on Friday 7 February 2020.