A Subtle, Delightful Winter Ale

“From the first fire of the season.”

That’s Ferment’s Dan Peterson describing the moment when the calendar shifts from pilsner to porter season. Ferment is the brewery located three blocks east of pFriem, where Dan was a brewer before Ferment, along the waterfront in Hood River. And the porter is Woodsman, perhaps the most wintry and Oregonian of all the autumnal/winter ales. Porters are perfect winter pub ales to begin with, but Dan includes a secret ingredient that makes Woodsman especially nice: the tips of Douglas Fir gathered in the springtime, when they’re soft and green.

It’s a subtle flavor and not what people would guess. I ran an experiment on three friends, asking them to identify the unusual ingredient and none could. It’s partly because Dan doesn’t want to overwhelm the beer, but also because the fresh growth isn’t piney (or firry, which is not a thing we say), as you might guess. “It’s less evergreen Pine-Sol and more like a raspberry-lemon character,” Dan told me when we spoke about the beer. I got more blackberry than raspberry, but either way, it’s perfect with the chocolate notes in the base porter. If I cocked my head just right, I also thought I picked up something right at the end that seemed sweetly minty. The berry note is evident if you know its there, and for Pacific Northwesterners who have plucked a tip to chew on during a spring hike, it’s an evocative flavor of home.

Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) is the iconic tree of Western Oregon, growing in the vast stands throughout the wet valleys from the Cascades to the coast. Doug firs are among the tallest trees in the world, with mature specimens growing over 300 feet tall. Old trees--and they can live longer than a thousand years--can easily have boles twelve feet in diameter. Breweries tend to collect the tips of spruce, and our native Sitkas are impressive, too--but Dan chose the tree every Oregonian knows like a friend, but one whom we all privately hold in awe.

The brewery puts in a lot of work to create that subtle sweetness. Beginning in May or June, depending on the year’s winter, Dan and members of the brewing and restaurant staff head off to a forest that is just west of town. They harvest sustainably so the trees aren’t harmed—they even need a permit—which means more time. The trees must be a certain height to harvest, and they can’t pick too much of the new growth. “We bring a load of grain bags out with us—it’s beautiful,” he said. “I love it.” It takes more than one visit to collect 200 pounds of tips, which they freeze.

He wrote about foraging at the Ferment blog:

We wear long pants and sturdy shoes, hats, sunglasses, light clothing, and we spend a few days picking the tips off the boughs of Doug Fir trees out there. By cutting a couple slits in a grain bag and running a belt through it you have a perfect little harvest basket. It can get pretty hot in the day so my favorite time to pick is in the late afternoon into dusk, under Mt. Hood, with the birds swooping up their evening meal and calling to their loved ones. The sky lights up orange and pink as the sun settles into the hills surrounding the little hidden valley.

Dan’s found that the tips work best at the end of boil rather than in the whirlpool or during dry-hopping, but the goal is not to overwhelm the flavors. They also use the tips in a mixed-fermentation saison, which is fermented with a yeast strain he gathered further up Mt. Hood. That one is characterized by the biochemical interactions of yeast and fir, and Dan calls it light and refreshing.

Woodsman is more straightforward. I first had a pint during Covid. Sally and I had been hiking in the Gorge in the winter, and we stopped into Hood River afterward. Things were shut down for Covid, but Ferment has a big deck overlooking the Columbia and a window for ordering food and drink. We had pints of porter while huddling near their outdoor fire, and it was the perfect culmination to our foresty day—a dark, full, frothy porter with hints of the Douglas fir inside.

Beers made with fir or spruce tips used to be a more common sight, as did porters, now nearly extinct, and winter ales. If you needed a reminder of why they were once more popular, pick up some Woodsman—or better yet go for a hike and stop in for a pint afterward. It’s a quintessential Oregon in a beer.