My latest article for The Bulletin features Stout Month, which celebrates stouts throughout the month of February. Along the way I picked up three stouts from Bend breweries to highlight.

Did you know that February is Stout Month? It may only be an informal designation, but for many years, Astoria’s Fort George Brewery and others have celebrated this darkest of beer styles all month long.

Fort George started Stout Month in Oregon, and for all of February, the brewery releases a vast variety of specialty stouts, and hosts events such as its Festival of Dark Arts. Stout Month didn’t originate with Fort George, however, rather with co-founder Jack Harris, who came up with the idea in 1994 while brewing at Mountain Sun Pub & Brewery in Boulder, Colorado.

Harris anticipated business slowing down for the winter and came up with the idea to generate interest. “Nobody else was doing it,” he said in a blog post on Fort George’s website. “I certainly wasn’t paying any attention to marketing or filling niches, it was sort of dumb luck on my part that folks really responded to the idea of celebrating a variety of stouts during the cold, dark days of February.”

The three beers I highlighted for the article are Salted Caramel Stout from Bridge 99 Brewery (a limited-edition flavored/pastry stout, of which I bought a crowler), Lava Lands Stout from Sunriver Brewing, and Camp S’mores “campfire stout” from Boss Rambler Beer Club.

There’s still plenty of February left to enjoy Stout Month, so get out there and enjoy!