Earth Beer first made their Avocado Kolsch in 2020, and they’ve returned to it each spring. When it comes to local ingredients, you can’t get much more local than these avocados either: you can reach up and touch one while you’re sitting in their picturesque hilltop beer garden.
Did I mention the brewery’s on an avocado farm? That’s kind of important information here. I guess when the Earth team heard that people like beer with fruit in it, they got all excited: “Avocado’s a fruit, right? We have plenty of those!”
Anyway, when harvest rolls around, they pick a few hundred organic avocados and mash them all up with lime. We’re talking a fairly large batch of guacamole here – around 50kg of the stuff.* Then they plop that into the brew and make themselves a kolsch, a beer that already bucks the norm by being warm fermented with an ale yeast but cold conditioned like a lager.
Not only is this beer incredibly refreshing, but it’s surprisingly well integrated. The gentle fruity character brings together the lime and the esters, and there’s a creamy feel across the tongue that I’m assuming is partly the smooth carbonation and partly the oils from the avo. A soft minerality, a slight earthiness, and you’ve finished your beer before you can say: “Kids these days are always complaining that they can’t afford to buy a house, but then they’re going out and buying all that Avocado Kolsch!”
Mick Wüst
* This is approximately the amount of guac I like to eat in a sitting.
Earth love avocado season and this beer so much they're even hosting an Avocado Jamboree.
Published September 17, 2024 2024-09-17 00:00:00
