Kyle Nabilcy
When it comes to beer purity, I am distinctly laissez-faire. If you want to throw coffee, vanilla beans, cinnamon, cherries, maple syrup and beard yeast into your rye barrel-aged imperial stout, go nuts — it’s the 21st century, Reinheitsgebot had its day. If you want to stick to barley, yeast, hops and water, that’s your prerogative, but you better have your technique down because there’s no hiding flaws behind a recipe that lean.
Truth be told, though, I am as much a sucker for adjunct novelty as any bottle count-obsessing, release line-waiting beer goober. But there are adjunct beers, and then there are the beers that go beyond just adding wacky ingredients and actually try to taste like something other than beer.
I wrote about one last month, Tallgrass’ Key Lime Pie, and in that column I also referenced an upcoming collaborative release from California’s The Bruery and Florida’s Funky Buddha. That beer, ¡Guava Libre!, is now on shelves in Madison and across the Bruery’s distribution footprint. For those not familiar with Funky Buddha, this release is exciting because Funky Buddha’s beers don’t distribute outside of Florida, and the crazy ones like this are typically sought after.
¡Guava Libre! is based on the Cuban pastry, pastelitos de guyaba. They’re typically little puff pastry pockets, and in the variety at issue here, you’ll find guava paste and cream cheese. I’m not sure why the Bruery website never mentions the pastry by name, but if you want to order one at your nearest Cuban restaurant, that’s what to look for.
The guava in the beer recipe is obvious; the cream cheese is replicated with the addition of lactose, a sugar that adds a heavy sweetness and body to a beer without being fermented and jacking up the alcohol content.
And heavily sweet, this beer most certainly is. Funky Buddha, along with Florida compatriots like J. Wakefield and Angry Chair, is known for being sugary sweet, adjunct-laden, and relatively nuance-free. This is not to say “bad,” but definitely “unsubtle.” ¡Guava Libre! follows in Funky Buddha’s tradition of flavor-forward adjuncts and big, big body. It’s cloudy, it pours like a stout and the vanilla component is apparent from sniff to sip. The guava almost gets run over by all the sweetness.
The Bruery is no slouch, though, when it comes to novelty recipes. Its Or Xata calls to mind Mexican horchata, the creamy sweet drink made with cinnamon and vanilla; it’s frankly a little eerie how close it gets.
There are a lot of beers like this on the market, from all quarters. Here in the Midwest, Odd Side Ales in Michigan produces a Sweet Potato Souffle ale that shows up at Great Taste of the Midwest occasionally. Chicago’s Moody Tongue turns out very culinary recipes, like Caramelized Chocolate Churro Porter. Even Surly’s mole-flavored variant of Smoke goes for a “close your eyes and pretend” level of flavor authenticity.
Westward, in addition to the Bruery, you’ll find Anderson Valley’s G&T Gose, which attempts to replicate the flavors of a gin and tonic without invoking the wrath of the TTB by outright saying so. Ballast Point makes a “golden oatmeal stout” called Red Velvet that’s available in nitrogen-charged bottles for a creamier pour. Think frosting.
Out east, Southern Tier does an admirable job of trying to out-Florida Florida with beers like Thick Mint, its Girl Scout Cookie-referential mint chocolate stout. Even farther east, British brewer Wells & Young produces both Banana Bread Beer and Sticky Toffee Pudding Ale. Right good effort, chaps, but I haven’t been a fan of either. In both cases, I’d rather have beers that replicate those flavors with traditional beer technique — a nice Bavarian weissbier for those banana esters or an English barleywine for sweet toffee notes.
Still, sometimes traditional beer technique can take a seat. With ¡Guava Libre!, The Bruery and Funky Buddha continue making a strong case for the occasional beer-as-food-mimicry release. I’m guessing the pair’s second collaboration beer, the forthcoming guava/vanilla/dragonfruit/coconut/lactose-doped ¡Pink Snow!, won’t be particularly subtle either.
