You probably saw all the memes on Sunday, the wildly grinning face of Justin Timberlake circa turn of the millennium, the blocky font shouting, “IT’S GONNA BE MAY,” and perhaps it whooshed over your head. If so, the goobers at Time, always willing to explain a joke, have you covered.
I’m thinking about this particular May 1 tradition because frankly I’ve had enough of the April showers. I am ready for warmth. I am ready for those May flowers. I am ready for joy to return to the world, dammit, and I have reason to believe it’s gonna be this May that it happens.
Because Tallgrass Key Lime Pie is coming back, and in cans.
I confess, I missed the news when it broke back in November. One of my favorite beer experiences of 2016, Tallgrass Key Lime Pie is as true a translation of a dessert into beer form as I’ve found. It’s a perfect novelty adjunct beer, keeping up with the whoppers coming out of breweries like Funky Buddha and the Bruery, punch for punch.
It was at Cask Ale Fest, precursor to Craft Beer Week, that the news broke (over my head, anyway), of Key Lime Pie’s return. The Tallgrass rep poured me a taster of a Berliner weisse with blood orange and cucumber — quite nice — and after specifically, hopefully, asking about Key Lime Pie, I did an involuntary happy dance when he gave me the update.
Indeed, the late spring/early summer months are ripe with fruit beers. New Glarus’ Strawberry Rhubarb is proving to be as delicious out of 12-ounce bottles as it was out of 750s. Soon enough, the details for the first R&D release at the New Glarus brewery will come out; those are frequently but not always fruited.
Tallgrass will bring out two new canned Berliner weisses as well, with the existing Strawberry Jam recipe being joined by Blueberry Jam. Blueberry is a tough flavor to dial in to a beer, but I’m always willing to taste the effort.
And if you have a source, two other adjunct-happy brewers are teaming up for a new release out in California. The Bruery is collaborating with Florida’s Funky Buddha to create Guava Libre, an imperial cream ale with guava, vanilla and lactose that’s meant to imitate the experience of pastelitos de guyaba, a Cuban pastry filled with cream cheese and guava.
But that’ll be a tough get around these parts, unless you’re a Reserve Society member. The impending return of Tallgrass Key Lime Pie is enough to show me glimmers of the sun behind all these godforsaken clouds.
