From the Beer Writer: While I can and will eat anything, and have very few food aversions, we all have things we enjoy and those we don’t care for all that much. Personally, I’m not big on olives, cheap caviar (I sound like such a highbrow jerk saying that), watercress or guava. I’m pretty sure I know the reason for my aversion to the latter, and it stems from my first job, where there was a locker room that constantly stunk with the funk of this tropical fruit, which my co-workers would keep on-hand with great regularity. It produced a constant and potent stench that prompted me to hold my breath when passing through that space en route to the shipping warehouse. So, I don’t eagerly seek this ingredient out, but I’ve found it to be a rather pleasant addition to beers. The Lost Abbey’s rare Duck Duck Guava and Legacy Brewing Company’s award-winning Guava Beer are good examples, but the best yet is Bitter Brothers Family Tart with Guava. I was already a fan of Bitter Brothers Brewing Company’s house Berliner weisse, but adding a dose of pink guava to this bacteria-driven, kettle-sour gives it character that goes beyond the fruit itself. If anything, it makes the beer taste like an explosion of multiple tropical fruits, which is probably why I don’t necessarily associate it with guava (that and the fact it doesn’t smell like a used sweat-sock fished from a urinal) and, thus, abhor it. Upon tasting it, I was happy to find this easy-drinking and assertively tart 4.5% alcohol-by-volume beer will eventually be packaged and available to the masses.
From the Brewer: “The Family Tart with Guava is our base Berliner weisse done with pink guava purée. It’s soured with our house mix culture that has multiple strains of Lactobacillus, Pediococcus and Brettanomyces, and is finished with a Saccharomyces yeast strain. This process gives the base-beer overtones of tropical fruit—especially pineapple—and lighter notes of stone fruits like apricot and peach. Up to this point we have done a new fruited flavor every month. Going forward, we are going to limit that exclusively to tasting room with wider release of seasonal flavors. This ties in with our plans to start canning in the fourth quarter of this year and having the Family Tart be one of those beers we can. The next fruited Berliner weisse will come out in the fall and be a blood orange-based purée with light additions of pomegranate and passion fruit. Winter will be prickly pear, spring will be peach and in the summer we will return to guava. If we do something we really like in the tasting room one of those flavors might change, but for now that’s what we are going with.”—John Hunter, Head Brewer, Bitter Brothers Brewing Company
