U.S.: California brewery puts avocado on tap
![U.S.: California brewery puts avocado on tap U.S.: California brewery puts avocado on tap](https://cdn.freshfruitportal.com/2020/01/News-shutterstock_356279348.jpg)
Angel City Brewery's Avocado Ale has been described as something similar to guacamole in the form of a beer.
The Fuerte avocado-infused creation premiered for the public this past Saturday in Los Angeles, California at the brewery's Avocado Fest. Brewer Dieter Foerstner, the brains behind the beer, said he expected a love-hate reaction to this seasonal new comer.
"It’s a light-bodied ale. It’s brewed with 150 pounds of Fuerte avocado, as well as crushed red pepper, dried cilantro, garlic and a little bit of dried lime peel," Foerstner told www.freshfruitportal.com.
"The beer has really light, delicate flavors to really showcase the avocado. It’s got a really refreshing, almost creamy-like finish. It’s a beautiful beer."
Foerstner said the idea for the beer came to him early one morning at the office. From there, the progress of the beer has taken him by surprise.
"I pitched the beer idea to my owners, half expecting them to say, ‘You’re out of your mind, Dieter’ but I got quite the opposite response. So I was left with the task to actually do it. But it was really great. We brewed it for the first time last year at a festival called Bloom Fest.
"We brewed it then but we didn’t have our public house open and we didn’t have label approval, so no one really got to taste the beer except for the people who work here at Angel City," he said.
"When the opportunity came this year to do it again, we mulled around the idea and thought ‘what the heck’ and did it again. To my surprise we’ve been getting a lot of publicity on it. People are intrigued by it and I’ve been really shocked by it."
Adding a local touch, the avocados for the beer come from a Southern Californian farm owned by Foerstner's grandmother.
"My 90-year-old grandma and I went one afternoon and picked all of the avocados that we used in the beer. It was a family affair," he said.
Similar to other unique beers tested by Foerstner, he said the reaction so far has been mostly positive.
"They’re all pleasantly surprised. I brewed this beer back in January called the French Sip. It was an au jus-themed beer. We brewed it using pink Himalayan salt, black pepper corn, rosemary and seaweed. There were mixed reactions. It was either you loved it or you hated it and I’m assuming the same thing is going to happen with our Avocado beer," he said.
"There are going to be people that are fanatical about it and people that absolutely despise it."
In Southern California, however, the idea of anything avocado isn't so out of the ordinary.
"Southern Californians really love their avocados. I joke around that they’d even put avocado on their Cheerios in the morning. It’s a beloved fruit and I’m really glad we got to showcase it in the form of a beer," he said.
For the moment, there are no large-scale packaging plans for the beer. To try it out, drinkers will have to swing by the brewery's public house in downtown Los Angeles.
Photo:Â Foerstner pouring a glass of Avocado Ale, by Angel City Brewery