Love Good Beer

Seasonal Beer

Monday, June 15th, 2009 | Beer | 2 Comments

Good news, delicious red-centered BC strawberries are now in season. Strawberry season in BC signifies the start of BC’s bountiful harvest. For those British Columbia who choose to eat large, watery California strawberries all year round, I beg you, please switch to local berries. Local BC strawberries are far juicier, sweeter and overall more flavourful than generic imported strawberries. They are only available for a few weeks, so get your fill while they are still here.

Fresh local strawberries mean one thing in my house, waffles with strawberries. Now here is the challenge, pairing beer with waffles & strawberries. Beer has such a diverse flavour profile from style to style, that I image there must be a beer that works with strawberries.

My first thought is to match this seasonal breakfast-for-dinner or “brinner“, with one of the many local fruit beers available. BC brewers offer a good selection of beer brewed with the inclusion of fruits such as Peach, Raspberry, Blackberry and Pumpkin . Unfortunately I have not been able to find a single brewer in BC offering a strawberry beer. A friend and former brewmaster told me that strawberries impart an unpleasant flavour post ferment, but this cannot be true.  Abita Brewing in Louisiana brews what is rumored to be a good strawberry beer. Unfortunately I don’t think I will be able to find Abita’s Harvest Strawberry Lager in BC.

The other option I am considering is a Belgian fruit geuze, a wild fermented lambic beer brewed with fruit – the fruit helps add sweetness to the beer. An aardbei geuze, a strawberry geuze, seems an obvious choice. The only problem could be the geuze overpowering the fresh strawberry flavour. I want the beer to complement the fresh strawberries, no compete. A Belgian Fruli, a Belgian wit beer with strawberry juiced added is also a good option, but from what I have read, Fruli is closer to strawberry soda than strawberry beer.

Please feel free to make recommendations on beers that complement strawberries.  I will be making a trip to Brewery Creek and possibly Firefly tomorrow to see what I can find. This Wednesday will be the big strawberry waffle day, I’ll keep you all posted.

Cheers,

Erik

Tags: aarbei geuze, BC Strawberries, Beer and Waffles, Belgium, brewery creek, firefly, Fruit Beer, Fruli, Lambic, Waffles, Wit Beer