If you're a fan of designer berries and fancy brews, there's a buzzy collaboration on the horizon that'll whet your appetite. Oishii, the berry brand famous for its vertically-farmed, $6 strawberries, has teamed up with Grimm, an artisanal brewery in Brooklyn, New York, to make a beer that tastes of the finest strawberries around.
On September 9, Grimm unveiled the Ambient Fizz: Koyo Berry, which highlights the flavor of Oishii's Koyo strawberry, at its Williamsburg-based taproom. In a statement to Tasting Table, Grimm founders Joe and Lauren Grimm said, "We all put our heads together to imagine the perfect, wild strawberry beer and decided the best showcase for these berries would be in an Ambient Fizz." After macerating over 300 pounds of Koyo strawberries, the brewery combined the sugared berry mix with its 1.5 to 2-year barrel-aged sour beer and a splash of water. The resulting flavor is described as having a slightly tannic finish and mild tartness, perfect for the summer season.
Breaking down the flavor components of this ale further, let's look at the two key ingredients that go into this brew. The Koyo strawberry is a new release from Oishii, following its wildly popular Omakase strawberry. The Koyo is a varietal from Japan and is noted as having a mildly tart flavor. The big selling point for these berries, besides their flavor, of course, is the fact that they are made to be non-GMO and pesticide-free. In other words, it's a very environmentally clean strawberry.
Meanwhile, the beer itself brings in the "wild" aspect. As the Grimms describe it, "Like a lambic, these beers are fermented exclusively by the wild microbes that settle onto the surface of the liquid as we expose the wort to nighttime air." Though the beer packs a powerful punch of flavor, it has a fairly low ABV, coming in at 4%.
Read more at tastingtable.com