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Call it #RoséAllDay or bae, this summer’s hottest boozy trend has rosé beer. That’s right — beer, not wine.
What began with beer being aged in wine barrels has moved on to new and distinctly unusual beer and wine mashups. Local brewers are fermenting beer with wine yeasts and grape pomace — the grape skins, pulp and seeds leftover after pressing during harvest. They’re adding wine outright or throwing in red fruit and flowers for a rosy hue. These additions boost aromas, body, flavor, color and alcohol, making for some crisp, tart and refreshing quaffs.
And in the process, beer hybrids are bringing wine lovers into the beer tent.
Here’s what some Bay Area brewers are crafting for your next pint — and where to try rosé beer for yourself.
Drake’s Brewing Co., San Leandro
At this East Bay brewery, barrel program manager Travis Camacho sources grape pomace from local wineries. “Pomace is basically a waste product for the wineries,” Camacho says, “but there is still a lot of sugar and flavor in the grape skins.”
For Drake’s rosé beer, Lusu’s Love Child, Camacho sourced carignane pomace from Berkeley’s Lusu Cellars, adding it to a Flanders red sour. He gets malvasia bianca pomace from Alameda’s Rock Wall Wine Co., which he blends into Drake’s sour blonde beer to make Unholy Alliance. And for Cultured Chaos, he worked with syrah from Sonoma’s Bedrock Wine Co. All three beers were aged in wine barrels and carry a 2018 vintage date.
Drake’s brewmaster John Gillooly creates his own hybrid, a brut rosé IPA.
“We are opening a tap room in Sacramento and wanted a super dry, refreshing, hot-day beer,” he says. “We thought why not make our brut IPA a white wine spritzer? Then we thought it would be neat to throw hibiscus in and make it a blush wine spritzer.”
To get that rosé hue and tartness, Gillooly adds 10 pounds of hibiscus to the brut IPA base, which was blended with chardonnay must — that the juice and pomace — to make Drake’s Blush.
Details: Check it out for yourself at the brewery taproom at 1933 Davis St., San Leandro; www.drinkdrakes.com.
Eight Bridges Brewing Co., Livermore
Brewmaster Justin Beardsley puts cabernet sauvignon must — from Livermore’s Iron Palm Winery — into Eight Bridges’ Nottingham Brown Ale, aging it in Livermore’s El Sol Winery’s red wine barrels. The result? Wine Aged Brown, a beer that smells like red wine.
“That pomace imparted a nice red wine flavor flavor with acidity from the grapes,” he says.
Now that Livermore’s Ehrenberg Cellars winery just opened next door, Beardsley is hoping for access to even more local wine barrels and pomace.
Details: 332 Earhart Way, Livermore; www.eightbridgesbrewing.com
Calicraft Brewing Co, Walnut Creek
Brewer Blaine Landberg first blurred the beer-wine lines with Buzzerkeley, a sparkling ale brewed with Champagne yeast. Now he cans two beer-wine hybrids. Rosé Ale and Guava Trees are both sparkling ales, the former made with rosé yeast, the latter with white wine yeast.
Landberg also brews other hybrids, served on tap or in growlers, including Passionfruit, Raspberry and Strawberry Trees, all made with wine yeasts, and several reserve sparkling ales, made with sauvignon blanc grapes, chenin blanc and viognier pomace, or zinfandel must for a rosé beer.
Details: 2700 Mitchell Drive, Walnut Creek; www.calicraft.com
