This Beer Is Brewed With Veggies And It’s Actually Pretty Damn Good

@enjoyillinois

Beer styles can vary just as widely as wine, if not more. You have beer types like lagers, stouts, porters and malts. Then you have styles like amber, blonde, brown, dark, fruit, red, India pale ale (IPA), pilsner and wheat. The list is never ending. As the craft beer industry continues to grow, the styles of beers will too and any old-school brewing rules will keep on expanding.

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Brewers are taking full advantage of farmers markets with the mission of creating successful beers brewed with vegetables and herbs, called field beers. It’s important when you’re using produce, that the hops don’t come across as overpowering. Vegetable and herbs are incorporated in the mash, kettle or secondary fermentation part of the brewing process.

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People want a beer that’s innovative and created locally with high-quality ingredients. Scratch Brewing company, located near the Shawnee National Forest in Illinois, focuses on farmhouse beers with home-grown, locally farmed and foraged ingredients. The company uses things like elderberry, ginger, dandelion, maple sap, hickory, lavender and chanterelle mushrooms. Bon Appetit called Scratch Brewing Company’s mushroom-filled “Oyster Weiss” as a trend to watch out for in 2017.

M.I.A. Beer Co. has a tart German wheat beer that’s infused with hundreds of pounds of carrots, oranges and ginger. The concept seems to be growing. Foraged beer lets people experience a certain part of a world in a way that imported vegetables don’t.

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Pumpkin beers often fall into the field beer category when they’re not in a league of their own. Chili-flavored beer, when it has an intense chili flavor and aroma, is considered a field beer. Mushroom-infused beer can also fall into this category. This style lets brewers highlight the medicinal benefits of fungi in a language that everyone can understand and enjoy. Some breweries use real veggies, while others use an extract or syrup that gives the beer its vegetable profile. With field beers, the malt flavors are usually hidden to let the vegetable shine through.

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Let’s hope breweries keep on getting crafty with produce!