Well, my Father’s Day went well enough. I got to sleep in for starters. The teenager, as is his won’t hung in his room while I took the little girl out to the water park (where dads got in free on Father’s Day). Now it’s evening, and while I’ll be calling my own dad later, I get to take some time to put much meat and a foil of French fries on the grill, and pop open another beer sent to me by the brewer.
Just among those promo beers lately, I’ve been getting the first slice what may be the next trend: coconut in beer. There’ve been coconut porters and such for a while, but now the fruit is making its way into lighter beers. Case in point, Pahoehoe from Two Brothers.
This new seasonal, whose name I don’t want to try to spell more often than I need to, starts with a Golden or Blond Ale base, then adds “the uniquely sweet taste of coconut” using coconut water and toasted coconut. As long as I don’t still smell of coconut oil sunblock, I’m going in.
The beer pours with cloudy gold, and a head that bubbles for a while, then dwindles to nothingness. I’m seeing coconut is one of those additions that kills head retention. The smell has just a hint of toasted coconut on top of a base malt nose. No overdone coconut oil here.
The taste? It’s kind of complex, there’s a bit more to it than just dumping coconut flavor into a light beer. Malts are a little bit chewy, and they have some sweetness. But cocnut remains understated, more of the toasted coconut I mentioned before. It has a low hop level (16.1 IBU), so the coconut and malt can make themselves known without competition from extra bitterness.
