What’s your desert island beer?
It’s a popular beer nerd question I’ve been asked a million times, but I’ve never quite come up with the perfect answer to it. The idea behind the question is that you have to select a single beer as the only beer you can ever drink on this hypothetical lonely island, presumably for the rest of your life.
My favorite beer is High Roller, an IPA made by Big Boss Brewing in Raleigh, North Carolina. When I lived near the brewery, there was a time that I used to joke that I was made up of at least 30% of the IPA. That might not have been too far from the truth.
When it comes to desert islands though, is a 6.7% IPA really what I want to exclusively have on hand? I’m not sure.
If the island was hot (as I imagine most desert islands are), then I think I might go for something more along the lines of Anderson Valley’s Briney Melon Gose. It’s been one of my faves all summer, and I think it would be the perfect thirst quencher in the heat — but do I want to drink watermelon all day everyday until the end of time? Not so sure about that one either.
So what would I do? There are definitely a ton of options out there, but none of them quite fit the “drink everyday alone in the sun” bill.
If I could bring the whole brewery with me things get easier, but not much more so. Firestone Walker has an awesome lineup of everything from IPAs to sours, as does Mikkeller, and Sierra Nevada would have me covered on the gose front with Otra Vez and on the IPA side of things as well. That might work. And let’s be honest, I could probably survive on Russian River’s Pliny and Sanctification until the end of time (although I’d be seriously wasted).
But am I bringing brewers or beers? If brewers, do they get to bring stuff with them, or will they eventually run out of ingredients? Fonta Flora, from Morganton North Carolina is definitely worth a look. It makes consistently amazing brews, and does so with foraged ingredients. I bet they’d be making amazing things from the random stuff we found on the island (what’s on a desert island anyway?), so the beer lineup would definitely change pretty often.
Anyway, I thought now might be a good time to post this question to our audience. What’s your desert island beer, and more important, why? And why don’t people call it a deserted island beer rather than a desert one? Seems like a much more logical question.
Let us know your thoughts in the comments!