There are two kinds of people in this world: those who like pineapple-and-ham pizza and those who are pitied by the first group. Granted, the idea of eating pizza with pineapple on it sounds a little funky — until you try it. Once you do, the gates of understanding open and the pizza-delivery vehicle drives straight through to the brain’s pleasure center. The same can be said about pineapple flavored craft beer and cider. After the fist sip, the gates of understanding open and the beer-delivery vehicle drives straight through to the brain’s pleasure center. Much of the credit or blame, depending on your point of view, falls on San Diego’s Ballast Point Brewing Co. The brewery’s Sculpin IPA has long been a favorite in the beer community, and at its San Diego tap house, the company experiments with casks of Sculpin infused with pineapple, mango, grapefruit and other ingredients. Fruit lends a perceived sweetness to the beer, which cuts through a lot of the bitterness of hops. Today, Peaks and Pints presents pineapple as our flight of the day. Enjoy Craft Crosscut 1.7.18: A Flight of Pineapple.
Ace Pineapple Cider
5% ABV
California Cider Company, the first family-owned cidery in the U.S., has been producing Ace ciders since 1993 in the beautiful Sabestopol seas of Sonoma County just north of San Francisco, obviously next to some of the world’s most renowned wine makers. Their Pineapple Cider, the world’s first pineapple cider, is produced by adding pineapple juice to the fermented apple base. The pineapple flavor and aromas are there but the sweetness is not. It is similar to nibbling on the core of a fresh-cut pineapple. You get the entire tropical pineapple flavor without the over-the-top sweetness. The tartness of the pineapple provides the cider with slight acidity, which stays on the palate.
Maui Pineapple Mana Wheat
5.5% ABV, 20 IBU
Looking for a German-style wheat beer with a delirious touch of tiki? Nestle up to the bar for Maui Brewing’s Mana Wheat. The Hawaiian brewery has, obviously, thrown in Maui Gold Pineapple into its wheat beer. Aloha! At first all you’re likely to detect in the nose is a nice bright hefeweizen aroma of bananas and clove. Ultra-ripe pineapple flavor shows up subtly in the medium-length finish (along with a mild hop note), then gradually becomes more noticeable, though never heavy-handed. This craft beer literally brings the islands of Hawaii to you!
Modern Times Spaceship Earth
5.2% ABV, 40 IBU
With Modern Times Spaceship Earth, you get all the aroma hop fun from a hazy IPA, but this pale ale is more refreshing with small acidity and quenching character like carbonated white grapefruit juice. Named after Buckminster Fuller’s 1968 short book, this crushable hazy pale ale is packed with Centennial, Citra, Simcoe, Amarillo and Denali hops, yielding an aroma of green mango, green banana, pineapple upside down cake and canned pineapple. Taste is more of the nice sweet tropical fruit hops featuring pineapple, grapefruit pith, sweet malts and herbal bitterness accentuated by the dry body. The light bodied pale finishes with bread, lemon and pineapple.
Black Market New England Style Double IPA
8.4% ABV, 48 IBU
There’s a lot of hype around New England beer right now, as the so-called milkshake IPA gains greater and greater notoriety in the craft world. These extremely cloudy India pale ales are the regional style du jour, each new release less translucent than the last. Black Market Brewing out of Temecula, Califonia, has jumped into the haze with a double IPA hopped with Cascade, Mosaic and Denali and dry-hopped with Cascade, Mosaic, Denali and Ekuanot giving this beer not only huge pineapple and tropical fruit favors but also dank resinous tones. Behind the hops a mild level of malty dry breadiness exists creating another tasty facet.
Ballast Point Pineapple Sculpin
7% ABV, 70 IBU
In 1992, homebrewing enthusiast Jack White opened Home Brew Mart in San Diego — a shop filled with supplies, ingredients and instructions for helping his fellow brewers make better beer at home. A simple shop it remained until Yuseff Cherney, an award-winning homebrewer himself, hopped aboard. The two men opened Ballast Point Brewing in the back of the store in 1996. Today, Ballast Point makes nearly 40 varieties of beer, the best known is Sculpin, an American-style IPA. Named after a type of fish that, though equipped with poisonous spikes, is also considered very flavorful, the brew is hopped at five separate stages during the brewing process, including a final dry-hop with the pungent American varieties Amarillo and Simcoe. Pineapple Sculpin is this same IPA brewed with sweet, juicy pineapple. Pours a clear golden orange with a khaki head. Smell is of citrus fruit, citrus zest, pineapple juice, and pineapple chunk aromas. Taste is much the same with citrus zest, grapefruit juice, and pineapple juice flavors on the finish.
